Three

[Deleted]

Part 1: Rattling (I.L.F. Part six) 

The rusted mass of Jeb’s pickup truck moves around in a rather unstable way as his finger reaches over to turn down the volume on the radio as he shouts back towards a man who wiggles around in the backseat, restrained and unable to carry out any other type of movement.

Jeb: Settle down back there. You know what you did.

The muffled sound of the man screaming out behind the dirty bandana blocking his voice rings over the now reduced sound of country music.

Jeb: You aren’t gonna make this easy on me are you?

The man continues to wiggle around as Jeb slowly pulls over to the side of the road.

Jeb: You wanna talk now, do ya?

He reaches back, sliding down the bandana as the man continues to squirm and shout out in anger.

: Who are you and what do you want with me?!

Jeb: Shout all you want, it won’t do you any good. There’s nothing but rarely traveled dirt roads for the next several miles.

: I didn’t do anything wrong!

Jeb: Oh, you didn’t? Does the name John Adams ring a bell?

: You mean that guy they shot down somewhere near Chicago? The asshole who held his own family hostage?

Jeb: That asshole is our fucking brother!

Jeb reaches for a heavy black flashlight on the seat next to him before swinging it backward and hitting the man across the face, knocking him unconscious.

Jeb: Have a nice nap, officer. Won’t be too much further anyways. McGrady is waiting for you.

Part 2: Giant ass shoot 

The scene opens up on a shot of The People’s Choice outside of a gym in Rhode Island, loading up a rental car full of gear for their upcoming trios title defense on Slam.

Teo: You guys ready for this one?

Spencer: Yeah, definitely a big one and a lot on my mind with this.

Vic: I’m feeling a bit of rust, but this is our shit, man.

Teo: Remember guys, this isn’t just a regular title match, this is a trios title defense against the stiffest competition we’ve faced as a team so far.

Spencer: Well, it’s a big task for sure, but we won these for a reason. We set out to be the shit and that’s what we accomplished. Me and Vic may no longer have tag belts, but nobody can take that accomplishment and what we did for the wrestling world away from us. Someday we will lose these belts and someday you will lose the people’s championship, but we’re still champions. We stepped up and did what we had to do to create our spots among the greats who came before us. Even after we lose these belts, more will come. I know that as fact. Whether we win or lose tonight, we are all champions and I’m proud to be able to do this alongside two motherfuckers who show nothing but heart and determination and leave it all out there in the ring every week.

Vic: Nice speech, man. Ready to give that shit to the viewers and those in the locker room?

Spencer: Always.

The antidote clears his throat as Vic reveals a small camera, moving it to focus more on Spencer.

Spencer: So once again, we’re here, preparing for a fucking war and for those in the locker room, just look at what I’m doing. For months I’ve been putting in the hours, been doing what it takes to continue the climb to being one of the very best and for weeks now, I’ve been part of one of the greatest teams in WCF history as we’ve come out to impress and done just that. No matter how much shit the competition wants to talk, they can’t take away what we’ve managed to do in such little time together. It takes some people years to do things that we’ve done and it took us less a month to achieve the very goals that all teams set out to do. Just to remind everyone, we are still the first and only team to every simultaneously hold the tag team and trios championships at the same time and that’s damn impressive if you ask me. Now this week, I’m here with my brothers to continue that trend. I’m the fucking guy who’s out here damn near every week, giving it everything I have, everything I’m called up and told that I’m working a match for this company.

Now looking at this matchup, I have to admit that this is hands down the hardest obstacle that I’ve ever faced, period. I know that we’re capable and I know that we can match the aggression that the six other men in this bout brings to the table, but I’d be a fool to even consider underestimating this lineup of guys who are coming to try to take these belts away from us. I’ve faced almost all of them at one point or another and while some are bigger threats than others in my eyes, that doesn’t mean a damn thing when the situation is a trios match. The good news is that the confidence is here, I have motherfuckers scouted because I know them, I know what they’re about and have for some time now.

Now six motherfuckers? Damn, I could be here all night doing this shit. I don’t know who was in the booking meeting and decided to go ahead and suggest that Spencer Adams be put up against six fucking guys, but whoever they are, I can tell you that they obviously don’t know the ether that I spit or the fucking mayhem I create in the middle of the wrestling ring. I’m one of those guys that requires a special gameplan and six opponents to me is just a lot of extra targets for me to stab right in the fucking bullseye. Who do I start off with first? Maybe...a certain “monster”, a guy who even after being proven to be soft on most occasions nowadays, still insists on trying to sell this shitty late nineties gimmick and expect the rest of us to just standby, shaking in fear at the thought of having to face him?

I know that it’s crucial for me to view everyone in this match as some sort of threat, but I really fucking struggle to do so with Oblivion. I mean, there’s a definite difference between this guy and the guy who established that name in the first place, isn’t there? You may here fables about a monster named Oblivion who came in and competed with the best of them and how he even held the world championship at one point, but those fables are fading into a land of forgotten nothings where they lay next to the likes of Professor Coach and FIST. That guy that you hear about as someone who was once a force is now a fucking shell. I don’t know where that dominant, monstrous side of this man went, but I know that I have struggled to see even small glimpses of it since I’ve been a part of this roster.

In fact, I’d say that Oblivion has as much of a claim to greatness as a guy like Adam Young. I mean, neither one have really done much to impress anybody in the past few years and oh yeah, yours truly has been able to handle both of them rather easily. While a lot of us are going out there and trying to make the kind of statements that really matter, this “monster” has been little more than the clean up crew who comes along to pick away at the scraps of equally shitty competitors and jobbers like some kind of brain dead vulture who sees the lens of a camera and thinks that we are somehow blown away at the sight of him.

Everything that Oblivion does or has done, it dies. Whether it was being a top level talent or aligning himself with bland, DRG-like stables such as the AoD, it all just fucking croaks. People may try to take shots at me for my time with the DRG, but go ahead and tell me what’s really bad. A rookie coming in and seeing an opportunity to try to develop alongside people who he felt could bring out something more in him, or a washed-up, has-been fuck who unites with a bunch of never-weres as he just prayed to the heavens above that somehow, the combined force of lower card lring rats and boring, poorly named motherfuckers would manage to cast the kind of spotlight on him that would make anybody give a single fuck above him being in a wrestling ring? Yeah, that’s what I thought too.

I’ve seen real monsters, many of them, but they did not include a guy whose only memorable air time is savagely beating woman like he aspired to be the War Machine to their Christy Mack. “Look at me, everybody! I can try to murder women by beating them with mop handles and dipping their heads in peanut butter and other weird shit like that! Are you convinced that I’m a scary monster yet?” Nope, not at all. In fact, you’re still just the same guy that you’ve always been, a fucking joke of a competitor whose best case scenario on any given show is to be able to find someone as equally desperate as he is to try to hog up all the camera time for an improved feeling of self worth. That’s where I come in. See, I’m the guy that is here to keep people like you in check and I will continue to do so every single time.

Now the only chance at a victory that this man Oblivion has is in his partners, because he sure as hell doesn’t have it in him to take on The People’s Choice without at least decent partners. Luckily, he is once again booked with a shield around him, a guy or two who will protect him and make him look strong, not that it’s really hard to one up Oblivion anymore. He’s teamed up with Kemp and Rabid, two guys who I may have sort of weird, newfound respect for as competitors, but still know that I’m more than capable of handling in any situation. At One, Kemp and Rabid had their chance to prove that they are a cohesive and formidable force and they finally took it, so congrats to them, but these two have another thing coming if they think that this makes them somehow above the three of us. Actually, let me make this perfectly fucking clear so that we can just get any confusion that either of these two may possess.

Kemp, Rabid, on your best fucking day, you will not be better than us. You may hold those tag team championships, but we’ve already proven more than capable of being the answer.There may be times where you manage to secure the upper hand in a certain matchup, but we are still one of the few groups who has been able to properly counter your entire movement. We didn’t do that with a big name attached to us like Pantheon, we simply showed up and proved that we are greater than or equal to the entire #BeachKrew movement. The two of you may be in ring equals at this point, but you’d be stupid to think that you will achieve a status of superiority over people like me and my brothers, people who are evolving at such an impressive rate as competitors.

Kyle, I’m so proud of you for finally finding a groove, a way to graduate from being my whipping boy, now allow me to re-educate your stupid ass on exactly what it’s like to get your ass handed to you by knocking you down a peg or two. I hope you remember the fact that I’ve always been that guy that has remained one step ahead of you in the department of career achievement. You know that tag belt you carry around? How did it feel to look down at it in your hands and see my nameplate on it before yours? Did it fill with rage knowing that I won that relay to championship gold? See, you may hold your fair share of victories over me now, but I was the originator, man. I was the one who showed everyone after me exactly how to go about defeating Kyle Kemp, not the other way around.

So go ahead and cling onto that belt, sleep with that shit around your waist if you have to, it still doesn’t change the fact that I was the first person in this business to show Mr. “Better than you” that there are people out there that he’s not above. Not only do you have to worry about me, but I also have my fellow former tag champ and my fellow trios champ with me. Oh, and speaking of fellow trios champs, we have that Teo Del Sol guy, you know, the one who also showed you that you weren’t better than him in your big blowoff match together. Hmm...sounds like shades of the devil’s den if you ask me. Kyle, I may not have actually humbled you, but I know that I fueled those delicious insecurities that you wear on your sleeve. If there’s one thing that summarizes “the antidote”, it’s the rivalry that we have, that I defined with a series of soul crushing, consecutive victories over you. Ready for another, bitch? It’s not far away, don’t worry.

Rabid on the other hand, is someone that I haven’t actually had a ton of previous experience with. There isn’t necessarily a massive amount of bad blood between us other than the fact that he’s a fucking snake just like everyone else with their lips pressed to a glass of #BeachKrew kool-aid. What creates that chip on my shoulder and drives me to go hard against a guy like Johnny Rabid is the fact that he comes in with this technical, high-flying kind of style that I’ve worked my ass off to be a true representative of, the kind of representative who not only does it with a certain flavor, but does it to great success as well. Johnny Rabid is stepping into the lane that Spencer Adams has been paving for months and that shit doesn’t fly with me.

That weird #BeachKrew mashup is one thing, but to make things even more of a challenge, we’ve been put up against an all-star cast made up of Joseph Malignaggi, Occulo, and Howard Black. This is a group of former champions, some of the most formidable talent on the roster today, some of the greatest to have ever signed a WCF contract. As a trio, it’s a bit of a strange pairing to me, but it’s one of the most menacing combinations that has ever been formed in the history of trios teams. I don’t need to have seen these three team up to know that they will be a force no matter what.

Now the one guy who I’ve had very little interaction with is Occulo which I find to be a bit surprising. This is definitely one of those matches similar to the Raymond Hatcher match where I looked at it on paper and was just sort of wondering why it hadn’t happened to such an intimate degree yet. I don’t need to wait that much longer to add Occulo to that list of quality competitors who I’ve had a “normal” match with, so that’s definitely exciting. I will say though that I definitely feel The People’s Choice to be the team that’s walking in there with the edge when you look at the fact that just like Howard Black, Occulo is a bit preoccupied fighting off the likes of that mean nasty Dune.

Now this is trios, man. The People’s Choice is a brotherhood and while you may have that with Howard Black, I don’t think you can truly have that with Malignaggi. I get that he’s a guy that’s become more honest in his approach to the game, but come on now. The bottom line is that I have two brothers beside me while you only have one. Your other comrade is unfortunately just to busy continuing down a dark path of corruption that neither you nor Howard can do much about. Plus, if you couldn’t beat a guy like fucking Dustin Beaver, how do you expect to beat me and my partners this week.

I’m not gonna lie, I’m going to be taking notes out there. Every move you make, it’s going right up in the old noggin right along with the offensive arsenals of Howard Black and Joseph Malignaggi. While I feel that I still have a lot to learn about Occulo, you still have a lot to learn about Spencer Adams as well. Just ask the countless motherfuckers who thought that I was just another competitor, that for some reason, I wasn’t the competitor to bring out that extra fire in them. If you want to know more on what I’m about, just go ask your new “buddy” Joey how fucking tough I am in the ring. Seeing as one of the best wrestlers and the company had to pull out three consecutive lightning bolts just to keep me down for that three count. Trust me, Occulo, I’m a fucking nightmare in there, a foe unlike any you’ve faced before. If you want to take this title away from me, it’s going to take a fucking top notch performance.

Then we have Joseph Malignaggi, one of the opponents who made me the competitor that I am today. I can’t deny that our encounter took me to my limits, man. You ran your mouth like a fucking dickhead and you were able to back it up just like you always do. Remember though, I made you fight your ass off for that win, something that nobody thought I would be able to do, but I fucking did it off of heart and the will to fight. Do you know what happens though when you see yourself locked in another battle with someone that you’ve handed a loss to? It can be a very frightening thing to watch.

That loss against you wasn’t something that haunted me, because I knew that there was no shame in falling to a top guy like that. That loss didn’t leave me feeling crushed, because I knew that we would meet many more times and that when we did, you’d see a drastically improved Spencer Adams from the one that you faced before. When that referee’s hand slapped the mat a third time, all I could think about was the fact that one day, I’d be at that same level as you. I knew that one day, I would be that guy who makes the competition change their gameplan and prepare harder than the average opponent. Since day one, I’ve been determined to make my name hold that same weight. It wasn’t that I was determined to make the name “Spencer Adams” the same as yours, it was that I was determined to make the name “Spencer Adams” mean that the person across from me would have to kiss their momma on the cheek and squeeze extra tight on that WCF lunchbox as they look around with great paranoia on their journey to the workplace.

You as a competitor is one thing, though. I know I’m not the only one that thinks this way, but I do question the sincerity of the changes in you. Joseph “Flash” Malignaggi as one of the good guys? Call me crazy, but I’m not totally convinced or even close to it. I’m not talking about a guy that was a bit of a grump, I’m referring to the guy who toyed with and tormented those around him. Yes, it was strategic and I get that, but the man that I saw when I arrived here, the one that I continued to see for many weeks after that, that guy was a fucking asshole. I think that if you are honestly a different man than you once were, then you know that you have a lot to work on with your reputation.

I think I can go ahead and speak for almost every person in the back when I say that it’s a tragedy what Dune did to you and your family. It was shocking and deplorable of him and there’s no coming back from that, no way of making up for actions of that magnitude, but that still doesn’t erase “Joey Flash” from my memory bank and I’m sure that it doesn’t erase “Joey Flash” from the minds of your tag partners this week. How the fuck are those two supposed to trust you? After the way you treated them and everyone around them, they should enter the arena with eyes in the back of their fucking skulls.

How much do you really have in you for this one, man? Are you going to deploy a dozen lightning bolts and crash from exhaustion in the process of trying to pin me or are you going to save some of that energy for the remaining threat of Dune whose shadow continues to hang over you? I hope you beat Dune’s fucking ass for good the next time you two face off. This is my shit, not yours. Just remember that. These belts are what I’m here representing. While I know that you’re all for hard fought matches, this is the exact situation that I come out and work harder for than any that have come before it. So I do hope that I get the very best out of you once again, because you’re going to need it against the Spencer Adams of the new year.

Now onto the one that everybody’s buzzing about, Mr. Howard Black. I have to admit, seeing you bust through that curtain, I was marking out right along with the rest of them. It feels like it’s been forever since we saw you lace up and it’s an honor to be facing you in your return match. Being able to talk about a competitor so politely after going through a marathon of fuckheads isn’t such a bad thing either. When I first came to the WCF, you were one of the first people to really see that potential in me. Even through your feud with Thomas Bates during a time where I was an ally of the DRG, you had the class to take a look at what I was doing out there and give the cosign to a rookie on the enemy side.

Not long after I signed my contract, it seemed like I must’ve faced you half a dozen times and every time, you got the better of me. It felt like a definite student versus teacher kind of situation.  Shit, you know a motherfucker’s got my respect when I can’t even sit around and put you down or anything like that. What I will say however, is that you have a shit ton of catch up to do. I don’t just mean that as you needing to learn about the current WCF landscape as a whole, I just mean that while you’ve been away healing after your “partner” tried to end your career, there’s been a big shift in the WCF.

As you already know, after you left, a little group known as #BeachKrew came in and they’ve been trying their best to ruin the place ever since. With any company like ours, you of course have people who come in and pose a threat to things that you take pride in. Understand that it’s been on the shoulder’s of people like me, Teo, and Vic to keep them at bay. You may not have liked the DRG, but this #BeachKrew movement is far worse than anything you’ve seen before. I say this not out of a lack of confidence, but out of fear, the fear that they will somehow alter the landscape in a way that people like us can’t change. You might be able to go out on Slam with that same in ring ability and that same killer instinct that I remember being up against, but you have no idea the kind of machine that you’re about to face in #BeachKrew.

Howard, you’ve beaten me time after time, but I’m at a much higher level than I was then. A lot has changed since me and you were last squaring off. I’d be willing to bet that I’m a lot craftier in ring than you last remember. All I’m saying is good fucking luck and may the best team win. When Slam comes around and that match starts, I want you to understand your responsibility as a decent human being. I will throw everything I have at you as well as anyone else who stands in my way, but I know that your competitive fire is strong. So Howard, whatever you do, do not let any of those fucking #BeachKrew scum have the opportunity to walk out of Rhode Island with the trios championships around their waists. This may be a match where three teams face off for the gold, but there’s a mutual understanding that must be reached here that between you guys and us, we can’t allow ourselves to take a loss to those motherfuckers.

The history of these trios championships has been short, but as only the third team to hold them so far, The People’s Choice has gone above and beyond to really make these mean something. These are definitely a set of championships that is defined by how great each individual holding them is and we’ve proven to make these belts as well as every other belts we’ve held really mean something special. When you hold these straps right here, you’re nurturing a relatively new and still blooming division. As the keeper’s of these, we are the ones who are defining a whole new area and chapter in the WCF. You want to take these away from us? Then step up to the plate, but be prepared to care just as much about pursuing these belts as we do holding them.

Vic lowers the camera, turning it off as Teo closes the trunk behind them.

Teo: I think we’re good to go then.

Spencer: Remember, no matter what happens, this can’t be taken. Now let’s go defend it like only we can.

Fade to black.

Part 3: Eye for an eye (I.L.F. Part seven)

: Help! Get me down from here, you fucking animals!

The sound of the officers shouting could be heard throughout the secluded field and even from the front porch of the farm house. Jeb and the familiar figure spectated as the officer screamed bloody murder from the the cross in the field usually used for a scarecrow.

Jeb: How long you wanna leave him out there for?

: Until his will is broken.

Jeb: Well, how are we supposed to get any sleep tonight? Gonna be kinda hard with him crying out for help all night.

: He’ll break before then. They always do.

Jeb: So...then what about tomorrow.

: We let the family have their fun.