“Ooooo” calls out a raspy male voice from the nothingness of an abrupt fade in. It is distressingly obvious that he is using a clip-on microphone since the sounds of his tongue sloshing around inside of his mouth, creating bubbles of saliva that pop against his cheek, are captured rather sublimely. High definition audio at its finest! That said, it is gross, unsettling, and above all else… completely within the context of what we are about to witness.

“Hiiiiiii.”, greets this man behind a scandalous voice. His teeth are stained yellow, the caps are uneven and chipped, and his smile is as wide as the year has been long. A Santa hat rests atop his dome as strands of greasy black hair spill out from all sides. The words “Ho-Ho-Fucking-Ho” are embroidered onto the fuzzy white flip in an erratic looking font. He sits “criss-cross tomato sauce” on a throne made up entirely of bone; his own arms rest flat and forward on a pair of remains that look remarkably human. Parts of the bone structure from the throne appear to be cracked and torn. The periosteum layer actually acts as curtains for the solid bone mass to reveal itself underneath. Or at least, from a visual standpoint, that’s what it seems like.

“Oh, it’s not real.” he momentarily muses before continuing, “Yeah, no. Relax. Stay awhile. Put your feet up and sip some eggnog! I’m not Jeffrey Dahmer’s long-lost bastard or anything. Party City. Fifty bucks. Worth every penny!”

He smacks the imitative bone on the arm of the throne twice to certify its inauthenticity. Then, peering out into the sea of vacancy that is an undisclosed empty platform stage theater with his hand cupped just over his line of vision, he sighs.

“Good. We’re alone. For now, at least. Hehe. I wanted the chance to speak to you… well, directly, my friendly DEFIANTS! You see… I can tell there’s a lot of history here. Mm. Rivalries to end all rivalries. Matches that have earned more stars than the resident 4th grade know-it-all, whoever that may be. Yesss. This is good… fantastic, even! Allow me to enlighten you all why that is!”

He clears his throat loudly and stands up on the seat of the bone throne. Suddenly, four individuals make their way out from the sides of the stage. Two incoming from the right and the same from the left. They meet in the center and turn towards this bony, nameless figure.

“Forward, friends!”, he calls out.  

One by one, the four people who enter our scene all turn to face him. It’s an array of horrors, to be perfectly honest. Their mouths are sewn shut by a ghastly and completely unexpected display of stitchwork. The procedure on each of them must’ve been performed some time ago as there are no visible remnants of blood on any of the holes that figure-eight between each pair of lips in such an excruciating way.

The furthest person to the left, a male, about medium-height compared to the others, holds up his set of cue cards. His head is shaved to the skin, and he is of medium complexion. The face that stares back at us all remains expressionless; this despite his surgically applied silence, while he gives all of us a moment to read them.

Before we do, however, the man who beckoned them to come out claps his hands three times, and off the other three go, disappearing as quickly as they manifested.

In the spirit of the holidays, this bald-headed man begins re-enacting a famous scene from the film ‘Love Actually’.  

With any luck, by next year...
You’ll be holding onto one of these things…

The next cue card shows an arm being raised into the air, pieced together by torn sections of random magazines. Following that is a somewhat graphic drawing of a chair being bashed over Patrick Cassidy’s head. There’s a dialogue bubble sketched in pencil with the words, “Sing me another, Mr. Scary Man!”. Then finally, the fourth cue card that follows the previous three is of the man on the throne himself, holding onto what looks like three DEFIANCE Championships; the Favoured Saints Championship, the Southern Heritage Championship, and the ACT of DEFIANCE Championship.

Another cue card slides out to the front.

But for now, let me say…
With hope and agendas aplenty…
Just because it’s Christmas…
(... and at Christmas we’re supposed to cheat and ruin as much as we can!)

Another cue card slides out. This one shows dirt sheet clippings of the Man who has orchestrated all of this madness. In these clippings are various phases of the Man delivering a vicious pro-wrestling maneuver; that being, of course, a fireman’s carry that transitions into a falling lungblower. Yeowchimus Hurtimus, for sure.

The Man lets out a bellowing laugh that causes his lanky legs to crumble beneath him and fall down into the seat of the bone throne. His Santa Hat falls off, revealing a half-shaved head with a large “X” scar across his right temple; harsh reminders from an incredibly violent past. On the left side, hair falls down to his shoulder in a raven-esque color. The Man who stands on the “bone throne” immediately starts chuckling but tries his best to stifle himself so he doesn’t disturb the ongoing performance.

To me, you are so goddamn perfect…
And my black heart will loathe you...
Until you look like this...

The picture seen earlier in the cue cards returns, this time showing the Man holding up the three previous titles… with a fourth fastened around his neck. His dark brown, almost blackened eyes look over the top of DEFIANCE’s golden avatar — the FIST of DEFIANCE itself!

The Man stands up from his bone throne and applauds the retelling of one of the most underrated Christmas moments captured on film.

“Bravo, good sir! Bravo!”, the unnamed Man congratulates the other unidentified man whose lips remain sewn together.

A few moments pass by when the Man simply shrugs.

“Alright. That’s enough now. Go play with your brothers and sister.” he insists with a calm voice that could instill fear in just about anyone who crossed his path.

While adjusting the microphone on the lapel of his black suit jacket, he sits back down on the bone throne. He clanks his newly shined Oxfords together like Dorothy and her ruby red slippers before resting a leg over the plastic long bone that served as the arm of this elaborately created chair.

A smile broadens across his face.  

“Oh, forgive me… I forgot to introduce myself!”

The Man places a hand over his mouth and snickers like a child who knows they did something bad. His eyes close shut from the depths in which his laughter rises from. After a moment, he composes himself and rests his head against the faux-throne’s yellowish backing.

“I’m Arthur Pleasant… and this?" he says, implicating everything all around him with his hands, "DEFIANCE Wrestling?” 

Arthur pulls himself up from the bone throne. His extremities flop all around him as he mimics a marionette having its strings cut.

“This… is going to be fucking fun.”

Fade to black.

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