Wrath (The Secret History of Ford Fordham and His Adventure with The Deadly Sins Against the Stone Babies as Related by the Narrator from the Wuzzles)

Far away in the Land of Chicago there lived a little boy named Maddox “Ford” Fordham.  He lived with his grandmother who told him he was handsome and strong and powerful enough to do anything he wanted to.  He started to believe he actually could change whatever he didn’t like.

Whenever she told him stories, Ford was allowed to change whatever ending he wanted to.  Alice stomped the Queen of Hearts to death, Wendy stayed in Never Never Land, Dorothy became the conquering Queen of Oz, and the Cat in the Hat had no fish or mother.  She told him all about the God of the Old Testament who killed all his victims quite viciously including Rahab and Leviathan which he liked well enough, but when she got to the story of Jesus, Ford didn’t like it because Jesus got killed in the end.  This Jesus/God character, after all, was the same guy who put away Rahab and Leviathan.  His grandmother changed it as per his request so that Jesus took on the Roman Empire and won.

When his grandmother was dying, Ford told her over and over he could keep it from happening.  She said, “I know you can, baby.”  He refused to believe he wasn’t strong and handsome enough to keep his grandmother from dying, to keep God from conquering her too.  He couldn’t help but think about how Jesus lost in the end.  To him in that moment, the conquering Old Testament God became an enemy who had to be beaten.  He thought about the place his grandmother went as being a night-black realm of dreams where Rahab and Leviathan waited to exact the revenge owed them.

In foster care his belief in his own specialness wasn’t very popular.  He found himself constantly getting beaten up for mouthing off.  He kept waiting for the time when his own natural ability would help him win a fight.  He actually gained an ability to fight from his extensive experience despite his stubborn refusal to believe his skill came from anything other than natural talent.

Despite being haunted by poor endings to many movies and TV shows he just didn’t have the power to change, he was most haunted by the ending of King of the Ring 1989 because that was simply not the ending he wanted.  He didn’t think Machoman Randy Savage deserved the win, and he decided his aim in life was to right that wrong.  He ended up working in Extreme Championship Wrestling in the early days back when they were just on local TV stations.  He formed a stable with Sandman and Tommy Dreamer, and Ford called himself Dweller in Darkness.  He had a kind of a Shane Douglas look, big bulky guy with dyed blonde hair because all the important guys up to that point had blonde hair.  He was kind of ugly in an interesting way like he had been through a lot in life despite being very young.  This made him fit in well with grizzled looking guys like Sandman.  It was all nonsense because Ford hadn’t been through anything at all really.  At least Sandman had his alcoholism to make that look really mean something.  But Ford wanted always to be a good boy, to never disappoint his grandmother, so he never drank or did drugs.  When he cursed, it was only a mild curse word here and there, and he couldn’t help but blush each time he let one slip.  That never changed, from when he was a kid to when he was killed by his teammates.

But then Paul Heyman fired him.  At first he said he couldn’t clear the copyright for the name “Dweller in Darkness,” and it would just be a pain once they got a national TV contract.

Ford said, “Oh come on, that can’t be the only reason. I’ll change my name.”

Paul Heyman said, “Frankly, Ford, you’re an asshole, and nobody likes you.  You’ve got this huge ego, and you haven’t even done anything to deserve it.  You’re a mediocre mat worker at best.  You’re over-eager on your mic work.  I’d say we’d build you up, but it seems like you don’t think you need any improvement.  And your short temper’s not wining you any friends.”

“But … but this is wrestling.  We all have short tempers.  We all have big egos.  We’re all, you know, butt holes.”

“And it’s fake if you haven’t noticed.  I don’t think you know how the real world works, Ford.  Fake assholes go far in this business.  Real assholes don’t.  Real assholes are living in a dream that this kind of moral system actually works in the real world.  You’re old enough to realize this, Ford.  Feel free to call me once you’ve matured a little.”

Ford from then on convinced himself he was too extreme for ECW and he only got fired because of his name.  He didn’t acknowledge that these two beliefs were contradictory.  After a lot of failed attempts to pursue similar business, he got work through family contacts at Doctor Blast Economy Drugs, the drug store known for only buying white products because Doctor Blast was obsessed with that eerie, sterilized atmosphere.  Meanwhile, Ford was working on a new ring name for when he’d make his big return to ECW.  He settled on “Wrathgod” and even put that on his drugstore name tag.  Customers had to say silly things like, “Thank you for pointing me to the itch cream aisle … um … Mister Wrathgod.”

He even went around telling people he really had merged with a wrath god.  Sometimes he called himself Rahab and sometimes Leviathan and sometimes Nyarlathotep.  He said he had merged with one of these gods, whichever one struck his fancy that week, just as a werewolf is a man merged with a wolf.  He would tell this to pharmacy customers causally.  He would say, “This is just my temporary position, you know, before my Wrathgod duties kick in.”  Later, when he showed up at Deadly Sins home base with his robot and nobody could figure out where he had gotten it, he said it was a perk of being a wrath god.

One day in the pharmacy the door dinged, and a customer seemed to come in.  Ford didn’t look directly at this customer, but it seemed a direct look wasn’t really something that applied to this guy.  The day was sunny, and the neon lights against the white of all the products normally made it too bright in there, but this customer seemed to bring the darkness with him.  The florescent lights dimmed, the white products became black, nearly half the store was engulfed in darkness by the time the customer reached the drug counter.

“Can I help you?” Ford said though it felt like he wasn’t talking to anybody at all.

The customer asked him if he was Ford Fordham, except he didn’t exactly ask with words.  Ford knew that was the question and knew with equal certainty that this creature asking the question already knew the answer.

Ford answered, “Yes?” meekly.  The whole time he was messing around with prescriptions not looking at the customer because directly looking at him simply didn’t work with this scenario.  It was as if directly acknowledging this customer would make it too real to really handle at the moment.

The customer then asked Ford if he claimed he was bonded to the demon Nyarlathotep.

Ford said, “Yes?”

The customer said without saying it, Can you transform your body?

“No?” Ford said.

Choose one animal, the customer said, and meet me at Thunderbolts Mountain.

“Beluga,” Ford heard himself saying.  “The leviathan.  I want to be the beluga.”

It shall be done, the customer said.  He was gone.  The store became light again.

The next day he went to Thunderbolts Mountain and became a member of the Deadly Sins.  He believed he was the first and the inspiration for the whole concept.  Nobody else had a were-familiar that made much sense with their token deadly sin.  Lust, for example, was a were-panda named Pandemonium Odalon.  Sure, pandas may lust from time to time, but that’s not an animal you automatically think of when you think of lust.  Likewise, Avarice was a were-porcupine named Thurgood Numbertwo.  If I was a porcupine, Ford thought, I would be jealous of someone less prickly, sure, but a porcupine is not the token animal of jealousy.  None of it was quite as perfect as Wrath and the beluga.  Solomon Ant, who was Vanity the were-peacock and Karl Echo, who was Sloth the were-sloth, were late recruits who Ford assumed were only forced into their roles because the deadly sin gimmick had already been established.  After all, why wouldn’t they be a were-ant and a were-echo?  That would make more sense, right?

The actual endowment of the powers of the were-beluga occurred without much to do or ceremony.  Pater Non, the walking shadow who recruited him to the team, essentially told him he had become a were-beluga and he could transform any time he felt like it.  Ford was reluctant to transform.  He wanted to wait a while.  He was afraid the actual manifestation of his beluga form would contradict the perfection he saw in his mind’s eye.  He was actually going to be the Leviathan finally, and he didn’t want the stubborn disappointment of reality to ruin that just yet.

            The whole point of the Deadly Sins, Pater Non explained, was to gather the Seven Unusual Relics, a group of seven objects endowed with power by Jesus.  These weren’t the main artifacts everybody knew about like the Grail and the Spear of Destiny that so many wars had been fought over.  These were kind of the loser second-string artifacts that everybody had forgotten about, the ones nobody had really claimed or used let alone fought wars over.  Ford said out loud once they got their mission parameters, “This is going to be a piece of cake fellas.”

The first adventure for them was to find the Holy Milky Way.  It was supposedly a candy bar half-eaten by Jesus.  The Etruscans bronzed in the third century.  Pater Non told them the Holy Milky Way was in the land of the Lithopedians or Stone Babies.  You see, sometimes a child dies in the mother’s belly, and the natural processes within the mother’s body cover the dead baby in calcium.  This is called a Lithopedian.  The mothers bury the babies, but little did they know the babies continued to grow, and they crawled out of the grave.  They had no place in the world.  They instinctively shuffled their way to an elephant graveyard near Death Valley called the Land of Lithopedia.  The Stone Babies continued to grow until they were giants.  There they lived, and somehow, as these things go, they ended up with the Holy Milky Way.

So this is where they went for their first adventure.  The other were-beasts had already tried their new forms, but Ford wanted to wait for the first adventure, so he could, as he told everyone, make a very dramatic first appearance.  Their teleporter, the were-wheel, teleported them to about half a football field’s distance from Lithopedia.  There was no set plan.  They were not a team yet that had that sort of thing.  After all, Ford had assured them that this would be a piece of cake, and Ford could somehow make people believe he knew what he was talking about for a very brief time.  On the edge of Lithopedia, they saw a half dozen Stone Babies in the distance milling around, doing whatever it is Stone Babies do in their free time.  Ford shouted out to them, “Hey, Stone Babies, give us the Holy Milky Way or we’ll kick your baby asses!”  The half dozen Stone Babies all started to charge.  That’s when Ford said to his teammates, “Why don’t you fellas hold back.  It looks like I can take care of this one by myself.”

That’s when Ford made his dramatic transformation.  His body was the size of a beluga, massive and intimidating to match how he felt about himself on the inside, but his arm and legs were still the same size as a normal human.  So there he was with a massive whale body but puny little arms and legs.

The Stone Babies busted out laughing.  They didn’t actually have any faces, let alone mouths or vocal chords, but it was clear they were laughing at Ford.  They clutched their stomachs and spasmed up and down, slapping their knees.

It was unclear whether Ford realized his ridiculous condition.  He said, “Well, what are you waiting on, Stone Babies?”

The one that seemed to be the leader of the Stone Babies walked forward.  He slapped Ford in the beluga face.  Ford tried to punch back, but his arms were so short he flailed around, making the Stone Babies laugh even harder.  The leader of the Stone Babies then kicked Ford in between his legs.  Unfortunately, the gonads were in the regular human place, so Ford crumpled up as best he could with his weird body.

Thurgood Numbertwo said, “Are you sure you don’t need our help?”

“I got this,” he said, but then the Stone Babies ganged up on him and beat him and kicked him over and over.  He kept trying to get up, a very difficult thing with his tiny arms and legs, but they kept beating him back down.  He finally managed to get to his feet, and ran away as best he could considering the circumstances.  He screamed, “Retreat, regroup, run away!  They’re too strong!  It hurts too much!”

Back at Deadly Sins home base aka Thunderbolts Mountain, Pater Non informed Ford that part of the perk of being a were-beluga was that he had sonic scream power.  He could open his mouth, let out a sonic scream, and destroy as many Stone Babies as he wanted to.  Pater Non also made it clear that he had six other people on his team.

Still, Ford thought it was necessary to take a month to strategized.  They ran practice drills.  Ford developed a commanding voice, and it became clear that he was developing as the field leader.  He demanded to officially be made the team leader.  He was made the leader, though very few other members of the team actually thought this was a good idea.  For their various reasons, when Ford demanded the leadership position, they agreed, despite disliking him and, in the case of Pandemonium and Thurgood at least, thinking of themselves as superior leadership material.  They actually followed his orders with very little up front complaint at first, even Thurgood Numbertwo, who never hid his disdain for Ford and was fond of pointing out that he got his ass kicked by babies, obediently followed his orders.

So when they felt they were ready to take on the Stone Babies once again, the were-wheel teleported them again to Lithopedia.  Ford barked orders, “Beta formation now.  Solomon scatter pattern of peacock bombs now, keep them distracted.  Thurgood you run point, take out their legs.  Peachy, you’re on clean up.  Karl, stay back in case we need you.  Pandemonium, it’s you and me on full frontal attack.  You ready to bring the rain?  Now, now, now.”   He let out a sonic scream that shattered one of the Stone Babies.  Another Stone Baby cold cocked Ford with one punch.  He tried to block the punch, but his arms were too short.  When he came back to consciousness, he realized he was still being kicked and punched by Stone Babies.  He saw the rest of his team.  Thurgood was taking out the legs of Stone Babies with his mace.  Solomon was sending out his peacock bombs and blowing them up left and right.  Cardinal Pandemonium was punching them and wrestling them to the ground.  The were-wheel was dropping stuff like cars and pianos on the Stone Babies like a bombardier.  Peachy was dragging a legless stone baby off behind a stone outcropping.  Even Karl was in the fight, popping in and out, getting a claw swipe in here and there.

Ford screamed, “Retreat!  Fall back!  The cause is lost!  They’re too much for us!”  They’d been obeying his orders for weeks now as part of their training, so again they obeyed and retreated.

After that defeat, Ford disappeared for a while.  The rest of the Deadly Sins waited before they went on any more adventures.  They trained aimlessly.  They bickered about who would be new leader.  Thurgood and Cardinal Pandemonium especially desired the position.  Like Ford, both of them were assholes, but neither one was enough of an asshole to demand leadership in a way that it would be too much of an annoyance to disagree, so they made little headway on the issue.

Finally, one day when the Deadly Sins were supposed to meet at Deadly Sins Headquarters to finally decide the new leader, they found Ford already there.  He was standing next to a giant object covered in a white sheet.  He said, “Sorry fellas for staying away so long, but I think I have the solution to our problems.”  He pulled off the sheet dramatically and revealed a giant headless robot underneath.  It was dark purple and black in arabesque patterns over shiny silver metal.  It was sectioned in smooth metal plates like knight’s armor with wires visible behind the chinks.

“It’s a giant robot with no head,” Thurgood said.  “So what?”

“Watch,” Ford said and transformed into the were-beluga form.  With his disproportionate arms and legs, he climbed up a step ladder at the back of the robot.  After a long awkward silence in which he seemed to be fiddling with wires, Ford rested his head at the top of the robot.  It seemed natural like the beluga head really belonged on top of the robot body.  After a long time of Ford making strange expressions with his beluga face – somewhere between a man receiving pleasure at the dinner table and a woman removing her bra without removing her shirt – finally the robot body stepped forward, uncertainly at first, but more comfortably with each step.  At the center of the hanger he stood there, fist at his waist like a hero.  Behind the robot it was easy to see that the rest of Ford’s body didn’t look so natural.  It hung down like a huge whale-colored mullet with red and blue and yellow wires attached all over his body.  As the arms and legs of the robot moved, Ford’s little arms and legs moved frantically.  “Now how badass am I?” he said. 

“Who made the robot?” Thurgood said.

“I had a mad scientist put it together.”

“Mad scientist?” Cardinal Pandemonium said with a smile.  “What’s his name?  I might know him.”

“Doctor Blast.”

“That’s the name of the pharmacist you worked with.  Is the robot mad out of pills?  No seriously, who made the robot?”

“I was just kidding about that Doctor Blast thing, but it really was a mad scientist.  He wanted me to keep his identity secret.”

“Why?”

“What does it matter?  I say let’s go kick some Stone Baby ass!”

The rest of the team, after a long time of looking at one another quizzically, agreed, or at least they agreed that they should stop wasting time.  So they prepared for battled again, training and training so they knew how to strategize with the big gangly robot on their team.  They could tell that his confidence was once again astronomical, and some of them, Thurgood in particular, looked forward to watching him meteor back down to earth.

The day they decided they were ready, Ford had a little trouble getting through the gate created by the were-wheel, and his awkward entrance had the potential of being the confidence crash Thurgood was hoping for, but he got through the gate and stood there, hands again at his waist.  Ford, harkening back to their first failed attempt, ignoring the fact that they had spent so much time training together, said, “I think I can take care of this by myself fellas.”  He ran toward the Stone Babies.  He let out a sonic scream crumbling one of the Stone Babies.  Another of the Stone Babies tried to punch him, but this time he blocked it and punched that Stone Baby to pieces.  One jumped on his back which seemed to be his most vulnerable spot, but he flipped it over and fell over forward himself.  He scrambled awkwardly to stand up again – standing up always seemed to be his most difficult task – and he saw he only managed to take the poor thing’s head off.  The headless thing ran after him, a terrifying sight and he aptly screamed, inadvertently letting out the sonic scream power Pater Non had given him.  He took the leg of the Stone Baby he had just blasted to pieces and went around smashing Stone Baby after Stone Baby with his new found weapon.  He took out the four or five Stone Babies in his immediately vicinity in this manner and let out a sonic scream that blasted a few nearby Stone Babies who seemed to be minding their own business.  He continued like this until there only seemed to be one Stone Baby left.  It was a very impressive show of power.  He grabbed that last Stone Baby around the throat, shook it, and shouted, “Tell me where the Holy Milky Way is!”

“He has no mouth, oh brilliant team leader,” Thurgood shouted.

The rest of the team, while Ford was savagely smashing to rubble much of this primitive civilization, had taken the opportunity to rest and watch.  Karl, the were-sloth, who normally seemed to be as lazy as his title implied, spent that time popping in and out all over the landscape looking for the Holy Milky Way.  He finally found it tucked into a vaginal cave that seemed to be the central meeting place of the Lithopedians.

“We have the package,” Pandemonium Odalon shouted.  “Leave him alone.”  And that was the conclusion of the first quest.

They went on other adventures to find five of the other seven unusual relics.  He bumbled in the battle with the Obsidian Urchins and nearly kept them from getting the Withered Fig Bush from the Ghost Rabbits.  He killed an innocent villager on the Island of Wuz when they went to get the Holy Stauncher.  He was occasionally useful against the William Butler Yeatses when they were trying to get the Holy Bowling Ball, but just as many times it was his fault that it stayed just out of their grasp for so long.  When Karl came back from his adventure with the Tatterdemalions with the Sheriff Star and he revealed that he participated in a Tatterdemalion replica of the 1989 King of the Ring, Ford went on a rampage that tore up much of the hangar bay of Thunderbolts Mountain while he shouted over and over about how unworthy Karl was of such an honor.  Finally, when their attempts to get the Golden Eight from the Vampire Gorillas became a frustrating and seemingly endless task, Ford appeared to be as much a source of frustration as the Vampire Gorillas themselves.  The Vampire Gorillas had strength, speed, and stealth, and they had the numbers to keep fighting until the end of time.  Ford had only strength on his side.  His capacity for stealth was laughable.  He’d go into battle each time over-eager and optimistic, and each time he’d screw it up.  He failed to recognize this and blamed his teammates each time.

They made the decision to kill Ford Fordham.

Each member of the Deadly Sins had a different reason for agreeing to it though it was mostly Thurgood and Pandemonium who made the original decision.  Thurgood openly hated Ford from the beginning.  Thurgood said it was because the primary philosophical belief he was trying to teach his people was that only power mattered, and power wielded by an idiot drove Thurgood to madness.  It was clear, however, that the hatred was based more on a deep seeded dislike than any sort of ideology.  Pandemonium claimed he was doing it out of kindness, that Ford was simply going to get people killed.  He also said he did it because Ford was bullying Karl, Pandemonium’s protégé.  Thurgood accused him of wanting Ford dead because Pandemonium was the strong man of the group and Ford’s robot body made his power redundant.  Karl agreed to the murder because Pandemonium suggested it, and Karl had little confidence to make his own decisions at that point.  He saw it as an act of kindness toward him and appreciated it for what it was.  Peachy and the were-wheel didn’t add any opinion because they didn’t have mouths, but they always seemed to follow what the rest of the team did anyway. 

Solomon seemed the oddest one to agree to the murder of Ford Fordham.  He and Ford had a bizarre bond nobody could quite understand since Solomon was the most feminine of the group and Ford by all appearances was a dumb jock, but Solomon was the only one who would listen when Ford talked on and on about his accomplishments.  Ford would even listen when Solomon talked   There must have been some commonality the rest of the group didn’t see.  There was also suspicion that Solomon was behind the sudden appearance of the robot body.  Solomon was a sculptor who could animate little energy-filled sculptures like his peacock golems.  It seemed conceivable that he could make something like Ford’s robot body.  Their mysterious bond made the conspirators reluctant to include him.  They were very surprised when he agreed to the murder.

The plan was set in motion very soon after that.  Pandemonium told Ford that the Stone Babies and the Vampire Gorillas had formed an alliance to protect the Golden Eight, and the Stone Babies had specifically requested a one on one revenge battle with Ford.  Pandemonium said, furthermore, they had a plan this time inspired by Making the May King, grand wizard of the Ghost Rabbits.  They would plant a bomb inside Peachy who, once he blew up, could easily reconfigure himself.  Peachy would be set up as the prize next to the Golden Eight if Ford won this all-or-nothing tournament against the Stone Babies.  Pandemonium said the Vampire Gorillas would certainly go for this.  Peachy was, after all, a walking relic and considered in that community the most dangerous and frightening creature on the planet.  He would be an irresistible prize.  At a certain point, when everyone else was safe, Peachy would pass the Golden Eight to Pandemonium and then set off the bomb.  In the chaos, they would take the Golden Eight through the were-wheel and their mission would be a rousing success.  It was designed to appeal to Ford’s ego, and it worked perfectly.

The were-wheel dropped them off in Darkest Africa where the Vampire Gorillas lived they tramped through a well-trodden path they had taken many times in their missions here.  Ford was in the lead, of course.  Thurgood was floating above on his Sodomite Mace, Solomon flying ahead, the were-wheel lagging behind.  Pandemonium lagged a good distance behind Ford, and Karl was in line immediately after that.  Suddenly, after a whistle cue from Pandemonium, Thurgood’s Sodomite dropped hard on Ford’s left robot shoulder cracking the left arm almost out of the socket.  He landed and swung the mace around into Ford’s robot knee as he was turning around to look at his attacker, shock on his beluga face.  That’s when Pandemonium then did a rolling leapfrog off of Thurgood’s back into the chest of the robot knocking Ford backward into the trees some of the wires from the now busted up robot got caught in the trees so that he looked like a fly in a spider web.  Ford tried to fight back, as tangled as he was.  He let out a sonic blast that knocked Pandemonium and Thurgood back into the trees.  He tore free from his entanglements leaving his left arm behind.  That’s when he was hit with a flurry of peacock bombs permanently disabling the robot.  His expression of shock was most extreme when Solomon started to attack.  Solomon’s dark face betrayed no emotion.  Ford disentangled himself from his robot so that it was just his awkward beluga body alone, unaided, and he did something surprising: he ran away.  He stumbled on his whale legs.  He said stuff like, “Oh come on, guys.  What are you doing?  Don’t do this, guys.”  It was within his character to fight back, to say arrogant and angry things, but his voice had become a child’s voice again.  He stumble finally into a thick patch of jungle and struggled to free himself.  He could have transformed into a human, but he was scared.  That was clear from his eyes.  He was crying.  The Deadly Sins approached slowly, Solomon and Peachy in the front, Karl and the were-wheel in the rear.  “Oh come on guys,” he kept saying.  “You’re going to kill me, aren’t you?  Guys, I didn’t mean it.  I knew you didn’t like me.  I’m sorry I’m like this, but you can’t just killed me because you don’t like me.  It’s just I never have been satisfied.  How are you guys any different?  It’s just when I talk to people, it goes so wrong, I go straight to that arrogant me.  I have control there.  I have control over being an asshole.  That’s not the real me.  I don’t know the real me, but you guys don’t either.  I mean you guys are the best friends I ever had.  I’m being totally serious about that.  I thought you just knew … I thought you just knew me.”

They had been advancing all through his speech, all except Karl and the were-wheel, but at this point Pandemonium Odalon stopped and Thurgood Numbertwo slowed.  For all his later proclamations of unwavering commitment to kill Ford Fordham, it was hard to deny the half-weep half-laugh coming from that poor foolish bastard made Thurgood slow down.

But Solomon and Peachy never slowed.  Peachy even seemed to move faster.

“Oh god, you guys, don’t let it be him,” Ford said, struggling to get away from Peachy as he got closer, the biggest team member deathly afraid of the smallest.  “Not him, anybody but him.  Give me a chance, guys.”

Solomon sent out then a hoard of peacock golems that met all together to form an opaque dome around Peachy and Ford.  The screams were deafening, feminine at times and childish at times.  The whole process took much, much longer than they originally anticipated, but if it’s true what they suspected about Peachy’s power, that he ate his victims, there was more of Ford to eat.  Finally, the screaming stopped, and Solomon took down his dome.  There was nothing there but Peachy and a scorch mark.

The realization sunk in.  Maybe not immediately, but the realization eventually sunk in for all of them that they had just taken a man’s life for being an asshole and a royal fuck up.  A man who honestly seemed to think all of them were his best friends.