VVlue?

The Behemoth stirred. He blinked rapidly, trying to make sense of his surroundings. His eyes danced around the gray cloth interior of his Ford F250, shadowy figures whirled on the other side of the condensation covered windows. A smack against the window spurned him into action.

“Hello!?” A steel blue eye attempted to peer through the water droplets; it darted back and forth. The Cowboy Colossus unfolded himself from the back seat and slowly worked his face up and against the glass. Distorted eye staring back at distorted eye.

Indiana KOA’s were always weird places.

Another few rapid knocks and another shout from the other side of the door caused Byrd to wrap his mammoth hand around the door handle, the eye backed away from the truck and Byrd flung the door open. He launched himself out of the extended cab of the truck. He landed barefoot on the softest grass his toesies have ever felt.

The eyes owner was standing before him, it backed away quickly as Byrd took in his surroundings. Once again his eyes darted, the hedgemaze fire burned, somewhere in a far corner a horrific howl rang out.

“Well, you’re here…” Cecilworth Farthington said at the half naked wild man. The Behemoth’s own steel blues made contact with Cecilworth’s.

“As far as I knew I was in Indiana…” Clay turned and looked at the black F250 over. He’d checked the weather before he went to sleep, sunny and 85… was not the weather he’d been awoken too, and that’s definitely not the KOA camping spot he’d pulled into.

“And you’re here now. That’s nice?” The awkward question statement drifted between the two men, Byrd let the question go and assumed it was rhetorical. He pulled a black t-shirt, a pair of boots and a his black hat from the front seat. He pulled the shirt over his head and looked up at Farthington, who was staring at Byrd. Just staring. It finally dawned on Clay that the question wasn’t rhetorical.

“Yeah, yeah, it’s uh, nice?” The Universal Champion glared, his eyes flashed at nice and the question mark that followed. The Behemoth picked up on the discomfort. “I mean, ya coulda called and I’da made some time ta come out, ya know… But it’s nice we get ta spend some time before we kick the Whoresmen’s ass.”

“Psh…” The Universal Champion seethed.

“I mean it would have just been courteous ta let me know…” The boots have made their way onto his feet and Byrd stood up and towers above Farthington. Cecilworth looked up and shrugged, pulling out his mobile.

“That means I have to go to a room with a phone. I have plenty of rooms, but we took the phone room out years ago…” Farthington’s trusty thumbs twirled for a moment, before he slid the phone back into his pocket. Clay looked at the phone pocket, and back to Farthington, and then the phone.

“I mean it’s fine, I guess.” Clay smirked to the Best Boy. “Good ta see yer takin’ this seriously. I plan ta take it just as serio…”

“Well, look at that. The sun’s out. Here, let’s go for a little walk,” the Universal Champion waved Byrd forward down the cobblestone path. He pointed to his right; “That’s the fire. It’s nice.”

“Yeah, great fire…” Clay’s not the best at hiding his emotions, and the confusion was etched across his face as he took a few steps trying to keep up with the accelerating champion.

“And where your truck is, we play the Jolfs out there…” Clay looked back and by the time he turned back around Cecilworth was ten steps ahead of him. Almost at a brief jog down the path.

“And over here, this is the ring. It’s for practice. You can practice as much as you want.” Farthington gestured towards the ring.

“I can practice? Just me? Where the hell are you…” Byrd was cut off as Cecilworth turned a 180 and began walking in the opposite direction.

“I’ve got a few business meetings to attend, but you have at it!”

There was a truly irritated and distant tone from Farthington, one you wouldn’t necessarily expect from someone who just brought a big truck that went vroom onto his estate grounds by mysterious means.

“Have fun now.”

The sentence was punctuated by the slamming of one of the many doors that made up the entrance to the manor. Clay was now left alone between the eternal burning hedge maze and the jolf course, still waking up, still confused at everything going on. The only thing he had inside of him was a deep, very deep, and still growing sense of annoyance.

—

Now, the logistics of Clay Byrd’s new found truck location are probably a question that you now ponder, dear reader. It invites a lot of questions, like “how could a truck get from America to England without waking the giant man?” and things like “how did it end up in the middle of a jolf course?”. These are of course important questions.

Anyhoo.

Cecilworth Farthington was having a bit of a time of it. Despite the Universal Championship sitting upon his waist, which it always did, because as Farthington explained “you need something to hold up your trousers” as if that justified the concept, there was constant stresses between internal Glue Politics, or gluiticis, the whole “Max spent a year trying to murder me and now I guess Rose is doing a Max?” and of course, most horrendous of all, a lovely jacuzzi time ruined by a roid man and some bakers.

So when Dirk Dickwood informed him that his dear close personal friend LT had decided it would be fun to pair up him with Clay Byrd, last seen promising (yet another) murder to Farthington and then lariating his skull off, it wasn’t exactly victory laps around the Farthington Manor “Victory Lap” track from our intrepid hero.

Sulking would be much more of an accurate word.

“You’re going to have to work with him on this” came the wise council of one of the few people to ever help Cecilworth see sense, Phil Atken. The tension between the two men was always usurped by Farthington’s deep respect for Atken, but this wasn’t exactly the sage (non-Pontiff) advice he was seeking as he lurched around the Manor’s Glue Meeting Room or Glumy Room.

“But I don’t wannaaaaaaaaaaaa” came the baby town frolics reply. Thankfully for Atken, this bounced right off him, probably due to both disinterest and seeing this side of Farthington in action more times than he’d like, which was a lot of times, tens, hundreds, something of that ilk.

Farthington looked out of the window, seeing Clay sleepy stagger his way around the outside of the manor. The Universal Champion’s peering had the same feeling as if it was watching the local cat and waiting to see if it would piss on his lawn so that he could finally bring out the family shotgun and teach the cat a valuable life skill through the exploding of its entire body.

“He’s not going to piss out there.” came the knowing response from Atken.

“He might piss out there. You don’t know what the man is capable of. He lives in a truck! All of the outdoors is his bathroom” came the rapid and snide response.

As if the Founder had gone through an anger management course recently, instead of getting worked up on Cecilworth’s terse reply, he closed his eyes, let out a deep breath and tried to pivot the conversation towards overall clarity.

“What’s this really about? You call in a bunch of favours to get his truck over here and what was the plan after that? You give him a piece of your mind? To me, Cecilworth, it feels like you wanted to work with him.” Atken raised a quizzical eyebrow, Cecilworth did not return the glance, he had firmly elected to stare at his shoes instead, which were suddenly of great interest to the Universal Champion. The scoff produced by The Founder's response probably reverberated around the manor, more due to its terrible soundproofing than the scoff-volume.

“This is because he beat you, isn’t it?”

“Nyooooooo” came the less than convincing response. “It has nothing to do with the fact he was the last person to beat me in singles action by trying to lariat my skull away from the rest of my body and let it float away into the crowd as if it was a helium balloon. It has NOTHING to do with that, okay?”

The patheticness of Cecilworth’s response managed to cause a very concerning action to take place - it was a response so dad, Phil Atken couldn’t go anything else but chuckle at it. In Atken’s case, the chuckle still came across as sinister, the kind of chuckle that would slap you in the face if you dared go near it.“Jesus fucking Christ, is that really what we’re dealing with here?”, the disbelief was clear in Atken’s voice as he witnessed Farthington swaying side to side, his head still dropped down to look at them shoes.

“Well, it wasn’t… okay… it wasn’t. I had this big idea, I was going to fly him here, we were going to talk things out, we were going to be a good team, the past would be in the past… but then when I woke him up from that truck and say his big dumb Cowboy-y Vroomy face and beard as bushy as a hedge maze… it just reminded me of the last time I saw him.”

What followed was a weary sigh from the Founder. “Well, we have to fix this. Follow me.”

Atken gestured for Farthington to follow his trail out of the Gloffice HQ.

—

Dirk Dickwood, long suffering everyman of Glue, had been enjoying some lovely time in the manor pool during one of the four sunny days in England. The pool was sparkling, as a treat for Hank being activated to do his world famous “choking bombs” on the dastardly and evil Rose on the last ReVival. Dirk had his toesy-woesys dipped in the pool, while Hank played with a beach ball inside. The jovial air turned to confusion as the sun disappeared, providing only the shadow of a staggering, yet hulking behemoth.

“Bloody typical Hank, the weatherman said NO CLOUDS today and now there are clouds and I didn’t want clouds because… oh… hello”, Dirk’s ranting was put quickly to an end by realising that the cloud he was very angry about was in fact human.

“Hey! Hey! Cecilworth’s manslaves! Either of you fellas know why your friend moved my truck here and then immediately disappeared?”, it was a fair question from Clay that got to the heart of the matter.

Dirk pondered a reasoning for a second, “well, I did hear him on the phone earlier yelling “well I guess I brought Coral here so it looks bad if I don’t bring the big hulking brute…”. I thought you guys would be trying to hit the ring and establish chemistry.”

One thing Clay Byrd certainly had was a memory, and he distinctly remembered how Cecilworth’s last non-Glue based tag match went. “The match where he left his partner to die, on the off chance he might challenge him for the title?”

Dirk, almost used to this sort of shenaniganary from Cecilworth, shrugs his shoulders “he tried really hard to win before he sacrificed Coral, so that’s something if you think about it.”

If there was a table to slam a fist down on at this point, Clay would have done so, instead he sorta slams a meaty paw against the side of the pool deck, causing Dickwood to leap out of the pool. Hank almost pops his beach ball in shock, but since he is a perfect lad, nature stops this from happening so that his jolly time may continue.

“These shitbirds have done a lot of hurt and are capable of a lot of hurt. A. LOT. and I told that Rhinestone Gremlin and the Time Bitch that I’d take any opportunity I could get to get a chance to hurt them. And I’m pretty sure the feelin’ is reciprocal. I just wish yer pal was taking this as seriously as he needs to.”

Hopping one foot to the other on the hot wet ground of the poolside, Dirk tries to find his way to the smooth and cooling grass. Once arrived at his desired destination, he starts to take in the magnitude of the current situation, what with the massive cowboy standing and towering over him with a death glare shooting in any direction that dares to hold it.

“I understand, people have spent years hurting my friends, Phil’s career cut short, what Max did to Joe, what Hessian did to Joe, what Daytona did to Joe, what Joe did to Joe… lot of Joe related issues now I say it out loud. The point is, I hear you, I see you.”

Dirk is very proud he could use a line from the “Management for Dummies” book he bought twenty years ago. It took until now for the first use, but who wasted $20 now, eh Judgemental Universe?

“I think I have a way of being able to get on the same page. I’m asking for a little trust, which I can imagine is quite difficult right now. After all, Cecilworth did just abduct you and then storm into the manor like he’d just gone through his first high school falling out with a bestie.” Dirk continued, mopping his legs down, trying to get the big wet of the pool off of him. “I think we can solve this, you just need Cecilworth as angry as you are.”

Byrd’s face contorts, he tries to think of the last time he saw Cecilworth truly angry. Before he can say anything Dickwood ushered Byrd into the grandiose main entrance, following behind.

—

Clay Byrd and Dirk Dickwood arrived at the Farthing Manor Study, a room filled with many fancy leather bound books, decanters containing brown liquids, and of course, the centrepiece of any study, a roaring fire. Was it summer outside? Yes. Was it boiling hot relative to the country that these two men were in? Yes.

Oh, that’s it, I don’t have any further explanation.

“Ain’t it August?” asked a puzzled Clay.

“It’s just always on, I don’t know why. It just simply is. I learned to stop asking questions about this place after I found out about the secret cloning lab down in the basement. Or maybe that was a fever dream I had. It’s very hard to tell in this day and age.”

Dirk continued to ramble on in a way that would likely imply that he was in the midst of heatstroke due to the fire in the room. This puzzled Clay, who in no way was feeling the sting of heat that he should have experienced by being close to a pile of hot logs. Curious and confused, much like the rest of his day so far, Clay reached out and checked the temperature.

“It’s not hot.” Clay said to himself and perhaps to the rest of the room, but mostly to himself. Dickwood limply lifted up his palms in the classic “fuck if I know” gesture and added “Farthington Manor” as if that is the thing that would explain the cold emanating from the supposed roaring fire by their side. To move matters along, Dickwood gestured to Clay to take a seat in a lovely comfy looking leather recliner.

“There are snacks for you! I didn’t know this place had a chef, but that is quite the tasty platter” Dickwood notes the piled high silver platter of sandwiches, which are in triangle form, as this is known as the best form to make when entertaining guests due to the increased amount of sandwich and flavour potential you get from the triangle.

Free food is a guaranteed Clay Byrd soft spot, as noticed from the amount of PRIME funerals he has attended with the sole mission of chowing down and ignoring whatever form of bullshit that Joe Fontaine has come up with for said funeral. As he picks up a lovely cucumber sandwich, Byrd studies it for a few moments, contemplating the poison potential of the sandwich given the rest of his experience in the house today. Just as he leans forth from his chair, the study door slams open, and Phil Atken power walks into the room, pointing at the opposing leather sofa opposite Byrd. “You sit there!” commands Atken as a sulk faced ridden Farthington dutifully follows orders. Well, almost dutifully, he doesn’t sit, he lounges, crotch up in the air, legs akimbo and bicycling like a cat trying to scratch and a piece of floating lint. Atken looks at the scene and thinks “close enough” to himself.

“You two will stay in this room until you get on the same page. The past is the past. Clay, the floor is yours.”

With that, Dickwood and Atken head out of the study, slamming the door shut behind them. Clay looks at the fussing Farthington and tries to find the best approach to getting him into the right mindset. A long silence, Byrd shifts in the recliner figuring out how to start.

“Cecilworth, The Whoresmen have hurt folks we care ‘bout,” perhaps it was the soothing balm of a cucumber sandwich, but Clay Byrd seemed very measured in this statement, clearly attempting to be the bigger man in the situation. Well he already was, but more spiritually than physically in this sense.

“Lots of people hurt lots of people” came the reply of Farthington, still rolling around on the sofa, clearly still indignant over this whole deal.

Byrd runs through a rollerdeck of approaches to try and get Farthington on the same page as him.

“They beat the lizard and took Hayes’ belt.” was the next port of call.

“We all need a little humbling in our lives.” retorted Farthington just as quickly, although this did demonstrate he had decided to listen, his legs no longer in the sky yet his arms still draped down to the ground. Byrd went through the list of Whorescrimes in his skull again as the fire of the study roared and crackled in the background.

“Tona dunked Joe in a dumpster like he’s roid monster Yao Ming just last week!”

“Yao who? Anyway, lots of people dump Joe into dumpsters. I’m becoming convinced he likes it. Otherwise why is he always hanging around dumpsters to be dunked in, huh?”

Progress was not being made mentally, but physically at least, Farthington’s arms were now up in the air, gesticulating wildly, for he is and was a hand-talking sort. Clay bit down on his bottom lip, letting the crackle soothe him, attempting to find another pathway in.

“Anna Daniels and Rob Williams kidnapped that gold guy that follows y’all ‘round…!”

This one seemed to grab Cecilworth’s attention more, letting the concept wash over him as he sat up to a halfway point between lounging and attentiveness. “I did notice we were missing some furniture for a couple of weeks. Still, no use crying over people taking your furniture and using it for their S&M kink. Glue is very open minded.”

Fisting another cucumber sandwich down his gullet (is there a glizzy term for triangle sandwiches if so, Clay would be there King.) he had a sense he was finally getting somewhere. There had to be something that would get Farthington into an equal rage. Byrd knew it was locked in there somewhere.

“Daytona Diamonds calls them hot tubs instead of jacuzzis”

Now fully erect, Cecilworth stares at Clay, there is a silence in the room that implies the atmosphere is thick with intensity. Only the fire crackles in the background as Clay’s comment hangs in the air for five… ten… fifteen seconds.

What Clay Byrd doesn’t expect is for Cecilworth to leap in the air.

“THAT SON OF A BITCH, I’LL KILL HIM! I’LL KILL ALL OF THEM!”

—

An hour later, and the sun is setting. It is an English summer, so that probably means it’s 11pm or something. Clay Byrd and Cecilworth Farthington find themselves together in the backyard of Farthington Manor, enjoying some quality jacuzzi time with each other. Each man with a filled champagne flute in hand. Farthington goes quiet for a second, deep in thought, he then turns to Clay.

“I was just thinking about Anna Daniels. All the lives she could lead, she has a multitude of possibilities, she can visit universes beyond our comprehension…”

Byrd jumps in. “...and yet she chooses this.”

For the first time in their entire interaction on this day, there’s a smile from Farthington. He clinks his glass with Byrd’s in acknowledgement.

“Time to get to work”