Pit Fight

He was dreaming and did not know it. Tom Speed spent the entire ride from the barracks cannonballing through a humid fever dream, forgetting where he was and what had become of him. What he hadn’t lost track of was the pain in his left arm where he’d been shot seven days ago. The bullet had passed through him just to the left of his heart. It was pulsing and swelling even through all his reveries. It stung like fire.

The van he was riding in was cruising down the Henry Hudson parkway on the west side of Manhattan, but Tom Speed was skimming, at speed, over an infinite grey sea. It was hot in his dream, and he could feel the saturated air coocooning around him like a warm blanket as he went. He was riding right on the deck, where he could reach down into the grey matrix. he dipped fingers and hands and toes, watching the goey trail they left in their wake.

He was flying still, but climbing now, away from the infinite grey sea at high speed. He watched it dropping away below him and noticed the sky was the same color. The gravity mushed his guts around inside him. His shoulder was itching and he couldn’t scratch, couldn't reach the spot. Then he was spinning and falling, the G's stacking up, and pushing his skin taught on his body, until A blazing white glow washed out the entire scene like a CGI effect. There was blackness then, and quiet.

He found himself in the kitchen of his childhood, one he’d not seen - or even thought -of for at least 20 years. Starving, he went raiding through the cabinets he’d known so well. There was peanut butter, jelly, Wonder bread, but his arm stopped working. He couldn't reach the treats. He stared a long time, eye-fucking the useless limb and cursing it. His friends’ wife, What’s her name? She’s massaging his arm and now she’s stripping off layers of clothing, and Tom could see she hadn’t far to go until she’d run out of shit to take off. He could see her tits already. Speed laughed as he moved in and said “I’ll fuck you. And then maybe that other thing?”.

Other thing?

His arm was on fire now, actually engulfed in flame. He still watched it, not trusting. Even so, he felt it. Holy shit - how he felt it. Not just on the shoulder either, his entire arm and his entire left side: Burning. The pain woke him up and the bus hit a bump and his head slammed into the glass.

He barked:

Fuck! Fuck!

And somebody was whispering in his ear. Jedra. Alive still:

SPEED! TOM! WAKE UP TOM WAKE…

The voice is cracked and hoarse from abuse. His arm stings like fuck but he’s getting a handle on it, feeling around. It’s dark. The bus he’s riding is blasting and smashing potholes and traffic on the west side of Manhattan, bouncing the cargo around like zero-gravity.

TOM! Tom Speed…

Then she hit him on the shoulder and he was awake and confused:

FUCK! What!? Sleeping…

You’re not. You’re fucking on drugs ‘cause you got shot. You don’t remember getting fucking grabbed? Tom please…

Then he noticed how loudly she was yelling and how loud the background noise from …From what? So dark…He saw no streetlights in the NYC night.

You gotta wake up, big guy. I dunno what he’s got going on. They shot me up when they shot you up. Both of us were out…Some kind of sedative.

He remembered. He’d been shot but it hadn’t hurt. But then it had started to hurt just after…

Twinze. Twinze said to meet. He’d planned with the twins for tonight. He had to get word to them. How?

***

They never took the black sack off his head. The bus reached a destination, slowed and stopped, and was greeted by a roar of approval that rang from one river to the other. The noise when they’d walked off the bus was ear-splitting, like to cause permanent damage. His arm was raging now too as they led him off. She wasn’t making any sound but Tom Speed thought he heard Jedra was walking somewhere ahead. He could smell her, and - of course - hear her:

Fuck you asshole…Don’t fuckin…DON”T TOUCH ME ASSHOLE…FUCKIN DICK!

Her complaints were the bane of his existence, but amidst the horrible din of the angry crowd he found a weird sort of comfort in them. “If she’s still bitching,” he thought, smiling under his cowl, “then she’s still got some fight left.” Everything else was loudness and chaos and random touching. They were still being escorted but to what? Was it just a show of force? A power move to show the citizenry what they were prepared to do? A perp-walk, then. To shame them. In front of who?

The walk took a few minutes, it seemed, though in reality it lasted only thirty-eight seconds. Somebody put a hand on his, lead him, ducking, into What? A ring? A boxing ring? An Octogon?

The crowd was roaring in full throat now, and he couldn’t think for all the noise. It’s totality and volume were unlike anything he’d ever heard. It was terrifying. He heard a series of taps, a mic-check in stereo exploding around them like thunder. A voice, feeble under the din, squeaked out a greeting. Nobody heard. The voice - a reedy, male tenor - tried again: nothing. Then a whistle, trebley and piercing-sharp and amplified, finally commanded the desired attention. The crowd hushed.

Welcome to the Friday night fights everybody. I’m your host Carl Braun.

The crowd exploded again at the mans’ name. Speed was puzzled “They all know him,” he thought. Around him he heard swooning and cheering. A few minutes passed and Braun spoke again.

Greetings! We’ve got a great match for you folks tonight and I’d like to get right to it. Before we start - of course - I need to familiarize you all with the brave souls assembled here. Before I unmask the criminals, let me introduce my child warriors.

The crinkle and snap of a paper note rung out. Braun read a list of names. A woman in the crowd shouted

Fuck Yeah, CARL!!!!

There were six names in all and Tom recognized not a one. Braun changed his tone a little. The reserved yet confident air of the voice turned menacing as he hissed:

And they will face these two: Tom Speed and Jedra Moss. Their lists of offenses is long and storied, but in this town even murdering scum have their day in court. Suffice to say we won’t be missing much after the hunter/killers flambé these two later on tonight. The best part of them will make a fine breakfast for my hounds.

HUGE crowd pop then, followed by more scraping and swooning from the crowd. The din was growing once again. Soon intrapersonal communication would become impossible, squished like a childhood dream. After that, the only thing left was the blood. Lots of blood.

***

They removed the hood and the light - dim and distant though it was - burned and tunneled into his eyes. Around him, and stretching back in four directions from the spot where he was standing, Stump saw nothing but crowd. An angry, jumpy sea of arms making a thunderous ruckus. He was rubbing and tearing and Braun was still speaking and the girl in his ear still yelling. His arm hurt. Could it be infected? The crowd was too loud for him to think so he stopped. Braun was still blabbering about something. Elmer turned around and saw Jade. Her face was wet like she’d just been swimming and there was a brand new gash at her forehead. He said:

Fuck it’s hot.

She replied:

They have the same hammers as us?

He wiped at his eyes, trying to unburden them in all the light and noise. It was then that he looked across and saw his opponents. There were six of them, all about three and a half feet tall, and all staring daggers at them from under what looked like black hockey-helmets with lightly tinted plexiglass eye-guards. They were wearing black pajamas that reminded Elmer of scrubs. They were all holding hammers in their right hands. He noticed that he, himself was also carrying a hammer. He read across the black handle: SKIL. Jade said

Fuck me…

And then Braun belted out the words:

So FIGHT MOTHERFUCKERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRS!!!

Tom Speed passed out again.

***

Tom hadn’t always been so prone to fainting. Just these last few days he’d probably passed out about as many times as he had in ALL the previous years of his life. It had just been that kind of year. Speed himself was acutely aware of his sudden slumbers, but he couldn’t do anything about them. His blood-loss had been profound after the shooting and the wound had never been dressed properly. He was exhausted and depleted and it was hot as fuck in the city, so he forced optimism: trying desperately to believe that dying in the throws of a sound sleep was preferable to whatever agonizing alternative awaited him. He stopped dreading the sleep-attacks and basically started going in search of them. On his person or in his car at all times were a sleeping bag, a tarp, a tent, and a soft pad. Then he got to waiting. And he waited and waited and waited some more for a slumber that never came.

In a previous life - one in which he’d had children, a wife and a job - sleep had been one of his very favorite pastimes. Afternoons, early morning, brunch. He spent more time sleeping then doing anything else. He liked it dark and quiet with the windows blacked on a sunny day. You could see the light trying to flood, feel it’s heat, but still float, dreaming and snoring safe from the light of day and all its intrigues. He’d been taken prisoner on his way to Providence, and his captors had allowed him almost no rest at all. What’s more they were lax in dealing with his wound. It smelled funny. Nobody was listening to him about that. The results were awful and dramatic: Now his body simply chose to shut down and rest no matter what the situation. He’d fallen asleep during his interrogation, and fallen asleep in the middle of important conversations. He fainted while eating, and while running. He’d passed out just before the blind van ride, and - most terrifying of all - DURING a brutal scrap with the folks who’d taken them. Even now, as they wriggled on through the rocking, enraged throng, he felt the dream state calling to him. “If this happens anytime soon,” he was thinking “it will mean my death.”

Then he was back in the present, and the children were closing in with hammers brandished. Tom was trying to stall and feint, wondering, was he was expected to actually kill these Child Warriors? They were too young to know the causes and concerns behind the combat. They were innocent. Could he really defend himself against them?

Then one of them - a wiry boy with a shaved head wearing all black leather - got inside his defenses and drove a hammer-claw into his upper thigh. Tom surprised himself with his screaming. He’d been losing himself to the dream-world again, seeing angels, shooting stars, and light-trails instead of blood, flying steel, and rent flesh. Somewhere, though, in the back of his overtaxed mind, he knew that to allow himself anymore sleep would almost certainly spell his doom. He feinted to his right to avoid a swinging hammer, then brought his own weapon down on the head of another child who’d gotten too close. He screamed as he swung down, and the kids helmet and head cracked and collapsed, turning the ground beneath them blood red and slick with fluids. Speed, revolted by his own deed and terrified, let his own hammer slip to the ground then, and gave in once again to the dark void of unconsciousness. The last thing he saw before he fell were the child-warriors rushing in at them. His shoulder wound still hurt him more than anything else. What if one of these hammers were to find it?

When the kid hammered his leg the crowd whooped like they’d been shown a magic trick. Tom went down immediately, clutching at his thigh and they fell on him. Hammers were pumping and Speed was covering up but still getting tagged. He saw a taller little boy snarling in his face from above. The kid was foaming and growling like a boar as he raised his hammer. Tom tried to roll away but his arms were pinned. He looked up to face his fate, but saw instead another, friendlier hammer take his assailant at the temple. It looked like the hammer head went inside the kid's head. Blood like hot rain across Speed’s face as the kid fell twitching. Speed sat up and deflected hammer blows from three other sources. He waited a beat and then bolted one arm in front of his face and swung the SKIL hammer as hard as he could. He felt it ripping flesh and saw it come to rest inside a little girls’ neck. The little princesses eyes rolled to white as the curtain of red escaped her throat. Jade screamed:



DOWN SPEED!!



But it was too late. He was tagged, but good, in the cheek. He hit the deck again, and his mouth felt like full of warm fluid and metal parts. He spit a tooth-and-blood gruel on the ground and tried to find his feet. Another blow - this one to his side - laid him out on the hot tarmac. He started to hear the crowd again. Chanting? He couldn’t make it out. Loud was all he heard. Then a scream from behind him: JADE!

He rolled over to see the cause and he saw the end of the swing that saved his life. Jade had the hammer-claw embedded in the skull of the largest of the boys. She raked it back and spilled the insides out onto the floor. There was a smell like rot. The boy was twitching on the ground and going:



Ya Ya Ya Ya Ya Ya Ya Ya….



And he was coughing up a ton of blood and gore. Tears were streaming down his face.



Ya Ya Ya Ya Ya Ya….



Jade was kneeling to help when the last girl rose from where she’d been doubled over. Tom Speed meant to shout a warning but he was too busy holding off the last boy standing. The boy was swinging, enraged, and Tom was getting too tired to dodge him much longer. Not more than eleven years old if he was a day, the feral child sensed his quarry’s weakness and ratcheted up the violence. He rushed Speed, screaming and laughing as he hacked away, looking to pound through any defense with raw force and momentum. Tom had blocked what felt like hundreds of blows with nothing but his arm between the lethal hammer-swings. He felt it burn and sting, could feel it turning to pulp under the attack. The kid wound up then, and the next hammer-slash broke Speed’s arm below he elbow. He screamed involuntarily as the bone shot through his skin in a rancid explosion of blood and tissue. He tried to look around for his own hammer as the new agony wracked his body, but the pain was too much and felt he himself slipping towards a peaceful darkness. The girl Jade had put down at the start of the brawl had risen. Tom saw her stalking in from behind Jedra with a bright steel blade in her hand.

He tried to shout to his friend that the girl was coming but he couldn’t talk and block the boy’s blows at the same time. All that came out was a “Look!” that did more harm than good. Instead of turning to face the girl attacking, Jade looked at him who called her. Then her head jerked back on her neck and Tom saw a black-clad hand, miniature and soft, rake across Jade’s neck. A flood of purple-crimson burst from her throat and she fell, gurgling and convulsing in a stinking blood-puddle. Her assailant stepped forward over the still-jerking corpse and faced Speed, still reeling and on his knees. Speed, triangulated now between the last two children and still unarmed, backed up and put his arms up. They’d kill him now, he knew. The best he could do was to take one of them to hell with him.

***

The two child-assassins closed. Speed passed out again. Instantly he was under the sea. Miles under the sea - he knew - because it was pitch dark and cold. Very, very cold. The last thing he saw though, as he fell, was a puzzling image of his two child-assailants being grabbed from behind by two great black arms and thrown in the air. Beneath them, with fire burning and jetting from his mouth, was a massive black spider with what looked like the head of a man. Tom Speed didn’t have time to be amazed before giving himself over to the frozen depths of his dreams.