land of the loss

[music]

-

WELL, WELL, WELL.

Look who we have here, it’s Joe Fontaine! (applause!)

And what’s Joe up to? What shenanigans will we be witnessing today?

Oh, thank fucking God. You’re finally here. Did you get lost in traffic?

Listen, buddy, we have a problem.

What do you mean?

Take a look, and elucidate us.

Please.

…

Okay?

It was August of 2024, and Joe Fontaine stood in front of a disappointing arena somewhere in Chicago whose name wasn’t worth mentioning. How he got here was a simple case of confusion over whether St. Paul actually existed as a city, and wasn’t just something the people of Minneapolis invented just to feel special for having two cities instead of one. The Dallas effect, in other words. As a result of this confusion, Joe and fabby would get so “lost” that they’d wind up in Chicago.

Joe had his eyes on one element of this disappointing arena in particular.

No, not the three or so guys wearing eyepatches that laid on the ground around him. Those were victims of the 9-iron, 7-iron, and 4-iron, dispatched as casually as one would drink their morning coffee. Those were not worth commenting on beyond what jolf clubs were used in their dispatching.

No, Joe’s eyes were fixated on a statue that stood in front of the arena. The man depicted on the golden statue was every bit as disappointing to him as the arena itself. Generically bald, stupid smirk, and god, have you seen his shoes? What are thooose!? He looked like everyone Joe had ever seen from the early aughts. Who would make a statue of this guy? What a loser.

The only reason he cared about this statue had to do with a request from his boss.

No, not Phil. Not Cecilworth, either. His boss in PRIME, LT herself. That request?

@LT Oh hey @smoothjoecool if you’re at the ████ █████, Blacksmith Plague Doctor asked me if you could steal the statue of ████ ████ and bring it to the Airship

“Mr. fabby!” Joe commanded. Behind him, fabby was holding a big chain, and was every bit as worried about this situation as anyone should be when they’re about to commit some casual grand theft artpiece. “Tear down this statue!”

You always wanted to say that, didn’t you?

fabby got to work in wrapping the chains around the arms of the unnecessary statue of overcompensation. Joe watched him work, one of the jolf clubs in his hand in case some other brainlet attempted to stop his game of musical chairs. Nobody should play musical chairs with Joe Fontaine. Only he knew the rules, and his opponents won’t remember the rules once the game started, either.

fabby was a lot of things. Disappointing, incompetent, not really one for words, wears a gold mask, definitely not as mysterious as he thought he was, and able to get a rental pick-up truck. He was also fairly efficient at securing chains around a statue, as though he’d done something like this before. Once fabby had the statue secured, he gave the thumbs up and Joe got into the driver’s seat of their truck.

When fabby got clear, Joe put the pedal to the metal. Tires screeched. Metal screamed. The statue tilted forward and then fell, landing on the back of the truck with a thud. The truck bounced up from the impact and then came down, and then drove forward for a few harrowing feet before Joe put on the brakes.

fabby quickly sprung to action, throwing a tarp over the statue’s worthless generic body, and then they fled the scene of the crime. Joe laughed as the truck sped away. He turned up the radio, and blasted Demi Lovato for all to hear, and…

“There’s no fucking way you did any of that.”

The year 2025, just a week away from ReVival 72 and Joe’s attempt to take the Golden Ticket.

It’s still Chicago. It’s always Chicago.

“Want to see the incriminating evidence?” Joe offered, immediately pulling up such evidence on his phone.

Of course we took pictures. Thank God for drone strikes making this into a victimless crime.

“Pass. The last thing I want to be is an accomplice.”

The man who didn’t want to be an accomplice was Sid Phillips. You may recall that Sid had left PRIME in the wake of an argument he had with Joe last year.  At some point, they had reconciled enough that Sid could sit in the same coffee shop as Joe in Chicago, talking shop just like they had before Sid left the company.

Sid still looked as imposing as ever, though he didn’t work out as much as he did when he was on the road with PRIME. His long hair had been tamed into a manageable bun. He actually wore glasses. He still smoldered such that a lot of eyes were being cast his way. Hungry eyes, eating the eye candy.

It always annoyed Joe that Sid could so easily get attention without even trying. Joe has to run around with designer steel chairs and loudly talk about jolf futures to get even half as much swag. Life was unfair.

“That’s unfortunate. I’m in the market for more accomplices. Did you know I’m facing Cancer Jiles? That dickweed has accomplices that have accomplices,” Joe said. He thought about it for a second, and then added, “Accompliception.”

Sid rolled his eyes, “Not interested.”

Joe was visibly disappointed, but he knew. Sid Phillips the Human wasn’t dead, but Sid Phillips the Professional Wrestler definitely was, and Sid Phillips the Accomplice was getting aborted like a Jiles Universal title win.

“Well, just know that there’s a big ‘ol Sid-shaped hole in my retinue,” Joe said, “Right now, it’s just fabby, so… Y’know. If you’re ever interested in being the Competemplice, you know my number.”

Sid smoldered in response. A barista fainted. Probably just the heat, right?

“So, just to get things straight,” Sid said, ignoring the barista who just had her heart powerbombed, “You happened to be in Chicago because you ‘got lost’ and you just so happened to steal a statue while you were there.”

“Yeah.”

“We both know you’re not an idiot, you just play one on TV. So, you were in Chicago on purpose, weren’t you?” Sid asked, “Why?”

Joe sighed.

*.*

Here’s something that definitely happened in Chicago in August 2024.

Joe had made a big, giant show of his foolishness on Jabber, telling an elaborate tale of going to the Flynn Cup to murder Coral Avalon with jolf clubs (the entire reason the sport of jolf had been invented in the first place, by the way) only to get lost and wind up in Chicago.

In reality, Joe had specifically come to Chicago for a clandestine meeting.

The two of them drove up to one of the fanciest hotels in the city, a skyscraper that overlooked Lake Michigan, and found themselves at the penthouse suite. And there, sitting in a wheelchair and watching that lake with all of the care and love of a man who’d like to see it become a lake of glue… was the Humble Proprietor himself.

Joe had plenty of experiences with Phil Atken in the past. None of them were what you’d call good unless you, like Joe, liked inviting Philly A. to every maddening activity to have ever come out of your brain.

Near Phil stood Dirk Dickwood, clearly the voice of reason out of everyone in the room. It was his job to manage the two diametrically opposing personalities (and the furniture) in the room. With Phil, you had a man who still held considerable anger and hated as easily as he breathed. With Joe, you had…

A man whose dumbassery was not easily measured on the Hollywood-Stevens scale.

Yeah, that.

Dirk gestured for Joe to sit at the desk, which served as a decent buffer between Joe and the Proprietor.

If Joe was nervous about this meeting, he never let it show on his face. There was an easy smile there, the kind you shouldn’t have when you’re stuck in a room with a former Universal champion who managed (if only because of a trick of the rope by his future tag team partner) to choke out Brandon goddamn Youngblood.

“Why are you here?” Phil asked. He didn’t even look Joe’s way.

Joe never let up his smile, “Because you invited me here.”

A silence filled the room. fabby, who was not given a chair of his own (because why would you give a chair to a piece of furniture, that’s fucked up), shuffled uncomfortably from foot to foot. He felt the tension in the penthouse that Joe himself didn’t seem to care about.

“Not that,” Phil said. He turned his wheelchair around so that he could face Joe, “Why are you here?”

Joe only let his easygoing smile falter slightly when he answered, “I’m going to guess the ‘here’ you’re talking about is ‘Glue’ itself.”

Phil Atken did not smile. It was said that long ago, the Humble Proprietor lost his smile in the same way that one could lose a baseball by smashing it with a bat hard enough to send it into the ocean. Joe Fontaine certainly didn’t want to know what Phil Atken could do with a bat, he barely wanted to know what that man could do with his bare hands.

Phil looked at Joe, then passed the sort of glance at fabby that could wilt flowers and lesser men… and fabby definitely wilted.

“I see that your other half isn’t with you.”

Joe’s smile faltered slightly more, “Sid’s kinda taking a break from the whole Glue thing.”

If by “taking a break”, you mean that Avalon talked to him enough to convince him to finally leave PRIME and now the only personal backup you’ve got is this 6’3” piece of furniture that might have just taken existential damage from Philly A.’s eye lasers.

Yeah, that’s going to be a loooooooong break.

“And are you, as well?”

“I mean, I’m still here, aren’t I?”

“Are you?”

The question finally caused Joe to drop the smile slightly.

Joe knew he wanted to know why it’d not been since Colossus, the biggest show of last year, since he actually got in the ring. Apparently, Joe’s decision to try and become a star on a wrestling show without actually wrestling was becoming noticed by everyone. After all, it was why Sid left.

Phil has every right to ask why you’re still here. If I were Phil, I’d be a little upset about that, too.

Joe tried not to break his smile, “Okay. You know how sometimes you’re born in a big wrestling family that do the big family wrestles?”

“Say that like a normal human being,” Atken sniped.

Joe’s easy smile was becoming harder to keep up, “You know how I’m Joey Malone’s son, right?”

“Yes.” Phil said this with the tone of someone who thought Joe was stupid for even considering that he wouldn’t know that. It’s very similar to the tone of most things Phil said to Joe, so you’d have to notice the nuance of the syllable as it was being said to appreciate it.

“I’m his one and only son, and I…” Joe said, pausing to find the right words, “…am clearly not him.”

“Clearly not.”

“But that’s the thing, right?” Joe said. “I got tagged as ‘the son of Joey Malone’ the moment I got into wrestling. Hell, even before that. How I’m way shorter than he is, or how I’ve got the same eyes, or that he also was in a tag team with a Phillips and wouldn’t it be great and cool if we named that team after his old team?”

Joe stood from his chair, and set his palms on Atken’s desk. Dirk stepped in to make sure Joe didn’t go flying over the desk, but Joe didn’t go any further than that. Probably because Phil would beat him senseless.

“So you want to know something, Mr. Atken? I’m not here to be someone’s sequel.” 

Not even for him.

That’s why it says Fontaine on that roster page.

“And yet, you’re not out there, are you?”

“I’m not.” Joe admitted, before he backed away from the desk and sat back down in his seat. He looked over at Dirk as he asked his next question, “But I’m here all the same. Just figuring some stuff out.”

“Like what?”

Joe smiled.

“The right jolf swing.”

Phil’s expression never changed, but there was a bewilderment in his eyes. The kind of bewilderment that usually came from saying the word “golf” with the hard J.

“See yourself out. I have a headache now.”

*.*

Not to interrupt your train of thought, but let’s keep our eyes on the prize.

It’s not every day you get to personally collect the pelt of Cancer F. Jiles.

Usually, it’s the other way around. How many vaginal-speaking losers do you think they’ve sent to get “eGGsecuted” over the last three years? That man has sent more goobers packing than Nestlé. Thankfully, you’re decidedly non-goober-shaped. After all, you’re still basking in the afterglow of actually knocking off Nate Colton in the Almasy. People are going to take notice of you now.

People like Jiles.

We don’t know if Cancer Jiles feels anything like joy. If there’s one thing he’s Michael Jordan Rich™ in, it’s spite. What we do know is that so long as he exists in PRIME, he’s always going to threaten C-Money.

We don’t need Cancer Jiles hovering around hoping to get to C-Monoco for Round Whatever. The last thing Jiles deserves is hope, and it just so happens that we now have jolf league-approved hope-stompers.

So, like most things that Jiles covets, the Glue is going to take it from him.

Which means YOU will be the one to take it from him.

This is the Golden Ticket we’re talking about, after all.

You’re interested in being the center of attention, and there’s nothing better for attention than the threat of Dick Puncher the Invincible himself having some money in his bank. After all, what is the Golden Ticket but a Universal title in all but name? With that beautiful piece of Willy Wonka at your beck and call, all eyes are gonna be on you to see what you do with it.

When we do this (and make no mistake, we will), those at the top might put us on a collision course with C-Mount Charles. That’s a bridge we can cross when we get to it, and it’s a toll bridge so we’ll need the Golden Ticket to do it. 

But think about the real possibility here. 

You could just hang on to that Golden Ticket indefinitely until the heat death of the universe (or until they run another Almasy, I guess) and not actually have to fight C-Moolah at all. You could parade around with that thing for the rest of PRIME’s existence as full-blown proof that YOU, Joseph Fucking Fontaine, took the pelt of Cancer Fucking Jiles. 

Better than any white lion pelt. Sweeter than wine. COOLer than any championship belt.

After all, you’re not actually interested in fighting C-Diddy (wait, let’s not use that one). You’re interested in being C-Dub’s Number Two. You’re interested in being C-Illionaire’s Plan B. You’re interested in keeping the Glue business booming. C-Winning won’t have to worry about yet another someone lurking in the background ready to cash in their Golden Ticket – because you’ll have it.

Around here, Glue controls everything. Jiles should’ve learned that lesson at UltraViolence, but you know what? I think it’s high time that this valedictorian teaches him a little remedial course.

Ha.

*.*

It’s Joe Fontaine!

Yeah, yeah, it’s him. Us. You want to know what we’re doing right now?

What?

We’re in his “workshop.”

Oh no.

Oh, yes.

The workshop in question took up a corner of his hotel room in Chicago. A makeshift peg board was mounted against the wall, and from it hung metal pieces that belonged to steel chairs. The table in front of it was a cascade of different, curious parts that didn’t seem to belong to any steel chair you’ll ever sit in. It wasn’t just any sort of workshop. It was where the magic happened.

It’s where the jolf got made.

Screws were getting tightened, as Joe was placing a plate over the bottom of the seat of his latest horrific creation. A little surprise he had in store for Cancer Jiles. Something that was sure to bring the boom. As he did so, he was talking to someone on his phone.

“And it’s like… How dare he talk to me like I’m nothing more than something tarnishing his legacy?”

Joe’s words were heated as he worked with the careful precision of a man who watched a lot of YouTube videos about how to carefully install pressure sensitive triggers in things. He wouldn’t be able to install a payload until he arrived at the arena, but he knew the right pyrotechnicians for the job.

The voice on the other end of the call had a familiar rough drawl to him.

“Dang, son, your pappy’s still every bit the asshole I ‘member ‘im to be.”

Uncle Jeff paused, and then added, “No offense.”

“None taken,” Joe said. He gave the pressure plate a little press, and seemed pleased with the result, “But it’s like… What is with these people’s obsessions with legacies and torches and doing things the ‘right’ way as though there’s supposed to be a ‘right’ way to win? A win is a win, isn’t it?”

“Damn right,” Uncle Jeff agreed, “You get it.”

Of course you get it. The only one in the family who never got it was dad. That’s why he’s the one unable to properly walk, while Uncle Jeff could probably still sign Memphis Death Certificates even now if he wanted to.

Just, uh… May want to hook him to an oxygen machine afterwards.

“That might be the only thing me and Jiles agree on, you know?” Joe suggested, “We’re always looking to win in a perfectly crumbulent way.”

“Dontcha mean ‘cromulent’, nephew?”

“I said exactly what I meant to say,” Joe said.

“Ha!”

Joe picked up the pièce de résistance of his whole project. It’s a piece of gold-painted plaster, which had a very familiar face on it. It’s the face that smiled back at Joe Fontaine every morning when he looked in the mirror. His face wasn’t generic, his face didn’t have a stupid smirk, he knew good shoes, and he wanted the last thing Cancer Jiles to see before everything went down in flames to be his own goddamn face.

“Here’s what I think, Uncle Jeff, and you can disagree with me if you want. Lots of people do. There’s more to making your mark in wrestling than just what main events you’re in and what titles you’ve won. What’s the first thing you think about when you think about Uncle Danny?”

Uncle Jeff loudly chuckled on the other end, “He gone and retired your pappy’s ass!”

“Yeah, and also the rest of his body,” Joe added. “Uncle Danny was never the main event or a world champ. But everyone who knows wrestling knows his name because he ended my dad’s career.”

He smiled as he installed his own visage on top of the pressure plate of his new jolf club. He gave it a good test and was satisfied with the result.

“And that’s what I want. I want something more. Titles and main events will come with time, but I’ve got both of those now. I need more. I need to prove something. I need to be able to say that I’ve walked my own goddamn path without him always hanging over me.”

You should probably say that sort of thing without the clenched teeth in the future.

Uncle Jeff chucked at the other end of the phone.

“Nephew, I got faith that you’ll be just fine makin’ your own mark, pappy or not,” Uncle Jeff said. His chuckle slowly came to an end, then he said, “Hey. It true that Steve’s been hangin’ around?”

Joe had picked up his new club and turned it over to test its weight. When Uncle Jeff asked his question, his hands hesitated.

“...Yeah.”

“Careful with that one, nephew. We all know what he is.”

“Yeah. He’s furniture right now,” Joe said without hesitation, placing the chair back on the table, satisfied with the weight.

“I’m serious, nephew,” Uncle Jeff said, “He ain’t nothin’ but trouble. Don’t be a farmer lookin’ to take in a viper.”

Joe laughed, “Since when did I become the farmer?"

His grin turned toothy.

“I’m the viper in this analogy. Everyone else is just now finding out.”