Caught Between Realities
Jan 23, 2022 14:54:22 GMT -5
Marcus Welsh, Dylan Thomas, and 1 more like this
Post by BRIM on Jan 23, 2022 14:54:22 GMT -5
“You can’t be serious.. That’s not even possible.” Byson says as he looks at a fountain that resides in the middle of the Garden of Betrayal. “You’ve gotta explain this to me, one more time.”
“Muh’fucka! I’ve explained it four times already, what is there not t’get!?”
BRIM looks at the fountain curiously, his arms are folded across his chest as the fraternal twins bicker back and forth. The water begins to glow a bright blue. This causes BRIM to back up a bit..
“Aye, will you two shut it. There’s something going on over here.”
Duce sees the glow and looks Byson directly in the eyes..
“See?! I told yo’ muh’fu—-”
There’s a bright flash, a wormhole appears and suctions all three men into it. With another flash, the three are dropped off into.. The Garden of Betrayal… BRIM stumbles around, woozy from whatever the fuck just happened. He staggers over to a potted plant and vomits into it. Byson sits on the concrete floor, discombobulated and trying to recover his bearings. Duce appears to have adapted to the teleportation, he calmly stands there, waiting for his friends to recover.
“Do y’all believe me now?”
Byson holds up a finger, leans over and regurgitates onto the floor.
“Where the hell are we?”
“Key West..”
“Then what the hell just happened?”
“I told you already.. Dat fountain is like some sorta beacon. Tha last time I was just sittin’ there meditatin’, clearin’ my head from all’a tha madness dat is Zybala an’ somehow ended up here. I thought this place was just a vision but when y’all told me bout my eye. I had t’come back an’ see what was up.”
“What was up? What the hell have you brought us to?” BRIM questions.
“C’mon, follow me..” Duce says as he walks back towards the door. He opens it and what they step out into is something that BRIM and Byson never expected.
“This shit looks the same, like that’s the OCW Arena right there!” Byson exclaims, pointing at the famed arena.
“Aight.. C’mon..”
The three men make their way to the back entrance, however it’s surrounded by metal fencing. A keypad connected to a metal door appears to be the only way to enter.
“Go head, see if you can get in.”
Byson walks up to the door and presses a button on the keypad. A hologram emerges from the tiny camera on the keypad, erecting into a full size figure who stands opposite Byson.
“Please scan your hand or look directly into the camera.”
Byson looks at the figure, then back at Duce.
“T’fuck is this shit!?”
“Dis shit is tha future..”
“The future?”
“Where the fuck are the flying cars?”
“Ain’t none..”
A scanner comes out of the hologram and does a full body scan of Byson.
“You are not registering in our systems, please stand here as we alert the authorities.” says the A.I.
“What does that mean?” Byson questioned.
“Dat mean run if you don’t wanna be locked up fo’ tha rest’a yo’ life.”
“You want me to run after just getting pulled through a fucking wormhole!? Go fuck yourself bro! I’ll beat the hell out of anything that comes at us.” BRIM states, clearly exhausted from the travel.
Suddenly there is a loud thumping sound in the distance. Gears churning can be heard with each step it gets near.
“And what the hell is that?” BRIM asks.
“Well, it ain’t sentinels but just as deadly.”
“So what now?” What do we do? How the hell do we escape this situation?”
“Tha Garden..”
The Garden?”
Byson sprints towards The Garden, BRIM and Duce following his lead. When the round the corner, they notice an abandoned building that sits next to the OCW Arena.
“Where’d it go!?”
“Just go inside!” Duce yells.
The three enter inside to see that the Garden of Betrayal is still intact.
“What now?”
“I’m never going to make it to face Zybala huh?”
Duce scoffs. “Just go to the fountain, it’s the only way out.”
They make their way towards the fountain, the bright blue of the water beginning to glow again. With another flash of light, the three are thrust through another wormhole. They arrive yet again at the fountain inside of the Garden. BRIM and Byson now looking at Duce for answers, he simply shrugs his shoulders.
“At this rate, with all of this running that I do, I figure I’d be down almost a hundred pounds by the time this match happens.”
“Speaking’a which, what made you accept it? Like I thought we only stood on tha grounds’a what’s right an’ takin’ dis match doesn’t seem right.”
BRIM ponders the question for a moment.
“I mean, I get back the Savage Championship and I kill Zybala’s hopes of owning OCW ever again.”
“Like, I undastand dat part, it’s just dat I feel it’s a pointless fight.”
“Maybe on your end but business is business. Besides, out of all people, I thought you’d be happy about this. I mean he did kinda end your career.”
Duce goes cold, heading towards the front door of the building. When he opens it, the world before him is in shambles. Buildings seemed to have been destroyed in some apparent attack. The three look at the world around them in awe, Duce stands there as if he’s familiar with the surroundings. They begin to walk through the rubble of a town that is Key West as flood water also appears to have overrun the place. Trudging through water, the three look around to the once thriving vacation spot that’s now merely a ghost town.
“What the hell happened here?”
“I kept telling y’all dat America was goin’ t’shit but y’all thought I was crazy, y’all thought I had lost my mind when I was the only one seeing the bigger picture. Dis place is fucked an’ a lotta folks have yet to open there eyes to it. An’ by tha time any’a dem will realize it, they’ll all be chipped puppets stuck in a matrix, eating air and ideas, thanking dat they’re living their best lives.”
“Damn, so what about the ones who don’t have this chip?”
“Either dead or locked up. You can’t go against the system and expect to survive. I don’t care how prepared you are. They had a counter attack fo’ everythang anyone had planned.”
“So, while we’ve been over here worried sick looking for you, you’ve been taking a casual stroll through the future?”
“Pops used t’tell me bout dis place all tha time. Dis is what he called 3rd Earth, the final incarnate of the Earth before everything gets reset.”
They continue to walk through the high waters before coming to what appears to be a utopian town. A huge dam is constructed in front of it to hold back the water.
“When you say reset, what exactly does that mean?”
“Lemme put it like dis.. Tha earth has a natural orda dat it falls unda an’ fo’ centuries, dat orda has been thrown off wit’ unnecessary wickedness. Now karma is comin’ fo’ it’s recompense.”
“You still sound crazy to me, just an fyi..”
“It’s fine, like I said.. By tha time folks realizes what’s goin’ on, it’ll be too late.”
“I just wanna beat the shit out of Zybala and carry on with my life. By the time any of this shit happens, I’ll more than likely be dead.”
“You think you’ll be dead within the next few years..”
“At the rate that these people are dropping out here, right now.. I don’t see why it’s not a possibility. Plus, if the world is ending, where’s the fun in making sure Zybala doesn’t have a happily ever after. That would be like the major go fuck yourself to him. First failing to win the OCW World Championship for the first time in his career and then making sure that his name never resides on the dotted line for any type of ownership for this building. Hell, the simple fact that I haven’t acknowledged him has him losing his mind already.”
“Yeah, the guy came beating on the door drunk as shit, demanding that BRIM do a promo.”
“This match gives Mike the advantage already, it takes place in three locations that he’s familiar with and I’m still not understanding how we’re going to make that shit happen. This little glimpse into the future that you got going on here is just going to have to happen when it happens.”
“Oh, it will..”
“So Duce, you’re telling me that seeing Mike go down after everything that he’s done to us doesn’t make you feel some type of joy!?”
“Of course it does but it’s tha fact of knowin’ dat tha future is goin’ t’be even greata is what I’m lookin’ forward to mo’.”
“I feel ya, lil brother but we’re living in the here and now and right now is an opportunity to cash on something bigger than us. Zybala has long been associated with the name OCW and somehow, someway, Poblano has finessed him out of being the name that signs our checks. You yourself know how annoying Mike can be when he locks his sights on someone.”
“An’ you thank it’s gonna be any betta if you take everythang dat he holds dear? Seriously, do you not remember the battle of bleu cheese against ranch.”
BRIM goes to speak but considers the question.
“My point exactly, Mike won’t let you live it down.”
“Man look Duce, I’ll just have to cross that road when we cross it, but for right now, he’s on the marquee across from me. So a fight is what they’re going to get. I know the history between us, I understand what’s all at stake. And sometimes you just have to make sacrifices that contribute to the greater good.. Beating Zybala would be contributing to the greater good.”
“Trust me, I kno’ how much of a parasite dat Mike can be an’ trust an’ believe dat tha two’a y’all have only cross tha startin’ line.”
“You think that I give a fuck about any of that? Look, I get it. He was a pain in your ass, drove you almost to the point of obscurity but you see, I have nothing else in this life. No family, no riches, nothing. Just you two fuckers getting on my nerves with every waking moment. And if I can deal with that, I damn sure can deal with someone like Zybala. You see with age comes wisdom and one thing that I know is that the entire world is fucking annoying. Not just one person, hell at least here I can punch Mike in the mouth whenever I feel the urge. Because at the end of the day, I’m with whatever he’s with. I can accept defeat like a man and not have to face someone hundreds of times just to prove a point to myself. And the thing is I think he can do just the same. Hell he loses he still has investments that are going to continue to have his pockets sitting pretty. Whereas me, I’m left with nothing. NOTHING! You feel me? The Savage Championship is about the only thing that makes me feel relevant. Makes me feel like less of a fucking nobody. Less of just some big black guy who gets his ass kicked by tiny white guys.”
“Wasn’t Lux latino?” Byson chimes in.
“Fuck all that! That’s besides the fucking point. The fact of the matter is this, you had your time to shine in the limelight and you let Zybala extinguish that flame. You let him get into your head. But on my end, I don’t give a fuck if I have to beat his motherfucking ass from Russia to Ukraine, he’s not leaving out of Detroit or wherever the fuck we end up as my boss! You get that, he’s done enough to us to last centuries and I ain’t gonna continue to let some short fucker who’s half my size get the one up on me again.”
“Are we talking about Mike or Ed?”
“Does it fucking matter?”
“I would think so?
“Well it doesn’t, Ed’s in the past, he got his one up on me. We’re focusing on Mike!”
“FREEZE!” A guard yells from the top of a structure that’s connected to the dam.
BRIM looks up at him.
“Or what you’re going to do, shoot us?”
Suddenly, about eight soldiers shoot up from the water, all with their guns trained on the three men. One of the men has an assault rifle trained at BRIM’s face as he stares back at the soldier unfazed.
“PUT YOUR HANDS ON YOUR FUCKING HEAD! NOW!”
BRIM doesn’t budge but Byson and Duce obliges. BRIM sucks his teeth but is soon cracked across the back of his head with the butt of another rifle, knocking him out instantly..
“Muh’fucka! I’ve explained it four times already, what is there not t’get!?”
BRIM looks at the fountain curiously, his arms are folded across his chest as the fraternal twins bicker back and forth. The water begins to glow a bright blue. This causes BRIM to back up a bit..
“Aye, will you two shut it. There’s something going on over here.”
Duce sees the glow and looks Byson directly in the eyes..
“See?! I told yo’ muh’fu—-”
There’s a bright flash, a wormhole appears and suctions all three men into it. With another flash, the three are dropped off into.. The Garden of Betrayal… BRIM stumbles around, woozy from whatever the fuck just happened. He staggers over to a potted plant and vomits into it. Byson sits on the concrete floor, discombobulated and trying to recover his bearings. Duce appears to have adapted to the teleportation, he calmly stands there, waiting for his friends to recover.
“Do y’all believe me now?”
Byson holds up a finger, leans over and regurgitates onto the floor.
“Where the hell are we?”
“Key West..”
“Then what the hell just happened?”
“I told you already.. Dat fountain is like some sorta beacon. Tha last time I was just sittin’ there meditatin’, clearin’ my head from all’a tha madness dat is Zybala an’ somehow ended up here. I thought this place was just a vision but when y’all told me bout my eye. I had t’come back an’ see what was up.”
“What was up? What the hell have you brought us to?” BRIM questions.
“C’mon, follow me..” Duce says as he walks back towards the door. He opens it and what they step out into is something that BRIM and Byson never expected.
“This shit looks the same, like that’s the OCW Arena right there!” Byson exclaims, pointing at the famed arena.
“Aight.. C’mon..”
The three men make their way to the back entrance, however it’s surrounded by metal fencing. A keypad connected to a metal door appears to be the only way to enter.
“Go head, see if you can get in.”
Byson walks up to the door and presses a button on the keypad. A hologram emerges from the tiny camera on the keypad, erecting into a full size figure who stands opposite Byson.
“Please scan your hand or look directly into the camera.”
Byson looks at the figure, then back at Duce.
“T’fuck is this shit!?”
“Dis shit is tha future..”
“The future?”
“Where the fuck are the flying cars?”
“Ain’t none..”
A scanner comes out of the hologram and does a full body scan of Byson.
“You are not registering in our systems, please stand here as we alert the authorities.” says the A.I.
“What does that mean?” Byson questioned.
“Dat mean run if you don’t wanna be locked up fo’ tha rest’a yo’ life.”
“You want me to run after just getting pulled through a fucking wormhole!? Go fuck yourself bro! I’ll beat the hell out of anything that comes at us.” BRIM states, clearly exhausted from the travel.
Suddenly there is a loud thumping sound in the distance. Gears churning can be heard with each step it gets near.
“And what the hell is that?” BRIM asks.
“Well, it ain’t sentinels but just as deadly.”
“So what now?” What do we do? How the hell do we escape this situation?”
“Tha Garden..”
The Garden?”
Byson sprints towards The Garden, BRIM and Duce following his lead. When the round the corner, they notice an abandoned building that sits next to the OCW Arena.
“Where’d it go!?”
“Just go inside!” Duce yells.
The three enter inside to see that the Garden of Betrayal is still intact.
“What now?”
“I’m never going to make it to face Zybala huh?”
Duce scoffs. “Just go to the fountain, it’s the only way out.”
They make their way towards the fountain, the bright blue of the water beginning to glow again. With another flash of light, the three are thrust through another wormhole. They arrive yet again at the fountain inside of the Garden. BRIM and Byson now looking at Duce for answers, he simply shrugs his shoulders.
“At this rate, with all of this running that I do, I figure I’d be down almost a hundred pounds by the time this match happens.”
“Speaking’a which, what made you accept it? Like I thought we only stood on tha grounds’a what’s right an’ takin’ dis match doesn’t seem right.”
BRIM ponders the question for a moment.
“I mean, I get back the Savage Championship and I kill Zybala’s hopes of owning OCW ever again.”
“Like, I undastand dat part, it’s just dat I feel it’s a pointless fight.”
“Maybe on your end but business is business. Besides, out of all people, I thought you’d be happy about this. I mean he did kinda end your career.”
Duce goes cold, heading towards the front door of the building. When he opens it, the world before him is in shambles. Buildings seemed to have been destroyed in some apparent attack. The three look at the world around them in awe, Duce stands there as if he’s familiar with the surroundings. They begin to walk through the rubble of a town that is Key West as flood water also appears to have overrun the place. Trudging through water, the three look around to the once thriving vacation spot that’s now merely a ghost town.
“What the hell happened here?”
“I kept telling y’all dat America was goin’ t’shit but y’all thought I was crazy, y’all thought I had lost my mind when I was the only one seeing the bigger picture. Dis place is fucked an’ a lotta folks have yet to open there eyes to it. An’ by tha time any’a dem will realize it, they’ll all be chipped puppets stuck in a matrix, eating air and ideas, thanking dat they’re living their best lives.”
“Damn, so what about the ones who don’t have this chip?”
“Either dead or locked up. You can’t go against the system and expect to survive. I don’t care how prepared you are. They had a counter attack fo’ everythang anyone had planned.”
“So, while we’ve been over here worried sick looking for you, you’ve been taking a casual stroll through the future?”
“Pops used t’tell me bout dis place all tha time. Dis is what he called 3rd Earth, the final incarnate of the Earth before everything gets reset.”
They continue to walk through the high waters before coming to what appears to be a utopian town. A huge dam is constructed in front of it to hold back the water.
“When you say reset, what exactly does that mean?”
“Lemme put it like dis.. Tha earth has a natural orda dat it falls unda an’ fo’ centuries, dat orda has been thrown off wit’ unnecessary wickedness. Now karma is comin’ fo’ it’s recompense.”
“You still sound crazy to me, just an fyi..”
“It’s fine, like I said.. By tha time folks realizes what’s goin’ on, it’ll be too late.”
“I just wanna beat the shit out of Zybala and carry on with my life. By the time any of this shit happens, I’ll more than likely be dead.”
“You think you’ll be dead within the next few years..”
“At the rate that these people are dropping out here, right now.. I don’t see why it’s not a possibility. Plus, if the world is ending, where’s the fun in making sure Zybala doesn’t have a happily ever after. That would be like the major go fuck yourself to him. First failing to win the OCW World Championship for the first time in his career and then making sure that his name never resides on the dotted line for any type of ownership for this building. Hell, the simple fact that I haven’t acknowledged him has him losing his mind already.”
“Yeah, the guy came beating on the door drunk as shit, demanding that BRIM do a promo.”
“This match gives Mike the advantage already, it takes place in three locations that he’s familiar with and I’m still not understanding how we’re going to make that shit happen. This little glimpse into the future that you got going on here is just going to have to happen when it happens.”
“Oh, it will..”
“So Duce, you’re telling me that seeing Mike go down after everything that he’s done to us doesn’t make you feel some type of joy!?”
“Of course it does but it’s tha fact of knowin’ dat tha future is goin’ t’be even greata is what I’m lookin’ forward to mo’.”
“I feel ya, lil brother but we’re living in the here and now and right now is an opportunity to cash on something bigger than us. Zybala has long been associated with the name OCW and somehow, someway, Poblano has finessed him out of being the name that signs our checks. You yourself know how annoying Mike can be when he locks his sights on someone.”
“An’ you thank it’s gonna be any betta if you take everythang dat he holds dear? Seriously, do you not remember the battle of bleu cheese against ranch.”
BRIM goes to speak but considers the question.
“My point exactly, Mike won’t let you live it down.”
“Man look Duce, I’ll just have to cross that road when we cross it, but for right now, he’s on the marquee across from me. So a fight is what they’re going to get. I know the history between us, I understand what’s all at stake. And sometimes you just have to make sacrifices that contribute to the greater good.. Beating Zybala would be contributing to the greater good.”
“Trust me, I kno’ how much of a parasite dat Mike can be an’ trust an’ believe dat tha two’a y’all have only cross tha startin’ line.”
“You think that I give a fuck about any of that? Look, I get it. He was a pain in your ass, drove you almost to the point of obscurity but you see, I have nothing else in this life. No family, no riches, nothing. Just you two fuckers getting on my nerves with every waking moment. And if I can deal with that, I damn sure can deal with someone like Zybala. You see with age comes wisdom and one thing that I know is that the entire world is fucking annoying. Not just one person, hell at least here I can punch Mike in the mouth whenever I feel the urge. Because at the end of the day, I’m with whatever he’s with. I can accept defeat like a man and not have to face someone hundreds of times just to prove a point to myself. And the thing is I think he can do just the same. Hell he loses he still has investments that are going to continue to have his pockets sitting pretty. Whereas me, I’m left with nothing. NOTHING! You feel me? The Savage Championship is about the only thing that makes me feel relevant. Makes me feel like less of a fucking nobody. Less of just some big black guy who gets his ass kicked by tiny white guys.”
“Wasn’t Lux latino?” Byson chimes in.
“Fuck all that! That’s besides the fucking point. The fact of the matter is this, you had your time to shine in the limelight and you let Zybala extinguish that flame. You let him get into your head. But on my end, I don’t give a fuck if I have to beat his motherfucking ass from Russia to Ukraine, he’s not leaving out of Detroit or wherever the fuck we end up as my boss! You get that, he’s done enough to us to last centuries and I ain’t gonna continue to let some short fucker who’s half my size get the one up on me again.”
“Are we talking about Mike or Ed?”
“Does it fucking matter?”
“I would think so?
“Well it doesn’t, Ed’s in the past, he got his one up on me. We’re focusing on Mike!”
“FREEZE!” A guard yells from the top of a structure that’s connected to the dam.
BRIM looks up at him.
“Or what you’re going to do, shoot us?”
Suddenly, about eight soldiers shoot up from the water, all with their guns trained on the three men. One of the men has an assault rifle trained at BRIM’s face as he stares back at the soldier unfazed.
“PUT YOUR HANDS ON YOUR FUCKING HEAD! NOW!”
BRIM doesn’t budge but Byson and Duce obliges. BRIM sucks his teeth but is soon cracked across the back of his head with the butt of another rifle, knocking him out instantly..