Blood Magik- A Cold Day In Hell

by Corwyn Matthew

  “Hey, ‘Shit-Fuck’!” He mocked Le’Duprie’s bumbling curses with an awkward word-grouping of his own. “I’m over here, asshole!” His two large fingers pointed back at his own eyes. “Keep yur eyes on the prize!”

  Le’Duprie snorted and spit, sniggering obtusely.

  Jimmy felt more comfortable knowing Marty was on the ice but couldn’t bring himself to get focused. He was trying to avoid looking the Hound’s way and, in doing so, had a hell of a time remembering to put one foot in front of the other.

  When the Ref dropped the puck, Terry won the draw. Marty peeled back and Jimmy headed up-ice, following the habitual motion of his skates. When Marty inherited the biscuit from his D-man, he sent it up off of the boards across the rink for his dazed and confused winger. So far, everything appeared to be going as planned.

  Jimmy slouched against the weight of Le’Duprie’s stare pounding the back of his helmet, his heart racing nervously, closing in on the Hell Hounds’ zone. Apparently, he had a touch too much adrenaline fueling his feet, however, and ended up a step ahead of Marty’s pass, crossing over the blue line a hair offside. His coach was most likely screaming and spitting, cursing Jimmy’s lack of execution, but Jimmy couldn’t hear him. He barely heard the whistle when the Ref blew the play down.

  He lowered his guard to take a breath but had to cut it short when he saw Le’Duprie barreling toward him. A blurred image of Marty stood pointing in the background, yelling something, probably trying to give Jimmy a heads-up, but it was all he could do to brace himself for the blow…

  The play was dead, but Le’Duprie went that extra mile and came in for some overly aggressive, late contact. He crashed into Jimmy and sent him smashing against the boards, leading with the butt of his stick and elbow up high.

  Jimmy heard his ribcage snap inside of his torso like the muffled crack of knuckles under gloves. An elbow met his jaw next, plowing his head into the glass behind him with the boards giving in to the impact so generously they flirted with the fans in the front row. His helmet flew from his head and went fluttering over the glass into the recoiling crowd who groaned in sympathy for the smaller, unsuspecting winger. The hit was clearly illegal, but it was too late for protest…the damage had been dished.

  Jimmy slid unconscious down the white boards like a battered lump of snot and slumped to the ice with Le’Duprie fiendishly towering above.

  “That’s IT!!” Marty skated in from behind with a head full of steam, losing both his gloves to the promise of battle. “I’m fucking sick of yur shit, Duprie!”

  Le’Duprie, still basking in his stolen glory, turned to face his aggressor, but Marty had already released the first punch. The Priest landed a hard right even before the Hound could fully turn, spinning Jean-Claude back in the opposite direction, uprooting another tooth from the bone with the force of the blow.

  Le’Duprie raised his arm to his face afterward, casually nursing the damage with a sleeve.

  “Fuck you, Marty, you fuckar poosey.” He probably meant “fuck you, Marty, you fucking pussy”, but the interpretation was questionable and, as always, up for debate. After his failed stab at an insult, he dropped his gloves and spit the blood from his busted gums on the ice. “You wan’ to go? …Le’s go.”

  Without a glitch or breath of indecision, Marty squared off; left arm outstretched, grasping for a fistful of jersey. Le’Duprie kept a stiff arm while grabbing some cloth of his own, ducking the next punch thrown, competing to fix his footing.

  The force from the two dueling gladiators tugging and shoving while swinging their free arm rhythmically at each other’s skulls, whipped them in awkward circles. It was a fist flinging frenzy, full of bare, bloodied knuckles and enraged, lumped up, vein-swelling foreheads. For twenty long seconds their blows were in sync, equally pounding the shit out of each other’s faces.

  Eventually, Marty caught Le’Duprie off balance and landed a zinger to the side of his helmet. It popped up off his head like it was spring-loaded with a hair-trigger attached to his ear and bounced off the ice beside them. Le’Duprie threw another tethered blow while off balance that hit Marty in the jaw, but it slid off his face without doing much more than grazing his chin. The punch forced Le’Duprie to lose his footing and he fell face-first into a freshly stacked knuckle sandwich.

  Marty’ skates grew roots in the ice as he pulled his sprawling, sparing partner toward him, putting all his weight into a furious right cross. He nailed his fist to the side of Le’Duprie’s cheek hard enough to knock the burly bastard out cold, buckling the Hound’s knees and dropping him with the blow.

  Marty, still seeing red, didn’t stop at his victory strike that’d already won the battle. He saw the limp body of his friend Jimmy hitting the ice in his mind and felt the need to further punish the dog who’d hurt him. He directed another hit for his opponent’s nose and inadvertently forced the back of Le’Duprie’s skull into the unforgiving ice.

  The sound was sickening, and jarring enough to snap him out of his rage. He let loose his handful of jersey and Jean-Claude’s large body fell indolent on the rink.

  Marty hadn’t noticed, but the entire staff of linesmen and referees stood draped over him, digging for leverage, meaning to pry him from his opponent’s body. They were frantic, surrounding him like he was a wild animal. His mind started jumping at the exaggerated drama in an attempt to piece together what exactly had happened.

  How many times did he actually hit him, he wondered. He thought he’d only cracked him once after he lost consciousness, but as he looked at the body of the man lying on the ice, his heart dropped from the sight of the damage his fists inflicted. His face was wrecked, with an appalling collection of blood pouring from what looked like the back of Le’Duprie’s skull, congealing into a thick, dark puddle behind him…

  The arena of spectators was so silent the voices of the refs and coaching staff were heard from all corners of the Forum. Trainers hovered over Le’Duprie and Jimmy’s fallen bodies. They were lifting Jimmy onto a stretcher, but no one would risk moving the Hound from where he lay.

  Marty was almost catatonic while his teammates guided him off the ice. He heard voices behind him, like words from a distant TV that someone left on in another room – “He’s not breathing! He’s not breathing! Get the medics!” – but couldn’t muster up the will to react. He was coherent enough for an instant, however, to utter one word:

  “Jimmy…?”

  He wasn’t sure if Jimmy was okay, and for a moment, that was all that mattered… Then:

  “Jimmy’s good, man. Jimmy’s gonna be alright.” Terry found enough control to get Marty off the ice and into the locker room. “Stay here, Marty. Just…try not to hit anything else.” He sat him down in a bit of a daze himself and rushed back toward the crowd.

  Marty put his face in his hands and his stomach wretched. His head was spinning with flashes of his fists pounding Le’Duprie’s skull into the ice exploding in his mind. Hit after hit after hit. Blood dripped from his knuckles and poured from the fresh cuts in Jean Claude’s face like a red river from a black mountain…

  “Fuck!”

  He grew angry with himself and threw his knuckles into the hollow tin of a locker. He stood up, head heavy and stomach weak, and tore away his equipment, half of which was already hanging from his body. Stumbling to the showers, he caught a glimpse of his blood-spotted face in a mirror angrily staring back, so he turned away, ashamed, not wanting to face the sight of his own reflection.

  Only partly disrobed, the shower seemed like a swell place to wash away his sins so he turned the flow on and tried rinsing the spilt blood from his face. He could taste the aftermath in his mouth and spit spastically trying to push the flavor as far away as he could. The light that penetrated the spray pulsated from bright to dark, flooding his senses, and he tried wiping the blur from his vision, but couldn’t focus past the gore on his face that’d stuck his e
yelashes together in sickening clumps…

  The water pounded against his head as hard and as loud as Le’Duprie’s fist had moments before and, for an instant, he thought he might still be fighting, so he covered up to protect himself, ducking the raining blows. He felt the ground pull out from under him just before he heard a loud crack behind his ears, and those surrounding, pulsating lights that antagonized his consciousness took an ominous stroll toward black.

  The only thing he could see through the haze of his disordered mind, before losing the battle of light verse dark, was the half-translucent delusion of Le’Duprie’s bloodied face standing over him on the shower floor, his eyes angrily willing him to slip away into a nauseating and guilt-ridden nothingness.

  2

  “Marty…”

  He recognized Terry’s voice right away, even before opening his eyes.

  “Yur gonna be okay. Yur in the hospital… We’re gonna get you fixed up.”

  Flashes of light passed through the skin of his eyelids, rushing overhead, and he realized he was on his back but moving. Muffled sounds lead to cloudy vision when he opened his eyes. His head throbbed while his surroundings spiraled into context, slowly coming into focus with Terry’s face taking shape above.

  “What…?” He wasn’t sure where to begin.

  “You blacked-out, man. Doc says it’s a concussion. Looks like you cracked yur head on the shower floor, but yur gonna be fine. Just relax.” Terry sounded nervous, but sincere.

  “Where’s Jimmy?”

  “He’s here too. He’s gonna be okay. Got his own room and nurses and everything.”

  Other voices emerged from a haze of jumbled sounds; technical medical babble he couldn’t make heads or tails of. He wasn’t sure at first why he was where he was, but a flash of his fist hitting Le’Duprie’s face jumpstarted his memory.

  “Duprie…?”

  The hesitation in Terry’s response put fear in his heart.

  “You need to rest, man. Just take it easy, okay?”

  “Duprie?!”

  Marty needed an answer, insistent in his tone. He couldn’t “take it easy” without knowing what had happened.

  But Terry didn’t want to give it to him. Marty saw in his eyes that he couldn’t bring himself to say the words.

  “Goddamn it, Terry… Duprie! Where is he?!”

  Every sound that had just come into focus retreated twice as fast to a haunting silence.

  “He…he didn’t make it, man…… He’s dead.”

  Where There Are Sheep...

  Downtown Los Angeles; 20 minutes before the hospital:

  There was this strange smell. Sort of like what a wet dog might smell like if it were dipped in shit and smoking Newports. He’d picked it up a few blocks back over the stink of his cigarette but didn’t think twice about it since he was standing so close to a large festering dumpster, curdling with thick fermented liquids and moldy organic wastes. Such were perks of the trade when making a living called for secluded gatherings in alleyways where no one who could give a warm and fuzzy fuck would be caught anywhere near in any better shape than dead. His physical and mental wellbeing meant very little to him at this point in his “career” – a fact that brazenly reflected the sort of lifestyle he chose to endure.

  His name was Smoke – a street-handle shamelessly describing his most noteworthy pastime: the copious inhalation of a gaseous byproduct propagated by the roasting of methamphetamines. He would’ve preferred the analogy being derived from the smoke the end of a barrel expelled after firing off a round, but instead settled for being unanimously known as the highest kite on the block. Who was he to rebut the moniker he’d so deservedly earned?

  He’d sold this fidgety street kid a twenty-dollar bag of meth, collected the cash, then continued his stroll through the musty streets of where he’d been raised. Sometimes the stench of the bums on the blocks and the piss in the corners would sink into the threads of your clothes after hanging around the locals for too long. Or it might’ve even been that extra thick layer of big city smug and crass lingering in the air that settled into his hoodie and reeked so distinctively of a wet and rotting canine’s ass…

  He tilted his head from under his hoodie and took a quick whiff of his tee, but the raunchy old animal-like stink wasn’t coming from him. The alley behind him was at least a half-block away by now but the odor was still strong. It hung pungent in the air, stifling his enjoyment from every greedy pull off his lit cigarette.

  He looked around with a sour sneer and checked the bottom of his shoes for shit, but didn’t find so much as a smudge so shook it off, trying not to let it get to him. The stench was likely seething off some stray mutt following him around, he figured. Those oversized, street dwelling hyenas have a keen sense of smell well enough to savor the hotdog wrapped in bacon on his breath right over the reek of tobacco and meth smoke on his clothes. On the other hand, he might’ve just been imagining the whole thing. He smoked so much tweak earlier in the evening his eyes felt ready to pop out of his boney skull and bounce right the fuck out of the city, pioneering a pilgrimage into the suburbs on a quest for greater community awareness.

  He chuckled at the thought of his bugged-out eye balls heading a campaign of white-collared, Neighborhood Watchmen while continuing his patrol one lengthy stride at a time, tempered in his pace, expertly fabricating a practiced fearlessness.

  Not much civilian traffic grazed the asphalt at this time of night. Just cops, cab drivers, and the occasional afterhours junkie looking to score a bag. But the concrete was heavy with late-night pedestrians. There were more vagrants and dope dealers on the blocks than stop signs or bus stops. It was a bit more competition than he would’ve liked, but…hell, where there were sheep, wolves were sure to follow.

  Smoke indeed saw himself as a wolf in these streets and was likely perceived as such by any wandering close enough to catch his glare. He was of Caucasian descent and in his early twenties, but had the stare of a slightly older man, with definitive dark features (possibly from a mix of ethnicities) under a wiry goatee and an imposingly tall frame. He grew up as an urban kid with the look of a delinquent, but grew into his oversized clothes and now stalked the streets as a force to be reckoned with. He was thin, but his knuckles bore signs of wear, and his stroll was indifferent and overly confident. He had little to no hang-ups about his lifestyle and couldn’t picture himself doing much of anything else. It was as if the way society perceived him had drawn an invisible line in his mind that predetermined the limits of his aspiration. It was easy to be a piece of shit when everyone who ever glanced your way looked at you like you smelled like one. He reached into his jacket pocket for his menthol cigarettes in between drifting thoughts of his “career choices” and accidentally dropped a medium-sized sack of smaller, weighed-out bags of meth to the concrete.

  “Shit…”

  He stopped and crouched down, casually reaching for his livelihood as if it were a cell phone or his car keys. But before he could get his boney knuckles fixed to retrieve it, a mangy looking dog sprang out from behind him. It snatched the meth in its yellow teeth and scuttled into the alley up ahead leaving only a steaming, rancid smell tarrying in its wake.

  “Fuck!”

  His swear jumped out of his mouth with a tone that defined his surprise. The scampering canine startled him, strumming at his already high-strung nerves. Instinctively, he reached into his waistline and pulled his revolver, pointing it at the blurred image of the fleeing vermin, but it was long gone and around the corner by the time he could lift it to aim.

  “FUCK!!”

  He thrust his gun-hand forward, venting his aggravation through a squeeze of his fist around the Colt’s handle. If it had any bullets in it, he might’ve shot himself in the dick when he pulled it, but lucky for his “junk” the weapon wasn’t loaded. Honestly, he didn’t even know if the damn thing still fir
ed. He hadn’t kept it loaded since he killed a man the year before. Usually, if and when he’d have to whip it out, all the scum bags and crack heads would scatter like, well…scum bags and crack heads. He’d normally get the last laugh just watching these dumb-shits running sideways thinking they were dodging .45’s. This time, however, somewhere around that shady corner up ahead, some filthy fucking hobo’s pet poodle was eating the last of his stash, and that shit just wasn’t funny.

  He jogged toward the corner of the alley and stopped just short so to not spook the stupid mutt into running any further. With his head tilted around the rough edge of the building, he spied the ass of the dog scurrying into a dead end. The shaded corridor looked as black as Satan’s taint the further back he tried to see, but he was so spunned out of his mind he felt as if he had night vision goggles plugged into his ogling sockets and so braved the darkness as if he belonged.

  “Hey…buddy…” A homeless man, holding a brown-bagged, 40oz. bottle that smelled of a mix between cheap beer and a magic marker, laid sprawled out on the inside of the alley. “Spare some change?”

  Smoke looked down and his pistol followed his glare.

  “How ’bout I change your fuckin’ face, you stupid troll?” He shook his head. “Leave me the fuck alone. I’m busy.”

  The vagrant took a moment for the comment and gun to register, but managed to stay focused enough to counter the remark with a pudgy, middle digit from his free hand while simultaneously enjoying a swig of his beverage. It was a seemingly well-rehearsed maneuver, and he’d executed it with a kind of witty and inebriated elegance.

  “Yeah…fuck you harder, pops.”

  Stupid fucking bum was the least of his problems. That stupid fucking crack-mutt had definitely taken precedence over the bashing of a drunken hobo in the face with the butt of his empty pistol. Maybe he’d bash the prick in the melon if the dog got away, he thought. That might balance out the rest of his night if things didn’t get any better for him.