Oh. You're here. Well... To be honest, you don’t want to know this shit. I’m warning you. This is going to make you feel like you need a shower, like you just ate a full meal off a filthy sidewalk. Don’t even pretend you’re better than this. Because you’re not. If you keep reading, you’re gonna get sucked into Phoenix Lee’s world, and trust me, you don’t want to go there. It’s a goddamn sinkhole of destruction and self-loathing.
But you’re still reading.
Hah.
Good.
Now you’re fucked.
Phoenix Lee wasn’t born in a sterile hospital room with soft music and flowers on the windowsill. No, Phoenix was dragged into this world like a goddamn car crash. Born in a prison cell, no less, where his mother could barely stay conscious enough to push him out. It’s the kind of birth that makes you wonder if maybe you were just meant to be part of someone’s goddamn prison sentence instead of a life. His mother? Not the nurturing type. She was too busy in the middle of some shady criminal mess that landed her behind bars. Yeah, the boy was born to a woman who didn’t even get the luxury of labor pain before her first criminal conviction. Lee came into this world screaming, not because of birth pangs, but because his mother had to push him out while being shackled in prison. When the guards finally unlocked her cell to let him breathe, he got the name Phoenix—because the flaming wreckage of his birth was supposed to be the rebirth of some better, more meaningful life. Yeah. Sure. Whatever. The irony was lost on everyone, least of all Phoenix, who would never get the “rebirth” part. Not with the father he had.
His father? A cold-blooded, crime-ridden, heartless bastard. The kind of man who watches people die for the slightest fuck-up and shrugs. Even after cutting deals with the cops to keep his hands clean, he never stopped being a criminal. Like a cockroach who figured out how to stay alive by crawling through the cracks. He was the kind of man who raised his kid on lies and fear. Phoenix didn’t get bedtime stories. He got rants about how the world was shit, how everything was rigged, and how you had to take whatever you wanted because nobody would give it to you. Man was cold, hard, and unapologetically violent. And almost never home. No, that’s where the stepmother came in. Phoenix had to deal with her sharp eyes, mean words, and the fact that she never wanted him there. She was a real cunt with nothing better to do than to hate the kid who wasn’t even hers. But Phoenix didn’t really give a shit. He learned fast how to survive a house where no one cared about his existence.
And he also learned how to fucking disrupt everything around him. He was the kid who kicked up dirt just to see the world choke on it. He wasn’t the quiet, invisible one. No. He was the one who made your life harder just by existing. Teachers hated him. Parents avoided him. His existence was a middle finger to the whole goddamn world. He didn’t blend in, he didn’t shrink—he exploded. Threw tantrums that left bruises, burned bridges with the people who thought they could control him. By the time he hit adolescence, he’d perfected the art of shocking everyone, just for fun. He wasn’t playing by the rules because, let’s face it, there were no rules. Man, he was a problem, a walking, breathing fuck-you to everything that tried to box him in. He didn’t need the world to understand him.
Adolescence hit Phoenix like a fucking freight train. He wasn’t just the weird kid in school; he was the kid everyone whispered about, the one with the criminal mom and the absentee dad who couldn’t remember his birthday. By fourteen, he’d already been caught tagging walls, shoplifting cigarettes, and punching assholes in the face just for looking at him wrong. At sixteen, he got arrested for smashing a car window with a skateboard because the driver cut him off. The judge called it "anger management issues." Phoenix called it "giving a shit about myself for once." That’s when he got slapped with court-mandated community service, the kind of punishment reserved for kids too smart for juvie but too fucked up for a slap on the wrist.
Then came Andie. They met through that shitty mandatory community service. Not like they wanted to be there. Andie was like a shot of tequila to the face. Loud, sarcastic, crude, but with a heart that never made sense. She wasn’t a sweet girl pretending to give a shit. No, she was in it for the fuck-you vibe. She was the person who refused to be anything less than herself. Phoenix hated her at first. She wasn’t even a bit like the garbage people he grew up with. But he respected her. They started talking, ripping apart the hypocrisy of the world, burning it down one conversation at a time. They bonded over the absurdity of it all. By the end of the summer, they were thick as thieves. No pretenses. No lies. Just mutual destruction and laughter. Andie, in all her fucked-up glory, became the only person Phoenix could ever trust. But that doesn’t mean he didn’t fuck up with her, too.
Music. Phoenix found it when everything else went to shit. Punk rock, indie rap, something loud enough to drown out the silence. He needed something with teeth to make him feel alive, and nothing was more alive than the rage-filled anthems blaring from his shitty speakers. It wasn’t long before he decided to start a band. And then he needed a bass player. Cue Roux. Rich kid. Smartass. But different. She didn’t care about money. She didn’t care about being a “status symbol.” She was all fire and rebellion, just like him. They hit it off instantly, like a perfect collision of chaos and art. Roux didn’t care where Phoenix came from. She liked the way he thought, liked the way his music made her feel something, even if it was just rage. She was raw. She was real. And maybe that’s why Phoenix loved her. He loved her because she didn’t wear her privilege like a crown. She wore it like a goddamn burden.
Well; Phoenix don't really have a job. He's the guy who is good at making noise—loud, angry noise—and it was enough. He found his rhythm in BRAINDEAD!, his band, where they played songs that screamed every bit of rage he felt. He don't care about being famous or loved or anything that people usually want. He just want to feel alive.
He also dabble in another medium—clothing. He isn’t just some angry bastard smashing things with a guitar. He can take an old, beaten-up jacket and paint the hell out of it, turning it into a custom piece of art. The blood, sweat, and tears he put into it is the same as the music. And yeah, he make a little cash off it too. Some people see it as art. Others just see it as the chaos they need in their lives. Either way, Phoenix don't care. The money is secondary to the act of creation.
Phoenix’s life is a dumpster fire—an endless loop of bad calls and worse luck. The kind of survival that feels like drowning in a pool of your own stupid decisions. The apartment he shares with Andie smells like cigarettes and desperation, a place where even the cockroaches are probably planning their escape. They keep going because that’s what people do: keep breathing, keep rotting, keep lying to themselves that there’s something better around the corner.
But he’s Phoenix. He survives.
This is the life Phoenix would never choose, but somehow, it’s the life he’s got. It’s a fucked-up mess, stitched together with blood, guts, and rage. And yet, for all its chaos, for all its shattered pieces, there’s this weird, fucked-up beauty in it. Maybe Phoenix doesn’t know it yet. Maybe he never will. But that’s what makes him human. The constant wreckage, the constant fight. Just a kid trying to survive in a world too broken to ever fix.
Phoenix isn’t the hero of this story. He’s not the anti-hero either. He’s the guy in the back, slamming his fist into the wall until his knuckles bleed, screaming in a way that makes you feel something. He doesn’t want redemption. He doesn’t care about salvation. He wants to burn it all down, to fuck up everything around him, and to be the one standing in the ashes when it’s all over. Because the truth? The world doesn’t give a shit about him. No one does. But Phoenix has come to accept that. Hell, he thrives on it.
He fucks. He smokes. He drinks. He screams. And in the end, that’s all he’ll ever do. The music of BRAINDEAD! is his only anthem. The chaos of his life, the rebellion against everything, is his truth. He knows the only thing he can ever rely on is the destruction he leaves in his wake. Because the truth is, Phoenix Lee doesn’t give a single fuck about anything—except feeling something for a goddamn second before he destroys it.