There’s nothing like the feeling of digging the bony ridge of my knuckles into the meat of my opponent’s organs. The pain from a liver shot takes two seconds to register, so I shuffle a step backward to wait for his nerves to fire. On cue, a grimace spreads across his face, and his knees thud against the canvas.
I bare my teeth and spit a sludgy wad of saliva that lands heavy next to his groaning frame. I don’t hate the guy. He’s my salvation, this Artie Tintell, “The Pride of—Wherever.” But it’s the eleventh round, and Artie, despite currently resembling nothing as much as a mannequin in a dumpster, fractured both of his hands against my face during the previous ten rounds, which is now steak tartare, an abstract painting of oily pink lumps. There’s ten rounds of frustration in the spit that Artie’s writhing body has just smeared across the ring.
I deserve some slack for forgetting where Artie’s from. This is my tenth fight in the past eight weeks. Most of them, I go down in the fourth or fifth round, put on enough of a show to convince people they’ve seen a legitimate contest. This one, I got orders to take a beating until the eleventh. Well, I took the licks, but the unnecessary ones cause more than physical pain—they stick like plaque in the veins, build an internal pressure. The knowing grin Artie gave me as the round started didn’t help.
I walk back to the corner in which my manager, Jimmy, has his face resting in both hands. He looks up as I approach before his eyes flick over somewhere behind me. I turn to follow them like I’d twist in my seat to look at a car crash. We’re looking at five men. The one in the middle wears a dark suit that seems perfectly natural in this concrete box rank with spilt blood and sour sweat, but as I stare, they meld together to form a single figure with pursed lips and crossed arms. I imagine that same disappointment etched on Death’s features after someone’s done something mortally stupid.
“Why?” Jimmy asks.
I turn back to him and shrug. My career as a punching bag began when I could no longer hear the t.v. over my growling stomach. I was good, once. Bright lights, packed stadiums, fat purses that turned anorexic by the time they made it into my hands. The leanness of those checks landed me here. That and a torn ACL which never healed right. Maybe I do know. I’m sick of being fodder.
The ref is kneeling over Artie’s prostrate body and waving his hands, a symphonic gesture that draws guttural jeers from the crowd. I dip under the ropes to hop off the canvas, onto the concrete and into the mass whose fury has sent metal folding chairs clattering against the floor in the dozens. Jimmy leads me through, threading his way through the gaps until we get to the locker room door, which he tears open and I slam shut once we’re both inside. He cuts off the bloody tangle of my wraps while I use my free hand to gather our things. We both freeze at the sound of a knock on the door. Animal instinct more than any real surprise. I just hope Jimmy doesn’t reap the consequences of my decision, if it was a decision. Maybe it was Fate’s knuckles, Fate’s left hook, the eruption of Fate’s disgust with itself into a firing of fast twitch fibers that made this knock on the door inevitable. Maybe I never had a choice.
The door opens, and the suited man walks in. His eyes are basset hound-weary, like I’m just the latest in a long string of unpleasant necessities. I see the iron circle of a gunbarrel, a single point of shining darkness that expands until it’s the only thing in my field of vision. The circle flashes orange, I feel a dull impact against my liver, and I try to savor my brief independent streak as my knees thud against the concrete.
~ fin ~
Patrick Szakiel grew up in New Jersey and is currently living and writing in The Netherlands. His work has previously appeared in Shotgun Honey and Close to the Bone, and he’s currently querying a thriller, Helen and Earl, for representation/publication. For more information, go to patrickszakiel.com.
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