Double No Show

Well, it was always the unspoken agreement, wasn’t it, Jiles?

Ha.

Haha.

Hahahahahahahaha.

—

History makes us who we are. It informs our nature, it dictates our nurture. It is only through our life experiences that we can start to put together the jigsaw of our lives, and therefore of our place in the world. The lens we view everything under comes from our lived experiences, our bias, our love, our hate, our wishes, our wants, our needs…

History is always bound to us, history will always bind us.

For Cancer Jiles, he always has a remarkable ability to collect history. Forgotten remnants of the past, scooped up for his personal amusement, whether it be a battleship, an ascot, or sometimes it’s just actual physical people (hello Rick!)

History is his toy, it’s something to play with, to make a mockery of, to reshape under the gooey banner of the Bandit brotherhood.

So, it gets you thinking about the history he doesn’t want to remember, the parts that he can’t recreate in his alfredo image. We all know of his history as a former Universal Champion in PRIME, he gets that status, he gets that recognition. We never hear how he got to that belt, we never hear what he wanted to do with the belt. We forget the trips to Chicago he made while supposedly being a loyal soldier to the PRIME blue.

Up until last week, we also forgot how he got that belt.

Cecilworth Farthington was about to remind the world of Phil Atken, what he managed to achieve, a career worthy of celebration. A successful second act at his stage in life, that’s not something that is easy to do, I mean, the odds of a Phil Atken PRIME Universal title run were on no one’s bingo card when Lindsay Troy swung open the doors.

ReVival 50 was going to be a celebration of history,  of a man who achieved a lot in a very limited time, a man who had chosen to break free of his past and carve out something new.

Phil Atken was finally walking again, he was ready to send a message that men like Cancer Jiles and Julian Bathory would never keep him down forever.

He forgot his history. He forgot Jiles would rather Atken be erased.

So as he stood at the top of the ramp at ReVival 50, he was not a conquering General returning home after conquest.

He was the cannon fodder for the opening volley of a war that had been brewing for quite some time.

The Bandits struck first.

---

“HE’S FUCKING DEAD! I AM GOING TO KILL HIM!”

The normally aloof and smugly self-satisfied Cecilworth was frothing in rage as he walked back through the curtain in the middle of ReVival 50. He knew in about an hours time, he was stepping in the ring with some former of murderous train, a train that wanted to toot-toot over a Farthington-shaped corpse but after seeing his mentor kicked down in what was meant to be a moment of celebration made the Murder Express feel in a very distant station. Farthington was seeing red, perhaps ninety six different shades of it.

FLAMBERGE was close behind and similarly fired up. The two men would likely have burned down the entire arena in that moment if they had a sense it would take down Cancer Jiles with them. Sadly they lacked access to the essential fuel materials to make a big honking fire, so angry yelling into the universe was a sort of unhappy compromise.

The only thing that put a pause to the violent outbursts of the Glue Crew as security blocked their pathway to future Bandit-based interactions was the Emergency Response Team rolling Atken past them in a stretcher. A potent cocktail was a mixture of outrage, violence, hurt, sympathy, empathy and flammability and right now, Cecilworth didn’t know what to do as the bartender continued to rattle the shaker.

The first sense was to follow his mentor, to continue to heal a relationship fractured. It was only a few weeks prior that the cast of respect had been molded and attached to the thread of fate that linked Atken and Farthington.

The problem was running out of the building would be to run out on a main event, to run out on the fans, to run out on the company. Cecilworth knew he was feeling a certain way, and he knew that getting out into that ring would be the outlet he needed.

Even still, his instinct remained to follow, and as the stretcher wheeled by, the former Five Star Champion took a few steps in the direction of the nearby ambulance. Every pained wheeze from Atken convinced Farthington that he was making the right call. This is what he needed to do.

This is what he should do.

The only thing that stopped Cecilworth from taking a fun trip on the sadness bus, going whee whoo whee whoo into the Madrid night air, was a hand upon his shoulder.

Farthington spun around, ready to throw hands (of which he now owned multiple), there was only fight at this point in the man’s brain, no capacity for even considering flight as an option.

The voice though, the voice give Cecilworth a moment to pause, a moment to reflect.

“You’re not going to no-show, are you?”

In Cecilworth’s frothing rage brain, he saw the face of Cancer Jiles laughing back at him, but in spite of the red mist’s descendance, there was still just enough sense in Farthington’s brain to realise there was no way it could be true.

That’s the moment Cecilworth looked down and discovered the hand had not reached his shoulder from behind, it had come from below.

The scowling angry Scottish face of Phil Atken, a face frozen like a bulldog chewing a wasp looking up at Farthington.

“You go back out there, you fuck that big fucker up, you send a message. The Cold War is over, it’s time to drop the nukes.”

Farthington stopped in his tracks as Atken continued to get wheeled away, to his back, his enraged Glue brethren looked very much ready to scramble a few eggs.

Farthington took one last look at his mentor.

He was still out cold.

—

“No, seriously, I want to kill him. This isn’t one of those GRRRR I AM AN ANGRY WRESTLING MAN AND I CALL MURDER DROPPING YOU ON YOUR SKULL moments. It’s more of a I WANT TO DROP YOU ON YOUR SKULL AND I HOPE YOUR SKULL PLOPS RIGHT OFF AT SUCH A FORCE THAT WITHIN TEN MINUTES YOUR FUCKING SKULL IS ORBITING THE MOON emotion.”

It was clear that Cecilworth was not basking in the victory after an intense contest with Hessian, where the former PRIME Universal Champion had done a good job in trying to manifest Cecilworth’s fictional limb explosions into a concrete reality. He sat backstage in the Gluebalow (still workshopping it), more ice pack than man, layers of tape zig zagging his body, clearly demonstrating a lot of the effects of riding the Murder Express. Sitting to his side was likely one of the few voices that could even be able to break through the mist, a confidant to both Farthington and Atken, Dirk Dickwood.

“C-Money, I get it, you know I get it better than anyone here. I also want to see our t-shaded friend have all of his limbs and organs attached to wild horses and then we let them run wild and see what parts stay attached, for a fun science project. I want Jiles to suffer like no man has ever suffered before. That’s twice now, TWICE… but… but… you don’t seem to be in the condition to take on this fight…”

Cecilworth tried to lift his arm up to stop Dirk in his tracks, but it was the damndest thing - he knew that his arm with these but it wasn’t moving like he wanted it to. In fact, it wasn’t moving at all, choosing instead to just flop around like it was a teenager in their first dorm room away from home. Dirk could see Cecilworth’s focus, he knew what was going on.

“... I think you’re proving my point right now. I could go down to Linday Troy’s office, I could demand that you get your hands on Cancer Jiles as quickly as Tropical Turmoil and I can guarantee you that I’d have a contract in my hands within seconds. We wouldn’t need to fight to have that match after tonight, I’m surprised I haven’t had a phone call already asking if we’d take it on. You could easily, EASILY have that match…”

Dirk pauses for a second and Cecilworth has a sense of where the gap is going.

“Buuuuut?” Cecilworth inquires to Dirk, already likely knowing the answer.

“But, how are we going to fix all this in two weeks, C-C? You’re getting older, your body isn’t healing as quickly. Sure, you can chop down monsters, you can make them tap, you are a mad honking swan and Hessian tried to grab your bread after all. I know you can hurt Jiles, I just want to make sure you’re fit enough to hurt Jiles right.”

Cecilworth trusted Dirk, and as he felt the burn of all the multiple ice packs across his body unify together in a beautiful choral choir of agony, he knew that his close compatriot was right. If he were to rush into a fight with Jiles now, he was giving a massive opening to one of wrestling’s savviest competitors. Less painting a target on himself, more becoming the human embodiment of those sitting ducks at the shooting range.

Ping

Dirk looks down at his phone and the grimace says it all.

“So, slight problem, they got ahead of us… and errr…”

Cecilworth nodded, he already knew what that “errr” meant, Tropical Turmoil was now a part of Farthington’s calendar. He didn’t have an option, he wanted to do unspeakable evils to Cancer Jiles but now he wouldn’t be able to do it on his terms, on his timeline. Things were going to have to escalate, escalate quickly, fiercely, rabidly. In Cecilworth’s head there was only one option, one that he’d been afraid to face until now.

“Dirk, did I tell you what I found in the basement?”

For a man who enjoyed his certainty, for a man careful in never taking too many big chances, for a man who looked to himself as a figure of stability in a world increasingly growing chaotic, Cecilworth knew that he could not clutch to his pearls. He had to be ready for Jiles, he had to send a message, he had to have Phil’s back.

It was time for Cecilworth Farthington to get experimental.

—

“That door was supposed to stay closed forever.”

As Cecilworth looked down the spiral staircase that stood before him, it was like his father was whispering straight into his soul. He knew it was a risky proposition to ever enter the wing of Farthington Manor that he was never truly welcome in. He wasn’t even sure what brought him on this journey, it was as confusing for Cecilworth as anyone that for the first time in his life, he’d chosen a different fork in the road.

As Cecilworth's shiny shoes clunked down upon the stone of the stairway, step by step, Cecilworth tried to think why he was doing this. What made him want to be here, be near the spirit of his father

The couldn’t quite put his finger on it, it was something in his subconscious that was screaming at him. Something that kept making him feel like there was still a part of his father that was alive in this universe. Every week he’d been backstage at ReVival, it was almost as if he could smell his own bloodline in the vast white interchangeable corridors of any major sporting arena.

It hadn’t always been the case, when he first came to PRIME, he never had any sense of it. Something had changed over the past year or so, something had shifted..

Someone in PRIME had brought his father’s spirit to him, always nearby, never quite crossing paths.

That provided two big questions, both a big time “who?”, coupled with a stonking great “why?”.

Cecilworth was near the bottom of the staircase now and was hoping that this might go some way to at least explaining the “why?”, even if the “who?” was still out of his grasp.

As he reached the expansive basement area, the chemical smell was the first thing to smack him in the face. It gave the kind of sense that left untouched, the room would smell so bad that this wave of chemical mixture currently burning Cecilworth’s eyes was actually the better choice than leaving the room to its own natural musk.

Rows and rows of machinery stood before Farthington, all bubbling and gurgling away with a rather unsettling amount of viscous fluid. Cecilworth could barely comprehend what he was staring at, the bright white strip lighting and clinical walls certainly do not fit with the aesthetic of the rest of Farthington Manor.

As Cecilworth tried to take in the room, his eyes continued to well up, hit with wave after wave of the potent potables the burbled in menace to his left and to his right. As his mind cleared, Cecilworth noticed another concerning curiosity. The room looked incredibly well maintained. This wasn’t some abandoned part of the estate. Whatever was supposed to happen in this room, it was still happening.

As Farthington peered down what felt like endless rows of machinery, he could see a tall figure lurking at the back. In a weird basement, seeing a tall figure should really be cause for horror and alarm, but Cecilworth felt oddly comforted by what he could see, and as he walked closer to the figure, it started to make a lot of sense on why.

It was Hank. His friend Hank.

Wait… IT WAS HANK.

Why? What? How? A lot of confusing questions fired off in Cecilworth’s neural noggin. What he was seeing right now made absolutely no sense, and it was about to make even less. Hank put a reassuring arm around Cecilworth’s shoulder and smiled, walking to one of the burbling machines.

“We need to talk, you need this…”

Hank… Hank was talking… HANK WAS TALKING!!! Cecilworth’s brain had been on the edge of collapse for the past twenty minutes, but it had finally fallen over the edge, like a particularly bad guess on the Cliffhanger game on The Price Is Right.

To take in this room, to take in Hank’s knowledge of it, to take in Hank talking, it was a bit too much, all at once. So, as expected, all Cecilworth could manage to splurt out…

“WHAT THE FUUUUUUUUUUUU….”

—

You let me down, Jiles. I think you know that too. We were meant to be on a historical collision on the road to Colossus. I was carving down every single former Universal champion, including my own mentor, in my attempt to ascend to godhood. You, Mr. Golden Ticket, you were fighting for your life in every single match because you never felt anyone else would be good enough to be the owner of the ticket. You showed more effort and passion in the Almasy than I’ve ever seen you capable of, because you knew it was a chance to rub it in the face of every doubter you’ve ever faced. The people who always look down on you because they only look at the surface. They see the grand entrances, the ridiculous tights, they think of you as a clown. They write you off as they sneer because they don’t get you, they don’t understand you.

They don’t see the malice in your eyes. They laugh at the misspelling of “First Blood”, not realising how the blood was created in the first place. They chuckle at the Octane, not the monsters that live upon it. Trophy after trophy, you display it out in the open and the same fools make the same mistakes, over and over again.

So how come you didn’t fight hard enough against Jared Sykes? How could you have done that to me?

There was an elegant plan in motion, every Universal Champion of the ReVival era was scheduled to fall at my hands. I even got a little bit of brain wrong and forked my own mentor in the skull because of the euphoria I was experiencing. My brain was squeezing out all the good endorphins and boy, I could think of little else. Youngblood, Rezin, Hanlon… Atken… I’d made my point with them all.

You were supposed to be next, Mr. Jiles, you were the last missing piece. I was to snap your brittle limbs, just like I did in the past, there wasn’t going to be a sneaky roll-up this time, only your own pain and misery.

Like a kid on Christmas, I was buzzing with excitement to open my Almasy Final and become a true god of the wrestling arts. I sat under the tree, carefully taking the wrapping paper apart, living in the moment, savouring the treat that awaited. Yet, what looked back to me was not a long-time rival, instead there was an anatomically correct Ken doll.

You failed me. You let me down. You were supposed to be there. You were to be the final stone in my gauntlet of greatness before I went to battle the Red Army.

You think sending yourself to the gallows was penance enough for that failure? If you thought living in your little ship’s brig was you at your career low, just wait and see the sights that I have to show you in Portugal.

From the day you fell to a man who mostly took great pride in discussing the size of his butt, I have been patiently waiting to correct history. You weren’t merely another record for me to conquer, you were my very purpose. People in this company love talking about their stories, protagonists to a man.

You failed and I could never finish mine and I think it was a really cool one! What started in that Culture Shock Battle Royal was always supposed to lead to Colossus. Farthington vs. Jiles. Revenge for Phil Atken, a gauntlet complete, a wave of momentum, support and closure. It was so beautiful in my head. A true Hallmark moment, some may say.

You let me down, you stripped that moment from me, you made me chase my past, you made me try and return to a man I never want to be again.

So, now, we fight.

My friend, the gallows weren’t your sentence, it’s where you laid until judgement was ready. Lady Justice awaits and she’s ringing the bell.

If I was you, I’d stay at home.

Just like we agreed.

Hah!