Sometimes You Wanna Go Where Everybody Knows Your Name (8 Patrons Remain)

Wanna know the fugged up thang, Jason?

If yew needed a morally degenerate piece of shid with the gift of gab to fake bein’ crippled and speak on yo' behalf, just so yo’ ace could win a few matches and convince yaself that ya still the rassler ya once was…

Yew could'a just called my ace.

Seymour's

There was much commotion when the bar fights commenced, and by the time the fighting was done, the amount of patrons had been cut in half.

16 Patrons, all clamoring for the Universal Crown which rested upon the Mantle.

The Tentacle dispensed with the Desperate Man, leaving him all the more anguished.

The Old Bear chewed up the Restaurateur and spit him out.

The A-Lister rolled the Guru out of Seymour's like a yoga mat.

The Lizard sent the Politician packing, but not before taking his neck.

The Golden Rookie, fueled by spite, took out the Sophomore, telling him all about it while he did so.

The Comic Relief stepped up to bat and knocked the Phenom out of the park.

The Mime removed the Rhinestone Cowboy from the premises, while his conman associate did the talking.

And the Shid Gremlin?

Well…

He did it.

He defeated the Serious Man.

Only eight patrons remain.

And he is one of them.

It doesn't take long, once the smoke clears, the tables are cleaned off, and the drinks are served, for the remaining eight to size each other up.

And the Shid Gremlin already knows his next target.

He approaches the Mime, slithers on the floor like a snake, or a magical cat, just as he had done over a year ago, in a different setting entirely.

They were both in different places now, physically and mentally, psychologically and spiritually.

For a while now, the Mime seemed like he was losing it all. The way he behaved on Friday nights, the scumbag he was associating with, it all suggested a different kind of darkness than the Shid Gremlin was used to.

Less absurd, more forlorn.

And the idea of a different darkness than he was used to thrilled the Shid Gremlin at an utterly molecular level.

He was designed to pick up on darkness.

To exploit it.

To wear it, as a robe, or a loin cloth.

To explore it and live in it and fuck in it.

To garden it.

To feed it.

The Shid Gremlin wants very much to do all of those lovely things with the Mime's darkness, and that is why he skips towards him, a jolly feeling in his toxic heart, to say hello – and kick his ass.

But the Mime refuses to open his mouth. He gestures for his conman associate to speak for him, not even turning his head to acknowledge the Shid Gremlin himself (and why would he? No one wants to do that).

“Anything you want from him?” The conman says, in a wheelchair that doesn't work but doesn't have to. “It goes through me.”

The Shid Gremlin squints his disapproving eyes at the conman. He turns to the mime and says, “I know I cut off my dick and all, but goddamn buddy…

“At least I still have my balls.”

The Meat Freezer

Fred had been many things in his life, as you well know. Lover to a car bumper. Dragon of Fiserv Center. PRIME Intense Champion.

But he'd never been a quarterfinalist. In anything. Hell, he'd never been in a tournament, much less advanced in one.

And it felt so damn good.

Also, it scared the hell out of him.

Mainly because of who was next in his bracket.

“GOD FUGGIN’ DAMN IT!!!” Fred screamed when he heard the news.

Jason Snow.

Fred's first defeat. The first man to ever definitively whoop his ass up and down that ring.

What he remembered most was just how strong Jason Snow really was. Every fist, every slam, every kick – they felt like cement blocks. Fred left that match believing with all his heart that Snow was on steroids. When he found out Snow had pissed clean to get a job with PRIME, Fred vowed right then and there that, no matter what, he would not step back inside a ring with that powerful son of a bitch ever again.

Reality, once again, used this tournament to fuck Fred over.

But Fred was never one to get fucked on and not try to fuck back.

So he made a drastic and reckless decision. A decision that would prove damn near deadly.

“We gonna break into that damn Kroger over yunder, once the employees head out for the night. We gonna use their damn meat freezer to train.”

When he said that to the Lasagna Boys, they weren't sure exactly what he meant.

But what he had in mind was far more fucked up than their imaginations could fathom, anyway.

For you see, after breaking into the Kroger and entering the meat freezer, Fred Dick had Toddrick and Miguel put meat hooks through his back and suspend him in the air. Then, he demanded they beat the god damn fuck out of him.

Imagine the scene in Rocky where he's beating the shit out of a big ol' hunk of meat, but the meat is Fred Dick, and Rocky is Toddrick and Miguel.

Freezing their asses off in a meat freezer, wearing nothing but boxing shorts, boxing gloves, and a thick film of Vaseline, Toddrick and Miguel put in work on Fred's body.

Jabs. Hooks. Uppercuts. Kicks to the balls. Punches to the balls. Punches to the throat. Kicks in the teeth.

But something… was off.

“B-B-B-Boys,” Fred said, teeth chattering, because he was butt ass naked and suspended from hooks in a meat freezer. “Yall ain't hittin’ me hard enough. J-J-J-Jason S-S-Snow ain't f-f-f-fuggin’ around, neow!”

“We can't h-h-hit as hard as S-S-Snow!” Toddrick yelled.

“No s-s-shit D-D-D-Dick Tracy. Jason Snow got that old man strength. I ain't n-never f-f-f-felt strength like that.”

“I g-g-got an idea,” Miguel said.

“Ok,” Fred replied.

“W-W-What if we go g-g-get some f-f-fucking bricks and b-b-beat the shit out of you with those?”

“Great idea!” Fred screamed.

So the Lasagna Boys went off in search of bricks. Their bodies warmed up outside of the freezer, as did their minds.

“You know,” Miguel said. “We could just… like… run.”

“Yeah,” Toddrick said. “Too bad we're merely physical expressions of Fred Dick's absolute will.”

Toddrick's brain was washed a bit more than Miguel's. They searched high and low for bricks, but this appeared to be an item that Kroger did not sell. After a bit of arguing back and forth, they decided they would each go get one item that was brick-like and meet back at the meat freezer.

Toddrick's brick-like item was a bottle of hot sauce. Toddrick had to admit, it wasn't much like a brick, but they could pour in Fred's eyes for maximum pain effect.

Miguel found a barbecue grill which had been on display.

They stepped back into the meat freezer twenty minutes later.

And Fred looked… pale. Nearly dead. Damn near frozen. His hair and pubes had tiny icicles dangling from them.

“C-c-c-cold,” Fred said, sputtering like a car. “My lasagna feels like a d-d-d-d-damn Stouffers!”

“I got just the thing to warm you up,” Toddrick said, shaking the bottle of hot sauce.

“B-b-b-bricks?”

“Nope,” Toddrick said. “Better than that.”

Then he shook hot sauce out of the bottle into Fred Dick's eyes.

“AAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!” Fred screamed. “YOU NO GOOD, ROTTEN B-B-BASTARD!!!! MY EYES!!! MY FUGGIN’ EYYYEEEESSSS!!!”

CLANK!!!

(That's the sound of Miguel swinging a barbecue grill like a fuckin steel chair and caving Fred Dick's head in with it.)

Silence befell the meat freezer.

An awful, dreadful silence.

The only thing bringing that silence to an end is Fred's dangling, half-frozen body, swaying on strained chains…

“...Did you just fucking kill Fred?” Toddrick asked.

“Daddy ‘Sagna, you okay there bud?” Miguel asked.

Silence.

“Fred's dead,” Toddrick said. “Holy shit. He's fucking dead, he's fucking dead, oh my god, we're going to prison! We're going to fucking prison and they're not gonna let us be Lasagna Boys in there. Remember? Fred said if we ever go to prison, a couple fine pieces of ass like us, they'll make us Booty Boys! Remember, Miguel!?! Remember!?!”

Miguel slapped Toddrick across his mouth, and then grabbed him by the shoulders.

“Get a hold of yourself, boy!” Miguel screamed. “Bitch ass BOY! Let me think… let me think… We'll need to hide his body. Fuck!”

Suddenly, Fred gasped – a long, hard, cagey gasp.

“Oh thank God he's alive!” Toddrick screamed.

Fred, probably falling into hypothermia, offered a quivering smile at the boys.

“It gon’ take… take a lot more than… guaranteed CTE to… to… take my ace out.”

Then, he s l o w l y rolled his frozen, icicle-laden head toward Miguel and said, “Do it again.”

Jason Snow.

The single most dangerous man on dis roster, so dey say. And ya know, if I hadn't stepped into that rang with yo' ace, I'd have a problem with folks sayin’ that.

But I been in there. I seen what you can do – more ‘portantly, I done FELT, what yo’ ace can do.

You ARE the single most dangerous man in PRIME, inside dem ropes and, from what I've heard, outside of ‘em as well.

That's why it breaks my heart, to see yo’ ace turn to the help of a conman. Not on account of you bein' too good for tricks of trade or the other various et ceteras and whathaveyous.

It's just that, me personally? 

I hate lion tamers. 

Fuggin’ loud mouthed bastards, usin’ dangerous animals for show, for entertainment, for money.

Shid pisses me off.

So Jason, I just gotta know…

When are you gonna eat that mothafugger?

Seymour's

The conman stood up from his wheelchair, and placed himself firmly between the Shid Gremlin and the Mime.

“I hate you. I hate everything about you. Would you like to know why, asshole?” The conman said. “I hate you because you're nothing more than a mischief maker, a loser, and a charlatan, masquerading as a serious threat to my associate! I hate you because you use numbers to your advantage all the time, and yet you accuse my client of having no guts! Balls, as you call it! I hate you because the entire time I've been talking, you've had this dumb ass grin on your face that suggests you aren't listening to a word I say. I hate you because–”

“Let me stop ya right there, chief,” The Shid Gremlin says, putting a hand in the conman's face. “All due respect, whatever the fug you were saying right there? I wasn't listenin’ to it, because I don't give a damn what you thank. I give a damn what HE thanks. If I wanted to hear from a two-bit con artist, I could call my mothafuggin’ daddy.”

Then the Shid Gremlin coils around the conman's body, and whispers with his snake tongue right in the Conman's ear.

“I removed his ace from my life. Because I got balls. Don't no man speak for me. Hell naw.”

Then, the Shid Gremlin unfurled himself, spinning away from the conman associate, right towards the Mime, who still paid the Shid Gremlin no mind whatsoever.

The Shid Gremlin spit in his hand.

He said a few words.

“I thank what really bothers me is, I had admiration for ya. Real, genuine admiration.”

Then, he spit in his other hand. Said a few more words.

“Just to find out, you ain't no better than me. Maybe you used to be. Maybe a long ace time ago, back when Mimes said shid with they chest, back when Mimes stood on BINNESS, and didn't need no fake ace, crippled man doin’ it for ‘em. Now look atcha. You don't say shid with yo’ muhfuggin’ chestacles. You ain't standin’ on BINNESS. You devolved, ya sorry ace sum bench.”

He shrugged, and pointed towards the mirror behind the bar. If the Mime had looked, he would've seen the truth of the Shid Gremlin's next statement.

“Devolved into somethin’ dat looks a lot like me.”

But he didn't look. Didn't acknowledge. And the Shid Gremlin couldn't stand for it a second longer.

He SLAPPED the Mime with both of his spit covered hands…

…and readied himself for the Hell that would follow.

The Boiler Room

Ever since becoming a Lasagna Boy, letting go of his prior identity completely and forgetting that he had loved ones and so on, Toddrick had been having very heinous and awful nightmares.

The night previous was no different. He dreamt that he was a carnie, one of the ones who helped set up the rickety roller coasters that were incredibly unsafe not just from a materials standpoint, but from a this-machine-was-assembled-by-meth-heads standpoint as well.

Snow was falling. The boys were loading up the gear to head to the next town, when the Carnival Barker suddenly began clutching his chest.

“Snow,” he said. He clutched at his heart as though it were being attacked. Toddrick ran to him, he needed medical attention, and Toddrick had a CPR Certification (did he? Didn't he? It seemed like he may have… at some point… in a life deleted).

But the cold Snow began attacking him.

Tearing him limb from limb.

Ever seen Snow kill a man?

Huh. So has Toddrick. At least, in his dreams.

It tore the Carnival Barker to small, pulpy bits.

And Toddrick awoke with a start, screaming his face off about Snow and carnival barkers when–

“Shhhhhhhhh,” Fred said, under several heavy blankets, still shivering from their night time training exercises. Fred pointed a quivering finger towards a new, third dog kennel, which contained Sebastian Gold, resting somewhat peacefully. “The baby's sleepin’.”

Fred had done quite a bit of work attempting to divorce Sebastian Gold from Reality, but it was a union that proved far more stronger and devoted than Toddrick's and Miguel's. It was a taxing ordeal, and Fred recognized that while he needed Gold's brain to beat oatmeal, he didn't need it to be overcooked. So nap time was established.

Fred had nearly frozen to death, by the way, in that freezer – a task they had done during Gold's nap time as well.

When they returned, Fred needed a long warm-up period, so he didn't dump the bucket of water on Gold's head and begin part two of Gold's transformation yet.

But soon.

“I had a terrible dream, Daddy ‘Sagna,” Toddrick said. He looked over at Miguel's kennel. He was asleep as well.

Fred, meanwhile, looked like some kind of Antarctic Buddhist, half-thawed and criss-cross applesauce, blanketed up with an icy beard.

“Speak to me, sweet boy,” Fred said, “And cast aside thine troubles.”

“I had a dream that Snow killed a carnival barker. I've never seen anything like it. It was so cold and… I don't even know how Snow did something like that. It's just flakes and–”

“Snow really is dangerous as a god damn wild ace lion,” Fred said, nodding sagely. “But he's got a tamer now. It bothers me, for some reason. I can't figure out why.”

“Because the tamer makes him even more dangerous,” Toddrick said, as though it was obvious on its face.

Fred gasped. “MORE dangerous?”

“Well,” Toddrick said, “If you're trapped in a cage with a lion, it's bad enough. But if that lion has a human being HELPING make sure it kills you? Yeah, it's more dangerous. Don't get me wrong. You're getting straight MURKED by that lion either way – but even more so if it has a tamer that wants you dead, too.”

Fred hadn't even considered it.

But Toddrick was right.

“Okay, so, how do we handle Snow's tamer?” Fred asked, a trembling, cold hand scratching his chin. “What's his name, Bader?”

“Easy,” Toddrick said. “We master him. Tame the tamer. At ringside. We get some chairs, some prods, fuck with him. Keep him out of the match entirely. If possible, keep his eyes out of the match entirely, too.”

“Master Bader, master the lion?” Fred asked.

“Not necessarily,” Toddrick said. “It's still a fucking lion. But your odds are marginally better. I mean, you got me – the brawn. You got Miguel – the brains. And uh, whatever the new guy is–”

“The Golden Boy,” Fred said.

“Okay,” Toddrick glided right past that. “But you got the three of us, right? Then you got Anna. Daytona, too, if he's not being a massive prick about it. Thereby, the true master baits the Master Bader into the lion's undoing, with his fold of Lasagna Boys and Whoresmen.”

Toddrick shrugged, “Then, all you have to do is figure out how the fuck you're gonna kill a lion.”

“Wrong,” Fred said. “I don't have to kill a lion. I just have to pin one for three seconds.”

Toddrick nodded. “You're right. Absolutely… Of course, the lion might kill you after.”

“Come what may,” Fred replied. “Come what fuggin’ may.”

The two sat in silence for a while, let the plan marinate.

Then Fred said, “Toddrick?”

“Yes, Daddy Sagna?” Toddrick replied.

“Don't tell Miguel, but yo’ my favorite Lasagna Boy.”

The Almassy is a lotta different thangs, to a lotta different people, Snow.

For some, it's just another bullshid thang they have to participate in to keep drawin’ a salary as a member of this roster. For others, it's a last gasp effort of making something of their careers. Hell, Rookie Jiles is gonna retire if he don't win it– and he ain't even a veteran. For you, I'm sure, it's an opportunity. I'm sure you want to prove not just to us, but to ya damn self, that yo’ ace is still the lion ya once was.

I remember when you first came back here. My first pay-per-view appearance ever. Lindsay Troy's fine ace booked me against you, and I did everythang I could to get out of it.

I called in multiple bomb threats.

I tried to get disqualified.

But in the end, I was forced to stare down the man who was, at one point in his career, the undisputed Kang of the Jungle.

You was dangerous as hell, and I admit, I was scared of ya.

Hell, you wanna know the truth? I'm STILL scared of ya.

I never intended to be in so much as the same room with yo' crazy, violent ace since then.

But this is the Almassy.

It's not just a fuggin' opportunity to me. It's not just some fuggin’ obligation I undertake as an employee of PRIME. It's not some last grasp at relevancy. 

Ya know, some folks say that football – the soccer kind, not the red blooded American kind which is better – is life. 

It's not. 

The Almassy is. 

Ya know how I know?

Because I feel more alive the longer I'm alive in this tournament.

When's the last time you felt alive, Snow?

Because, if I was a gamblin’ man, I'd bet it was before a man with a chair showed up to be your tamer.

And make no mistake, I am a gamblin’ man.

After all, if the Almassy is life, then I'm betting it all on bein’ able to pin a lion before it tears me limb from limb.

Besides, the pain of a lion feasting on my big, fat ace will never outweigh the ecstasy of victory.

I want to win life, Snow.

All you've ever done is end it.

Seymour's

Seymour's was once more an hour closer to closing time, and it had been a war the likes of which the Shid Gremlin had not endured in some time.

But in the end, he survived the Mime and his sharp teeth, and power beyond the likes of regular men. He outlasted the Mime's evil intentions, and managed to hoist him, and his conman associate, out of the bar.

Upon doing so, those who remained stood in line and thanked the Shid Gremlin for getting him out before they had to try.

“You have no idea how much I didn't want to fight that psycho,” one of them said.

“Yeah,” another piped in. “Thank God you beat him.”

The Shid Gremlin snickered to himself.

They didn't know it yet, but it was going to be a long mothafuggin’ night.

(But that's life, am I right?)

“I never thought much of the courage of a lion tamer. Inside the cage, he is at least safe from people.” -George Bernard Shaw “When a lion doesn't get its prey, it remains hungry. When the prey saves himself, he has not won, but has saved his life.” -Uday Kotak