Page 5 of Violent Possession

Blah, blah, blah, hell, no mercy, blood. Same old speech. The crowd rages. Rat raises his arms, his arrogant smile widening. He loves this. He feeds on it.

The organizer turns to me. His smile fades a little.

“And in the left corner... coming from some godforsaken hole... the challenger... known on the streets as... IRON ARM!”

Marcus thinks the nickname is intimidating. To me, it’s just a reminder that the price for doing the right thing once in my life was a piece of me. The joke is so good that it makes me want to laugh.

Some boos. Some laughter. I blow kisses to all of them.

“PLACE YOUR FINAL BETS!”

Marcus gives me one last pat. “Finish him, but don’t kill him. It’s expensive to clean up the mess.”

Rat stomps his feet like a sumo wrestler. He yells some shit about hospitals. “Hope you got enough to pay for your ambulance after I’m done with you.”

I gesture at him. “You talk too much, princess.” He gets pissed.

A rusty bell rings somewhere in the noise. The trigger. The world disappears.

When I’m fighting, my head goes empty. It’s the only peace I know. The only constants are the thud of my own heart and the cold weight of the cheap St. Michael medallion bouncing against my sternum. Adrenaline is a clean river that washes away all the filth and pain... ah, pain is just confirmation that all this shit is real.

Rat charges, expecting a trade of brute force, but I don’t give him that pleasure.

My left is fast, precise. Jabs that open his guard, that throw him off balance. I feel the impact on my knuckles, the vibration shooting up my arm. He backs off. He doesn’t understand the cadence. A punch that stings and disorients, followed by a dull, heavy impact.

I don’t feel his bones crack when I hit him with my right fist. I don’t feel anything. It’s just weight and consequence. His imbalance is his downfall. The left opens the way, the right finishes the job. Punch after punch. He spits blood. A smile spreads across my face.Beautiful.

Violence is the purest form of conversation,Seraphim told me once. He was right. Who knows what kind of shit angels whisper in the ears of madmen? Who knows if he wasn’t one of them for real? In the bible, seraphim have six wings. No face, no mouth. Just eyes. Eyes everywhere. On their arms, their backs, their wings, in the air. You look, and they’ve already looked first.

If you saw a real one, you’d piss your pants and still call it divine. They burn what they touch. Nothing is more honest than a broken bone.

Seraphim was more biblical than a preacher. More god than man. When everything inside you shuts down, all that’s left is the flesh. My altar is the ring.

Punch after punch. The blood is warm. The crowd is a blur. I could do this forever.

Two hands grab me, pulling me away by force. The organizer. I may worship it, but death doesn’t pay well at an event like this. I come back to myself. The people around go quiet. Rat is on the floor, a red mess.

A heavy silence.

His chest doesn’t rise or fall. Still. His eyes are open, glazed, staring at the ceiling lights as if they were the gateway to paradise. Or to nothing.

Shit. Marcus is going to freak. No more fights for a while, until the dust settles. What a stupid way to die. At least the arrogant smile is gone.

Someone from the production crew gets in the ring, kneels beside the lifeless body, and presses an ear to his chest. They don’t want to see a dead man.

Then, a thumbs-up.

He’s alive.

The organizer raises my left arm. The glory. The crowd roars. My name, my name, my name. Frenzied, grabbing the rubber ropes that separate them from the ring, jumping, shouting. Defeating Rat is a historic, unprecedented feat. His face is busted, but he’salive.

The feeling of being admired for something as dirty as violence makes me ecstatic for a second. Just a second. Then the emptiness returns, the screams die down, and the man who was just restraining me now drapes an arm over my shoulders.

“LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!” he yells to the crowd. “SPECTACU-FUCKING-LAR!”

The crowd responds as if they’ve witnessed a miracle.

Marcus is out there, practically having an orgasm. He gives me a double thumbs-up.