Page 13 of Violent Possession

I have a plan.

GRIFFIN

In exchange for breaking Sacramento’s champion, I got a dislocated middle finger, two hundred and seventy-three dollars, and a shitty nickname echoing down the halls of the cheap motel where I’m left to rot.

“Hey, it’s Iron Arm!”

“Holy shit, look at the size of that arm!”

“I bet he could break a watermelon with that thing.”

Yeah, you whores. It’s fucking Iron Arm. One of the bastards asked me to flex my bicep for him, for free.

For a few minutes, everything made sense. Now, nothing does. The TV is showing a game show where people are screaming hysterically over a blender. The host promises to turn misery into a spectacle, and he gets off on humiliating poor people. He tells them,I’ll give you a house, but only if you dance naked on national television.

And the people at home applaud. They think it’s beautiful. Overcoming adversity. How lovely, this poor fucker humiliating himself for money. The host in the expensive suit is no different from the sweaty organizer in my ring. His audience is nodifferent from mine. At least my show has a higher risk of dental damage. More bang for your buck.

Suddenly, my hotel room door opens. The only person with permission to come in here is Marcus, and it’s him, in a polyester suit and a gold-toothed smile, who appears.

“Stumpy! News from paradise!” Marcus enters, waving a manila envelope. He sits on the edge of my bed and throws it onto my lap. “Open it.”

“What the fuck is this, Marcus?”

“It’s your next paycheck, you ungrateful fuck! Karpov called because he wants you back in the ring. Main event.”

“That’s to be expected,” I say with a shrug. “I broke the last main event.”

“Ah, but the purse... Griffin, the purse is...astronomical. I’ve never seen anything like it around here. This is big boy money.”

For a second, I wonder what I’d even buy with that kind of cash. A lifetime supply of cheap whiskey? A slightly less shitty motel room? The possibilities aredizzying.

I sit up. My body, outside the ring, aches everywhere, and I’ve already learned to ignore my own existence.

I pick up the envelope. Inside, a single sheet of paper with a few typed paragraphs. I look at the number at the bottom of the page, the fixed amount they’d pay the fighters just for stepping into the ring. It’s high. High enough to be a typo.

“This is wrong,” I say.

“No, it’s not! I checked three times! Karpov said that after your ‘spectacular performance’, he attracted an investor. Someone withrealmoney, who wants to raise the level of the show.”

An investor sounds strange in the middle of filthy concrete. Investors wear expensive suits and talk about spreadsheets, and their kind of betting is usually different. Something to do with luxury, with wagers that can be made while sipping wine, witha European standard of order. The closest big money gets to a basement fight is when it buys sports teams.

“Who?”

“I don’t know! Some rich guy, who cares?” Marcus gestures impatiently. “What matters is he wants to see quality bloodshed, and you, stumpy, you’re the goddamn head butcher now. They want arealshow.”

Like the woman drowning in cockroaches on TV for five hundred dollars. The audience applauds the same shit. My eyes go back to the paper. “And who’s the other clown?”

Marcus’s smile falters. “Ah, right. The investor... he has a special request. He wants to see technique. They’re bringing in a guy from out of town. A real fighter. The guy’s a ground specialist. Jiu-jitsu, judo, that pajama bullshit.”

I stare at the paper, then at Marcus’s gold-toothed smile.Jiu-jitsu. Judo.The kind of shit that tangles you up.

“They want to see me crippled on the other side, too?”

“Come on, stumpy, don’t be pessimistic!” Marcus laughs, but his eyes don’t. He knows. “Think of the money! With just the show-up fee, we can disappear from Sacramento. Go somewhere with sun, women who don’t have STDs, and beer that doesn’t taste like piss.”

A poor fucker humiliating himself for a little money. The holy, rotten gold.

People I would have sworn had dignity get on their knees, lick, and dance in the mud for a pile of bills they won’t even count right, but as long as it’s in front of them, it’s a god with a hard-on.