"His father put money on him and the other boy was backed by the neighbor."
Enter the world of Korey Wallace's gut punch of a story, which in three pages brings new meaning to the idea of a fight club.
Enjoy this month's edition, and keep dodging,
The Editors
It was cold. Down inside in the place he went to hide and dream.
The first punch he slipped and countered. One-two. One two. It was hot when the panic came. Primal and all too real. Vicious like an alley mongrel. Desperate and mangy. But he breathed. In. Out. In. Out.
After school, his mother told him he was worthless and locked him in the closet until he went down inside and allowed the silence and cold to construct a wall around his mind and body.
As he came up and under, his fist broke across the lower jaw and chin and the head snapped back and a yelp escaped the mouth along with blood and teeth. Multiple teeth.
One-two. One-two.
His father put money on him and the other boy was backed by the neighbor. The neighbor who got arrested for breaking his wife’s nose. The wife with the cocaine mound on the round dining room table in the apartment where he went to play with their daughter. The other boy was 12 and he was six. A tiny six and the 12 year old was long and tall and muscular and they were friends but the men wanted a fight and his dad wanted to show what he made and there was money and nobody to stop it.
Two-one. Two jabs followed by step and overhand right and then out and circle. Back in and jab, jab, slip and into the body and then head and out and circle. Then back in and a low left jab to the belly and then a right shovel hook and out with a straight left jab to the nose.
The bigger older boy couldn’t fight and he was scared and he shook. The little boy was like a rabid monkey and clawed and punched and wrestled and just kept coming. His dad smiled and they were in the grass along the sidewalk next to an apartment building and it was hot.
Eventually, the cold became a background he could step into or pull up and around him. Eventually, there was only the rational calculated aware fear of what was going to happen and what he would do.
His mother chased him through the two bedroom apartment. Screamed he was just like his father.
Three quick inhales through the nose followed by a long exhale and he was gone and down inside where he could dream and hide and protect what was most precious so that his body could do what it was being asked to do.
The 12-year-old boy slammed his head against the stucco wall. Again and again, and again. It went black and he woke in his father’s arms. The pain in his head seared behind his eyes and vibrated against his temples. It wouldn’t stop and he kept his eyes closed and the nausea came and the vomiting and black, black, black.
The second series of punches was thrown with more precision. He felt wobbly and time slowed to a dangerous crawl. The man looked like he wanted to take his soul and he was fighting mostly off his back foot, and he felt pushed and pressured and reminded himself to breathe. But it wasn’t enough. It never was and it never had been.
She chased his father with a butcher knife and his father left. His father always left. He hid down inside and went to his bedroom and laid on his bed in the dark. She threw a pan against the wall. Found him and began to slap him and beat him until he cried then put him in the closet until he stopped crying, until the cold allowed him to become nothing and nobody and gone.
He became the man who never left and never backed down and the pain blossomed into a shrine and light he carried in his chest. Always.
Again, he hammered in and through. Big punches. Hard, swift, mean. Eventually, they all went out. Eventually, he felt what it was to not lose but lose what it was to understand some things just couldn’t be pushed through. He was wobbly and this man across from him could take a beating but so could he, so had he, and he was gone, again, deep into the cold, and he threw until his arms ached and he was only body. Only motion. Only this perfected machine of calculated violence.
In. Out. In.
Out.
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Korey Wallace's flash fiction has been featured on the podcast NoExtraWords. His story "A Way" was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He lives in Des Moines, IA where he works as a paramedic.