Punching and Kissing

by Helena Newbury

  I brought the ugly, gaudy crystal head of the cane up to my mouth and kissed it softly, the facets sharp against my lips. When I looked up at Rick, he was grinning all over his face.

  “There,” he said. “See? She’s got the idea.”

  Rick planted his cane back on the floor with a hard little rap. I winced. I couldn’t imagine how painful that thing would be, against flesh and bone. “You can take this guy, right?” he asked Alec.

  Alec was still having to restrain himself. “Sure,” he said tightly. “No problem. He’s a little guy. One good hit and he’ll go down.”

  “Good, ‘cause I got a lot of my own money on you, tonight,” said Rick. “Make sure he goes down and stays down.” Then, with a final leer at me, he was walking out into the pit to introduce the fight, his bodyguards trailing him.

  Alec turned to me and pulled me into another hug.

  “You sure about this?” I said. I didn’t know why, but I was suddenly panicking. “There’s still time to pull out.”

  Alec didn’t answer, but I knew what he was thinking: no, there isn’t. Even if we didn’t need the money, you don’t just walk out on one of Rick’s fights. You did what you were told or you had your legs broken.

  “I got this,” said Alec. “He’s just a little guy.” He released me from the hug but I kept stubbornly holding him until the last second. Then, reluctantly, I tapped my fists against his like we always did, our good luck charm.

  “I’ll see you afterward,” said Alec. “Go upstairs and watch. And stay the hell away from Aedan.”

  And then he was jogging out into the pit.

  Sylvie

  The crowd had gone quiet as I climbed the stairs back up to the balcony. I could make out Rick’s voice, telling them who they’d be watching. “From the land of tulips and dykes”—the crowd snickered—”undefeated in The Pit these last three weeks, The Dutchman!”

  Alec and I had both been born right here in New York, but he had to make it sound good.

  “And stepping up to take him on tonight, a challenger from Detroit—Morgan!”

  I faltered on the stairs. That was weird. Normally, Rick had a whole spiel. Did that mean he didn’t know this Morgan guy? What if he was dangerous?

  I raced up the rest of the stairs, slipped through the crowd and leaned over the balcony to look. To my relief, Morgan didn’t look like much at all. He was at least five years older than Alec, maybe more. And he didn’t have Alec’s muscle or his height. Maybe this would be alright after all.

  The Pit didn’t go in for niceties. The bell was an air horn, blown every three minutes to give the fighters a minute to recover. There was no grinning blonde in a bikini holding up round numbers and no medics on standby for injuries. Most important of all, there was no referee. The rules were simple: you fought until one of you couldn’t get up.

  The horn sounded and Alec went in fast and confident, swinging a heavy right hook. I think he meant to take out Morgan fast, before anything went wrong.

  Almost immediately, it did.

  Alec wasn’t slow on his feet, but Morgan made him look like he was sleepwalking. Whenever Alec swung, Morgan was somewhere else. His punches weren’t heavy, but they were lightning-fast and precise. Within a minute, Alec was sweating and off-balance, guarding his side where Morgan had hit his kidneys.

  I could feel my chest tensing up with every hit my brother took. Who the hell is this guy? Who’s Rick put him up against?

  By the second round, Alec was starting to tire. He wasn’t used to a small, nimble fighter. He couldn’t turn fast enough, couldn’t protect his sides when Morgan darted around him. And then a vicious kick to the back of the leg made him crumple and stagger. His hands went out for balance, leaving him exposed, and Morgan started punching him in the face. One, two, three, four—

  Alec finally got his hands up, but he was reeling. He slumped back against the concrete wall, blood pouring from between his fingers.

  My insides had clenched into a tight, hard knot. I could barely breathe.

  In the next break between rounds, the difference between them was obvious: Alec had to hold himself up using the wall, wiping the blood from his eyes. Morgan was rock steady and untroubled—not taunting and whooping but not worried, either. Just a professional, doing a job.

  Then he stripped off his tank top and I saw the tattoos. Military tattoos. Rick had put my brother in the ring with some ex-Army guy.

  The next round started.

  I bolted for the stairs.

  Sylvie

  Al, one of Rick’s bodyguards, was watching from the little side room. He held his arms out to block me, a solid wall of suited muscle.

  “Stop the fight!” I screamed. “He’ll kill him!”

  He shook his head. “You know how it works. Crowd have paid their money. It’s over when it’s over.”

  When one of them can’t get up. I could feel the bile rising in my throat. Behind Al, I could see Alec being driven back by a flurry of blows. His head rocked left, right, left. I imagined his brain being hammered inside his skull. All that delicate artistry that made him him: his personality, his kindness, his memories of our parents. It was being wiped out, punch by punch.

  I launched myself at the pit. I’d throw myself between the two of them, if I had to. But then Al caught me easily around the waist and held me back. I stretched, clawing at the air, reaching for Alec. “No!”

  The punches kept coming. Alec’s legs went to jelly and he fell to his knees, his head lolling forward. He’s going to go down anyway. Stop, now! Stop! Please stop!

  Morgan didn’t look cruel as he did it. He didn’t gloat. He was just like Alec, trapped in the system Rick had created. But he needed to win, just as Alec had.

  I remember screaming as he drew his arm back. Alec’s eyes opened for a second and I thought he looked at me.

  Then Morgan’s fist smashed against the side of his head and he fell to the floor.

  Sylvie

  There was no moment of victory for Morgan. Rick didn’t come and hold his fist aloft and proclaim him the new champion. The crowd fell quiet—they could sense that things had gone very badly wrong. Rick’s fighters weren’t supposed to lose, not on their home turf. Especially when he’d been betting on them.

  Morgan slunk past me with an apologetic glance. Al finally let me go and I ran to Alec’s body. He was slumped on his back, his legs bent awkwardly. Shit. Shit! Should I move him? Not move him? Is he breathing? “ALEC!”

  No response. But I could see a hint of movement in his chest. He was still alive—just.

  The crowd was clearing out fast, now the entertainment was over. I heard the distinctive rattle and clang of Rick descending the stairs. As he approached, I spoke without looking up. “Have you called 911? We need to get him to the hospital….” I looked up, expecting to see...not apology, not from Rick. But concern. Regret.

  What I got was something else altogether.

  “Wake up!” screamed Rick. His cane sliced through the air and hit Alec’s leg only a few inches from where my hand was resting. I heard the snap as the bone broke.

  Alec jerked but didn’t open his eyes. I flung myself instinctively off him and crawled to one side, my arms up to protect myself.

  “You cost me twenty grand, you weak little fuck!” yelled Rick. Oh Christ—he was even more coked up than before.

  My brain was trying to come to terms with what I was hearing. How could he blame Alec? But this was Rick. Someone else was always to blame.

  “It—It wasn’t his fault,” I said, trying to keep my voice level. “The other guy was ex-Army or something. I saw the tattoo.” I looked towards Alec. “Please, Rick—we have to get him to hospital.”

  Rick ignored my plea completely. He rounded on his bodyguards. “I told you to check that guy out!” he bawled to Al. “I said there was something wrong about him.”

  The bodyguards were smart enough to nod apologetically, even though I was betting they’d had no part in picking Morga
n. More likely Rick had chosen him himself during a coke-fueled binge.

  Alec’s breathing was growing weaker. I crawled back to him and put my arms around his neck, drawing him close. “Please, Rick!”

  “You think I’m letting him walk out of here?” Rick asked. He brandished his cane. “After what he cost me? I got another fight in a month and no one to put on!” He suddenly swung the cane down again, hitting Alec’s ankle, this time. There was a sickening crunch.

  I threw myself across my brother’s legs. “Please! Please, no more!”

  Rick’s face darkened even more. He was angrier than I’d ever seen him. I saw, to my horror, that even his bodyguards were backing away. He’s out of control. “You’d better move,” he told me. “Unless you want this cane shoved up you.”

  I wasn’t crying. I was too scared to cry. He was going to kill Alec. He was going to rip my one remaining piece of family away from me. “Please!”

  “He’s better off dead,” said Rick. “If he can’t fight, he’s worthless to me.” He twirled the cane and then raised it over his head. “Get the fuck out of the way.”

  I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t move. I knew that me being there wouldn’t stop him. I knew that he’d just swing that cane straight down and batter his way through me, again and again, until he hit Alec. But I couldn’t leave my brother to die. I hugged Alec’s legs and tensed my whole body, waiting for the pain to hit. I searched for something, anything, to say that would stop this. And as the cane whistled down, my brain finally came up with two words.

  “I’ll fight!” I screamed.

  The end of the cane smacked into the concrete an inch from my head. For a few seconds, the only sound in the room was the eerie ringing of it.

  “What?” asked Rick. He sounded genuinely puzzled.

  I was still pressed against Alec’s body. I could feel his breathing—God, so weak. I gingerly raised myself up and twisted around to face Rick. “I’ll fight,” I said again. This time, the words actually registered in my brain.

  One of the bodyguards started to laugh.

  “I’ll fight, here in The Pit,” I said. “Put me on instead of Alec. I’ll fight whoever you want.”

  Rick looked at me with something between disgust and fascination. “You?” He looked at his two bodyguards for help. Al was laughing. Carl just looked amazed.

  “Please,” I said. Now the tears had started. I could feel them rolling down my cheeks. “Please. Let me—Let me fight.”

  Rick’s forehead wrinkled. “A girl fight?”

  “A catfight,” said Al, grinning cruelly.

  Rick considered. Then he lifted his cane and poked it under my chin. He used it to lift my head and turn it, examining me from all sides. I let him. “You’ve never fought in your life, have you?” he asked.

  I shook my head.

  He squatted down so that he was on my level. “That crowd up there wants blood,” he told me. “That isn’t going to change, with two women. Whoever I get to fight you is going to beat the living crap out of you.” He leaned closer. “It goes on until someone can’t get up. You know what that means?”

  I nodded slowly. Every loser got beaten unconscious, but death was always a risk. Even Alec had come out of this fight barely alive—he still might die. For me—small, fragile and untrained—the ending would be inevitable.

  If I lost, I was going to die.

  I looked down at Alec. My tears were leaving dark, spreading pools on his tank top, mixing with the blood from his wounds.

  “I understand,” I said. “I’ll do it. I’ll fight.”

  Aedan

  I could have ridden the train all the way back to Newark. Hell, I could have gotten a cab—I was okay for money, since I didn’t have much of anything to spend it on. But I like walking. No one bothers you, walking at night. Not if you look like me.

  So I got off a few stops early and walked past the industrial parks and the docks, past walls of shipping containers taller than buildings and past black water as still and calm as glass.

  My apartment block’s lousy for just about everything—no nearby stores, no nightlife. Half the apartments are empty, some with broken windows. No one in their right mind would want to rent there. Which is exactly why I liked it. No neighbors, no visitors. Everyone left me alone.

  Upstairs, I opened the windows to try to let in some air—the air conditioning broke a long time ago. But there was barely a breath of wind.

  I settled for a shower, cranking the spray up hard and cold and letting it blast against my body, foaming and hissing against my chest and then my back. Cold showers were a boxing thing, a good way of helping swollen muscles to heal. I hadn’t needed that for a long time. I’d kept in shape, still went to the same gym, but I hadn’t felt that burn and ache that comes from really using your body. Working out isn’t like fighting, in the same way cruising in your car on the freeway isn’t like a race.

  But tonight...tonight, I could feel just a hint of it. Just a touch of that fire in my shoulders and chest, from swinging punches. Just a little throb in my fists where they’d connected with those bastards faces.

  It felt good. I tried to tell myself it was because I’d done good, because I’d saved Sylvie. But I knew it went deeper than that. Fighting had felt good.

  It was the first time I’d raised my hands to anyone in over a year. The first time I’d let myself be myself, instead of a locked-down, hooded nobody.

  And something else had felt good, too. Her. The sight of her; the touch of her. I squeezed my hand shut, remembering the feel of her soft skin against my calloused fingers. The scent of that long dark hair when it had passed close to my face, like walking through a fucking meadow filled with blossoms.

  I turned off the shower and toweled myself dry. But the memories didn’t stop.

  The way her ripe breasts had pushed out the top of that pink t-shirt. The curve of her, from breast to waist, sculpted just perfectly for me to grab her and lift her and push her up against a wall.

  I hit the light and flopped onto my bed, naked. It was way too hot for clothes. I lay there in the darkness with a faint breeze blowing in through the window.

  Her back. That feline curve that ran from between her shoulders all the way down to the top of her ass. It made me want to strip her naked and run my palm down it. Maybe she’d gasp a little as the heel of my hand rubbed against that soft, tan skin, my fingers trailing along each sensitive vertebra.

  Her legs. Those fantastic, sculpted calves and thighs, the tight denim hugging every smooth curve, leading up to—

  I could feel my cock rising now, unbidden.

  Her ass. Those tight, tight globes, high and firm and sticking out in just the right way. Just the right size for my hands to cup and squeeze. She’d groan. And then, with her on all fours, I’d gently part them….

  My cock was pointing at the ceiling, now, throbbing. No. For feck’s sake! I wasn’t going to jack off to her like some teenager.

  Her lips. Pink and full and so soft. Pressed together, a lot of the time, like she was worried about stuff. I wanted to take that away. I wanted to see her smile. The closest I’d seen was that little sigh of relief when she’d finally gotten her soda, and her lips had parted to show shining white teeth. It was burned into my memory: the little beads of sweat on her forehead, the way her lips had trembled when she paused her drinking and panted in air.

  It was easy to imagine her on top of me: head thrown back, that long, silky hair flowing down her naked back and spilling over my hands. I’d be stroking her all the way from her ass up to her shoulders and my cock would be buried inside her, her thighs clamped around me. She’d pant and beg as she spasmed around me—

  I snatched my hand away from my cock, thumped the pillow in frustration, and turned over on my side.

  There was no use fantasizing about what I couldn’t have. The worst thing in the world for Sylvie would be to get mixed up with a monster like me. I liked her—feck, I was hard as iron for her.
>
  So I’d have to steer clear of The Pit.

  For both our sakes, I’d make sure I never saw her again.

  Sylvie

  There was a cab ride, paid for with the cash I dug from Alec’s pockets. Then the blinding fluorescent lights of the hospital. Alec on his back on a gurney and doctors shouting questions at me as I ran alongside.

  What happened?

  Was he attacked?

  Do you want us to call the cops?

  And me lying and making up a story about him getting mugged in an alley and the guy taking a crowbar to his leg. I didn’t get a good look at him. It was dark. Please, just help him.

  I saw them looking at each other and at the cuts on Alec’s knuckles—some new, some old. They didn’t believe me. He wasn’t the first bare-knuckle fighter to be brought in.

  They talked about hemorrhaging and swelling and needing to relieve the pressure. One of them, before the others could stop him, demanded to know why I’d waited so long before bringing him in. I burst into tears.

  They took him into emergency surgery, leaving me with a wad of forms to fill out. I went through them methodically, one by one, which took my mind off the horrors happening in the operating theater. Then I stared at the wall and tried to figure out how everything had gone so wrong, so fast.

  ***

  After five hours, they said I could see him. Everything above his eyebrows was swathed in white bandages. When I saw the tube down his throat and the papery hiss and pump of the ventilator, I wanted to scream. His eyes were closed, but it didn’t look like any sort of peaceful sleep. His brow was furrowed, as if he was having a nightmare.

  One he couldn’t wake up from.

  “He’s in a coma,” said the doctor, taking a seat beside me. She was a pretty blonde who looked not much older than me. “That’s not unusual, with head injuries. In some ways, it’s the brain’s way of protecting itself.”