AUTHOR'S NOTE: There's some rough language and drug references ahead!

DISCLAIMER: Phoenix Wright is not my property. The title is from the Rage Against the Machine song of the same name. Fight Club is property of Chuck Palahniuk.

BULLS ON PARADE

Do you know what insomnia feels like?

One night you're sleeping in your luxury apartment.

You wake up in a stuffy office, with a mountain range of paperwork.

You wake up on the floor of a seedy bar clutching the bar stool after having the bridge of your nose nearly shattered by a fist.

You wake up after a night of lovemaking, on a poor excuse for a bed.

You wake up on the witness stand confessing to a crime you didn't commit.

You wake up lying on a rock hard cot, with your wrists painfully handcuffed behind your back.

That adrenaline feeling that overwhelms you and leaves you with the sensation that you're about to careen off of the Grand Canyon…

Your soul is screaming, and runs wild inside your body, hurling itself against neurons, muscle and bone trying to break free…

Year 2018

Ironically enough, it had always been difficult for me to imagine a life of incarceration.

Bringing criminals to justice, and sending them to prison was, at one point in my short life, a daily routine. However, now it is I who sits here behind the iron clad bars of a prison cell day in and day out.

Here I am.

Stuck serving a three-year sentence for being an accomplice to murder…and for tampering with evidence.

Each sentence had the potential to be much worse, however I managed to assuage the situation with some plea bargaining…and winning some sympathy from the judge. Normally being the haughty prosecutor that I am, I'd call this pathetic; but now I swallow those words, for at the time, it was all I could do.

For Ema's sake.

She came to visit me today, in from Europe for the holidays. It's rather cold in the visitor's room tonight. I watch her pretty face go raw from crying huge tears from behind the glass, all while fumbling with a cheap complimentary cup of stale coffee. I tug at my sleeve wanting to wipe away the moisture from her beautiful blue eyes. This is the first time she's seen me like this: a criminal and a shell of my former self.

After I was sentenced, she had already left. It amazes me to this day that she still wants to be an investigator, even after watching her own sister's glorious downfall. Exposed as a pawn for a power hungry despot of a police chief. It was small price to pay, in my opinion, for protecting Ema.

Ahhh! That bastard Gant. He was a tumor that grew and sucked the life out of me. This tumor continued to grow until it consumed me whole. He took everything from me. Everything.

My integrity, my job, my sister…my freedom.

Even Mia.

Instantly I began to tongue a long scar on the inside of my right cheek. It's a nervous habit. I placed my right hand on the glass and Ema placed hers over mine. I gave her the warmest smile I could muster. "Keep your chin up. I'll be out of here soon. It's your turn to be the strong one, for us both."

Ema nodded weakly. A small smile started to bloom on her tear stained face.

A gruff voice spoke from behind me. "Your time is up Prosecutor Skye. Back to your cell with you." I felt the fat sweaty hand land heavily on my shoulder. The guard.

I looked at Ema for a brief moment as the guard pulls me away. "I promise to stay strong Lana! I promise!!" she screamed through her sobs. I don't cry. My eyes have dried up. Life has left me desiccated.

Stay strong…

The sterile lights and Clorox smell of my jail cell are choking me. Hour after hour I feel myself withering away. My arms are skeletal, my eyes are sunken, and my hair is thinner than it's ever been. I've strained my eyes staring at these eggshell walls. This is the longest my sentence has ever felt, with my release date merely weeks away. I'm like the pathetic mule with a carrot dangling mere inches in front of its nose. Once I'm out, I'm not going back to that ignorant existence I had left behind. The bubble that was my job as chief Prosecutor had burst even before it was finished being blown.

I tongue the scar again…close my eyes and remember…