Göttem-DÄMN!-merung

It was a beautiful day in Buckinghamshire, and Cecilworth Farthington enjoyed his morning tea. He looked out the window and saw Joe Fontaine and FLAMBERGE (and fabby) swinging steel chairs at golf balls, screaming at them the entire time.

"Oh. I see." Cecilworth said. Without another word, he picked up a bottle of whiskey and poured some into his tea with a gentle stir.

—--

What are you doing?

That’s going to be a very common question from me to you, you know. Quite frankly, I don’t often know what you’re doing, and that upsets me tremendously. Last thing I remembered before Max Kael almost broke your neck and sent you on a five month spiral of claiming to be dead while plotting your empty-ass revenge that the Red Army accomplished for you, you were planning to murder Coral Avalon with a bunch of steel chairs.

Sorry, “jolf clubs”.

I don’t claim to know anything you plan, and that’s fuckin’ weird, man. I’m supposed to be the one in your head driving all of your thoughts and instincts. I’m that gnawing sound of knives in your head, the saber rattling the cage, the blade that’s supposed to make you instinctively murder everything in your path.

So, why are you playing jolf with FLAMBERGE, exactly?

You have no idea how this game is even played, and you claim you invented it. 

“Joe’s Golf”. I can’t believe you went this long without telling anyone that “jolf” is another of your dumb portmanteaus. Maybe you assumed people would get the joke, you forgot that most people in PRIME are morons. Well, no matter. Much like jolf itself, you make it up as you go along.

Is it the Avalon in you?

Ooh, right in Des Moines. Got it in one.

That guy’s continued influence on you really steams my buns, if you’re smart enough to catch my meaning. You can’t even confidently murder him because unlike Kael, just about everybody liked that guy. Cecilworth likes him! At least, you think Cecilworth likes him. You’ve never been too sure.

Either way, if you’d actually murdered him with the jolf clubs before Kael got to you first, you’d be looking over your shoulder for the rest of your life.

Some Bengalise fuck that Avalon made friends with twenty years ago in fuckin’ Kalkuta is going to pop out of a sewer manhole one day and stab you. Some Hungarian coal miner is going to drag you into the darkness he came out of because Avalon gave him some advice fifteen years ago that he’s held close to his heart ever since. The entire country of Japan will declare you an enemy of the state somehow and throw you into the ocean to fistfight a kaiju.

You know that’d have happened.

So, let’s call it a very good thing that Max “killed” you - full quotation marks, fuck you - and Avalon lost his oh-so-precious title before you had another chance to try again.

Oh, you knocked that one pretty far, actually.

How many points is that?

Oh. Six. You decided on six.

Okay then.

I don’t know how your scoring system works, and I suspect that you don’t know either. I bet you thought “six” was a reasonable number. I hope you didn’t think of “six” because it’s a couple of letters off from “sex”, because that’d be very Whoresman of you.

……That’s what it is, isn’t it?

God dammit. 

I can’t with you.

I bet the lizard brain never has this much trouble with his meat puppet. —-- So, why are you playing “jolf” with Joe Fontaine, exactly? When the hell did you two become besties? I mean, I guess you could do worse. He’s a maniac who seems like he loves the absolute shit out of you, for reasons unclear. And to his credit and your detriment, you owe Joe a fucking mountain of debt. It was YOUR job to avenge and revenge Joe after Max Kael attempted to murder him. You took it, you claimed it as your own, trying to spin that plate next to all the others in your life, and it was YOUR job to finish before Cecilworth or Hayes or anyone else had to get involved. And you failed spectacularly. Hell, The Attempted Murder-ee Himself did a better job than you, and he seems to have had his brain jostled quite a fair bit to have gotten to this point, where - hold on, hold up what you’re carrying again, I need the full 360… Ah yes, the “Sand Wedje”. Steel folding chair, with the headrest bent back to make a capital L, and you’re - wait, hang on, the Sand Wedje? Ah, I see, the tee shot went squirrely and you hit beach. Which jolf club did you use off the tee on this one? Ah yes, the 2 Wood, of course. Well. Splintery poops to you, I suppose. If I knew any of the rules, or if Joe did, or if any remnant of Knifey Joe that may or may not be steering that little green ball of chaos did, I would have some real insight here. Instead, all’s I can say is, you’re embarrassing yourself as an athlete and as a man to be wearing those jorts on this jolf course, or in any setting outside the confines of your apartment or a jail. And it’s good that you are. Embarrassing yourself like this, I mean. It’s important to hashtag-stay-humble in order to stay hashtag-blessed. … Hang on, where was I...before the bunker, before jolf clubs, where were - ah, that’s right, I remember - I was calling you a failure, and I got around to it in the end with the humble thing,  do you see it too? Sometimes, you just start down a road, and even if it turns out that you’re not on the road you expect, they’re all connected to each other *eventually*. Just like you and Joe. Re-connected, eventually, after Joe’s would-be death. You each were buried under the weight of pursuing right things for wrong reasons and wrong things for right reasons, and when a person is so thoroughly crushed, entities like me who are certified in the craft can help make sure you’ve been properly compressed and hardened. Psychological tensile strength tests, babygirl! There’s a two year old girl out there who idolizes you and shares your blood that you can’t save, and - see, look! You’ve been HARDENED hardened, haven’t you, FLAMBERGE? Not even a bump of reaction out of you. See how good it is that I’ve been set up here? It’s no use carrying so much weight if it won’t make you harder to kill. Better to learn how to grieve forever, and let that grief produce the chemical fuel that runs through the pipes of the Glue Factory. … …I see you’ve lined up your shot. How far are you from the pin - call it 30 yards? Probably calls for a nice and easy motion and - you’ve swung full strength. You wound back, you did your best Happy Gilmore, and you swung for the everloving fence - did you hit the ball? FLAMBO, did you hit the ball? …you didn’t hit the ball. Not exactly. You hit a castle’s worth of sand immediately surrounding the ball, and the cascading sands have forced your ball up and out. A minor miracle, all things considered, You might have cut the ball in half if you hit it flush. Sharp corner on that Sand Wedje. …useful club. You know something, meat puppet - I think we’re beginning to see this through the right way, finally, after so much unnecessary back-and-forth. The unnecessary “therapy sessions” at WellMind Clinic that really just did a lot to confuse you, when we all know what really should be going on here in terms of “Julien Lavigne is a machine that turns shit into gold and Olds into glue”. The absolute magnitude of hatred and pain required to power this machine. No, Julien, we connected, eventually. After some meandering, we ended up on the same road - my road, Phil Atken’s road, the road that sees “FLAMBERGE: PRIME Hall Of Famer and Youngest Legend Alive” as just warning shots to any serious person in wrestling, in sport, in the wider world at large. And my road is a toll road. Joe Fontaine is owed a fair bit of toll from you. And you’ll pay up until the voice of murderous rage inside of Joe Fontaine says you’re even. Count up your score for this hole. Seven point two. Point two? Why would there be decimals in this game? Is that score better or worse than six? Are better and worse false dichotomies that serve as barriers to open-minded human experiences, and we should therefore consider seven point two and six to be of equal life value? … What is jolf doing to me? —--

What has jolf done to you, man?

Followup question, what are you doing?

Apparently, you decided to try going for the full Farthington jolf experience and you’re trying to punch the goddamn ball now.

Great. Cool. A-plus.

I’m sure he’d be as proud of you as he was when you won your last match. At least, I think he was proud of you. Pretty sure he was still throwing heavy objects around at the time and shouting indecipherable curses in languages you’re not even sure he understood.

Like Swedish, den horan!

Come to think of it, it’s been over a year since you actually wrestled in PRIME.

You remember that night, don’t you? Of course you do.

You remember hoisting FLAMBERGE on your shoulders, parading him around the ring after you and him clowned all of those Red Army nerds. That might’ve been the best night of your life in PRIME, living vicariously through the accomplishments of the guy you consider your best friend. Well, one of your best friends. The other one didn’t have as great a time, really.

Remember your actual best friend, though?

No, not Cecilworth. Not Hayes, either. And I’m glad fabby didn’t even enter your mind just now.

Remember Sid?

What do you think he’s doing now, living it up at the University of Nevada? Maybe he’s the talk of the campus? It’s not everyday a former PRIME wrestler goes back to college. Maybe he’s gotten back into football? You and I both know that’s where his passion really was.

Think he’s found a new bae?

Are you jealous? Vad gulligt.

After all, Sid was the real popular one on your team. He didn’t have the brains that God gave a crowbar, but man, people were real into all of those nicknames and all of that dank smouldering and holy shit dat ass. All of the merchandise focused on him. He drew so much attention despite being a one trick pony who refused to ever get better at wrestling because he hated it.

Think about how hard you worked to overcome your limitations. You’ve had a who’s-who of people who’ve helped you over the years. Avalon, Marchesi, Cecilworth, FLAMBERGE, even Hanlon… That’s two Hall of Famers, two future Hall of Famers, and that awkwardly tall lura that Avalon hung out with. You did everything in your power to make it all work despite how useless Sid was and how… Avalon Avalon was.

People never looked at you the same, did they? They still don’t.

Because you always choose to act like a lura.

You embody the weirdo spirit of Glue.

It’s why you’re more at home with Cecilworth and your buddy who just whipped a Darude-class sandstorm over there than you ever were with Sid or Avalon.

As a result?

An absolute grade-A social maladjust like TAL still treats you as second class because he still can’t comprehend that Glue is full of dangerous weirdos. A guy whose brain is full of dated pop culture references to use in every sentence he speaks thinks he can take you despite the fact that you’re a better him.

You watched (from cardboard eyes) Crash Jackson walk in from out of nowhere and call himself a champion. Him! Crash Jackson!  Of all the hot-dogs-that-think-they’re-people! Herr Hotdog himself!

And do you know what the worst part is? Anna and Rob don’t even consider the Glue to be anything to worry about. They’re walking around with title belts like they’ve got this in the bag.

Oh.

Heh.

I reminded you of something. 

It’s something you’ve been thinking about for a whole damn year.

Anna never gave you a scarf, did she?

She didn’t, did she? Vilken dåre.

You were on the same side for WarGames. You all aligned in the name of Glue and Cecilworth. You cheer-led your whole heart out, and yet that was not worthy of a scarf, was it? For however “clutch” those scarves were or weren’t, it burned a hole in you, didn’t it? It annoyed you to know how second-class she thought you were. It’s a slight you’ve held within you for a whole year.

A slight like that’s just a whetstone to sharpen a knife.

Ah.

You finally punched the ball. Took you long enough. How far did it g– Oh. You punched it like ten feet. Uh, inte dåligt?

I’m not sure what I expected.

Oh, but that was worth… I’m sorry, did you just say the square root of negative pi?

…Joe, you motherfucker, what the actual fuck? You know FLAMBERGE doesn’t know shit all about fuck about imaginary numbers, he was trained his whole life for the one singular purpose of being a homicide monster that rips necks out of people and then puts them in his huge display case like some sort of weird black French Kraven the Hunter, what are you doi–

…You did that to piss me off, didn’t you?

…

Din jävel. —-- The square root of negative pi? That number seems like it was custom-made to piss you off. Or someone, anyway. He knows you’re not about numbers. Well. You’re about SOME numbers. Numbers like 12, for the number of consecutive singles victories I won for you (not to mention your pristine tag team record) (oh yes, we’ll get to that) Numbers like 3, for how many crowns you currently possess; or 4, the number you’re planning to possess after the Tokyo Dome. Or 24, your young young baby young age. And to that pantheon, we add the square root of negative pi, and you know why we add it without a complaint, or a rebuke, or a question? Because that’s the score Joe Fontaine says he shot, and when Joe Fontaine talks, people need to listen. We’ve all seen him dab, and it’s the kind of dab that grabs you by the soul-loins. It’s so weird. Weird like you. Maybe weirder THAN you, but still. It’s ok, though - you’re still plenty weird. I dig the new blink, by the way. Very European. Also, the planking, the fish flops, the rolling around - there’s just enough memeology around you to make people forget, even if just for a split second, that you are the embodiment of “dangerous” when it comes to the Glueminati and you band of Dangerous Weirdos. The PRIME locker room wants to step to you until they step to you, and by the end there’s usually not enough time for their regret before it’s over. You would think that of all people, The Anglue Gluechador would know this the most - you collected his neck the last time you met in the ring, but Jesus Christ, the things you did to his PARTNER. You choked out Mortimer Kjedelig so hard that he lost his fucking identity - and then you beat “C. Mortgomery Byrnes” so badly that he fucked off and vanished for MONTHS before coming back as his third and ultimately final form - and then. Well. You glue’d Zapp Scatino, is what you did. Glue’d him right up. You gave Anglue a chance to not be surrounded by failure, but because the Gluechador only knows how to exist when he’s surrounded by failure, history repeated itself. And now history gets to repeat itself again. History history. Got ‘em. Damn. It’s the kind of complete and utter domination of these two Olds that gives me hope for you yet, FLAMBO. Even if the team of Call Themselves Good Guys, the fucking World Tag Team Champions, now consists of a colonizer and the hot dog guy. A real crowning achievement for the morally naive. And then, there’s Anna. She knows too, even if the whole Kill All Old People And Take Their Stuff doesn’t really apply to time lords the same way…she’s one of those necks that was on the old mantle. She held a crown at an inconvenient time (for her) when you were chasing it. She was even there for the first time the most iconic entrance music in PRIME debuted! Ooh la la, ahh oui oui, indeed. It’s a real shame that this is how she’s stuck spending her time - boosting up a bunch of haggard old fucks who wouldn’t know the value of a clutch scarf if you choked them out with it. She could have been honorary glue. Instead, it’s just glue. Lowercase. The end product after years of market research and beta testing have perfected the methods in which you take those that are useless and turn them into something useful - if not useful to them, per se, at least useful to you as an adhesive. We’ll label her bottles “The Scarves That Bind Us” and save some bottles for the rest of Team Farthington. Her partner’s bottles won’t get labels. “leGend”, or since you’re you, “the Gend”. What a hard sell that is, and an even harder shirt to justify when you see him walk down the hallway and you can’t even hear him talk over the sound of every one of his joints clicking. Bet most of the good-good marrow is gone, but just remember - you’ve worked with worse. You made glue out of just teeth that one time. … Nice shot, I think? It’s hard to tell, because I don’t see the hole, and it’s not clear to me that this “hole” has a hole at all. What I DO see is Hank holding a waste basket. Is he the target? That’s not right at all, Hank’s a treasure. He shouldn’t have to resort to this sort of prop comedy. No, Hank’s too good for this sort of thing - hang on, look around, surely there’s someone else who can fill in for this - Oh hey, fabby. Didn’t see you there. That’s a lie. We’ve seen you for a while, we just…don’t wanna. Go, fabby, be the hole instead of Hank. Let him know that he can take a swim break if he wants. No, fabby, YOU don’t get swim breaks. You get to be a very important trash person. … … See if you can hit him on this next one.