The Night

[ddhlee]

A knife in the hand with the wavering taper of death ringing, dancing in my grip. Punching with the handle clenched into four digits, he bashed the wall to loosen his fist, then mummified the hand until the weapon became a claw.

"Evil," he smiled before his wrinkled manager gave him a hard slap on the shoulder. The cigar smoke stimulated his nose, sweat droplets grew against his face at the heat of fifty thousand people and five hundred lights shouted down on him as he stepped into the drum-hard floor of the arena.

"Ladies and gentleman," The announcer boomed "The fight of your life faced before you! Who will survive this fight-"

A pause touched the air, only the buzzing of the hot lights swarmed the noise.

"-to the death!"

From the other side, his eyes pocketed a figure stooped over in scars. His hand was bandaged, and the other arm limped with a blade in it. There was not enough wrapping for there to have been a hand.

[ddhlee]

A surprise struck his face?

No, he had been in the shadows too long. There was no room for surprises in a place that bred off the closet desires of human nature. Surprise was torn from the veil of sanity the moment the endorphins tattoo-injected to his shoulder kicked in.

The only respect allowed from the surface was the opportunity to appreciate no names. But everyone knew who was who; they knew who was the winner and who was the corpse.

Perhaps it was doubt.

A bell ordained their beginning. His steps tentative, solid. The old brown stains of once-blood nothing to think of. The opponent of scars approached, walked towards him in the armor of wounds.

Defenseless, or perhaps unworried. Sweat glistened the light of artificial day and pearled the steel of the wrapped knife-hand, the pearls that fell as tears when the hand flew for the scarred face.

[ddhlee]

Blocked.

Steel claw snagged against the bite of a handless fang that reached back. The scarred man, helmeted in his wrap of wounds, did not express as a fist retaliated the first strike. It missed the newbie's stomach by one quick flinch. That was what was expected. A muscle-and-scab knee punched for the prone thigh. Mechanical reaction. Beautiful for its merciless style. The crowd sparked at the anger and hissed cheers. The scarless one backed away, a wobbled step back: the knee strike had performed its job.

The man of scars stared calculated looks, efficient without expression. A second of tension stretched with potential scenarios between the two men in the mind of the man that stared back.

The scarred man could be striked with a feint with the claw again, but then during dodging, he would make a counterstrike with the blade for the face. Dodge and angle swoop with the feinted claw. But that was predictable and could be easily seen if he was prepared.

A naked hook to the chin could be blocked back, suggesting an open spot. A head butt forward and then he could punch the blade into his guts within the interval. This would have left his back open too.

Riskiness measured each potential move. milliseconds of chess moves raced in his head for the safest method to keep alive.

An idea sparked.

He took a step back again. The wobble recovered a little more from his leg.

Then a burst jump forward.

The scarred one stared back, shoulders together.

Predicted.

The blade-armed hand flashed up for his arms, but never reached. He slid down below him, and the weight of an entire man pushed the scarred man's legs off-kilter as they hooked against the man's foot. The blade found an easy spot.

The leg bled easily, perhaps the least scarred of the man's body. The wound would weaken him somewhat in an attempt to hold balance, even he could see it as the man fell and picked himself up after a failed counterswing. He hesitated slightly in the process. Slightly enough to make it apparent it worked. The crowd sizzled with cheers on the hot white drum mat, now deflowered with first blood.

[ddhlee]

A weakened opponent, no matter how veteran he was, could still be taken out if it was calculated correctly. The scarred man opened his mouth to breathe. Fatigue already began to seep into the man. The time to strike may have been sooner than planned.

A flank run. He twisted around to catch for the man's attention, and did. The blade hooked to the scarred man but missed the head, barely, catching blood on the shoulder. Easy. Too easy.

Too easy.

A kinetic wall chomped above his chin from an unexpected uppercut. The ceiling looked up at him in irridescence. He picked himself up only to feel pain surge hard impacted waves. He looked to see the man's foot already stepping down four hundred pounds into a defenseless leg.

He swung for the leg and forced more blood out of it. Another half-second flurry blunted his sight. The crowd continued to cheer, continued to sizzle as he lay on the bed of the arena.

The scarred one looked down and pain chomped down, less this time, into his arm. Into his fisted iron. He could not pick it up. The pain was less, then less, but the drowsiness was there. A little thing that tinged his soft jaw and grew in spectrum like the lights above.

He did not feel anything when he heard the scarred man speak for the first time, a burnt ripple in his voice as he examined his weapon red hot with the blood of a heart.

"This ain't like chess."

The End.

[longstevo]

Damn. You kinda put me to shame.

I don't know if I can still write here with you posting!

Just kidding. Keep it up, man. We love to see your posts.