being a teen is a precious time when special organs on your body are blossoming from dormancy into full-time regular use (Pretty Pimpin)

Yes. Finally.

You are beginning to feel more and more inevitable each passing morning.

The Collector, immortalized, objectified.

A threat - the threat -

the black Ace that buries necks in the dirt,

call it Spades

or call it wild.

Wild, dangereux, not because you are the most exotic animal in the PRIME zoo

(though you might be)

but because at your core

beneath the jolf, behind the bombast, even past your hairpin trigger,

you are feral.

Through hours and hours, months and months, years and years,

I have reverted you to your natural state:

a freak of nature

backed into constant corners

whose “fight or flight” goes one way and one way only.

Forever.

A lever pushed past the edge, with screws that would be on the brink of rocketing loose

had I not sealed them in with cold rust;

a locomotive barrelling down tracks that you must trust to be there

when I tell you they’re there

because the alternative is a young lizard

discovering in real time

how it would feel

to experience the heat death of the universe

inside of everything that makes you a man

all at once.

Your heart, your lungs, your mind,

your sausage baguette.

…

And it’s joyous to behold.

I get a front row view of my favorite show,

a terrifying script,

a creeping sink that eats at the guts of men…

the horror of knowing so certainly

so absolutely

that they have a battle plan for how to catch the Lizard King

how to slow down the mlementum

while they are unknowingly in too deep.

An Uncollected Neck only because time,

like the locomotive,

moves in one direction -

forward, at speeds they almost understand

yet no one is prepared to handle

except for you

because you’re starting to understand

that even trying to “handle” this thing,

this ripping gunshot,

this terminal velocity that presses out glue straight from the marrow,

would only mean that your neck is right in line with the rest.

Doomed, or cursed -

or if you’re someone like Max Kael,

or that other Max Kael,

or whichever one runs the news, 

or runs for office, 

or runs for the arms of a man he knows too deeply and coldly and sinisterly to ever truly love -

if, like him, you’re a dog chasing tires,

a horsefly chasing lights,

a goblin chasing chaos for the thrill of it?

Maybe catching that tire,

getting hit by that train, 

is a mercy.

For men like him, the real curse is existence

and you and I are more than happy

to rid him of that burden.

—--

Julien Lavigne woke up with a shot. This has become unfortunately common lately, which is a real bummer - Julien and sleep used to get along like gangbusters. Cool dreams about flying, or winning medals, or sexy sex times (because after all, being a teen is a precious time when special organs on your body are blossoming from dormancy into full-time regular use).

The dreams have become less fun. Teef would often disintegrate within his mouf, all while some floating idea that this is just evolution and “why would our stomach need teeth if they just had eyes”, whatever the twisted fuck that was all about…or Daniel Darby might come bursting through some door, pissed at being thrown by the wayside and having served all sorts of jail time, with gun drawn…or, in this case, he was a child again. Younger than a teen, but old enough to remember how hard it felt being this small and how generally helpless he felt to control a single goddamn thing about his day, let alone his life.

A girl was there, too. Only two and a half, but able to talk to him - and so much like him, too. The same face, though not the same hair; the same smile, if not the same pitch in their voice. So much like him that in the dream, they both looked in the mirror and saw the same oblivious, floating kid staring back at them, and they laughed about it.

Then a shadow of a 300 pound man in a track suit blocked out the light. And he started that slow-burn rant that horrible fathers like Henri Lavigne all seem to master - a cold, percussive, matter-of-fact diatribe of every way Julien fails, rising in tenor, disappointment and shame literally raising the temperature of his own face, volume spiking now, words losing all cohesion and instead transforming into a terrible ringing, and then…

…well, it’s been spoiled already. Julien Lavigne woke up with a shot.

Was it a Monday, or a Tuesday? A Wednesday? Time had started to lose all meaning to the Frenchman - though he can’t pinpoint exactly when this began, because to do so would require that understanding of time he’s been missing for…some time.

And so, when he woke up this morning he rubbed his face, and felt something unfamiliar and unexpected - well, some part of him was expecting that.

“Maybe it’s still the dream,” he thought, making his way down a hallway he was sure he knew like the back of his hand but finding the bathroom to be a bit further away than he expected. But finally, he made it, and flipped on the light switch - a completely blinding experience that he immediately came to regret.

As his eyes adjusted, he didn’t recognize the man in the mirror. Then he laughed, because in his head he heard

“You silly bitch, it’s just you.”

He flipped up the toilet seat, which was a different color than he was expecting.

“Dad? Did you renovate, or something?”

His call was absorbed by the walls and was met with no response.

He controlled the direction of his morning flow with one hand while he used the other to address an annoying itch on his face - and to his confusion, hair was there.

He wrapped things up with his number one, gave three final flicks for “liberté, égalité, fraternité,” and flushed. He found the sink after a brief moment of head fog, began to rinse, and looked up, still not recognizing the man in the mirror.

FLAMBERGE.

Without thinking, his left eye slowly began to blink, then his right; then his left eye slowly opened, followed by his right. Oh, that’s right.

Wait, is that him?

It’s just you.

Julien looked at the pajamas of the man he knew to be himself but that he didn’t recognize in the mirror, and he thought to himself…pretty pimpin, honestly.

Teal silk short shorts go well with this fluffy-ass robe.

Clashes with the room though, and that caused him to look around a bit more. Definitely not the bathroom of Henri Lavigne. It’s actually a bathroom he uses all the time, given the fact that it’s in his Vegas flat. He starts to remember that he’s never really invested the time to decorate this place much, given how often he’s on the road, or at Farthington Manor, or on the jolf links.

But how can all that be true while the rest of his memories are playing tricks on him?

Those weren’t memories, FLAMBO. You were dreaming. 

Stress dreams, again, but still dreams.

It was a Thursday, or a Friday, and how weird it was to be “home” (ish) because that’s not where he was so very sure he expected to be given that very real memory of his father screaming at him. Father screams are a near-daily occurrence in his very early 20’s, as he pushed and pushed and pushed his only child to brute force his way into accomplishments that Henri himself had failed to achieve; disappointments Henri could perhaps unlive if his son wasn’t such a fucking idiot and would do what he was told, damn it.

Julien was now at least 5 feet away, and this man he didn’t recognize was now in the way of the sink. He needed to brush his teef - hang on, better check to make sure they’re still there - yep, no need to see Dr. Pleasant - and hang on, that man’s brushing someone else’s teeth!

FLAMBO, you’re just brushing your teeth.

It’s just you.

And then Julien laughed again, and was no longer five feet away. He was there, and the beard was starting to make sense again. The hair was making a little less sense, though - hang on, yep, that’s right, he was just asleep. This requires maintenance.

And suddenly, Julien is a hundred miles away, watching through a telescope as a stranger runs a pick and a comb through his very strange hair. 

Any place will do, FLAMBERGE.

If you can hear me, or if you can’t, or if you don’t understand what is and isn’t my voice:

it really doesn’t bother me.

Any time will do, any space will do,

you can launch yourself anywhere you need to be.

Flagellate your sleep schedule all you want,

phase in and out of your mid 20’s and early 20’s and teen years and childhood every day for all I care,

cycle and recycle and twist inwardly upon yourself for the rest of time in order to bring to bear this perfect bullet train of mlementum if that’s what it takes.

I’ll make sure your teefers get cleaned

and your bladder gets emptied

and you make your plane rides

and you choke the will to fight out of my lessers.

Julien flew through that 100 mile gap between his dissociation and reality, and it was jarringly quick. He blinked rapidly, suddenly hyperaware of where he was, who he was, how old he was. The edges of the nightmare that woke him up grow fuzzier by the second, and he struggles to remember the bulk of it. He does remember seeing his very young half-sister, Henriette, and then he remembers feeling awash in shame and failure, and - ah. Thanks, voice. You know exactly why that would be the vision to pop up in his subconscious NOW.

Julien Lavigne, the living adult man - or the husk of him, if you’re pessimistic about the kid - has to face Max Kael again.

And even if the voice proverbially Kerrigan’d FLAMBERGE’s Kneecaps of Mental Fortitude…

Tonya Harding is misunderstood, and it was FLAMBO’s fault, but go off.

And even if FLAMBERGE, now, in the Famously Dangerous Odd Glue Year that is 2025, seems to be back at the peak of his powers…he threw everything he had at Max Kael once, and it was all for nothing.

The guilt Julien Lavigne carried for failing to avenge the fallen Joe Fontaine, “murdered” at the hands of one (of the many) Max Kaels did two things to Le Protagoniste…it served as one of the last dominoes that needed to fall before he could fully succumb to the Powers Beyond His Comprehension that seem so keen on steering his life; and it left a raw hotspot. A hotspot with a direct channel to the fear cortex within his mind - and with Julien, fear was always hand-in-hand with shame and the feeling of failure.

Joe’s been a good friend. He hasn’t even once brought up the fact that FLAMBERGE failed. It’s not really even clear that Joe views it as a failure at all - the Glue Boiz were all so happy to see Cecilworth write the final chapter of that nightmare series with Max Kael. And then the Glue Boiz kept winning, gold flowed, and maybe it’s just hard to be bothered about the past when you can have your furniture polish your championships as you jolf in the summer breeze.

Julien was so close to allowing himself to let go of that guilt - maybe he had even convinced himself that he had done it. He could chalk his failure up to lessons the voice felt the need to teach him -

I DID need to teach him, for the record.

Your dog pees on the rug enough times, you need to shove their nose in it

to build that sensory connection

that extremely quick flip of a switch that lets him know, NO, dog, NO

BAD DOG

ASSOCIATE YOUR WRONGS WITH THIS DISGUSTING HUMILIATION

…or something like that.

- or he could chalk it up to Max just riding the fire of the peaks of his madness, a feral creature in his own right that seems much more interested in politics these days than blood feuds.

…

But no. It turns out, Julien wasn’t over it. Not at all. And his dreams let him know it.

As long as the Neck Collector allowed Max Kael to have done what he did to Smooth Joe Cool and to never experience existential dread by Julien’s own hands…the failure spot would remain hot. The channel between seeing “FLAMBERGE vs. Max Kael” to “overwhelming fear of failure” to “everything awful he’s been made to feel about himself ever since memories could form” was electrically powered.

…

And so, as Julien gave his face another once-over, he started to recognize himself again. The boy he was, the man he is, the muddled mush in the middle that leaks out in both directions. A reminder has become a part of his daily ritual - a prayer that “this too shall pass”. A prayer that is patiently observed by the voice,

who knows that yes, this is a true thing, though not the beacon of hope nor the return to “teenage dreams of sexy times instead of adult anxiety nightmares” Julien may wish it to be.

“This too shall pass” because all things do; this too shall pass, because all things become glue.

—--

FLAMBERGE,

you could be ten thousand miles away

chasing the moon, or drowning in an ocean.

You could lose your connection to your body entirely,

detach from your worries

and live two completely separate lives:

the one that others see and you can’t,

and the one that you see, and others won’t.

It doesn’t matter to me, because you could be an actual, living, breathing, Gila monster

behind a glass wall, a very exotic animal at the zoo

with a fun name that people like to say;

you could be deaf yourself

while you stand mere inches away from Max Kael’s face,

your marbles fully scattered

as I push the words out of your fucking mouth and bring forth the weapon that was always made for this one, perfect thing,

as you’re unable to remember what year it is;

I will still drag you,

the cold-blooded you,

the tired you,

the regretful you,

the shameful you,

to the very front of this bullet train.

I will tie you to the fucking locomotive

and leave you a stack of train tracks to furiously throw in front of it

as we burst forward at unprecedented speeds,

like fucking Gromit.

I will throw every wrench I can find into that failure superhighway in your brain

like forks in the microwave

twenty minutes on high

smoke detector’s out

and guess who’s napping;

I will hotwire your goddamned frontal lobe

in order to choke the life out of Max Kael

or that other Max Kael

or the Max Kael that’s apparently dead

or Arthur Pleasant

again.

I will do anything to you that I require

which is the great thing about you succumbing;

it’s not like I have to ask permission.

It’s already mine.

…

Don’t act like you won’t enjoy it, because you will.

At least, the bonus effects.

You might be dancing on the surface of Mars as Max Kael loses all consciousness in the loving embrace of Marie Antoinette -

he’s always in the market for another head, so why not “off” with this one? -

and even from there

as watch yourself from another planet standing face to face with a debt paid to Joe Fontaine that he may not really think you owe him,

you’ll feel the cooldown.

The fire put out, the steam and smoke dissipating the last poisons.

It’s the one thing that has a shot of cooling down that fiery chimney that’s given you grief every night for…how long?

I seem to have lost track of how long it’s been, as well.

Yikes. 

For you, I mean.

You know it’s been long when even I can’t be arsed.

…

Cool, clear water over a burning coal chute.

A lot of smoke to consider.

But then again, you’re FLAMBERGE.

Le Protagoniste. The Youngest Legend Alive.

You always want that smoke.

—--

It’s an interesting thing to see Julien Lavigne finish his morning routine as all this blistering hatred ripples underneath his exterior - because if anything, he seems to be chipper.

Now that he’s remembered who he is - which is to say, He Him - he’s begun to recognize the fine line between how he experiences panic versus power.

Honestly, the line is the edge of a knife, and he cuts himself on it just a bit every day - but each soul-wound layers on another layer of scab and callous that makes the next one easier to bear; the next one, easier still.

Today was Saturday, or Sunday - honestly, right then, it didn’t much matter.

The voice rang harder and harder, all the time, constantly. “This too shall pass”, he might’ve hummed to himself; Anglue sure as shit did. By now, the Gluechador had been glued harder than any hoof that Elmer’s ever pulverized.

Julien knew that there was a great opportunity to find peace in the fact that he might just disconnect from reality entirely sometimes - a lot of gold seems to follow him in those moments.

So he decided to hum, and even shimmy to some Stromae as he ate his morning omelette (...du fromage, fine, yes, some French stereotypes are real.)

Max Kael stands in his way in the Almasy, the next great chance at personal achievement and glory that Julien so very badly craves.

Max Kael triggers every insecurity Julien has had about failure since he was a child.

And the voice is fucking relentless.

…

…which means that at least if it’s a deal with the devil, the devil’s coming through.

—--

I’m so proud of Joe for once again doing the things you apparently can’t

or - if I wanted to be gentler - just haven’t done, yet.

Who was the one who actually got revenge on Max Kael for the murder of Joe Fontaine, again?

It was Joe Fontaine.

Who murked the biggest biiiiiiiiiiiiiitch in the history of PRIME like he’s been a singles superstar his entire life, while you sit 0 and 2 against Jake Colton’s Biggest Mistake?

It was Joe Fontaine.

Thank goodness he’s there for you as your tag team partner.

But, oh no, consider this -

the road to this achievement you crave so badly goes through champion after champion after champion.

You will face winners, and then winners of winners, if you want to reach the finals -

finals, which have a very very

very very very real chance

of being Glue versus Glue.

Hayes could be there without a second thought. He’s been in the Universal Championship picture since the start of the ReVival Era, he’s a stone cold killer,

he’s got an incredible mustache

and he can beat anybody. He HAS beaten anybody. 

If he stays out of his own way, no one will be shocked to see him run the table.

But also, there’s Joe.

On just as much of a hot streak as you…

granted, much of that streak is shared

but then again

he beat Colton.

You may NEVER beat Colton,

you piece of shit,

and Joe did it on his first try.

You really think it would be some miracle if he did it again to Cancer Jiles?

…

Either way,

after I eliminate this former champion in Max Kael for you

and then the next former champion

and the next one,

you need to prepare for this now:

the path to the very top of the world,

the one that runs through the would-be leader of the Glueminati,

the one you, deep down, so very much wish was you,

runs through ALL of the Glueminati

and you may

just 

get

a little darker

along

the way.

…

Thank goodness for the pain Kael is causing you.

It’ll give you time to slab up that callous some more,

burn away these sores

and toughen the fuck up

for the gluey, gluey tracks

we’re going

to have

to build.