Fake Casino Chips? How to Tell if a Poker Chip is Real or Not

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Turning Random League of Legends Champions into a DnD Build (Attempting) Until I've Done all 152 (and Counting) Day 8: Twisted Fate

If I’m being completely honest, Twisted Fate is probably the hardest time I’ve had trying to figure one of these builds and probably the least confident I’ve been on one, but mama didn’t raise no bitch and I’m shooting my shot.
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Who is Scott Borgenson? Profile from 2016 in “Institutional Investor”

(Note the connections)
CargoMetrics Cracks the Code on Shipping Data
Scott Borgerson and his team of quants at hedge fund firm CargoMetrics are using satellite intel on ships to identify mispriced securities.
By Fred R. Bleakley February 04, 2016
Link to article
One late afternoon last November, as a ping-pong game echoed through the floor at CargoMetrics Technologies’ Boston office, CEO Scott Borgerson was watching over the shoulder of Arturo Ramos, who’s responsible for developing investment strategies with astrophysicist Ronnie Hoogerwerf. At Ramos’s feet sat Helios, his brindle pit-bull-and-­greyhound mix. All three men were staring at a computer screen, tracking satellite signals from oil tankers sailing through the Strait of Malacca, the choke point between the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea where 40 percent of the world’s cargo trade moves by ship.
CargoMetrics, a start-up investment firm, is not your typical money manager or hedge fund. It was originally set up to supply information on cargo shipping to commodities traders, among others. Now it links satellite signals, historical shipping data and proprietary analytics for its own trading in commodities, currencies and equity index futures. There was an air of excitement in the office that day because the signals were continuing to show a slowdown in shipping that had earlier triggered the firm’s automated trading system to short West Texas Intermediate (WTI) oil futures. Two days later the U.S. Department of Energy’s official report came out, confirming the firm’s hunch, and the oil futures market reacted accordingly.
“We nailed it for our biggest return of the year,” says Borgerson, who had reason to breathe more easily. His backers were watching closely. They include Blackstone Alternative Asset Management (BAAM), the world’s largest hedge fund allocator, and seven wealthy tech and business leaders. Among them: former Lotus Development Corp. CEO Jim Manzi, who also had a long career at IBM Corp.
Compelling these investors and Borgerson to pursue the shipping slice of the economy is the simple fact that in this era of globalization 50,000 ships carry 90 percent of the $18.5 trillion in annual world trade.
That’s no secret, of course, but Borgerson and CargoMetrics’ backers maintain that the firm is well ahead of any other investment manager in harnessing such information for a potential big advantage. It’s why Borgerson has kept the firm in stealth mode for years. In its earlier iteration, from 2011 to 2014, CargoMetrics was hidden in a back alley, above a restaurant. Now that he’s running an investment firm, Borgerson declines to name his investors unless, like Manzi and BAAM, they are willing to be identified.
“My vision is to map historically and in real time what’s really going on in economic supply and demand across the planet,” says the U.S. Coast Guard veteran, who prides himself and the CargoMetrics team on not being prototypical Wall Streeters. “The problem is enormous, but the potential reward is huge.”
According to Borgerson, CargoMetrics is building a “learning machine” that will be able to automatically profit from spotting any publicly traded security that is mispriced, using what he refers to as systematic fundamental macro strategies. He calls the firm a new breed of quantitative investment manager. In unguarded moments he sees himself as the Steve Jobs or Elon Musk of portfolio management.
Though his ambitions may sound audacious, one thing is certain: Borgerson doesn’t lack in self-confidence. Over the past six years, he has secretly and painstakingly built a firm heavy in Ph.D.s that can manage a database of hundreds of billions of historical shipping records, conduct trillions of calculations on hundreds of computer servers and systematically execute trades in 28 different commodities and currencies.
For his part, Borgerson seems an unlikely architect of such a serious, ambitious endeavor. Easygoing and fond of joking with his colleagues, he is a hands-off manager who credits CargoMetrics’ investment prowess to his team. His brand of humor comes through even when he’s detailing the series of challenges he had starting the firm. After using the phrase “It was hard” several times, he pauses and adds, “Did I mention it was hard?” Although Borgerson declines to provide any specifics about Cargo­Metrics’ portfolio, citing the advice of his lawyers, performance during the three years of live trading apparently has been strong enough to keep his backers confident and his team of physicists, software engineers and mathematicians in place. “Hopefully, it won’t be too long before we can make a more significant investment,” says BAAM CEO J. Tomilson Hill. Former Lotus CEO Manzi is optimistic about the firm’s prospects: “It has an unbelievable edge with its historical data.”
CargoMetrics was one of the first maritime data analytics companies to seize the potential of the global Automatic Identification System. Ships transmit AIS signals via very high frequency (VHF) radio to receiver devices on other ships or land. Since 2004, large vessels with gross tonnage of 300 or more are required to flash AIS positioning signals every few seconds to avoid collisions. That allows Cargo­Metrics to pay satellite companies for access to the signals gleaned from 500 miles above the water. The firm uses historical data to identify cargo and aggregation of cargo flow, and then applies sophisticated analysis of financial market correlations to identify buying and selling opportunities.
“We’re big-data junkies who could not have founded CargoMetrics without the radical breakthroughs of this golden age of technology,” Borgerson says. The revolution in cloud computing has been instrumental. CargoMetrics leverages the Amazon Web Services platform to run its analytics and algorithms on hundreds of computer servers at a fraction of the cost of owning and maintaining the hardware itself.
At his firm’s headquarters — where the lobby displays a series of colored semaphore signal flags that spell out the mathematical equation for the surface area of the earth —Borgerson leads the way to his server room. It’s the size of a closet; inside, a thick pipe carries all the data traffic and analytic formulas CargoMetrics needs. That computing power alone would have cost $30 million to $40 million, Manzi says.
CargoMetrics is pursuing a modern version of an age-old quest. Think of the Rothschild family’s use in the 19th century of carrier pigeons and couriers on horseback to bring news from the Napoleonic Wars to their traders in London, or, in the 1980s, oil trader Marc Rich’s use of satellite phones and binoculars for relaying oil tanker flow.
Other quant-focused Wall Street firms are latching onto the satellite ship-tracking data. But, Borgerson says, “I would bet my life on a stack of Bibles that no one in the world has the shipping database and analytics we have.” The reason he’s so convinced is that from late 2008 he was an early client of the satellite companies that had begun collecting data received from space and on land to build a large database of all the world’s vessel movements in one place.
That’s what caught Hill’s eye at Blackstone when he learned of Cargo­Metrics a few years ago. BAAM now has a managed account with the firm. “If anyone else tries to replicate what CargoMetrics has, they will be years behind [Borgerson] on data analytics,” Hill says. “We know that a number of hedge fund data scientists want his data.”
But too much reliance on big data can go wrong, say many academicians. “There is a huge amount of hype around big data,” observes Willy Shih, a professor of management practice at Harvard Business School. “Many people are saying, ‘Let the data speak; we don’t need theory or modeling.’ I argue that even with using new, massively parallel computing systems for modeling and simulation, some forces in nature and the economy are still too big and complex for computers to handle.”
Shih’s skepticism doesn’t go as far as to say the data challenge on global trade is too big a puzzle to solve. When informed of the Cargo­Metrics approach, he called it “very valid and creative. They just have to be careful not to throw away efforts to understand causality.”
Another big-data scholar, Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor of electrical engineering and computer science Samuel Madden, also urges caution. “What worries me is that models become trusted but then fail,” he explains. “You have to validate and revalidate.”
Borgerson grew up in Southeast Missouri, in a home on Rural Route 5 between Festus and Hematite. His father was a former Marine infantry officer and police official, and his mother a high school French and Spanish teacher. The family traveled 15 miles to Crystal City to attend Grace Presbyterian Church, which was central to young Borgerson’s upbringing: There he was a youth elder, became an Eagle Scout and received a God and Country Award. The church was across the street from the former home of NBA all-star and U.S. senator Bill Bradley, whose backboard Borgerson used for basketball practice.
When it came to choosing what to do after high school, Borgerson was torn between becoming a Presbyterian minister and accepting an appointment to the U.S. Coast Guard Academy or West Point. He went with the Coast Guard because, he says, “the humanitarian mission really appealed to me, and I had never been on a boat before.”
At the academy, in New London, Connecticut, Borgerson played NCAA tennis and was also a cutup, racking up demerits for such antics as placing a sailboat on the commandant of cadets’ front lawn and leading bar patrons in a rendition of “Semper Paratus,” the school’s theme song. Still, he graduated with honors and spent the next four years piloting a 367-foot cutter — which seized five tons of cocaine in the Caribbean — then captaining a patrol boat that saved 30 lives on search-and-rescue missions. From 2001 to 2003 the Coast Guard sent Borgerson to the Fletcher School at Tufts University to earn his master’s of arts in law and diplomacy. While at Tufts he volunteered at a Boston homeless shelter for military veterans and founded a Pet Pals therapy program for senior citizens.
Following graduation, from 2003 to 2006, Borgerson taught U.S. history, foreign policy, political geography and maritime studies at the Coast Guard Academy, and co-founded its Institute for Leadership. While there he would get up at 4:00 each morning to work on his Ph.D. thesis exploring U.S. port cities’ approaches to foreign policy. He would also travel to Boston to complete his course work at Tufts and meet with his adviser, John Curtis Perry.
Borgerson’s military allegiance runs deep. One weekend last fall he played football in a service academy alumni game. On another he attended the Army-Navy game. Still militarily fit at age 40, the 6-foot-5 Borgerson works out regularly at an inner-city gym aimed at helping youths find an alternative to gang violence; a few weeks ago he was there boxing with ex-convicts and lifting weights.
Leaving the Coast Guard was a hard decision for Borgerson, resulting in part from his frustration with the military bureaucracy’s stymieing of his bid to get back to sea for security missions. With his degrees in hand, he applied for a fellowship at the Council on Foreign Relations. During the application process he met Edward Morse, now global head of commodities research at Citigroup. Morse was on the CFR selection committee in 2007 and recommended Borgerson as a fellow.
Morse introduced Borgerson to commodities, and to trading terms like “contango” and “backwardation.” Morse himself had, earlier in career, gotten the jump on official oil supply data by hiring planes to take photos of the lid heights of oil tanks in Oklahoma’s Cushing field.
Working for the CFR in New York reconnected Borgerson with his Missouri roots. Bill Bradley’s aunt called the former senator to say: “The son of a family who went to our church in Crystal City is in New York. Would you welcome him?” Bradley did — and would later play a part in Borgerson’s career development.
While at the CFR, Borgerson became an expert on the melting of the North Pole ice cap, writing numerous published articles on its implications; this led him to co-found, with the president of Iceland, the Arctic Circle, a nonprofit designed to encourage discussion of the future of that region. Borgerson recently spoke to 50 international generals and admirals about the Arctic and is co-drafting a proposal for a treaty between the U.S. and Canada that would help resolve the differences the two countries have in allowing international ship and aircraft travel through the Northwest Passage.
His Arctic research led to an aha moment early in 2008, while he was still with the CFR, on a visit to Singapore and the Strait of Malacca with his Fletcher School classmate Rockford Weitz and their former Ph.D. adviser, Perry. Seeing the mass of ships sailing through the strait, Borgerson and Weitz decided to build a data analytics firm using satellite tracking of ships.
Like many successful entrepreneurs, the two struggled to find financing before reaching out to a network of friends and their contacts. One was Randy Beardsworth, who had sat with Borgerson at a 2007 Coast Guard Academy dinner, where Beards­worth, then the Coast Guard’s chief of law enforcement in Miami, was the guest speaker. Borgerson “made references to history and literature, and I thought, ‘Here is a sharp guy,’” recalls Beards­worth. “We have been friends ever since.”
But Borgerson didn’t turn to his new friend in his initial fund-raising. “He came to me in 2009, after he had been turned down by 17 VCs, was maxed out on his credit card, was married and had a newborn son,” says Beardsworth, who was reviewing the Department of Homeland Security as part of the Obama administration’s transition team. Beardsworth came to the rescue, not only committing to invest a small amount but introducing his friend to Doug Doan. A West Point graduate and Washington-­based angel investor, Doan took to Borgerson right away. “To be honest, it wasn’t his idea, it was Scott I invested in,” says Doan, who provided $100,000 in capital and introduced Borgerson to a few friends, who added $75,000. Manzi came on board as an investor in 2009, having been asked by Bradley to check out Borgerson’s plan for a data metrics firm. (Manzi knew Bradley from the late 1990s, when the latter was considering a run for U.S. president.)
With Doan, Doan’s friends and Manzi as investors, CargoMetrics was finally able to garner its first venture capital commitment in early 2010, from Boston-based Ascent Venture Partners. That gave the start-up the capital it needed to hire a bevy of data scientists to build an analytics platform that it could sell to commodity-trading houses and other commercial users. In 2011, CargoMetrics added Summerhill Venture Partners, a Toronto-based firm with a Boston office, to its investor roster, raising roughly $18 million from venture capital and angels for its data business.
By then Borgerson had already begun to contemplate converting CargoMetrics from an information provider into a money manager; he saw the potential to extract powerful trade signals from its technology rather than share it with other market participants for a fee. Among those he consulted was serial entrepreneur Peter Platzer, a friend of one of CargoMetrics’ original investors. Platzer, a physicist by training, had spent eight years as a quantitative hedge fund manager at Rohatyn Group and Deutsche Bank before co-founding Spire Global, a San Francisco–­based company that uses its own fleet of low-orbit satellites to track shipping, in 2012. “We had lengthy conversations on how to set up quant trading systems and how [commodities giant] Cargill had made a similar decision to set up its own in-house hedge fund to trade on the information it was gathering,” recalls Platzer. So Borgerson reset his course. Doan describes the decision as a “transformative moment” for the CargoMetrics co-founder. “The military trains you to be a strategic thinker,” Doan explains. “Scott had been tactical until then, making small pivots, and like a general who sees the theater of war, he moved into strategic mode.”
Borgerson’s ambition to succeed was in no small part fueled by the early turndowns by many venture capital firms and a fierce determination to best the Wall Street bunch at their own game. “There’s a lot that motivates me, including — if I’m honest — I have a big chip on my shoulder to beat the prep school, Ivy League, MBA crowd,” he says. “They’re bred to make money, but they’re not smarter than everyone else; they just have more patina and connections.” (Bred differently, he spent last Thanksgiving visiting his parents in rural Missouri. After breakfast he and his father were in the woods, shooting assault guns at posters of terrorists, with Gunny, his father’s Anatolian shepherd dog.)
Borgerson’s plan was not met with enthusiasm from the company’s then co-CEO, Weitz. CargoMetrics had been gaining clients and meeting its goals, and was on its way to becoming a successful data service provider. Weitz, who now is president of the Gloucester, Massachusetts–based Institute for Global Maritime Studies and an entrepreneur coach at Tufts’ Fletcher School, did not return e-mails or phone calls asking for comment. For his part, Borgerson says: “A ship cannot have two captains. The company simply matured and evolved into a streamlined management structure with one CEO instead of two.”
Eventually, Doan went along with Borgerson’s plan. “We believe in Scott and that shipping holds the no-shit, honest truth of what the economy is doing,” he says. But buying out the venture capital firms several years ahead of the usual exit time would require a hefty premium over what they had invested.
Once again Borgerson’s early supporters played a key role. Manzi, a fellow Fletcher School grad who had mentored Borgerson since the company’s early days, put up more money (making CargoMetrics one of his single largest investments) and introduced him to a powerful group of wealthy investors. Separately, the CFR’s Morse suggested that Borgerson meet with Daniel Freifeld, founder of Washington-based Callaway Capital Management and a former senior adviser on Eurasian energy at the U.S. Department of State. Impressed by Borgerson’s “intellectual honesty, vigor and more than four years of historical data,” Freifeld brought the idea to a billionaire third-party investor, who took his advice and became one of CargoMetrics’ largest backers. “I would not have suggested the investment if CargoMetrics had not done the hard part first,” adds Freifeld, declining to name the investor.
A chance encounter in the fall of 2012 gave the CargoMetrics team its first taste of real Wall Street trading. Attending an Arctic Imperative conference in Alaska, Borgerson met the CIO of a large investment firm, whom he declines to name. When Borgerson confided his ambition and that CargoMetrics had developed algorithms to trade on its shipping data once it was legally structured to do so, the CIO suggested CargoMetrics provide the analytical models for a separate portfolio the money manager would trade. Live trading using CargoMetrics’ models began in December 2012. Manzi brought in longtime banker Gerald Rosenfeld in 2013 to craft and negotiate the move to make CargoMetrics a limited liability investment firm. Rosenfeld acted in a personal role rather than in his position as vice chairman of Lazard and full-time professor and trustee of the New York University School of Law. The whole process took a year and a half. During that time Blackstone checked in as an investor.
Bradley, now an investment banker, has yet to invest in CargoMetrics, explaining that he is unfamiliar with quantitative investing. But he may eventually invest in Borgerson’s firm, he says, because “we are homeboys. I believe in him and that things are going to work out ” — pausing to add with a smile, “based on my vast quant experience, of course.”
Borgerson has been in stealth mode since CargoMetrics’ early days, when he moved the firm from an innovation lab near MIT because the shared space was too open. He is much more forthcoming when boasting of the firm’s “world-class talent.” The team includes astrophysicists, mathematicians, former hedge fund quants, electrical engineers, a trade lawyer and software developers. Hoogerwerf, who has a Ph.D. in astrophysics from the Netherlands’ Leiden University, built distributed technical environments for scientists and engineers at Microsoft Corp. Solomon Todesse, who works on quant investment strategies, was head of asset allocation at State Street Global Advisors. Aquil Abdullah, a team leader in the engineering group, was a software engineer in the high-performance-computing group at Microsoft. And senior investment strategist Charles Freifeld (Daniel’s father) has 40 years’ experience in futures and commodities markets, including nine with Boston-based commodity trading adviser firm AlphaMetrics Capital Management.
“All were self-made people; none were born with a silver spoon,” Borgerson notes. One of his blue-collar-­background hires was James (Jess) Scully, who joined as chief operating officer in 2011, after his employer Interactive Supercomputing was acquired by Microsoft.
“The team we built treasures team success, which is Scott’s motto,” Scully says. “We want shared resources, one P&L, not ‘How much money did my unit make?’” Both Scully and Borgerson say Cargo­Metrics is like the Golden State Warriors, a leading NBA basketball team known for putting aside personal glory and playing as a band of brothers having fun.
Borgerson says he fosters a no-ego policy with “lots of play because investment teams are built on trust, and playing together builds trust.” Team building at CargoMetrics includes pub crawls, picnics at Borgerson’s house, poker nights, volunteer work in a soup kitchen for the homeless, Red Sox games and visits to museums.
Trips to the Boston docks or Coast Guard base are intended to remind the CargoMetrics team of the real economy. There are also occasional “touch a tanker” days. On one visit to a tanker, everyone was amazed that the ship was the size of a city building, Borgerson says. “They could smell the salt on the deck,” he recalls. “Wall Street can lose sight of the real fundamentals in the world. I don’t want that to happen here.”
Unlike the Rothschilds 200 years ago, only a small percentage of the trades that CargoMetrics makes relate to beating official government data. Most simply are aimed at identifying mispricings in the market, using the firm’s real-time shipping data and proprietary algorithms.
At a whiteboard in his conference room, Borgerson sketches out CargoMetrics’ general formula. He draws a “maritime matrix” of three dynamic data sets: geography (Malacca, Brazil, Australia, China, Europe and the U.S.), metrics (ship counts, cargo mass and volume, ship speed and port congestion) and tradable factors (Brent crude versus WTI, as well as mining equities, commodity macro and Asian economic activity). Using satellite data with hundreds of millions of ship positions, CargoMetrics makes trillions of calculations to determine individual cargoes onboard the ships and then to aggregate the cargo flows and compare them with historical shipping data. All that leads to the final comparisons with historical financial market data to find mispricings. If CargoMetrics observes an appreciable decline in export shipping activity in South Africa, for example, its trading models will determine whether that is a significant early-warning sign by considering that information alongside other factors, such as interest rates. If Cargo­Metrics believes a decline in the rand is forthcoming, it might short it against a basket of other currencies. “This is like a heat map showing opportunity,” Borgerson says, noting that CargoMetrics is not trading physical commodities. “We are agnostic on whether to be long or short, and let the computers spot where there is a mispricing and liquidity in the markets.” He sums up his simple, but still less than revealing, process by writing on the whiteboard “Collect, Compute, Trade.”
Borgerson says CargoMetrics is building a systematic approach that will work even when cargo cannot be identified — on containerships, for instance. It already knows a large percentage of the daily imports and exports into and out of China and island economies such as Japan and Australia. And although the firm cannot glean from its calculations on satellite AIS data the type of cargo, such as iPhones from China, it can measure total flow, which shows present economic activity. Cargo­Metrics’ data scientists are working on linking such activity to the firm’s data set of the past seven years to measure the evolving global economy. That will lead, Borgerson maintains, to more trades on currencies and equity index futures and, eventually, trades on individual equities. “Uncorrelated” is a mantra of Borgerson and his team. Well aware that correlated assets sent the performance of most asset managers, including hedge funds, plunging in the financial crisis, CargoMetrics is determined to come up with an antidote. Careful not to say too much, Borgerson lays out the simple principle that the process starts with placing many bets among uncorrelated strategies in different asset classes, like commodities, currencies and equities.
The goal is diversification, staying as market neutral as possible and remaining sensitive to tail risk in different scenarios. CargoMetrics’ analytic models help find asset classes that are outliers. Those may include a publicly traded instrument such as oil, another commodity or an equity for which shipping information was a leading indicator during times when other asset classes marched in lockstep. The historical ship data is then blended with this new information to seek opportunities. Identifying mispriced spreads among different trades within an asset class is another way of avoiding the calamity of correlation. Borgerson says the firm’s models will find instances where one type of oil should be a short trade and another a long one. The same goes for whole asset classes — shorting one that will benefit if virtually all asset prices plunge and buying another that will rise when oil prices gain. “We’re counting cards with the goal of being right maybe 3 percent more than we are wrong, as a way of making profits during good times and staying afloat during times of sudden, unpredictable but far-reaching events,” Borgerson says. The key, he adds, “is to know your edge and spread your risk.” CargoMetrics’ uncorrelated approach worked during the dismal first three weeks of this year, says Borgerson. Dialing down risk as volatility in the markets soared, the firm was on track in January to have its best month since it began trading.
To improve the firm’s models, eight of its data scientists hold a weekly strategy meeting, nicknamed “the Shackleton Group” after the band of sailors shipwrecked in the Antarctic from 1914 to 1917. Hoogerwerf and Ramos co-lead the group. At one recent meeting they were deciding how much risk, including how much liquidity, there was in a possible strategy; reviewing whether to keep previous strategies; and assigning who would research new ones.
The Shackleton Group’s meetings are free-form, with a lot of “I’ve got an idea” interjections that disregard official roles. “We hit the restart button a lot,” says Ramos, a former director of business intelligence and a quantitative economist at law firm Dewey & LeBoeuf who joined CargoMetrics in late 2010. “That’s why our motto is ‘Never lose hope.’” A bet on oil, related to Russia’s production, was stopped at the last minute in 2014, when Russia invaded Ukraine. Some currency-trading strategies have been abandoned in theory or after failing. Strategies the Shackleton Group likes are passed on to the firm’s investment committee of Borgerson, Scully and Ramos for a final decision. CargoMetrics has a unique set of big-data challenges. Historical shipping patterns may not be as useful in the new global economy now that shipping freight prices are plunging, a sign that trade growth rates may be changing. And analysts point out how hard identifying oil cargo can be in certain locations and instances, even in more-­predictable economic times. “While it may be easy to say that ships leaving the Middle East Gulf are typically carrying crude oil, knowing the type of crude is sometimes quite difficult,” says Paulo Nery, senior director of Europe, Middle East and Asia oil for Genscape, a Louisville, Kentucky–based company that analyzes satellite tracking of ships. Borgerson maintains his team is well aware of the dangers of data mining and getting swamped by noise. “If you run computers hard enough, you can convince yourself of anything,” he says. To make sure CargoMetrics’ algorithms for identifying cargo are valid, the firm spot-checks manifest data filed at ports and imposes statistical confidence checks to guard against spurious correlations.
Getting the jump on official government statistics is likely to become tougher too thanks to the recently formed High-Level Group for the Modernization of Official Statistics. Although the U.S. is not a member, Canada is a key player helping to lead the mostly European nation group (including South Korea) in coming up with a global blueprint for measuring and reporting economic activity.
Reflecting on his journey to Wall Street — raising money, hiring employees with different skill sets, making changes to Cargo­Metrics’ culture, overcoming legal and regulatory hurdles — almost gives Borgerson second thoughts about whether he would do it again. “I’ve sailed ships through tropical storms, captured cocaine smugglers and testified before Congress [on his Arctic research],” he says, “but this was the hardest.”
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Benzos led my bro here

16 months in prison, but for the first year, I hadn’t yet comprehended the actual reality. I suppose I really didn’t – or couldn’t – notice how much things inexorably changed without me until a year had passed. People move on. You can’t remember what your friends look like. They talk to you distantly on the phone. Your girlfriend becomes a friend, friends become strangers. I haven’t talked to my brother Neil in over a year. I should reach out, I know. I’m in prison; of course I’m the one that fucked up.
I wasn’t always like this. My 15 year old self would be awed, amused, yet disappointed if he knew this would be his future; the 17 year old me would be horrified; and my 20 year old self would be like, “What the fuck happened?!”
I’m scheduled to go home in November, but I’m fighting another case. The prosecutors are trying to nail me with 17 years, because an acquaintance overdosed. They allege I gave him the drugs. I didn’t.
Its surreal to watch my life bargained away, lawyers treating years like poker chips for something that, even if everything they allege was true, I had no control over what unfolded. The ensuing events were as impersonal as a card game, and almost entirely the result of the victim’s own choices. So, now I find myself in a special kind of hell: prison without an out date.
The other day I complained melodramatically to my mom that my fate is a modern day retelling of the Book of Job, of which she took exception, saying, in so many words, that I’m not saintly like Job. That’s certainly true, but I can understand – on every level – the feeling of utter helplessness in the face of fate’s cruel machinations. That’s a book in the bible I can feel, that resonates deeply.
My bunkie studies the bible everyday. He’s not exactly “Christian” but makes a big deal about the real name of God, which he believes to be Yah and Yashua. He regularly delivers impromptu sermons to no one in particular, feeling like he’s a hand-picked disciple of “Yah”. It’s really fucking annoying. Fucking A, how can you be so fixated on one book when there are so many other good ones? He also farts a lot, loud, stinky, and shameless, as potent as smelling salts. I need to change units.
My TV was stolen by the Bloods, so my days are stretching out infinitely longer. I’m trying to fill up the rest of the day after lifting weights and running in the morning, so I don’t waste all my time dwelling on getting high off dabs or pieces (1/8 of a strip). I really don’t do it, but if you put the latter in a ChapStick cap filled with water, let it dissolve, and then snort the ensuing solution, you can catch a decent buzz – more like a medicate numbness than an illicit high.
A dab is performed with a thumbtack (to apply the wax) and a rigged wire for charging tablets that incorporates a little piece of steel stolen from the scrubbing pads in the kitchen dish room which heats up as electricity runs thru it. Despite the higher than average idiocy of the average inmate, I’ve encountered other impressive feats of ingenuity: tattoo guns, repairing TVs with self-made tools, smuggling in cellphones.
Since my life is effectively on hiatus (I’m physically absent in everyone else’s), the people that are still a part of mine have grown in importance. They make me feel a little less alone whenever I get to speak to them. But its tough to watch their lives progress without me, which is egotistical but true. We’ll never make new memories together for as long as I’m locked up.
I’m frankly embarrassed about how I acted towards Kasey. I really loved her, but didn’t show it enough when it actually mattered, and now she’s moved on and it sucks. Sometimes I get the impulse to call her before I stop and remind myself, “she doesn’t wanna talk to you, you’re some fuckin weirdo in prison.” I try to imagine her as I left her on that balmy May afternoon instead of getting dicked down by some lame dude who I’m suddenly jealous of. To cope, now I fantasize about girls I wanna fuck- and could, realistically – once I’m out of prison. I’m jerking off to hope.
Without social media, my world feels pretty microscopic compared to what it was before. I’ve had multiple bunkies, a couple of TVs, a handful of workout partners, and a fistful of fights. I’ve formulated a decent routine to follow. The day-to-day monotony actually makes the time go by faster, paradoxically. Life goes on…
Everyday I wake up, realize where I’m at, and become instantly depressed as it dawns on me: this is my life. I always try to return to sleep so as to resume dreaming, but I rarely succeed. As anyone who’s ever been locked up can attest, there’s no transition quite so jarring and depressing as the segue from a deep slumber dreaming of familiar faces and places (regardless of what’s happening) to awakening on an uncomfortable prison bunk. Dreaming truly is the opiate of the imprisoned.
I’ve always wanted to write a book or something like it. Only now I’m actually making an effort. Writing is one of the few activities that allows me to transcend my surroundings, forgetting that my life has been circumscribed down to the few experiences available on this small compound, encircled by two 15-foot barbed wire fences.
Writing reminds me that I once had had fun with friends, had fallen in love, had my fair share of triumphs before I became prisoner #511007, deemed unfit for society, possibly for more than a decade, for doing what almost every individual in the same situation would do.
After some deep introspection, my previous life seems almost foreign to me at times. I’m living with everyone else’s demons in this place as well as my own, so I reflexively assume the worst of everyone. I often fail to limit this suspicion to other inmates, and extend it to my family and friends. I’m officially institutionalized.
www.easy-trouble.com
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A Very Long, Extremely Complicated Rewrite of the Apollo Trilogy (Part 2)

Part 1, Part 3
So, up till now, we've not done much interesting. Some writing fixes here or there, some choice revisions, and a completely changed ending for one case, but nothing that interesting.
Now we go off the rails.
For this, my purposed rewrite of Turnabout Succession is so utterly immense, altering about 90% of the story in some way, along with massively recontexualizing the rest of the game, that I will have to divide it into sections. Consider this the real part of the Apollo Justice rewrite, all before it was just the small fry.
First Investigation
For starters, not even the date is the same. Rather than October 7, the case opens up on September 3, for reasons which will become very clear soon at the end.
The case opens up with Phoenix acting surprisingly busy, which confuses Apollo until Trucy explains that Phoenix has a strange tradition to head out by himself every year out into the countryside. She doesn't know why, but reassures Apollo it's no big deal (Apollo just assumes that Phoenix has a mistress).
Like in the actual game, Valant has announced that he's making a big performance, but a notable change is that he's having Trucy come along as an assistant, wanting her to start getting some professional stage experience.
With Apollo left on his lonesome, Phoenix gives him a random job, giving a package to Eldoon as a "gift". Meeting up with Eldoon, it turns out that he's planning to get back in surgery now that his old rival is dead, and maintain the family noodle business at the same time (Apollo points out that's insane). Eldoon proceeds to ask how Phoenix is doing, and relays some outsider perspective on the Wright's. After Phoenix's disbarment, he took to doing countless odd jobs around the community before settling into his job as a "pianist", and still does even now, all for zero pay. He just laughed at every struggle he had to make, never once losing the smile on his face. He was, in every way, a hero.
Returning to the office, Apollo finds it empty, only to find a mystery envelope on the desk. Reading it, Apollo finds a baffling message.
"Within the frame of the portrait, there is something to reveal. The truth of MM-4 will not be forever sealed."
The letter is signed from Akashic.
Apollo is baffled by the note, but chooses to follow the address to studio anyway. There, he encounters Klavier, who was called to the studio with the exact same note, with them both aware of who Drew Misham was. Evidently, someone wants both of them to investigate this case. Klavier himself is the same as usual, but Apollo can tell he's still shaken about what happened two months ago.
The investigation of Misham's studio is basically the same, minus Ema not being so obstinate since the Jurist system isn't a thing in this version, though she does comedically sock Klavier in the gut when he gets on her nerves one too many times. After learning about Brushel, Apollo then leaves to go find him, though, Klavier asks for Apollo to see him at his office, for...some reason.
The meeting with Valant is basically the same minus Phoenix being there, then there's essentially a merged take on the two encounters in the detention center with the introductions of Vera and Brushel. Brushel, noticeably, seems unsurprised in this version about Apollo taking up Vera's case. Here, though, he informs Apollo and Trucy of a secret compartment in Misham's studio, which he learnt about during the interview.
Returning to the studio, Apollo puts in the lock Brushel told him, and finds a series of evidence, all critical to the plot:
The last one shocks Apollo and Trucy immensely, only for any attempt to contact Phoenix to end up with no answer. Returning to the office, Apollo finds another letter, this time from Phoenix, informing the two of them he's had to vanish. He assures Apollo that he believes in him, and that, no matter what, he can pull through.
That evening, Apollo visits Klavier's office, which he sees has become much neater since the Gavinners have disbanded. Klavier exchanges some pretty friendly words with Apollo, only to clam up when Apollo notes that he's acting different. Klavier, suddenly, deflates.
Klavier reveals his backstory. His and Kristoph's father was an official of law who pushed his sons to be the greatest no matter what. While he was a great man who believed in the law, Klavier admits his methods were beyond harsh, and Kristoph bore the brunt of it, which Klavier suspects it the reason he turned out the way he did. He, on the other hand, got the easy deal in life, and lived the fulfilling life both as a prosecutor and musician.
This has changed now, though. With Daryan still at large, Kavier is stuck with the reminder that, no matter what, he's not what Apollo thinks he is. He, like every other person, is weak. Weak in spirit, weak in will, and weak in motivation. Everything, he says, which he thinks Apollo is.
"You know, Herr Forehead...I think we really are opposites."
Apollo ponders Klavier's words, then decides to show Klavier what he found. Klavier is left utterly shocked when he sees the photo, as he reveals a shocking fact, that "older boy" is actually Daryan. How on earth this is possible he has no idea, Daryan never talked about his past, but the truth is unmistakable. And, if that's the truth...who knows what else exists.
Klavier, despite being the prosecutor in the case, fully believes Vera is innocent. Together, he and Apollo are going to unravel the truth, and end what began seven years prior.
First Trial
The first half of the trial is basically identical to the actual game. Apollo and Klavier cross-examine Brushel. The only difference is Klavier is far less insistent, since here he wants Apollo to prove Vera's innocence.
Where it diverges however is once we get to the "proving what Misham was poisoned with" part, where, instead of a postage stamp kept in a picture frame, what Apollo pushes for is a recently sealed letter included in the correspondence letters in the secret compartment. As explained, the chain of letters were, in order to protect their security, were always matched with specific stamps for the responder to send with. Thus, when Misham was using the stamp sent to him, he ended up poisoning himself.
Obviously, the question then becomes why the letter was in the safe, only a bit of cross-examining answers that, Brushel did it on request of a dying Misham himself, who wanted both the "secret" to be hidden while still protecting Vera. Brushel's only mistake was not realizing poison residue got on the coffee cup, meaning Vera was implicated by essentially freak chance.
With this, Vera's innocence is proven, but, realizing that he's essentially implicated Phoenix, Apollo demands that Vera now testify so to get more information. This is where we go into the fact that, as a savant, she was the one comprising the forgeries, though purely on her fathers orders. Vera insists that, despite this, he was a good person, and was only doing this to help her.
Eventually, it comes out that there was actually a secondary correspondence chain besides Phoenix, but Vera claims her father burnt all of them out of shame. Before she can confirm, however, she collapses, having fallen into a coma, and is rushed to the hospital.
Apollo is left victorious and defeated, Vera innocent yet in intensive care, and the missing Phoenix now a murder suspect.
Second Investigation
The following day, Apollo is at the bar located at Sunshine Colosseum, drinking apple juice in frustration over the situation while talking to a not exactly inebriated Ema (Ema getting wasted is canon BTW, going off a piece of official art). Phoenix is still missing and a suspect, Vera is still in a coma with the strong likelihood of death, and there's zero way of proving the alternate chain of correspondence letters even existed. He's not really interested in the performance either, seeing Valant as just a criminal showboating about getting away with what he did.
Apollo, however, does come out for the segment at the end focused exclusively on Trucy, saying it's the least he can do for what might be one of the most important days of her life. Once her part is over, however, Valant returns for the final act...and then the show is suddenly halted. Trucy suddenly appears, looking horribly pale and genuinely shaken, and Apollo soon sees why as he heads into the underground parts of the colosseum, and finds a trail of blood leading into a storeroom. Standing there, a bloody sword in his hands, is Phoenix, with Lamiroir's body having been run through.
~~
A few hours later, the situation has been clarified. Lamiroir is alive, but in critical condition, Phoenix has been arrested and is now believed to be the culprit of both murders, and Valant not only believes that whole-heartedly, but is planning to testify in court that Phoenix is the murderer.
Apollo, obviously, doesn't believe for a second that Phoenix is the culprit, but can tell despite putting on a cheerful face Trucy is clearly even more grief-stricken and broken by the situation. Heading to the detention center, Apollo confronts Phoenix about what's happened.
~~
Visiting the crime scene, Ema delivers the low down on the situation. Lamiroir was stabbed through the abdomen, the weapon being one of the real swords that are used in the Trope Gramarye's acts (as is implied in canon, and explicit here, Magnifi's tricks involve the use of actual dangerous objects for authenticity). The storeroom has only one entrance/exit, and is otherwise completely inaccessible. Lamiroir's body was found on the table located in the middle of the room, with mild fractures located across her body. There's also an upper level in the storeroom accessible by a single ladder, and two strange holes in the wall on the far end, and an ornate knife which Trucy notes she doesn't recognize in the Gramarye props.
As Ema confirms, all evidence is pointing to Phoenix as the killer, but she refuses to believe that he's the culprit. Ema suddenly reveals a non-spoiler recap of the events of Rise from the Ashes explaining the actual relationship she has to Phoenix, and tells Apollo and Trucy that, no matter what, she has faith that they will be able to prove his innocence.
~~
Out on the stage, we have another meeting with Valant, giving more of the Gramarye backstory from the actual game:
~~
Outside the colosseum, Apollo and Trucy run into Brushel, who says that he's heard all about the current incident. Information travels fast, and, in this case, there's a lot more truth to be seen than just the basics:
~~
Heading back to the office, Apollo is mulling over what they know, with Trucy admitting she always "knew" Valant's hatred of Phoenix, but didn't want to acknowledge it. Suddenly, Apollo finds a crudely written message from Akashic (despite the handwriting being completely different) hidden with a shocking piece of information, head to the Borscht Bowl Club.
Arriving at the club, Apollo is shocked to find Klavier, who is acting friendly as always, but quickly gets serious again as he admits that Vera's health not only isn't improving, it's getting worse, and chances of her survival are seeming slimmer and slimmer. More pressingly, though, he reveals why he's here, because the letter explicitly gave him a heads up that the club is where Daryan and Machi have been hiding.
The question is where, but Apollo quickly deduces it, it's the secret room from Case 1 (remember that? That's now an actual plot point). He and Klavier head inside, where Daryan is sitting there, glaring at the two of them with eyes ready to kill.
Daryan asks why the two of them are planning to do, to which Klavier says he's simply here to talk. His failure to persecute Daryan was his own failure, so here in the moment he's going to try and atone for that failure. Daryan calls Klavier a naïve moron, and just readies the gun, fully intending to shoot.
Apollo, suddenly, notices a single cocoon Daryan successfully preserved from the destruction of the guitar through a plastic wrap. Apollo realizes that, even if he was willing to throw all of it away, Daryan at least wanted to preserve a single one, which makes him reveal his motives. 12 years ago, he and his parents were in a fatal car accident, and Daryan only survived because of the Misham's being there at the time. He spent his life trying to repay his debt to them, only for "someone" to appear seven years ago and essentially take Vera's life hostage. To that purpose, Drew had to make forgeries for that person, while Daryan had the more pressing job, become "friends" with Klavier, and make sure he never found out the truth.
This continued until Vera, who always suffered from fragile health, developed Incuritus, which would likely kill her before she turned 20. Daryan, determined to save her, organized the plan to smuggle out the cocoons with Machi, acquiring the cure he needed to save her life while also appeasing the masterminds want for Lamiroir to be in the country.
Klavier is understandably shocked about all of this, saying that, if he knew, he would've tried to help. Daryan just calls him a moron, and pulls the trigger...
...Only for the bullets to harmlessly bounce off Klavier's chest. As Apollo reveals, while the two of them were negotiating, Trucy had secretly entered the room and swapped the bullets with dummies. Daryan, refusing to give in, attacks Klavier in a fit a rage, only for him to be overpowered, unable to fight with a dislocated shoulder, and is forced to the ground. Daryan has been defeated.
Machi, who's still in the room, clarifies his own motives for the smuggling, explaining that Lamiroir had remembered "something" about her old home, and her family. Due to her fame and some kind of past "agreement", however, Lamiroir was prevented from ever leaving the country except as a tour, never able to see her family again. The plan, as Daryan had convinced him of, was that selling the cure would get Machi the money needed to free her.
Klavier asks if Daryan regrets what he's done, to which he just laughs at it. He regrets nothing of what he did, and rubs it in that he never considered Klavier a friend. Klavier goes silent for a bit, and then says he will find a way to get Vera treated, and will actually help Machi find a new identity and life, acknowledging the two of them as victims of a world larger than either of them could handle. As for Daryan, he'll carry the weight of all his sins, for the rest of life.
Daryan hesitates, clearly uncertain to trust him, before deciding to just give up. If Vera survives, then his life is worth sacrificing. Apollo is left almost baffled by this act of sacrifice considering how vile Daryan had revealed himself to be, but tells Klavier that maybe that's proof that everyone is trying their own method to survive in the world.
~~
After Daryan is taken away by Klavier, Apollo and Trucy investigate the hidden room, and find a strange note of what appears to be prison escape plans of some kind, which say that it'll be easy because of everyone being "sheep". After Trucy poking around some more (because Trucy), something shocking is unveiled, another secret passage, this time leading down a much longer, windier path, before finding themselves in, of all places...the crime scene.
This leaves the two of them incredibly confused, and they go to meet Klavier at his office. Klavier is shocked at the possibility, but thinks whole-heartedly that this at the same time explains a lot, though he can prove none of it:
~~
Valant is found at his "office", which is horribly run down and filled with bottles indicating he probably has some issues he's not quite being honest about. After his extremely hostile interaction last time, Valant almost refuses to talk, but acquiesces at Trucy's request:
Apollo gets annoyed by Valant's obstinacy on discussing the current case, only for Trucy to find something, a letter asking him to meet the two of them "backstage", addressed by Phoenix! Why was Valant working with a man he actively hated?
~~
Apollo and Trucy meet with Phoenix yet again in the detention center. Phoenix asks Apollo if he understands the facts, to which Apollo admits he's just even more confused.
Before he leaves, Phoenix drops a hint that, if he wants the truth, to give "him" the note Apollo has. Apollo questions how on earth Phoenix knows that, to which Phoenix just smiles, quotes Mia, and says he is placing his faith in the next generation.
Suddenly, Apollo gets a call from Ema, she's found Brushel, and he's willing to talk.
~~
Apollo and Trucy find Brushel talking with Ema at People Park. Brushel acts incredibly nervous and attempts to hide the truth, but, the moment Apollo shows the tipoff about Daryan to him, he cracks and begins the mother of all exposition dumps:
Brushel admits that he knows all this is a lot to take in, but says that Phoenix was perhaps the man who impressed him more than anyone else in the world. A man who would gladly sacrifice his own life if it was in the interest of granting justice for another. He tells Apollo and Trucy that, no matter what, it's their responsibility to carry what he started, and to, perhaps, change the world. Before he leaves, he hands Apollo something Phoenix asked him to give, a fresh locket made from the one Phoenix found on Zak's body, showing Trucy as she is now. It is the proof of everything Phoenix now fights for, and what Apollo should be fighting for as well.
~~
At sunfall, Apollo and Trucy see Thalassa on her hospital bed.
Trucy admits she barely even remembers her mother. She was only five when she "died", and she had no idea what even happened to her. The only words she can even say are that she looks peaceful now, as if the cruel nature of the world is absent in a single instance.
Apollo starts pondering the meaning of what he's even doing, if even doing this means anything.
Apollo feels a grip on his hand.
Like a miracle, even though she is near death, her hand touches his.
For seconds, a happy memory appears in the back of his mind, of a loving woman's song.
"What...what was that...?"
Suddenly, Apollo's phone rings. Answering it, it's Klavier. Talking to him, he reveals he and Ema investigated Kristoph's jail cell while he was in questioning, and found not just an identical vial of nail polish to the one that poisoned Vera, as well as a envelope identical to the correspondence letters Misham and Phoenix were using! Klavier says he's certain there's a thread behind all of this, and that the two of them are going to prove everything in court.
"Everything's in place. You ready?"
"...If I don't do this, there's no reason why I'm even alive."
"Heh, all right then. Herr Justice...let's rock."
~~~
This got too long for one post, so read Part 3 for the final trial.
submitted by RainSpectreX to AceAttorney [link] [comments]

Drugs led my brother here.....

16 months in prison, but for the first year, I hadn’t yet comprehended the actual reality. I suppose I really didn’t – or couldn’t – notice how much things inexorably changed without me until a year had passed. People move on. You can’t remember what your friends look like. They talk to you distantly on the phone. Your girlfriend becomes a friend, friends become strangers. I haven’t talked to my brother Neil in over a year. I should reach out, I know. I’m in prison; of course I’m the one that fucked up.
I wasn’t always like this. My 15 year old self would be awed, amused, yet disappointed if he knew this would be his future; the 17 year old me would be horrified; and my 20 year old self would be like, “What the fuck happened?!”
I’m scheduled to go home in November, but I’m fighting another case. The prosecutors are trying to nail me with 17 years, because an acquaintance overdosed. They allege I gave him the drugs. I didn’t.
Its surreal to watch my life bargained away, lawyers treating years like poker chips for something that, even if everything they allege was true, I had no control over what unfolded. The ensuing events were as impersonal as a card game, and almost entirely the result of the victim’s own choices. So, now I find myself in a special kind of hell: prison without an out date.
The other day I complained melodramatically to my mom that my fate is a modern day retelling of the Book of Job, of which she took exception, saying, in so many words, that I’m not saintly like Job. That’s certainly true, but I can understand – on every level – the feeling of utter helplessness in the face of fate’s cruel machinations. That’s a book in the bible I can feel, that resonates deeply.
My bunkie studies the bible everyday. He’s not exactly “Christian” but makes a big deal about the real name of God, which he believes to be Yah and Yashua. He regularly delivers impromptu sermons to no one in particular, feeling like he’s a hand-picked disciple of “Yah”. It’s really fucking annoying. Fucking A, how can you be so fixated on one book when there are so many other good ones? He also farts a lot, loud, stinky, and shameless, as potent as smelling salts. I need to change units.
My TV was stolen by the Bloods, so my days are stretching out infinitely longer. I’m trying to fill up the rest of the day after lifting weights and running in the morning, so I don’t waste all my time dwelling on getting high off dabs or pieces (1/8 of a strip). I really don’t do it, but if you put the latter in a ChapStick cap filled with water, let it dissolve, and then snort the ensuing solution, you can catch a decent buzz – more like a medicate numbness than an illicit high.
A dab is performed with a thumbtack (to apply the wax) and a rigged wire for charging tablets that incorporates a little piece of steel stolen from the scrubbing pads in the kitchen dish room which heats up as electricity runs thru it. Despite the higher than average idiocy of the average inmate, I’ve encountered other impressive feats of ingenuity: tattoo guns, repairing TVs with self-made tools, smuggling in cellphones.
Since my life is effectively on hiatus (I’m physically absent in everyone else’s), the people that are still a part of mine have grown in importance. They make me feel a little less alone whenever I get to speak to them. But its tough to watch their lives progress without me, which is egotistical but true. We’ll never make new memories together for as long as I’m locked up.
I’m frankly embarrassed about how I acted towards Kasey. I really loved her, but didn’t show it enough when it actually mattered, and now she’s moved on and it sucks. Sometimes I get the impulse to call her before I stop and remind myself, “she doesn’t wanna talk to you, you’re some fuckin weirdo in prison.” I try to imagine her as I left her on that balmy May afternoon instead of getting dicked down by some lame dude who I’m suddenly jealous of. To cope, now I fantasize about girls I wanna fuck- and could, realistically – once I’m out of prison. I’m jerking off to hope.
Without social media, my world feels pretty microscopic compared to what it was before. I’ve had multiple bunkies, a couple of TVs, a handful of workout partners, and a fistful of fights. I’ve formulated a decent routine to follow. The day-to-day monotony actually makes the time go by faster, paradoxically. Life goes on…
Everyday I wake up, realize where I’m at, and become instantly depressed as it dawns on me: this is my life. I always try to return to sleep so as to resume dreaming, but I rarely succeed. As anyone who’s ever been locked up can attest, there’s no transition quite so jarring and depressing as the segue from a deep slumber dreaming of familiar faces and places (regardless of what’s happening) to awakening on an uncomfortable prison bunk. Dreaming truly is the opiate of the imprisoned.
I’ve always wanted to write a book or something like it. Only now I’m actually making an effort. Writing is one of the few activities that allows me to transcend my surroundings, forgetting that my life has been circumscribed down to the few experiences available on this small compound, encircled by two 15-foot barbed wire fences.
Writing reminds me that I once had had fun with friends, had fallen in love, had my fair share of triumphs before I became prisoner #511007, deemed unfit for society, possibly for more than a decade, for doing what almost every individual in the same situation would do.
After some deep introspection, my previous life seems almost foreign to me at times. I’m living with everyone else’s demons in this place as well as my own, so I reflexively assume the worst of everyone. I often fail to limit this suspicion to other inmates, and extend it to my family and friends. I’m officially institutionalized.
Check out blog www.easy-trouble.com
submitted by easytrouble92 to Drugs [link] [comments]

Addiction led my brother here ...

16 months in prison, but for the first year, I hadn’t yet comprehended the actual reality. I suppose I really didn’t – or couldn’t – notice how much things inexorably changed without me until a year had passed. People move on. You can’t remember what your friends look like. They talk to you distantly on the phone. Your girlfriend becomes a friend, friends become strangers. I haven’t talked to my brother Neil in over a year. I should reach out, I know. I’m in prison; of course I’m the one that fucked up.
I wasn’t always like this. My 15 year old self would be awed, amused, yet disappointed if he knew this would be his future; the 17 year old me would be horrified; and my 20 year old self would be like, “What the fuck happened?!”
I’m scheduled to go home in November, but I’m fighting another case. The prosecutors are trying to nail me with 17 years, because an acquaintance overdosed. They allege I gave him the drugs. I didn’t.
Its surreal to watch my life bargained away, lawyers treating years like poker chips for something that, even if everything they allege was true, I had no control over what unfolded. The ensuing events were as impersonal as a card game, and almost entirely the result of the victim’s own choices. So, now I find myself in a special kind of hell: prison without an out date.
The other day I complained melodramatically to my mom that my fate is a modern day retelling of the Book of Job, of which she took exception, saying, in so many words, that I’m not saintly like Job. That’s certainly true, but I can understand – on every level – the feeling of utter helplessness in the face of fate’s cruel machinations. That’s a book in the bible I can feel, that resonates deeply.
My bunkie studies the bible everyday. He’s not exactly “Christian” but makes a big deal about the real name of God, which he believes to be Yah and Yashua. He regularly delivers impromptu sermons to no one in particular, feeling like he’s a hand-picked disciple of “Yah”. It’s really fucking annoying. Fucking A, how can you be so fixated on one book when there are so many other good ones? He also farts a lot, loud, stinky, and shameless, as potent as smelling salts. I need to change units.
My TV was stolen by the Bloods, so my days are stretching out infinitely longer. I’m trying to fill up the rest of the day after lifting weights and running in the morning, so I don’t waste all my time dwelling on getting high off dabs or pieces (1/8 of a strip). I really don’t do it, but if you put the latter in a ChapStick cap filled with water, let it dissolve, and then snort the ensuing solution, you can catch a decent buzz – more like a medicate numbness than an illicit high.
A dab is performed with a thumbtack (to apply the wax) and a rigged wire for charging tablets that incorporates a little piece of steel stolen from the scrubbing pads in the kitchen dish room which heats up as electricity runs thru it. Despite the higher than average idiocy of the average inmate, I’ve encountered other impressive feats of ingenuity: tattoo guns, repairing TVs with self-made tools, smuggling in cellphones.
Since my life is effectively on hiatus (I’m physically absent in everyone else’s), the people that are still a part of mine have grown in importance. They make me feel a little less alone whenever I get to speak to them. But its tough to watch their lives progress without me, which is egotistical but true. We’ll never make new memories together for as long as I’m locked up.
I’m frankly embarrassed about how I acted towards Kasey. I really loved her, but didn’t show it enough when it actually mattered, and now she’s moved on and it sucks. Sometimes I get the impulse to call her before I stop and remind myself, “she doesn’t wanna talk to you, you’re some fuckin weirdo in prison.” I try to imagine her as I left her on that balmy May afternoon instead of getting dicked down by some lame dude who I’m suddenly jealous of. To cope, now I fantasize about girls I wanna fuck- and could, realistically – once I’m out of prison. I’m jerking off to hope.
Without social media, my world feels pretty microscopic compared to what it was before. I’ve had multiple bunkies, a couple of TVs, a handful of workout partners, and a fistful of fights. I’ve formulated a decent routine to follow. The day-to-day monotony actually makes the time go by faster, paradoxically. Life goes on…
Everyday I wake up, realize where I’m at, and become instantly depressed as it dawns on me: this is my life. I always try to return to sleep so as to resume dreaming, but I rarely succeed. As anyone who’s ever been locked up can attest, there’s no transition quite so jarring and depressing as the segue from a deep slumber dreaming of familiar faces and places (regardless of what’s happening) to awakening on an uncomfortable prison bunk. Dreaming truly is the opiate of the imprisoned.
I’ve always wanted to write a book or something like it. Only now I’m actually making an effort. Writing is one of the few activities that allows me to transcend my surroundings, forgetting that my life has been circumscribed down to the few experiences available on this small compound, encircled by two 15-foot barbed wire fences.
Writing reminds me that I once had had fun with friends, had fallen in love, had my fair share of triumphs before I became prisoner #511007, deemed unfit for society, possibly for more than a decade, for doing what almost every individual in the same situation would do.
After some deep introspection, my previous life seems almost foreign to me at times. I’m living with everyone else’s demons in this place as well as my own, so I reflexively assume the worst of everyone. I often fail to limit this suspicion to other inmates, and extend it to my family and friends. I’m officially institutionalized.
www.easy-trouble.com
submitted by inmateconvict to addiction [link] [comments]

Opiates led brother here ..

16 months in prison, but for the first year, I hadn’t yet comprehended the actual reality. I suppose I really didn’t – or couldn’t – notice how much things inexorably changed without me until a year had passed. People move on. You can’t remember what your friends look like. They talk to you distantly on the phone. Your girlfriend becomes a friend, friends become strangers. I haven’t talked to my brother Neil in over a year. I should reach out, I know. I’m in prison; of course I’m the one that fucked up.
I wasn’t always like this. My 15 year old self would be awed, amused, yet disappointed if he knew this would be his future; the 17 year old me would be horrified; and my 20 year old self would be like, “What the fuck happened?!”
I’m scheduled to go home in November, but I’m fighting another case. The prosecutors are trying to nail me with 17 years, because an acquaintance overdosed. They allege I gave him the drugs. I didn’t.
Its surreal to watch my life bargained away, lawyers treating years like poker chips for something that, even if everything they allege was true, I had no control over what unfolded. The ensuing events were as impersonal as a card game, and almost entirely the result of the victim’s own choices. So, now I find myself in a special kind of hell: prison without an out date.
The other day I complained melodramatically to my mom that my fate is a modern day retelling of the Book of Job, of which she took exception, saying, in so many words, that I’m not saintly like Job. That’s certainly true, but I can understand – on every level – the feeling of utter helplessness in the face of fate’s cruel machinations. That’s a book in the bible I can feel, that resonates deeply.
My bunkie studies the bible everyday. He’s not exactly “Christian” but makes a big deal about the real name of God, which he believes to be Yah and Yashua. He regularly delivers impromptu sermons to no one in particular, feeling like he’s a hand-picked disciple of “Yah”. It’s really fucking annoying. Fucking A, how can you be so fixated on one book when there are so many other good ones? He also farts a lot, loud, stinky, and shameless, as potent as smelling salts. I need to change units.
My TV was stolen by the Bloods, so my days are stretching out infinitely longer. I’m trying to fill up the rest of the day after lifting weights and running in the morning, so I don’t waste all my time dwelling on getting high off dabs or pieces (1/8 of a strip). I really don’t do it, but if you put the latter in a ChapStick cap filled with water, let it dissolve, and then snort the ensuing solution, you can catch a decent buzz – more like a medicate numbness than an illicit high.
A dab is performed with a thumbtack (to apply the wax) and a rigged wire for charging tablets that incorporates a little piece of steel stolen from the scrubbing pads in the kitchen dish room which heats up as electricity runs thru it. Despite the higher than average idiocy of the average inmate, I’ve encountered other impressive feats of ingenuity: tattoo guns, repairing TVs with self-made tools, smuggling in cellphones.
Since my life is effectively on hiatus (I’m physically absent in everyone else’s), the people that are still a part of mine have grown in importance. They make me feel a little less alone whenever I get to speak to them. But its tough to watch their lives progress without me, which is egotistical but true. We’ll never make new memories together for as long as I’m locked up.
I’m frankly embarrassed about how I acted towards Kasey. I really loved her, but didn’t show it enough when it actually mattered, and now she’s moved on and it sucks. Sometimes I get the impulse to call her before I stop and remind myself, “she doesn’t wanna talk to you, you’re some fuckin weirdo in prison.” I try to imagine her as I left her on that balmy May afternoon instead of getting dicked down by some lame dude who I’m suddenly jealous of. To cope, now I fantasize about girls I wanna fuck- and could, realistically – once I’m out of prison. I’m jerking off to hope.
Without social media, my world feels pretty microscopic compared to what it was before. I’ve had multiple bunkies, a couple of TVs, a handful of workout partners, and a fistful of fights. I’ve formulated a decent routine to follow. The day-to-day monotony actually makes the time go by faster, paradoxically. Life goes on…
Everyday I wake up, realize where I’m at, and become instantly depressed as it dawns on me: this is my life. I always try to return to sleep so as to resume dreaming, but I rarely succeed. As anyone who’s ever been locked up can attest, there’s no transition quite so jarring and depressing as the segue from a deep slumber dreaming of familiar faces and places (regardless of what’s happening) to awakening on an uncomfortable prison bunk. Dreaming truly is the opiate of the imprisoned.
I’ve always wanted to write a book or something like it. Only now I’m actually making an effort. Writing is one of the few activities that allows me to transcend my surroundings, forgetting that my life has been circumscribed down to the few experiences available on this small compound, encircled by two 15-foot barbed wire fences.
Writing reminds me that I once had had fun with friends, had fallen in love, had my fair share of triumphs before I became prisoner #511007, deemed unfit for society, possibly for more than a decade, for doing what almost every individual in the same situation would do.
After some deep introspection, my previous life seems almost foreign to me at times. I’m living with everyone else’s demons in this place as well as my own, so I reflexively assume the worst of everyone. I often fail to limit this suspicion to other inmates, and extend it to my family and friends. I’m officially institutionalized.
Check out the blog at www.easy-trouble.com
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“Surreality” - Brothers First blog post from MI Prison

16 months in prison, but for the first year, I hadn’t yet comprehended the actual reality. I suppose I really didn’t – or couldn’t – notice how much things inexorably changed without me until a year had passed. People move on. You can’t remember what your friends look like. They talk to you distantly on the phone. Your girlfriend becomes a friend, friends become strangers. I haven’t talked to my brother Neil in over a year. I should reach out, I know. I’m in prison; of course I’m the one that fucked up.
I wasn’t always like this. My 15 year old self would be awed, amused, yet disappointed if he knew this would be his future; the 17 year old me would be horrified; and my 20 year old self would be like, “What the fuck happened?!”
I’m scheduled to go home in November, but I’m fighting another case. The prosecutors are trying to nail me with 17 years, because an acquaintance overdosed. They allege I gave him the drugs. I didn’t.
Its surreal to watch my life bargained away, lawyers treating years like poker chips for something that, even if everything they allege was true, I had no control over what unfolded. The ensuing events were as impersonal as a card game, and almost entirely the result of the victim’s own choices. So, now I find myself in a special kind of hell: prison without an out date.
The other day I complained melodramatically to my mom that my fate is a modern day retelling of the Book of Job, of which she took exception, saying, in so many words, that I’m not saintly like Job. That’s certainly true, but I can understand – on every level – the feeling of utter helplessness in the face of fate’s cruel machinations. That’s a book in the bible I can feel, that resonates deeply.
My bunkie studies the bible everyday. He’s not exactly “Christian” but makes a big deal about the real name of God, which he believes to be Yah and Yashua. He regularly delivers impromptu sermons to no one in particular, feeling like he’s a hand-picked disciple of “Yah”. It’s really fucking annoying. Fucking A, how can you be so fixated on one book when there are so many other good ones? He also farts a lot, loud, stinky, and shameless, as potent as smelling salts. I need to change units.
My TV was stolen by the Bloods, so my days are stretching out infinitely longer. I’m trying to fill up the rest of the day after lifting weights and running in the morning, so I don’t waste all my time dwelling on getting high off dabs or pieces (1/8 of a strip). I really don’t do it, but if you put the latter in a ChapStick cap filled with water, let it dissolve, and then snort the ensuing solution, you can catch a decent buzz – more like a medicate numbness than an illicit high.
A dab is performed with a thumbtack (to apply the wax) and a rigged wire for charging tablets that incorporates a little piece of steel stolen from the scrubbing pads in the kitchen dish room which heats up as electricity runs thru it. Despite the higher than average idiocy of the average inmate, I’ve encountered other impressive feats of ingenuity: tattoo guns, repairing TVs with self-made tools, smuggling in cellphones.
Since my life is effectively on hiatus (I’m physically absent in everyone else’s), the people that are still a part of mine have grown in importance. They make me feel a little less alone whenever I get to speak to them. But its tough to watch their lives progress without me, which is egotistical but true. We’ll never make new memories together for as long as I’m locked up.
I’m frankly embarrassed about how I acted towards Kasey. I really loved her, but didn’t show it enough when it actually mattered, and now she’s moved on and it sucks. Sometimes I get the impulse to call her before I stop and remind myself, “she doesn’t wanna talk to you, you’re some fuckin weirdo in prison.” I try to imagine her as I left her on that balmy May afternoon instead of getting dicked down by some lame dude who I’m suddenly jealous of. To cope, now I fantasize about girls I wanna fuck- and could, realistically – once I’m out of prison. I’m jerking off to hope.
Without social media, my world feels pretty microscopic compared to what it was before. I’ve had multiple bunkies, a couple of TVs, a handful of workout partners, and a fistful of fights. I’ve formulated a decent routine to follow. The day-to-day monotony actually makes the time go by faster, paradoxically. Life goes on…
Everyday I wake up, realize where I’m at, and become instantly depressed as it dawns on me: this is my life. I always try to return to sleep so as to resume dreaming, but I rarely succeed. As anyone who’s ever been locked up can attest, there’s no transition quite so jarring and depressing as the segue from a deep slumber dreaming of familiar faces and places (regardless of what’s happening) to awakening on an uncomfortable prison bunk. Dreaming truly is the opiate of the imprisoned.
I’ve always wanted to write a book or something like it. Only now I’m actually making an effort. Writing is one of the few activities that allows me to transcend my surroundings, forgetting that my life has been circumscribed down to the few experiences available on this small compound, encircled by two 15-foot barbed wire fences.
Writing reminds me that I once had had fun with friends, had fallen in love, had my fair share of triumphs before I became prisoner #511007, deemed unfit for society, possibly for more than a decade, for doing what almost every individual in the same situation would do.
After some deep introspection, my previous life seems almost foreign to me at times. I’m living with everyone else’s demons in this place as well as my own, so I reflexively assume the worst of everyone. I often fail to limit this suspicion to other inmates, and extend it to my family and friends. I’m officially institutionalized.
Link to blog https://easytrouble.wordpress.com/
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Brothers blog from prison “Surreality”

16 months in prison, but for the first year, I hadn’t yet comprehended the actual reality. I suppose I really didn’t – or couldn’t – notice how much things inexorably changed without me until a year had passed. People move on. You can’t remember what your friends look like. They talk to you distantly on the phone. Your girlfriend becomes a friend, friends become strangers. I haven’t talked to my brother Neil in over a year. I should reach out, I know. I’m in prison; of course I’m the one that fucked up.
I wasn’t always like this. My 15 year old self would be awed, amused, yet disappointed if he knew this would be his future; the 17 year old me would be horrified; and my 20 year old self would be like, “What the fuck happened?!”
I’m scheduled to go home in November, but I’m fighting another case. The prosecutors are trying to nail me with 17 years, because an acquaintance overdosed. They allege I gave him the drugs. I didn’t.
Its surreal to watch my life bargained away, lawyers treating years like poker chips for something that, even if everything they allege was true, I had no control over what unfolded. The ensuing events were as impersonal as a card game, and almost entirely the result of the victim’s own choices. So, now I find myself in a special kind of hell: prison without an out date.
The other day I complained melodramatically to my mom that my fate is a modern day retelling of the Book of Job, of which she took exception, saying, in so many words, that I’m not saintly like Job. That’s certainly true, but I can understand – on every level – the feeling of utter helplessness in the face of fate’s cruel machinations. That’s a book in the bible I can feel, that resonates deeply.
My bunkie studies the bible everyday. He’s not exactly “Christian” but makes a big deal about the real name of God, which he believes to be Yah and Yashua. He regularly delivers impromptu sermons to no one in particular, feeling like he’s a hand-picked disciple of “Yah”. It’s really fucking annoying. Fucking A, how can you be so fixated on one book when there are so many other good ones? He also farts a lot, loud, stinky, and shameless, as potent as smelling salts. I need to change units.
My TV was stolen by the Bloods, so my days are stretching out infinitely longer. I’m trying to fill up the rest of the day after lifting weights and running in the morning, so I don’t waste all my time dwelling on getting high off dabs or pieces (1/8 of a strip). I really don’t do it, but if you put the latter in a ChapStick cap filled with water, let it dissolve, and then snort the ensuing solution, you can catch a decent buzz – more like a medicate numbness than an illicit high.
A dab is performed with a thumbtack (to apply the wax) and a rigged wire for charging tablets that incorporates a little piece of steel stolen from the scrubbing pads in the kitchen dish room which heats up as electricity runs thru it. Despite the higher than average idiocy of the average inmate, I’ve encountered other impressive feats of ingenuity: tattoo guns, repairing TVs with self-made tools, smuggling in cellphones.
Since my life is effectively on hiatus (I’m physically absent in everyone else’s), the people that are still a part of mine have grown in importance. They make me feel a little less alone whenever I get to speak to them. But its tough to watch their lives progress without me, which is egotistical but true. We’ll never make new memories together for as long as I’m locked up.
I’m frankly embarrassed about how I acted towards Kasey. I really loved her, but didn’t show it enough when it actually mattered, and now she’s moved on and it sucks. Sometimes I get the impulse to call her before I stop and remind myself, “she doesn’t wanna talk to you, you’re some fuckin weirdo in prison.” I try to imagine her as I left her on that balmy May afternoon instead of getting dicked down by some lame dude who I’m suddenly jealous of. To cope, now I fantasize about girls I wanna fuck- and could, realistically – once I’m out of prison. I’m jerking off to hope.
Without social media, my world feels pretty microscopic compared to what it was before. I’ve had multiple bunkies, a couple of TVs, a handful of workout partners, and a fistful of fights. I’ve formulated a decent routine to follow. The day-to-day monotony actually makes the time go by faster, paradoxically. Life goes on…
Everyday I wake up, realize where I’m at, and become instantly depressed as it dawns on me: this is my life. I always try to return to sleep so as to resume dreaming, but I rarely succeed. As anyone who’s ever been locked up can attest, there’s no transition quite so jarring and depressing as the segue from a deep slumber dreaming of familiar faces and places (regardless of what’s happening) to awakening on an uncomfortable prison bunk. Dreaming truly is the opiate of the imprisoned.
I’ve always wanted to write a book or something like it. Only now I’m actually making an effort. Writing is one of the few activities that allows me to transcend my surroundings, forgetting that my life has been circumscribed down to the few experiences available on this small compound, encircled by two 15-foot barbed wire fences.
Writing reminds me that I once had had fun with friends, had fallen in love, had my fair share of triumphs before I became prisoner #511007, deemed unfit for society, possibly for more than a decade, for doing what almost every individual in the same situation would do.
After some deep introspection, my previous life seems almost foreign to me at times. I’m living with everyone else’s demons in this place as well as my own, so I reflexively assume the worst of everyone. I often fail to limit this suspicion to other inmates, and extend it to my family and friends. I’m officially institutionalized.
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Paper Ghost: Chapter Two ~ Music and Notes

The curtains fly open on the first note. The first sequence is fast, bombastic, all loud horns and aggressive piano. The audience under the balcony hushes all at once. From on high, Odell stood alone where the spotlight didn’t yet shine, still in her statuesque pose. Lenore and Mr. Tanner vanish behind the back curtains, scurrying along a hidden walkway, leading to the smaller theatre boxes. From a box across the foyer, eye level with Odell’s balcony, they settle in to watch. Or in Lenore’s case, to conduct the performance from the shadows like a theatre phantom. Barely there, and yet, somehow, everywhere.
The chords are complex but the tempo quickly slows it all down, as the distinct sound of jazz fills the central hall. The band of musicians is under the balcony, playing their snazzy bebop song in front of the guest elevator. Only when the melody and rhythm come to an almost-harmony does Odell step into the light.
The sight of her sends the crowd into an immediate frenzy. It takes a full minute for them to simmer down. Odell doesn’t move an inch until all but the music is quiet again.
Leisurely, she unwraps her arms from her chest. With a sharp change of key to accompany her, Odell throws out her arms like a bird spreads out its wings and then, in a dramatic mezzo-soprano, she sings.
“~Evening, Foxy Lady~”
The instruments gently rumble under her voice, not quite drowning out the excited shrieks of the crowd. She sustains the ending syllable until the crowd quiets. Sauntering her way to the railing; the lights illuminate her out of the darkness. She’s tall; she’s sensuous. Keeping every eye on her, as is her purpose. She continues her song,
“~So nice to see you visit me Out of that dusty den Kept in lock and key~”
Odell’s eyes, lingering on the heads of the people below, drift up. The little lady meets her gaze with a simple blank stare.
The central hall is worn by time. The walls had once been made of oak, polished steel at its edges and a high barren ceiling that made sounds resonate. But time had shredded the wood and browned the metal. The ceiling had fallen in and the holes muffled the echo. In the condition it had been in back then, not even Odell’s provocative productions could distract from the grime. Luckily, with Lenore’s expertise in construction, mechanics, and metallurgy, the repairs were perfect. She had long ago repaired the wall insulation and replaced the oak with sheets of recycled brass and steel. Each plate is cut in irregular shapes and spaced a few millimetres apart. In between each plate is what appeared to be black cement. The hall looks even better than it had in its heyday. And repairs were far from the only improvement the little lady had made.
Odell smiles at Lenore knowingly.
“~Oh, I’ve been so lonely Jewelled crown and throne, All alone Dusk to dawn Long days, cold nights~”
Lenore shakes her cloak off of her shoulders, freeing her hands. She hesitates, but she quickly steels herself. No one in the crowd can see her from where they are. She, and her secrets, are safe. So she removes her mask, revealing copper-red hair and baggy hazel-brown eyes to no one who didn’t already know. Seeing her face, her real darling face, the singer’s smile becomes sweeter.
She and Lenore exchange the slightest of nods.
“~Poor me, poor me, Alone~”
Lenore holds out her hands as if she’s about to play an invisible piano. Her fingers twitch. Behind Odell, the curtains begin to flutter. There is no wind but curtains rise from the floor, regardless. The fabric flaps in time with every tremble of Lenore’s hands as if the little lady was reaching across the room and ruffling them herself.
“~When it rains, when it pours Dancing in the flooded streets like the ocean shores~”
The curtains flutter closer to Odell, reaching out as if to touch her. Odell steps on top of the banister. The crowd gasps as the curtain curl around her waist and forearms like snakes. Lenore waves her hands like a conductor, and the curtains copy each movement. The drapery outstretches from Odell’s back and suddenly, from the view of the audience, the singer has a vast pair of heavy blue wings. Her voice rises as the music readies for the drop. The ground seems to quiver, as she finally breaks into the chorus of the song.
“~And the sky~”
The drapes broadened.
“~Bleeds~”
The walls hum, droning like a deep drum beat.
“~Red!~”
With the first line of the chorus; with the bounce in the tempo from the band; with a scant sweeping gesture from Lenore, the room itself came to life.
Odell leaps from the balcony and the curtains, her perfectly woken wing, carry her through the air and over the heads of the cheering crowd. She flies above the audience and they, in turn, reach their arms up at her, grasping but still out of reach. The other band members sing harmoniously in the background, raising the melody from a hum to a roar. They sing under her, 
“[Bleeding red!]”
Odell echoed them, her voice neither strained nor wobbly despite still being in nimble and bumpy flight
“~Bleeding red!~”
The drapes throw her into the air, inciting shrieks from the crowd, then they catch her and she bounces like she’s on a trampoline. The musicians chant under her, 
“[Blue and red!]”
The curtains unfurl, grazing and caressing down her legs, waist, and chest until her dainty feet landed on the stage under the balcony. She stands on equal footing with musicians as she finishes the chorus, 
“~Oh, blue and red…!~”
For a few seconds, there’s a break in the lyrics, allowing the melody to take over for a while. With Odell safely back on her feet, it gives Lenore a second to relax. Her arms ache lightly. The drapery is an extension of her right arm, every twinge conveyed a subtle command. Her left arm has a different job.
The band didn’t have a drummer. But there’s still a new sound ringing alongside the other musicians. It came not from a person, but from the room itself. Those black cement-like lines in between the metal on the walls. Underneath the cement is tiny glass tubes spreading like nerves throughout the Theatre. They’re glowing now. Reds of several shades glow from the within walls, dim in the cracks but glinting in the brass and steel plates. It’s as if they are suddenly standing inside a giant prism, alight in only the red light wavelength. Each change of light gives off a deep sound. The Theatre itself is the drums and Lenore is the drummer. Her left hand keeps the beat.
Odell grins. Her eyes flicker from the audience, up to where Lenore and Mr. Tanner are hidden, and back down to the audience again.
“~Foxy lady, Come sit with me Oh - Wo - Oh - Wo Sing with me, Foxy Lady That old forgotten song~”
As she sings, Odell waves her arms in rhythm and Lenore makes the room follow her lead. The curtains dance and the walls sing at the singer’s beck and call. 
“~I’m so lonely Oh When the sky bleeds red Bleeding red I’m bleeding red The sky bleeds red~”
The band sings after her, and the crowd joins in,
“[Blue and Red]”
Odell smirks.
“~Oh, blue and red~”
From on high, Mr. Tanner and Lenore are still watching. Although Lenore appears idle she was, in actuality, heavily engaged. The audience only sees Odell. Odell soaring in the curtains and controlling the lights. They hear the drumbeat and somehow know in their minds that it had to be coming from her.
They would be wrong.
Lenore is as much a part of this performance as Odell is and she had all the control over the enchanted elements. But the audience didn’t need to know that. Lenore didn’t want them to. They were meant to see Odell. Only Odell. The singer is Lenore’s greatest mask.
Every once in a while, Mr. Tanner looks away from the stage and back at Lenore. Studying where her gaze lands. How Lenore’s eyes rarely stray from Lady Averill.
“~Because life is bad The stink of hash without the high; A one-night stand and an awkward goodbye While the sky bleeds red [Bleeding red] And I’m going mad [We’ve all gone mad] And if you don’t come through [Come through…] I’ll go dancing alone~”
Odell finishes the chorus and dramatically points at the saxophone player, named Mitchell. She exclaims, “Play it, Mitch!”
Mitch prances out from under the balcony’s shadow. Backed up by the other musicians, he plays his sole. The music is erratic, each section fragmented, jarring the audience with every note. It kept them on their toes, excited for more. They improvise for a good few minutes as Odell dances around them. She dances like this is the best moment of her life, as if nothing could ever get better than this.
Lenore scrutinizes with thoughtful eyes. She doesn’t observe with the same thinly veiled desire that the audience did. For once, there was actually a certain sort of tenderness on her face. The warmth of her expression doesn’t go unnoticed by Mr. Tanner.
“She is quite the performer.” He grumbles.
Lenore blinks and appears to shake herself out of something. She answers, voice snappy “Indeed.”
The saxophone solo comes to a close and Odell takes her place back under the spotlight.
“~I’m a prisoner of war The world’s not blue anymore~”
Odell flicks her wrists and Lenore directs the curtains to scop the singer up, lifting her back onto the balcony landing.
“~Harsh days don’t stop irking [Irking] Yet we keep on working [Working] Burned out [Burned out] Burned out [Burned out] But when it falls, It will storms Cause the sky’s not blue anymore~”
The drumbeat rumbles as the lights go out and the curtains fall still. Odell’s eye flicker to Lenore. There is a tiny quirk on the little lady’s lips. An almost-there smile.
“~Foxy lady under the red sky Baby don’t leave me~”
Odell reaches her arm out towards her, fingers outstretched and waiting to be clasped even though the distance between them is too great. Lenore narrows her eyes slightly.
“~Foxy lady Under the red sky The Bleeding sky Bleeding sky Bleeding red I’m Bleeding...~”
Lenore’s hand twitches. She doesn’t reach out but her fingers do flex in the singer’s direction. That’s enough for Odell. She smiles brightly as she belts out the last line, long and proud, the band and the audience singing with her.
“~Red!~”
And with that, the instruments play their final cords. The audience cheers as the performance come to a close and the performers take their final bows. The band then starts to play another, much calmer song. It’s like elevator music with its simple progression and repeats. They moved to the side, allowing the crowd to pile into the elevator. Odell is smiling and waving from the balcony like a crown princess to her adoring subjects.
“Thank you! Thank you! You have been a most wonderful audience!” Odell calls, “I hope you’ve enjoyed our little show but the fun’s not over yet! Please enjoy the rest of what our little Theatre has to offer and have a lovely night!”
With that, the drapery close around the balcony with a graceful sweep and the people, once again loud and rowdy, leave through the elevator. After everyone had left, the curtains lower Odell from the balcony so she can thank her band. They laugh and joke with her as they put their instruments away. They chatter about their next rehearsal, planning for new songs and improvements for the old ones, until she dismisses them for the night. Soon the central hall is quiet and empty.
An idle clap echoes through the hall, hidden behind the curtains of the balcony. The curtains part. Lenore’s hag mask is back on her face as she gives Odell a clearly sarcastic clap. The multi elevator is unlocked, she and Mr. Tanner are waiting by its open birdcage doors.
Odell smirks, her neck craning as she looks up at the balcony. She says, “Aw, darling, you’re too kind. Stop, you’re making me blush…”
Lenore clasps her hands together, “If there’s one thing you lack, Odell, it's shame. Nothing could make you blush.”
“Not quite nothing,” Odell hums, wicked smirk melting away into a heartfelt smile. “Well, that was fun! Now, how about a pint, shapeshifter?” She gestures for Lenore to send down the drapery again, which Lenore does with a roll of her eyes, “We could play cards in the Goldmine and grab a glass at the Absinthe, hmm?”
Once Odell’s feet touch the metal of the balcony floor, the curtain conceals them behind their dark blue fabric. She steps onto the elevator, towering above Lenore. The top of the little lady’s head only comes up to the singer’s shoulder. Mr. Tanner stands up to her chin.
“Are you not a little young to be drinking so much?” asks Mr. Tanner, the elevator doors slowly closing. It’s heading down to the second floor, The Absinthe House.
“Aren’t you?” Odell replies, looking down at him out of the corner of her eye.
“You are both young and I don’t recall that stopping either of you before,” Lenore says, sliding her hood back on.
“Eh, I drink it diluted anyway. Not like there’s anything else to drink in this city.” Odell shrugs and wraps her arms around the two of them, “Besides you look younger than either of us, Lenore. You being so dainty and all.”
“I prefer the term vertically impaired.”
~*~
Floor seven is the Theatre’s gambling room, called the Goldmine. It’s relatively smaller than the other rooms but it was still by no means tiny.
The middle of the room has a little stage for karaoke, professional and drunken alike. There are lavish couches and chairs circling around the big gambling tables. Every table has a different game. There’s blackjack, poker, craps, roulette, etc. The Goldmine is lit with purple and blue spotlights, giving it a bit of a foreboding air. The space has a feeling of underworldly awe, the soft lines of red glowing dimly through the walls, making it feel like you’re betting against something wicked. Something nefarious and strange. The Goldmine is filled to the brim with guests tonight and the upper part of the room and ceiling is a fog of cigar and cigarette smoke. Odell had stopped by the Goldmine to pick up a deck of cards and some poker ships before heading upstairs to meet with Lenore.
The Absinthe House, on floor two, is the bar chamber and usually the first stop for those heading to the Goldmine.
The Absinthe and the Goldmine are also the only rooms banned to children. Anyone who wanted to smoke in the Theatre had to pay a hefty fee, so only the richest patrons stayed in the Absinthe and the Goldmine. In the far corner of the room, there’s a locked door, guarded by security and off-limits to the customers. Inside is the private library for which Lenore and Odell spent most of their time together. It’s not vast or grand in appearance but it was free of smoke, private, and relatively clean. There were a dozen shelves of books and only one sitting area of which Odell and Lenore now dwelled.
“So the compound collapsed on you again,” Odell states as she lounges on the fainting couch, airing her flute of blackberry wine. She leans on the pillows with sultry laziness.
Lenore is sitting near in creaking rocking chair reading through a book with a cup of ale on the desk behind her. She had discarded her cloak and mask on the chair beside her.
“Yes.”
“Well… that sucks doesn’t it?”
Lenore scoffs. She drops her book onto the desk, none too gently, and puts a hand to her temples.
“Yes, I am quite aware of that, thank you, Odell.”
Odell sat up a little. Lenore had turned her back to the singer. She picks up her cup; she was on her second and Odell on her eighth, draining it in one heavy gulp. Odell pushes her legs over the side of her couch and stands. She looks resigned, more out of place than most were ever allowed to see her.
She shuffled over to Lenore and wringing her hands as she stands over her.
“...There’s always next time--”
“Ha!” The sound that comes out of Lenore’s throat is too bitter and rough to be called a laugh but there is some self-deprecating humour in there. “How many times have I said that in the last fourteen fucking years?”
Lenore looks away, avoiding Odell’s pitiful gaze. What use was pity for her? It accomplishes nothing and gives way to laziness, a terribly persistent disease. Odell sighs. She sits down on the armrest of Lenore’s chair, smirking slightly when the extra weight jostles the little lady. The smirk fades quickly when Lenore raises an annoyed eyebrow at her. She wasn’t surprised to see Lenore dry-eyed and brooding. Hadn’t that been the reaction she’d been getting the last ten fucking years?
Odell sits quietly letting Lenore deal with whatever she needed to deal with.
“... You know...” Odell reaches over and picks up Lenore’s book. The First Edition Advisory on Natural Talents, “There are other books in this library. I mean, you’ve read this one, like, a hundred times. I bet you could recite it from memory by now.”
Lenore looks unimpressed. Her eyes squint up at Odell, “... The absolute control of the body and the mind are not exclusive to any one individual. Natural talents are a product of the self, unique to each individual--”
Odell bursts into laughter, lightly bopping Lenore on the head with her own book, “Oh, fuck off!”
Lenore’s eyes twinkle and her smile is smug, “Chapter 2, page 19. The first chapter is completely pointless. It’s just the writer bragging about all the books he’s read, all of which I’d much rather be reading instead of his self-indulgent drivel. I could write a better book on the subject with my head stuck in a blender. Better than having it up my ass like this author.”
“Maybe you should. Write a book, I mean, not stick your head up your ass,” Lenore breathes heavily, in that way that Odell recognizes as her trying to stifle a laugh. Odell continues, “There’s probably nobody in the world who knows more about natural talents than you. I’ll help you edit it, if an idiot like me can understand it, everyone will.”
The mirth in Lenore’s eyes goes cold. Suddenly she’s all scowls again, “And yet, everything I do still ends in failure.”
Odell frowns. She bops Lenore on the head again, a little harder this time, “Horseshit. Is our Theatre a failure? Ten giant floors, you built them all with your bare hands. Hundreds of workers and hundreds of guests every single night. Does that sound like failure to you?”
The little lady is silent, glowering at her lap.
“Lenore.” Odell takes her by the chin and forces the little lady to look at her. “If you keep talking shit about my favourite foxy lady, I’ll have to deck you.”
Lenore clicks her teeth, pushing the singer’s hand away. But, Odell saw the tiny smile she’d made blossom on the little lady’s face. The singer stands, sauntering away as Lenore pours herself another half a glass of ale. She’s more thirsty than she thought she was, how long had it been since she’d drank anything?
“What do you think went wrong with your project, Lee?” Odell sprawls back in her chair, confident that Lenore’s languishing was over for the moment.
Lenore holds her finger to her chin, thinking it over, “Hmm… The compound was reacting well until the final two ingredients, I believe.”
“So maybe a substitute or different ingredient would do then?”
“No, no. That can’t be it. Those two ingredients are imperative to the project’s ultimate purpose. It just...” Lenore stands from her chair and paces around her desk. “It just doesn’t make any sense.”
“Well, if you’re so certain the ingredients themselves are fine then maybe I can look into the boy that was sent to collect them. He was new, I think. Maybe he did something wrong.”
“My instructions were very precise, Odell.”
“And yet there are still people stupid enough to mess them up. I’ll look into it.”
“All right.” Lenore stops pacing. She takes out a pack of cards and chips, dealing the cards between the two of them. “So what do you say to a game of poker? I could use a few extra coins in my purse.”
“Bloody bitch...” Odell shakes her head and cradles her cards close to her chest, “I’ll give you something all right.”
~*~
Lenore is running for a straight. She has the king and the queen, a knave and a ten of spades, all she needs is the ace. It was just when she had called for another card, and Odell had slipped an ace from her stockings, that they hear a knock on the library door.
Lenore stands from her chair, taking her cards with her. Never trust Odell not to cheat at poker. She tucks herself into a nook between the library shelves while Odell calls for the person to enter. The space is barely large enough to fit a tiny drawer or an above-average sized child. It fit Lenore perfectly.
“Miss Averill?” The person timidly takes a few steps into the library. They’re wearing a simple blouse with a pin and a vest with a matching bowtie. It was one of Odell’s band members. The pianist.
“What is it, Ime?” Odell beams at her worker, all pretty smiles and steamy eyes.
“There is a letter for the Theatre, Miss.” The worker, named Imelda, sputters under the blind of Odell’s gaze. Odell uncrosses her legs and walks up to her. As she collects the letter she searches for the name of the sender. The envelope is blank but for the intended address. There isn’t even a stamp.
“Do you know who it’s from?”
“Um, not for sure Miss but...” Ime looks nervous. “An Official delivered it”
An Official. Lenore, who had been listlessly listening, perks up instantly. She peeks out from her nook, as much as she can without being spotted. She grips her cards hard enough to nearly crumple them into a ball. Slowly, she sneaks her way between the shelves towards the door.
Odell’s holding the letter, half-frozen and stupefied. An Official had been here. In their Theatre. To deliver a letter? Hastily, she collects herself. She smiles lovingly at her worker. Her lips are pulled too far towards her left cheek and her eyes didn’t crinkle enough at the sides for it to look real. She calmly dismisses Ime and the worker scurries away.
Odell is just about to open the letter when they hear another knock. Lenore, who had just walked up beside Odell, ducks once again behind a shelf although this time she was far less tolerant of the interruption.
“Yes?” Odell calls, not bothering to look up at the door.
Mr. Tanner walks in, eyes zeroing in on the shelf Lenore is hiding behind, “It’s only me, Miss Laymon”
Lenore marches out from around the corner. She doesn’t acknowledge Mr. Tanner, her eyes are glued to the piece of parchment in Odell’s hands. Looking at her Odell had to suppress a sigh, their pleasant moment of levity had been nice while it had lasted. Odell hands the letter to Lenore, who snatches it like it’s made of solid gold. Odell faced Mr. Tanner, discontented and weary.
“What is it now?” Odell mumbles.
Mr. Tanner appears mildly confused. He gazed first at Lenore, who is gripping the letter hard enough to almost tear it. His gaze turns mildly worried when she starts to pace back and forth, dropping the cards she had been holding in the process.
“My apologies, Miss, am I interrupting something...?”
“Yeah… But I don’t think anything could make it any worse either way.” Odell’s head swivels back and forth, following Lenore’s increasingly agitated form.
“... I see. I have only come to inform you that there seems to have been a series of disturbances occurring on the lower floors. Some shadowy figure is shaking up the customers.”
“All right, I’ll deal with that soon. Thanks, Mr. Tanner.”
With the dismissal, Mr. Tanner gave a small bow, one last subtle look at Lenore, and a longer look at the letter she was holding before briskly exiting the library.
“What’s the date?”
Now Odell’s concerned expression turns confused. She takes a few hesitant steps toward the now oddly calm looking Lenore. The little lady is leaning against the desk, vacant-eyed, holding the letter lightly in her left hand. The complete shift in temperament is startling.
“What?”
“The date, Odell! What is the bloody date!?” Perhaps calm is not the right word.
“July 21st...”
A smile graces Lenore’s face at that moment. If one had thought Odell’s leering grins were unsettling, then they would be petrified by the sheer malice and ruthless intention on Lenore’s face. Even Odell flinches when it turns her way.
“It seems our most esteemed rulers are in need of some entertainment for the coming of the new year.” Lenore fumes before calming again. She looks contemplative, running her fingers roughly through her hair. “It strikes one as being too convenient to be true.”
Lenore reads the letter over again. Odell cautiously, like she was approaching a wild animal, approaches her as Lenore rifles through the drawers of her desk. By the time Odell is close enough to reach for the letter, Lenore is reading the clock on the far wall while organizing her pens and paper. The clock reads 2:28 am, making it July 22nd.
“Can I..?” Odell points to the letter, crinkled in Lenore’s fist.
“Hmm?” It was only then that Lenore seems to realize that perhaps Odell was not exactly on the same page. “Oh! Yes, yes, of course.” She shoves the letter at Odell.
Odell tries in vain to smooth out the crinkles as she studies the letter.
​
“In Regards to Old Quinn City’s most esteemed Theater,
This is a request to Old Quinn City’s Theater by the superiority of our grandiose city’s ruling family, the House of Romilly, for your appearance and commission for the upcoming New Year’s Celebratory Dinner. This dinner is a most special and once in a lifetime event to celebrate not only another year of the House of Romilly’s gracious and pristine rule over our regal city but also the fifteenth anniversary of the abolishment of the cities previous, and most heinous, governors and our new cities founding.
As an obligation to honour the benevolent sacrifices and labour we have fulfilled for the benefit of you and this city’s virtuous people, we hope you will perform your duty and accede to this requisite.
With reverence of the highest esteem and consideration,
The House of Romilly”
​
For a while, Odell can’t react. Lenore is yet again a tornado, moving hot-footed around the library. She picks up the book she had been reading and went through the shelves picking up books.
Atticus’s Notes on the Mind and Manipulation​ ​is swiftly plucked from the shelf, The First Edition Advisory on Natural Talents is tucked tight under her arm, and she had to reach high up to snag ​The Genius and Cunning of the World’s Most Notorious Dictators ​and Glassmaking from the Renaissance to Modern Day from the top shelves. Finally, she moves on to the loose stacks of paper beside the desk.
It’s an odd change of pace. Odell, usually so full of life and bustle seemed stuck in her place and graceless while Lenore, commonly static and cynical, was near excited in her efforts even with the absence of a smile to prove it. It is only when Lenore had slams a large stack of documents down with a reverberating slam that Odell snaps out of her stupor.
“That’s… that’s way too convenient,” Odell says as she clenched her fist around the letter, crumpling it.
“Exactly!” Lenore is now buried in books and loose papers. Looking at her Odell is reminded of an old Scrooge, sulking behind their huge pile of money. It was then that she decided that she definitely needs another drink.
“Odell, call one of the workers. I need every recent newspaper. The few print companies we still have are biased beyond compare but they may have some useful information snuck under all that pandering.” Lenore rambled on undeterred by Odell’s growing annoyance, “I shall take notes on any clues or motives and compare them with Atticus’s notes and my book on Dictators--”
“​Make that five more drinks.” ​Odell thinks to herself.
“—The circumstances of this invitation may just be the opening we are looking for—” Lenore's voice grows bitter as she goes on, flipping through the pages and making notes with the swiftness of a wild hummingbird.
“Worse even, if they have grown suspicious of the Theatre.” She gripped her pen in two hands and nearly snapped it in half, “Then this may be a trap. A ploy to make us vulnerable in their stronghold...” She looks up from her desk only to find that Odell has disappeared. She scans around the room frantically only to realize Odell has retaken her seat on the fainting couch, pouting.
“Odell, this is no time to dawdle! Tired as we both are we have to hold ourselves to a certain--”
“Can’t we go back to playing cards? You were winning...” Odell fusses as she lounged on her stomach. Her eggshell blue eyes glistened with mock tears as she lets the candlelight hit her face at the perfect angle so that they sparkle like stars. The little lady doesn’t fall for it.
Lenore scowls at her like a mother finding her child’s hand in the cookie jar. “Discipline leads to freedom.”
Odell crosses her arms, scowling back at her, like a child whose hand was slapped after being found in the cookie jar. “And it crushes all the fun…”
~*~
Mr. Tanner is tired.
“​But that is no reason to laze around.” ​He thinks as he stands outside the Theatres doors in the humid summer morning. Odell is on her balcony, giving her usual charismatic goodbyes to their customers. As he tries to peek over the heads of the crowd at her, however, he has to note a rare bit of fatigue in her frame. Her smiles are hollow, shrivelling behind a cloud of worry. ​What could have been in that letter...?
An old man trips on the way out, snapping Mr. Tanner out of his thoughts. Courteously, Mr. Tanner moves to steady him, getting a suspicious glance in return.
“... I am not going to pickpocket you, sir. I can assure you that.” He looks the man straight in the eye, speaking flatly as he held his arm. The old man’s eyes widened for a second until he glares and rips his arm from Mr. Tanner’s grasp. Fixing his crumpled top hat, the man sniffed and turns his nose up at the young cleaner.
“I’m sure you aren’t.” He retorts.
The rigid man walks away, and Mr. Tanner lets his eyes follow him until he was out of sight. As the man disappears on the horizon of Mr. Tanner’s vision, the cleaner allows his eyes to drift up to the long stretching structure that blocks the skyline. It’s only slightly visible over the rooftops. In reality, though, it is bigger than any other structure in the city.
The people of this city see a red-tinted sky in the morning, in the evening, and in the night. Do you think they are happy about this? About the lives they have to lead? It’s hard to say for sure. Some are bound to like it but, in most cases, they are the minority. Unfortunately for the unlucky, unsatisfied majority, there is nowhere to go. The stretch around the horizon is constant. It circles the city’s border like a snake swallowing its own tail. It is not the distant hill of a horizon that the sun falls behind each night; it is the impassable concrete of the border wall. The base of the cities cage. That structure is not only the source of the red sky. It is also the source of nearly every citizens’ misery. There is no way out.
Mr. Tanner regards the wall with his gloved hands folded neatly behind his back and coat buttoned up to his chin. His skin itches in the humid morning air. His eyes are too dry and they sting the longer he stares. The sun is on its way from the east and the moon is dimming behind the clouds.
The last guest exits the Theatre and Mr. Tanner moves to close the doors to the cities only Theatre. It is already 5:15 am and work starts at eight. He must sleep while he can and, maybe then, tomorrow will be a better day. Maybe it will be an easier day.
He is so tired it made him almost numb at times. Especially now.
The cleaner spares the horizon one last squint through the doorway as it slides shut. For the first time in a while, there is a little spark on his face. Just a little fire in his eyes. His eyes burn bleakly under the harsh rays of the sun, piercing with something powerful.
Because the structure to the west, to the east, to the north, and to the south is not just a wall. It is also where they live.
submitted by Fable_Darling to FeatherInInk [link] [comments]

AEW All Out 2020 - Build

Murderhawk Rampage
After coming up short against Cody at Double or Nothing, Lance Archer and Jake Roberts come out and talk about how their quest for the death of The Elite will not be done just because of one lost, and they are not done with Cody yet, they demand a rematch to be set up for Fyter Fest on June 20th. But he is confronted by Dustin Rhodes, who says that Archer almost sent him into retirement during the TNT Championship tournament, and for what, just so he could lose to his brother at Double or Nothing? Well he isn’t going to just let that slide, he wants some revenge against Archer, besides, if he wanted a rematch with Cody, he’d have to actually earn it first. Jake Roberts says Archer will run through whoever he has to, even Dustin. The two are set up for a match in two weeks time, on the 10th of June edition of Dynamite.
​
Come the 10th of June, Lance Archer and Dustin Rhodes have a decent enough match, but it ends with Archer standing tall over Dustin. After the match though he attacks Dustin further, leaving him laying and commentary play up that Dustin may have shown his last gasp when he returned from his last match with Archer, but this time, they have a strong feeling he won’t come back again. Archer and Roberts come out again the following week and once again demand a shot at the TNT Championship at this Saturday's Fyter Fest. So later in the night a No.1 Contenders match is set up pitting Lance Archer against Kip Sabian, Jungle Boy and Christopher Daniels. By the end of that match, Archer seems to have won the match when he puts Daniels away with a Blackout, but Kip Sabian, with the help of Jimmy Havoc pushes Lance out of the ring and steals the victory, ending Lance’s chances for the TNT Championship. (the TNT Championship will be elaborated on later).
​
After the match, Kip runs away, but Jimmy just isn’t lucky enough he gets thrown out of the ring by Archer who then turns his attention to Christopher Daniels, who he puts in the E.B.D Claw. Scorpio Sky and Frankie Kazarian run down to help their ally, but Lance slides out of the ring giving the two a death stare. Later after the show is over, SCU calls out Lance Archer for a match with Christopher Daniels at Fyter Fest, which Archer has no problems accepting.
​
When we reach Fyter Fest, Lance Archer destroys Daniels easily, showing his dominance, but once again, after the match he tries to attack Daniels again, but he’s ready for Kazarian and Sky, who he throws out of the ring. When he goes to hit Daniels again, this music hits…
​
IT’S DUSTIN RHODES… He’s back AGAIN… He walks onto the stage and locks eyes with Archer, before walking down the ring, but from his coat behind his back he pulls out a lead pipe, but Archer has already started making his way to Dustin, too close, not having anticipated the equaliser, Dustin lays into Lance with the pipe, as Archer is trying to get away, for the first time in AEW, he is retreating, eventually managing to get away from the lead pipe shots.
Following Fyter Fest, Dustin carries his trusty lead pipe around with him to keep Lance Archer at bay, but Jake Roberts warns Dustin that “Everybody Dies” at the hands of the Murderhawk. He will be coming to finish what he started with Dustin, and that is sending him into retirement. Dustin replies saying he doesn’t fear Lance Archer and will fight him anytime anywhere. But Roberts says it’s not that easy to get a match with him, he will do what he wants on his own terms.
​
The following week, Dustin makes the official challenge, a match with Lance Archer at All Out, September 5th, no pinfalls, no submissions, no count outs, no disqualifications… Only way to win is to make your opponent utter the words “I Quit”... Dustin doesn’t get an immediate response and is left to wait and stir. But the next week, Jake Roberts says that they have been discussing their decision and… Lance Archer covers the microphone with his hand, opting to take the microphone himself. He talks in a deep, ominous and intense tone, saying that at All Out, Dustin Rhodes is making a big mistake by challenging him, but he has one condition before accepting the challenge… “At All Out, when I make you utter the words I Quit, you are done… retired… gone from AEW for good.”
​
Dustin comes out the following week, and he says that if he can’t beat Lance Archer at All Out, it proves that he’s lost “IT”, and if he doesn’t have it, then maybe he should retire. So he accepts Lance’s challenge, but if Lance thinks he’s just going to lay down and give up, he’s got another thing coming, because at All Out he is going to fight for his career, he is going to fight for his livelihood, and he is going to fight for honour. All Out will not be the end of Dustin Rhodes if he has anything to say about it…
​
Dustin Rhodes vs Lance Archer - I Quit Match, if Dustin Rhodes loses, he retires.
​
The Path of Cage
At Double or Nothing, Brian Cage made his debut, looking like an absolute machine, the end of the match saw Cage throw Darby to the outside in a brutal spot before climbing the ladder and pulling down the Poker Chip. After DoN, we find out that Darby will be out of action for a few weeks, and Cage is booked for the main event of Fyter Fest against Jon Moxley for the World Championship.
​
When we get to Fyter Fest, Brian Cage once again looks like a beast, and he seems like he is going to win the World Championship in just his second match, but Moxley manages to roll Cage up for a 1… 2… Cage gets out, Moxley pops back up and surprises Cage with a Paradigm Shift, 1… 2… 3… Moxley retained his World Championship after almost losing. Cage is enraged and when he gets back to his feet, Moxley kneeling exhausted, Cage attacks him but before the beatdown can even get underway properly…
​
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q29HdeRBDL4
​
Darby Allin is back and he goes right after Brian Cage, showing no fear, Cage is proving to be a tough competitor to take down for the much smaller Darby Allin. However he uses his speed to stop Cage’s attacks, pulling down the ropes when Cage runs at him which causes Cage to topple to the outside, and Allin nails a Suicide Dive, Cage remains standing though. Allin does another, and another which drops Cage to a knee. His last resort is to climb to the top rope and go for a Coffin Drop which is successful, and he rolls back into the ring, while Cage walks back up the ramp in a fit of rage.
​
The next episode of Dynamite, we get an ominous backstage promo from Darby Allin, he talks about how his whole life he’s been smaller than everyone and had to fight that much harder, so he’s used to fighting a guy the size of Brian Cage, but not a guy with the same abilities as Brian Cage. he says that when people call Cage a machine, it is no exaggeration, and when he eventually does step in the ring with Brian Cage, he will have to fight harder than he has ever fought, but he will “Shatter the Machine”
​
Later on that episode of Dynamite, it is announced that over the next 2 episodes of Dynamite we will see two Fatal Four Ways, with the winners facing off the following week to determine the No.1 Contender for the AEW World Championship. One of the Fatal Four Ways will include Brian Cage and Darby Allin, which leaves fans hyped to see what will happen there.
​
The next week, Taz and Brian Cage cut a promo saying that next week they will destroy Darby Allin and earn Cage’s rightful shot for the World Championship that he was screwed out of last time, Moxley knows he can’t defeat Cage, and at All Out, the Path of Cage will lead right to the World Championship.
​
The second Fatal Four Way the following week consists of Darby Allin, Brian Cage, Jimmy Havoc and Colt Cabana. Brian Cage looks like a beast as usual, with Jimmy trying to make this match hardcore, but in the end, Cage nails a Drill Claw to Havoc, with them as the only two at that time. But before he can cover Havoc, Colt runs in and he throws all his weight into Brian and they both tumble over the top rope, meanwhile back in the ring, Darby is on the top rope and hits a picture perfect Coffin Drop and covers Havoc, 1… 2… 3… Darby Allin has won the Fatal Four Way, Cage was inches from breaking up the pinfall after pushing Cabana away and trying to slide into the ring again.
​
After the match, Brian Cage snaps, and he attacks Darby Allin in a brutal rampage, he throws Darby through the ropes clean and into the turnbuckle, as Darby tumbles to the ground outside the ring, clutching his back, medical personnel are trying to tend to Darby, but Cage grabs them and he pushes them aside, grabbing Darby and nailing a Buckle Bomb into the guard rail.
​
The next week on the July 15th edition of Dynamite, Darby Allin limps his way down to the ring with his back taped up for his No.1 Contender’s match against PAC. The match is short due to the condition Darby is in, and PAC quickly ends the match with a Brutaliser. After the match is over, Taz and Brian Cage walk out onto the stage and watch Darby as he lays in the middle of the ring having lost because of the damage Cage put him through last week.
​
Darby Allin takes a few weeks off to recuperate, but eventually, about halfway through August, as All Out looms closer and closer, another segment of Darby Allin is shown on Dynamite, where Darby challenges Brian Cage to a match at All Out, because someone needs to take out the Machine, and he wants to be that guy. Brian Cage of course accepts the match in an interview later in the night. And the match is set, Brian Cage vs Darby Allin at All Out on September 5th.
​
Darby Allin vs Brian Cage
​
The Inner Circle
The Inner Circle lost in the Stadium Stampede match against Kenny Omega, Hangman Page, The Young Bucks and Matt Hardy. After that match, the focus of AEW turns away from the Inner Circle for a little while until after Fyter Fest, when due to restrictions being lessened slightly, AEW are able to host their Blood & Guts match finally, finally being able to see the end of the feud between The Elite and The Inner Circle. The match starts off with Cody and Chris Jericho, as the match progresses and everyone makes it into the match, it is all out war, eventually coming to an end when Hangman Page pins Sammy Guevara for the 3 count.
​
After the match, Jericho leaves Sammy Guevara alone in the ring, with Hager, while Santana & Ortiz help Guevara to the back. The next week, Chris Jericho holds a “State of the Inner Circle”, all 5 men stand in the ring, and Jericho says that last week they lost Blood & Guts… because of Sammy Guevara…
​
The crowd gasps as Jericho slowly turns to face Sammy Guevara with a cold stare, Guevara begs Jericho to forgive him, even getting on his knees. After some begging Jericho just stares down at Guevara, eventually he smiles, turning to the crowd and asking “Did you really think one loss would break the Inner Circle?” he laughs to himself as the rest of Inner Circle laugh, he tells Guevara to get up already and they embrace, right when everything seems to be fine, and they begin to celebrate a new beginning for the Inner Circle, Sammy Guevara turns away from Jericho, and when he turns back…
​
Judas Effect, Jericho stares down at Guevara’s prone body, as Santana & Ortiz are in awe. Jericho leaves the ring, first telling Santana & Ortiz they have a choice to make, him or Guevara. When Jericho leaves, Hager follows close behind.
​
The week after, Jericho once again says that everything that has happened is Sammy Guevara’s fault, he says that The Inner Circle is dead, all because of Guevara. He has come to learn that Santana & Ortiz made their decision and they chose to side with “that twerp Sammy”, after everything he gave them, the only one who is actually grateful is Jake Hager. Without Chris Jericho, none of them would have a career here, none of them would even be acknowledged by these pathetic people who watch this show.
​
On the go home show, Chris Jericho comes out for another promo, and as he begins to speak, once again bashing Sammy Guevara and everything he has done for him. He is cut off by Sammy Guevara’s music, Guevara walks out and comes down to the ring, he catches Jericho off guard and while he’s shocked Guevara attacks. The two begin a brawl, Jericho retreats and Sammy demands Jericho face him in a match at All Out this weekend, which Jericho agrees to.
​
Chris Jericho vs Sammy Guevara
​
AEW Tag Team Championships
At Fyter Fest, Kenny Omega and Hangman Page lose the Tag Team Championships to the Best Friends who earned their shot at the titles during the Double or Nothing Buy In. However they therefore need a new set of challengers, which sees a No.1 Contenders Four Corner Tag Team match being held, which sees the former LAX, Santana & Ortiz, take on Jungle Express, The Dark Order and Hybrid2. Once the match is over, Santana & Ortiz come out with the victory and as the new contenders for the Tag Team Titles, with the match being confirmed for All Out. But in the meantime, all the stuff with The Inner Circle is going on, so the question arises of whether they are and will be distracted come All Out.
Best Friends (c) vs Santana & Ortiz - AEW World Tag Team Championships
​
TNT Championship
After Double or Nothing, Cody is the inaugural TNT Champion, and he needs a challenger for Fyter Fest, which is why Kip Sabian, Jungle Boy, Christopher Daniels and Lance Archer who had made his intentions clear, are put in a Four Way No.1 Contender’s match. Kip manages to steal the victory and punch his ticket to Fyter Fest in the biggest match in his career thus far with the help of Jimmy Havoc.
​
At Fyter Fest, Cody and Sabian are having a great match, but it seems like Cody is moments from retaining his Championship, only for none other than MJF to make an appearance and distract Cody, which allows Sabian to hit Cody with Deathly Hollows and score the 3 count and the biggest victory in his career, no matter the circumstances. Kip leaves with the TNT Championship in tow with Jimmy Havoc and Penelope Ford by his side.
​
Following Fyter Fest, Sabian goes on a string of wins against the likes of Rey Fenix, Scorpio Sky, Angelico and Joey Janela in title defences. But it comes time to find him a challenger for All Out, and so a Gauntlet is held with Jungle Boy starting against Evil Uno, somehow making it through the 4 opponents and earning his spot at the PPV for a title match.
​
Over the remaining weeks, Kip Sabian and Jungle Boy go back and forth with Sabian saying Jungle Boy isn’t worthy of fighting for his title, and he will easily retain at All Out.
​
Kip Sabian (c) vs Jungle Boy - AEW TNT Championship
​
History Always Repeats
After Double or Nothing, Cody having beat Lance Archer for the TNT Championship, the next week on Dynamite, Cody isn’t present, but there is a certain someone who takes issue with Cody’s title win, that being former rival, Maxwell Jacob Friedman. MJF walks down to the ring in a suit, and he cuts a scathing promo, going over his history with Cody, namely the single moment in which he took away Cody’s shot at the World Championship, but also his shot to ever fight for the title ever again. But now, Cody used his backstage power to create a whole new title just so he could win it, and he is shocked that none of the fans are calling Cody out on this blatant corruption and misuse of power.
​
Cody doesn’t bother replying and instead focuses on his challenger, Kip Sabian who wins the No.1 Contenders Fatal Four Way. But then during the match at Fyter Fest, MJF distracts Cody and causes him to lose the title, looking smug as Cody stares him down after Sabian runs away with his newly won title to celebrate.
​
On Dynamite, MJF comes out and gloats that he has taken away yet another title from Cody, one that he never deserved anyway. But this time he is confronted by Cody, who says that MJF is acting like a boy in a sea of men. There is no room for this pettiness in AEW, and if MJF wants to end this once and for all, then let’s do it at All Out. MJF laughs, he asks Cody why he thinks MJF would accept that offer, he gets nothing out of it. He already beat Cody, he doesn’t need a rematch, he just needed to do what was right for the future of AEW and get that title off of the fake hero that is Cody.
​
Cody keeps trying to get a match with MJF, but he has been able to once again get Cody in the palm of his hand, and says that he has demands again, but this time it’s just one, he wants Cody in a match where he can’t make any excuses if he loses again, so Cody suggests a Steel Cage match, but MJF says that’s not good enough for him. Cody goes through a bunch of different stipulations with MJF denying, until Cody finally suggests a 30 minute Iron Man Match. MJF says that’s perfect, because now he can beat Cody multiple times and prove exactly how much better than Cody he truly is…
​
Cody vs MJF - 30-Minute Iron Man Match
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AEW Women’s World Championship
After Double or Nothing has come to an end, Hikaru Shida stands as the new AEW Women’s World Champion, and she needs a challenger. As the women of AEW make their statements with their performances, trying to turn heads and earn a shot at the title. There is one woman who had her sights set on the Women’s Championship before the lockdown, and now with some of the travel restrictions being brought down, with important personnel being able to move around, having to quarantine for 2 weeks and be tested upon entry before and after the quarantine. Before Fyter Fest occurs, there is just enough time for the Top Gaijin, Bea Priestley to make her return to AEW in a match against Anna Jay, she dominates and wins in seconds.
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Priestley takes a microphone and says now that she’s back, she has the same goal as before she left, the only difference, now it’s a new target. “Hikaru Shida… I’m coming for you”, on the go home show, Bea Priestley has been awarded a No.1 Contender’s match against Shanna, and she wins that match to earn her shot at Fyter Fest.
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In the title match at Fyter Fest, the two women go back and forth, but Priestley seems to have Shida’s number, being able to counter anything she throws at him, it seems that Shida is in over her head as the Women’s Champion. Priestley sets up the Bea-Trigger with Shida against the ropes and as she throws herself into her opponent, Shida slides out the way and quickly rolls up Bea Priestley, 1… 2… 3… Shida has got the victory, but it’s not as clean as one would expect. Bea Priestley is clearly unhappy about the win and she’s not afraid to show it, storming back up the ramp.
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Because of the controversy behind the Women’s Championship match, Bea Priestley demands another shot at the title, no matter who she has to go through. And she does just that, she gets a string of wins against Riho, Yuka Sakazaki, Big Swole and Kris Statlander before one more match, where if she wins she gets her rematch for All Out, and that is against Nyla Rose.Priestley is once again able to win against Nyla Rose after a tougher battle than the rest and earns her rematch with Hikaru Shida.
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Bea Priestley cuts a promo about how Hikaru Shida fears her, how Hikaru Shida doesn’t know how to beat her and couldn’t even if she tried. She says that Shida is afraid because she knows that at All Out her title reign comes to an end and a new Queen takes the throne. Shida in response just says that she is going to remain the fighting Champion she is and will fight to retain her championship once again, because the title means everything to her, so at All Out, Bea Priestley will have to learn to accept failure, because that is all that will be coming her way.
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Hikaru Shida (c) vs Bea Priestley - AEW Women’s World Championship
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AEW World Championship
Jon Moxley’s reign is proving to be very successful, having won it from Chris Jericho, then beating Jake Hager and Brodie Lee before having arguably his toughest challenge at Fyter Fest, Brian Cage. The match ends with Moxley catching Brian Cage off guard with a roll up and then a Paradigm Shift to pick up the victory. Then with the World Championship needing a new contender, two Fatal Four Ways are held with the winners of each facing off for the right to face Jon Moxley at All Out.
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PAC defeats Kenny Omega, Matt Hardy and Chris Jericho, while Darby Allin defeats Brian Cage, Jimmy Havoc and Colt Cabana. In the eventual singles match, PAC defeated Darby Allin in a brutal short match after Darby Allin was left injured.
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Jon Moxley comments on PAC winning the contendership, but he is cut off by the Death Triangle with PAC walking down the ramp while Fenix and Pentagon go through the crowd and attack Moxley. PAC warns Moxley that at All Out his title reign looms to an end, because PAC is better than Moxley in every way, saying that Moxley is nothing without his past and he doesn’t deserve to be Champion. Lucha Bros. holds Moxley up to his knees by holding his arms out to the side, PAC grabs Moxley’s face as he tries to pull away and attack PAC, but PAC hits a Baseball Slide kick before climbing to the top rope and hitting a Black Arrow.
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Moxley has matches with Pentagon and Fenix in subsequent weeks, managing to pick up the wins but being beat down after each time. Then PAC has a match against Christopher Daniels which he wins and after that match Moxley gets some retribution, attacking PAC and sending him into retreat.
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On the go home show, the two have a contract signing, which ends with a brawl as security pry the two men off each other, the show going off air with PAC and Moxley staring each other down.
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Jon Moxley (c) vs PAC - AEW World Championship
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The Elite Tension
The big story in AEW the past few months has been that of The Elite, and the tensions showing between Hangman Page and The Young Bucks. After Double or Nothing, the tension having been put to the side for Stadium Stampede, Hangman Page and Kenny Omega are back to defending their Tag Team Championships at Fyter Fest against best Friends. The match ends when Hangman Page is hit with a Strong Zero and pinned for the 3 by Trent. After the match, Omega helps Hangman up but clearly is disappointed.
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The next thing on the Elite’s schedule is the Blood & Guts match at the end of July, and the match comes to an end when Sammy Guevara is pinned. After the match, Cody leaves the structure first, while The Young Bucks, Kenny Omega and Hangman Page are left in the ring, tensions seem to be rising now that the threat of The Inner Circle is gone. But as soon as Cody has left, three men in balaclava’s enter the structure and stare down The remaining men of the Elite as one of the three chains the door shut. Elite stands in one ring, with the three mystery men in the second. The Elite are one man up, that is until, the one masked man, clearly the leader of the group, raises his arm pointing to the top of the cage. When The Elite turns to look, another masked man is standing atop the cage, a clearly much smaller man, who dives off the top of the cage onto the Elite taking them all out. A beatdown ensues with the four masked men taking the elite out, and it seems a new threat has arrived, the men reach up and remove their masks one by one, first… Cash Wheeler, then Dax Hardwood, third is Rockstar Spud, and finally EC3.
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The moment which is known as the debut that shocked the world, is followed up when the four men make their way to the ring through the crowd, having not officially signed contracts with AEW yet. EC3 takes the microphone and says that over the past months he’s been talking and talking, just waiting for his moment to shine, for his moment to make an impact, as have the other 3 men standing with him, and they all agreed, there was no bigger impact than to target the namesake of this company, the one thing that will always stand above everyone else purely because of the fact that their names are in the title of the company, quite egotistical if you ask them. But regardless of that, they have achieved their goal, the headlines are talking about them, they have been trending for the past week, and everyone’s eyes are on them. They are… The Revolt.
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Over the next few weeks, The Elite confront what happened, and agree to put their differences aside one more time to take out this common enemy, they challenge The Revolt to an 8 man tag team match to Main Event All Out, in a match for the ages, a match of “self made superstars” against “creations of a monstrous company” having been let loose on the wrestling world. The Revolt accept the challenge, and if they win, they want to be officially offered AEW contracts.
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The Elite (Kenny Omega, Hangman Page & The Young Bucks) vs The Revolt (EC3, Rockstar Spud, Dax Hardwood & Cash Wheeler)
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Final Card
Buy In - 10 man elimination tag team match: Brodie Lee, The Dark Order, Jimmy Havoc & Shawn Spears vs SCU, Matt Hardy & Colt Cabana
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Lance Archer vs Dustin Rhodes - I Quit Match: If Dustin loses, he retires
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Brian Cage vs Darby Allin
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Chris Jericho vs Sammy Guevara
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Best Friends (c) vs Santana & Ortiz - AEW Tag Team Championships
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Kip Sabian (c) vs Jungle Boy - TNT Championship
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Cody vs MJF - 30-Minute Iron Man Match
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Hikaru Shida (c) vs Bea Priestley - AEW Women’s World Championship
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Jon Moxley (c) vs PAC - AEW World Championship
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The Elite (Kenny Omega, Hangman Page & The Young Bucks) vs The Revolt (EC3, Rockstar Spud, Dax Hardwood & Cash Wheeler)
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poker chips official weight video

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