Do we really need another reptilian shapeshifter as president?

Your words hurt people, FLAMBERGE. Do you even realize what you did?

You spooked his child-abuser ass.

You booped the proverbial snoot backstage when you told Paxton Ray to watch you closely. He saw you claim The Nuzzler’s neck, you shook him, and he immediately lost his shiny treasure as a result. It’s the only explanation, after all…he was undefeated, you know. Terrorized the damn place. Then, you met him once, you planted the fear in him, and lo and behold. No other reason that result happens. Could’ve been Anna Daniels, could’ve been Bobby Dean. You wash over people like a wave and leave torrential destruction in your wake, which grows wider and wider each passing show. 

…

Good.

I’ve made you so powerful now that you speak things into existence. 

We’ve heard the scuttlebutt backstage, of course. They think you’re more lizard than man these days. That I’ve consumed you so wholly that you no longer possess the intrinsic qualities that give men civility and nuance. What do you think about that, when you hear it? How do you feel when people tell you how much they hate you, how much they FEAR you, for what you’ve become?

…uh-huh. Ok, fair. Friendships aren’t a thing, but let’s be real, kid, they haven’t been a “thing” for you in some time. Still a lot of doubt about Cecilworth and Corkscrew Dick Tyler. 

(give me that one, I have to think it’s weird like a duck’s penis or I’m going to become obsessed with it and then we’re REALLY going to have a lot of problems when we’re talking about Making Glue)

(i mean for fuck’s sake, LOOK at that veal cutlet, you know he doesn’t care if his partner finishes or not)

(GOD that does something to me)

(…maybe it’s like an echidna, four heads)

(…i’ll start calling him Knuckles)

It’s nice though, right? Having power, for once. Your name on a match card has meant death for months now. How many pushes have you derailed? How much punishment have you showered down upon this roster, as a cold and sharp rain, changing people. Skewing forever how they view themselves, how they view their place here in the most dangerous and competitive professional wrestling organization that has ever been built.

Teefers. Love. Hell, Coral Avalon doesn’t become a killer and a champion without us showing him what a killer and a champion really is.

It’s an aura thing now. A lizard aura. Lizaura, and they can’t (or won’t) connect with you now. No adhesives to form relationships. Ironic, given the glue. Maybe it’s a thing where, as the chief glue-making artisan for the better part of a year, you’ve altered the formula. Better said, WE’VE altered the formula. It’s unlike before, because it’s impersonal now. You’re not putting labels on bottles and shipping them out for wholesale. Glue is glue is glue is glue is glue, is glue, is glue. And it’s all chipper shredders and devouring and listening to me while I take you where Phil wanted you to be. Where you are supposed to be.

Don’t make me say where, idiot. You know where it is.

You manifest doom, and then you put the necks in those hard plastic sleeves so no one else can fuck with them after they’ve been graded. The full Love Convoy set is already a great conversation starter whenever you finally encounter another REAL collector. 

And so you told Paxton Ray he might lose his championship if he fucked with you, and so he lost his championship before he even had the chance. 

You’re so powerful now that you make glue passively, in the background. Because your words hurt people.

Heh.

—–

Where are we, by the way? Open your stupid eyes, I know when I’m talking into a void of trying-to-sleep-French-kid. Blink, you fuck, it’s blurry. More than once. Waking up takes multiple blinks.

Oooooooh you’re in yOuR oWn BeD oN tHe RoAd. Look over to your right, anyone there? …no, no one there, of course there’s no one there, generally speaking you have to talk to people before they appear in your sleeping quarters. Unless you’re Knuckles, probably, because he could flex his sick chest tattoo at anyone he wants and that’s game over. 

Do you wish Jordan was there?

Yeah, that’s right you fucking dork, I’m going there. I shared that memory with you a while back for good reason, and then you started eating Whataburgers on the floor and watching coyotes eat birds and I wonder if that means you forgot how your innards used to work.

It’s ok if you forgot, for the record. It means you’re giving up hope. I like that you’re giving up hope. Phil knew the score – eliminate what is old. Clear the way for what is new. Consume. Digest. Create anew. 

Jordan is of the past, and you were clinging to that boy, weren’t you? Some sort of reminder of the time when you had that hope that happiness was real and God was real and Love was real and you could connect with all of it. Jordan was your life raft in a different kind of Lake, not one of Uncertainty, but one of Earnest Endeavouring. 

It’s all dead, for the record. Happiness, God, Love? All gone forever. You didn’t do that, again for the record (and shame on you for showing up here too late to be the one to actually bury those things in the dirt). 

I didn’t tell you, but the Lake of Earnest Endeavouring was the first thing on my Kill List when I showed up here. Sorry. It was holding you back by keeping you grounded. And for the record, that’s why I haven’t brought up your mom’s stupid letter in a while either. 

Oh wow – reactions on the monitors back here. Reign it in, tough guy.

I mean, do you want to open it? Do you want that warm connection with the one person who’s loved you unconditionally? I bet you do, infant. I bet you think there’s something in her words that might bring those hopes and dreams and God and Love back to life and you could take that with you as a backup plan when this whole “PRIME Sees Me As A Lizard Now” thing turns tits up, yeah?

Well I want you to be Universal Champion, FLAMBERGE. And I get what I want first. That’s always been the deal.

No takesies-backsies.

Roll over. Look at the hotel alarm clock, see what it says. 7:06am. Is that good? I don’t always know what numbers mean. My systems are only really set up to view certain specific emotional parameters, I can’t tell if 7:06 means you slept in like a piece of shit who isn’t training hard enough, or if you think you’re waking up early and you only think 7:06 is early because you’re 23 and you normally stay up until 4 and wake up at 11; all I can register is, like…loathing. 

For the record, loathing is good. It suits you. It’s on brand.

Do you eat breakfast anymore, or are cold-blooded lizard people like yourself more prone to the ebbs and flows of the weather? I see you asking what I mean, so let me try putting this in a question you’ll understand…do you get hungie when it’s warm? Do you not get hungie when it’s chilly? It’s warm, which is why I ask. Hot, even. You sweat through the sheets again. It doesn’t look good, or cool. Albuquerque and whichever lackey in PRIME’s corporate offices is responsible for booking you into a hotel room with functional air conditioning did this to you. It’s gross and smells like middle school.

(you don’t think Lindsay Troy did this to you, do you?)

(nah, she has you scheduled to pick up that Hoyt neck)

(that chiseled, handsome Hoyt neck)

(fuck, he looks good)

(rock hard jawline, and i bet he uses just the right clipper setting on that facial hair)

(setting #2, probably. just coarse enough to make you remember his cheekbones when they brush up on your neck)

(like a musky jungle cat who can make you see God…)

(…baseball grandma sports the weather brandon youngblood dead babies malaria nate colton)

Get up, there’s breakfast in here somewhere. Since this hotel’s A/C is broken, don’t count on the buffet’s 7/11-ass sausage links and pancakes being any good here. Just grab a box of whatever mass-branded and coldly corporate breakfast cereal you can find. It’ll treat your guts better.

…huh. Didn’t take you for a Raisin Bran man. Gotta have fiber if you’re going to flush out PRIME of its toxins.

…you didn’t think that hard about the analogy when you slept like sweaty shit and your Phil Atken Brain Insert is telling you to avoid hot breakfasts right now, ok yeah, fine, take away my cool idea. Dick. 

—–

Man, can I just say for the record? And I know it’s going to be controversial? FUCK Paxton Ray.

Yeah, FLAMBERGE, I know – it’s a hot take.

But man…I had this whole final image lined up and ready to reveal at Tropical Turmoil…

(ok i only had bits and pieces but listen to this)

(paxton ray, being all rahhhh i’m a dick but i love my daughter allegedly, rahhhh, intense championship i bleed chain blood rahhh)

(and you’d step out wearing a fighting for nora shirt)

(and you’d probably have gotten a lot of cheers and love because the story would be that it takes a motherfucker to beat a motherfucker)

(FUCK, the pop you would’ve gotten – i could’ve made people think you were still human, that god and love and joy and warmth were actually alive lmao)

(and now the hypothetical love you were going to get is gone forever)

(stolen away because you’re too scary, even for him)

(you showed up and spoke words to him and now he ded)

(RIP)

(i may have even let you open that letter from your mother if the neck you collected was the pristine paxton ray undefeated intense championship neck, but now that neck belongs to anna fucking daniels)

(…anna fucking daniels.)

Frankly, it was rude of him to lose the Intense championship before you got a crack at him. You threw him out of the Murder Death Rumble, after all! How dare he squander the inevitable video package!

I was going to try to make an analogy here about how maybe Paxton Ray is the raisins in your cereal, but I’m going to be real with you kid – I forgot how much Raisin Bran secretly rules. Two scoops, bitches, and your colon is ready to rumble. It’s a cleansing fire for your poop chute. Make sure you pack a couple boxes before you travel back to Strasbourg next – they don’t sell it in France.

Hang on, there’s the TV remote. I’ve got an idea – let’s channel surf all up in this bitch. Grab your poopin’ cereal and see if you can find – OOH I know! See if you can find the televangelist channel!

We learned about this phenomenon not too long ago – apparently in America, people actually CHOOSE to give money to wrinkly old white men on TV who tell them Satan has a hold on their country and their white babies. These are some of my idols, FLAMBERGE – you don’t even know! Ok ok ok ok I’ll catch you up, whew, hang on. So! What I love is how brazen the whole operation is – it’s so up-front with the bullshit, and the confident manipulation of it all…it’s inspiring. It’s the lofty peak that we Intrusive Thought Creations strive to reach every day.

If you were going to go out in some stupid pandering Fighting For Nora tee, I would have tried manifesting myself physically in a Justice For Joel Osteen ringer. Botox ain’t cheap, friends, and neither is a private jet. They KNOW it, they USE it. Freaking iconic.. S-tier understanding of an audience.

Sorry. I know I’m an internal mechanism – sometimes I have to externally process. You don’t learn how to turn men into lizards without first learning how important it is to convince others that God does things.

He may exist, but that’s not the point – the teachings are, if he does exist, he’s just watching. Cosmic binoculars or something. Chilling out. Waiting to see how the scores settle, never stepping in. God is an NPC. The cold calculus of glue-making is for the technically-living; he gets to act like his post-op analysis is Very Important, and many people spend their lives trying to artificially fluff up their post-op analysis resumé for Hoyt-knows-why, and…

Oh! You found the channel, HELL yeah…commercial. Soap or something. Brrrrrrrrr. 

…

I hate waiting.

—–

None of these people on the TV are as stunning as Hoyt Williams and so why are we still watching, kid? It’s not churning my higher juices, it’s also not churning my lower juices if you know what I’m saying, it’s just…a lot of singing. We don’t know these words. They don’t have analogues to our few and scattered times in French churches.

How’s the Raisin Bran treating you? Moderately badly? Well…we tried, I guess. Just try not to accidentally poop in public. May all your poops be intentional.

So, uh, listen. Don’t be mad.

(ha, who am i kidding – i’ve overridden all the controls back here, you’re going to be just as mad as i want you to be you fucking automaton)

I don’t, JUST want you to be the number one wrestler in PRIME. Which, I know – dick move on my part to bring this up just after you’ve reached 2nd on the big bad rankings list, and I’m very sorry I couldn’t bring this up earlier. It’s just…

How do you tell someone about the Glueminati and make it not weird?

Just – don’t get weird about the name. Yes, the reptilians run the illuminati and therefore they run everything you hold dear in the real world and yes, there’s a one-to-one analogy between that IRL situation and what I’ve been able to create with you, my lizard-adjacent threshing of teeth and mud and pain and wrath, and the group of very good boys I’ve steered you towards. 

Here’s the thing, though. We’ve finalized the shirt. 

It’s a cool shirt and it’s going to make us several moneys. Enough to get you a different hotel than the rest of the idiots in PRIME – one with A/C.

I see the trickle of spit forming at the corner of your lip – nooooo, FLAMBO, this doesn’t mean you get to choose. I’m steering. You like it when I steer, remember?

You better fucking remember, or I’m going to make you hurl that bowl of cereal.

…that’s right, good boy. Good fat dog. You get to be the Protagonist of PRIME when I tell you that you deserve it. 

It could be coming soon. We don’t know yet, do we? We have to overcome the second-handsomest wrestler on the roster first.

(after Knuckles)

(there’s just something hot af about how the black tattoo ink pops on his pasty chest)

(you don’t think that cross on Knuckles’s chest means he’ll be mad when you choke out Jesus, do you)

(that would be complicating for me)

(…)

(hang on i’ve figured it out)

(the cross always represented death)

(you choking out hoyt williams means something something dead jesus something something Knuckles’s sternum piece something something frisco town)

(oh BABY)

…

…

…you can hear that, can’t you.

Welp.

—–

My neck collector. My protege. The Future Protagonist of PRIME, the Kid, the French Phenom, the Motherfuckiest Motherfucker that No One Knows How To Handle…you could rule the PRIME world, did you know? Maybe not publicly at ReVival 29. Maybe not publicly at Tropical Turmoil. But it’s yours, now, if you would take it. Yours, Cecilworth’s, and Knuckles’s. 

Reptilians running the Glueminati. 

May Paxton Ray beg your forgiveness for the sins he thrust upon you, may Anna Daniels beg your forgiveness for taking what shouldn’t have been hers…and may Hoyt Williams beg the first gecko he can find for forgiveness for whatever the hell he did to deserve you.