The scene opens to an overhead shot of a neighborhood. It ain’t exactly the Hamptons. The houses look to be in sad shape. The camera continues to zoom in, and we see the activities taking place on the street.

A group of four black girls play double-dutch, hollering out barely audible, nonsensical rhymes. Another black girl, younger than the other four, watches from her porch. Two Latino boys play stickball in the middle of the street, using a broom handle as a bat and a bottle cap for a ball.

The camera continues to zoom in. Finally, we see its target. The medium-sized man looks completely out of place in this neighborhood. It’s not the baggy black Tommy shorts. It’s not the matching white t-shirt. It’s not the Oakland Raiders cap, worn slightly to the right, bill cocked high. It’s not the gold chain, even. No, it’s the fact that he’s a white guy, walking down a street in a minority neighborhood.

It was he who spoke before. It is he who speaks now as he walks.

“This is my life… conveniently enclosed in about 2 acres of pavement, bad houses, and shattered dreams.”

“This is where I grew up. It’s quite a place to live… check that. It’s no place to live. Especially for a white kid. 99 percent of this neighborhood is black or Hispanic, and in 1973, when I was born, me and my parents were that 1 percent. Business was profitable in the area, but that quickly changed. However, once you’re inside here… the only way out was death.”

“This is all I knew. Late nights, lying wide awake in bed: every gunshot blast, or, in some equally frightening cases, backfiring car sending a chill through my spine that can’t even be comprehended. Having to sprint inside from tossing the football around in the front yard because the gangbangers were pulling pieces.”

“Your childhood defines who you will be as an adult. I was on my way to being pretty well f*cked up.”

The man continues to walk, passing each run-down house on the block.

“This is where I made friends. Actually, more like I met my influences. And they were not good.”

“I had my first drink at age 12. I smoked my first cigarette at age 13, and graduated to marijuana cigarettes at age 15. I joined a gang at age 14. I still have the tattoo… a big eagle on my back.”

“I acquired my first gun when I was 16. I took it to school, strictly for protection, but I never had to use it. As scary as Montbello High was, and is, there has never been any gun violence inside the school. Outside the school…”

The man continues walking, clearly disturbed by the words he says.

“This is where my friends died. Shot, killed, in cold blood. Some by rival gangs, some in botched drive-by’s. I watched all but a chosen few fall all around me. It made me a hateful person, a spiteful prick who only went to class so he could play football.”

“It made me a murderer.”

The man pauses to collect himself.

“The judge and jury ruled self defense, but I know better. I only thought he had a gun. He never had a chance. He died as the bullet entered his heart. And I never stayed in jail, not even for a single day.”

“This is where my downward spiral continued. More booze, more weed, and new shit, like meth and heroin. It would have gotten much worse had I not graduated, barely, from Montbello. Me and my best friend headed off to Auburn University.”

“As it was, it only got a little worse. We were only there for a year and a half before we both got kicked off the football team for drug abuse. We quit school and came back home.”

“This was my neighborhood. Literally. After I got back, I robbed houses, shot at people, robbed convience stores, stole cars… and never got caught. The entire neighborhood feared me.”

“This didn’t sit too kindly with a couple of gangbangers, who put a contract out on my life. I got out as fast as I could. My other friend wasn’t so lucky, and now nobody knows where he is.”

“When I was 24, I made this turn for the last time.”

The man has come to the corner of the street he had been walking and a major street. The street sign reads Colfax Avenue.

“Is this hell? No. It’s Aurora, Colorado, but for 24 years of my life I wasted away here.”

“I have been sober for 5 years. I have not smoked or used any drugs in 4 years. I graduated from the University of Northern Colorado two years ago, and I have turned myself around.”

“Almost.”
The man leans up against the street sign.

“Growing up here, one is left with an unsatiable thirst for violence. It’s something that never goes away. That’s why wrestling… that’s why LCW Mercury… was a logical next step.”

“My goal? To make the wrestlers of LCW Mercury know not only my pain, but my fear. Just as I laid awake at night fearing for my life and the lives of those around me…”

“My opponents will lie awake the night before the event… fearing the Deathblow.”

“My name is Darren Reynolds. My motivation… is never to have to be this again.”

Reynolds walks off. The camera zooms back out to the overhead view, then fades to black.