Blood and Sawdust

by Jason S Ridler

  “No reneging on bets,” said the Judge, voice as clear as the pint glass he was cleaning. “But the next round is on the house!”

  A semblance of applause rippled through the air as what passed for order on the fringe was restored, and people ran to the bar to get their freebies.

  “Look,” Malcolm said. “I need to help her.”

  Milkwood chuckled, rubbing snot from his mangled nose. “Of course you do.”

  “It’s not like that—”

  “Of course not.”

  “Stop being such an asshole and listen!” He told him everything Lash had said about Dizzy Colt the imperishable bastard, but choked on the next part.

  “Why the fuck do you care if she lives or dies?”

  “I don’t.”

  “Then why force me to take a job that’s like slitting my own throat?”

  Pain shook his throat, as if he’d swallowed a case of empty beer bottle and speaking one word would shatter them all. The thought of that sick man…eating Mom’s heart.

  “Whatever,” Milkwood said. “It doesn’t matter. I won’t do it.”

  “You just have to!”

  Milkwood shot him a red glare that made his cheeks bristle. “Tell me again what I have to do and so help me God I will lose the next match and let the Judge feed you to Samson.”

  “Don’t threaten me, you chickenshit! You’d still be eating fists for the losers if I hadn’t have got through the ten layers of loser skull under your face. You owe me!”

  Milkwood leaned back and looked down hard. “Owe you? I got two dead friends because I wasted time listening to you instead of getting the fuck out of town.”

  “I didn’t kill them!”

  “No. Lash did, sending that boy toy to test me. Then she turned a bona fide circuit psycho on me. And now you want me to kiss the ass of the woman who turned me into this freak?”

  Anger strangled common sense and rational thought in Malcolm’s head and his mouth shot off like a cannon. “Unless you’re still fucking afraid of her, you chickenshit—”

  Even if he’d seen it coming in quicksand time, there would have been no room to move. Milkwood slapped Malcolm’s face so hard tears shot out of his shut eyes like grenade shrapnel and flew through the air with a one way ticket to the cage fence. He bounced off it, hit the ground and breathed in sawdust as agony ran like frost bite through his head. The two caretakers mending the fence Tomko had torn laughed, then got back to work.

  Pain bit through his clothes, deep in his skin and marrow, from his skull to his feet. Swelling inflamed his face, and turned his skin into a blistering tattoo. Hard shot. Harder than Rob had ever hit him. The bar spun through his glistening eyes, echoes of the crowd’s white noise chatter mixed with the jingle of the chains shimmering in his head. Gravity was nowhere and everywhere and for a few seconds he wasn’t sure which way to spit—

  Red eyes burned above him, then turned brown. “Kid? Oh, holy fuck, I didn’t mean that—”

  Didn’t meant it, won’t happen again, why do you have to piss me off so bad, why don’t you listen, I can’t believe you bet on that guy, do you know how hard I work to keep us alive, do you want to try it on your own, see how it is when no one gives a shit about you, do you think you can handle it, you fucking can’t even dress yourself without me, I have to do this to smarten you up, so you won’t fuck up when I’m gone, it’s for your own good, and someday you are going to thank me for this, you stupid, ungrateful, shit—

  “GAH!”

  A moment transpired as slow as molasses and as definite as a train wreck. Malcolm’s tiny fist shot out into the void and nailed something with a sick, wet, crunch.

  Gravity pulled and he dropped to his knees, the spinning world calming down as he gasped for air and eyes and laughs and cheers swirled around like stars.

  Milkwood, knees bent, pain contorting his mangled face, was holding his balls.

  “Nice cheap shot, short round,” someone said.

  “Stay…” Malcolm said to Milkwood. “Just stay the fuck away from me.” He pulled himself up and wandered back in the crowd, thoughts unable to grab hold of any one thing for long, but he knew he had to get the fuck away from Milkwood. The klaxon voice rang. “Round two starts in five minutes. No bets allowed after the first bell. All contenders must stay in their assigned seat in Contender’s Alley or get a little red dot for their trouble.”

  He looked back.

  Milkwood stood at the edge of contender’s alley. Two red dots on his black, ugly hair. Gashed mouth saying something but Malcolm turned and headed back to the bar for the next round. Lash was chatting with some slick pimp in shades and a silver suit, but faced him with a look of sad compassion.

  “He’s not a very nice man,” Lash said to Malcolm. “Is he, Pretty?”

  The guy grabbed her jaw and brought it back. “Didn’t realize you were baby sitting.”

  Malcolm ignored the taunt. “How do we kill Dizzy Colt?” Malcolm said.

  “Run home, boyo,” said the pimp. “Or else—”

  “Eat me, you pathetic shit.”

  “Boys, boys,” Lash said with a laugh. “There’s plenty of me to go around.” She whispered something into the shithead’s ear. He smiled, nodded, and wandered off. “Sorry. Just making dinner arrangements.”

  “Ha fucking ha. How do we kill him?”

  “Only by removing the nesting god, silly. Weren’t you paying attention?”

  “Next up,” screamed the Klaxon. “Jeet and Haggerty.” The fighters made their way past the hole in the cage Tomko had made. A gaggle of grunts were doing a rush-fix with wire.

  She caressed Malcolm’s swollen face. “I take it my Baby didn’t agree to work for me?”

  Malcolm winced under her touch. Tobacco juice dripped in the back of his skull. “I can’t convince him.”

  “Well. Aren’t you in a pickle?”

  Fuck, fuck, fuck.

  The next match unfolded before his eyes in even slower motion. Jeet was a pure blood warrior, fast and sure and serious. The kind with honour. The kind that almost never won. Haggerty turned out to be one of the dirtiest players in the game. Skin oiled. Nails sharpened. He managed to cut Jeet’s forehead right at the eyebrow with a thumb rake, then worked that side of the face with some jabs and a left cross. Malcolm knew he should be enjoying it. And he knew the good money was on Haggerty for this round, and that if it were any other night he’d be putting a dollop of his secret slice on Jeet. But all he smelled was blood, sawdust, and Lash. That was it. There was no return to Troy and Rob, no future payday to start out somewhere on his own, no killing Dizzy.

  There was nothing and no one.

  A sick pain birthed in his stomach like shark teeth, eating out and up and around. Suck it up, Slow Mo. He fought tears from forming, swallowed the pain until it was consumed by a ravenous hunger. A disturbing calm washed over him but his fists would not stop shaking.

  Alone. In the dark crowd.

  A wet stain on his nose began to drip over his chin. “I’ll take the job,” he said to Lash. “Do whatever you need to me to make it work. I don’t care. But I want out of here, and I want Dizzy Colt dead.”

  “Oh, Pretty.” She lifted his chin, kissed him hard, sucking every ounce of blood from his stained mouth, then breathed in hard, stealing his breath. “You’re hired.”

  The fight in the cage raged but he could barely care enough to watch. His lips still tasted of her, and even though he was breathing funny and it pained him so bad his eyes misted, Malcolm smiled with anticipation

  Once upon a time, maybe two days ago, he would have been back on the bar and trying to decipher Jeet’s move set, his arsenal, strip it down to essentials and build it up until he could connect the dots between his strengths and weakness, his victories and losses, his rep and the reality.

  But between the raised fists and beer bottles, all he felt was the rush of knowing that soon he’d get his chance at Dizzy Colt. He revelled in images of crushing the tobacco-filled
cheek with his fists, of ripping the smile off his face, of tearing out his heart or whatever the hell was thumping in his pigeon chest. Five years. Five years of thundering hell because of this carney shitstain, whatever his crazy voodoo background. Fuck Milkwood. He was no better than Rob anyway. A thug who preyed on the weak and then was so sad afterwards. Fuck him and his fucking talents. Malcolm would finish this fucker himself…

  But how?

  “How’s that finger?” Lash stirred a dark drink with two red maraschino cherries floating at the top.

  “Never felt better.”

  “And those pouty lips of yours?”

  He licked them. “Sweet.”

  She popped in a cherry. “You know, Pretty, I really liked how you taste.”

  He focused on the next match, at Sutherland and Cyrus and the fresh saw dust swimming at their feet.

  “But my baby is still stronger than you. Faster. Tougher.”

  “Bullshit,” Malcolm said, heart thudding as if being electrocuted. He looked up Lash’s legs, gazed hard at her small, firm tits, then went straight for her eyes. “He’s a chickenshit. Always will be.”

  “My, aren’t we all full of big, strong, powerful talk.” She bit down on the cherry and pulled the stem from her mouth. “But you’re going to need more than just words to keep Dizzy down. And I know how to give it to you.” A single drop of red cherry juice dropped from her lip and vanished in the darkness of the barroom floor.

  The crowd roared and Malcolm missed whatever it was that Sutherland did to Cyrus to get the cheers and the pass to the next round to fight whoever won between Carlos and Kudor.

  “My now, is that fear in those pretty blues?” She gripped his chin and lifted. “Am I really that scary? C’mon, Pretty. It’s not like I haven’t been swimming in your blood since I first tasted you.”

  He coughed into his hand as the Klaxon called for Kudor and Carlos. Focus, he told himself, focus. But why? If he did what she implied, who the fuck was the Judge to stop him? What the hell did any of this matter if he could finally throttle the man who had killed her?

  He nodded. “Let’s do it.”

  She gripped his hand. It was cool, like a steel railing, and pulled him through the crowd, toward the stairs. A wolf whistle came from the bar. The Judge, chewing on a lime, winked at him, then started slicing rinds.

  At the stairs edges, the stairs leading to the basement fight room where he’d first met Milkwood, sat Samson, guarding the way down. He growled at Lash with his ears held back. She yanked him up by the scruff. “Little baby Cerberus should not be so nasty,” Lash said. “Or he’ll lose his last head.” She tightened her grip and the dog winced.

  “Don’t be a shit,” Malcolm said.

  “Fine,” she tossed the dog and Malcolm caught him.

  Samson licked his face and he put him down, hoping that wasn’t fresh fingers on his nasty breath.

  “Next up, with his first circuit victory, Milkwood the Gouger!”

  Lash was already down the stairs and before the red door. “Where are we going?”

  “Some place private,” she said, lifting the latch. “Or do you like people watching you?” She pushed the door open with an easy touch. He jogged down the steps, gut full of wind, and charged at the closing door, half-expecting Rip to yank him back by the hair. The door barely budged and Malcolm shouldered it as the metal bottom screeched—

  A sweet smelling hand pulled him in the dark, and the steel door slammed shut.

  “C’mon, Pretty. Time to dance for me.”

  The distant glimmer of a single bulb allowed Malcolm’s eyes to adjust, but before he saw it he heard it, that wet hiss of a mouthful of juice breathing inward.

  A sick, liquid voice percolated through the dark as a grey face, thinner than a scarecrow, appeared from the velvet darkness. “Well now, I believe I’m smelling cub meat, young and fresh.” The black lips curled in a rictus grin. “And for a gallows bird, the taste is positively Dizzy.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

  AS THE CROWD SWELLED around the cage, Malcolm and Lash vanished from sight. Pennies rained on Milkwood, but a single silver quarter stuck itself to his bloody forehead.

  Yay me, he thought. I have a fan.

  He doubted it was Malcolm now.

  Have you been a punching bag so long you can only lash out on the weak? Forget who the fuck I am, what the hell am I becoming?

  Jeet stood before him, eyes closed in a silent prayer, waiting for the bell.

  It rang, and a snap kick rocked Milkwood’s temple with the speed of a chainsaw’s blade. The world spun in yells and screams of red and black before he reached out and grabbed a fistful of chain links and kept the world on its axis.

  Another smack to the back of the neck with a familiar crunch—an Ax Kick. With a snap, Milkwood’s knees smacked fresh sawdust. Staggering up, firm, strong hands yanked his wrist and tossed him in spinning circles as iron legs clasped around his arm in an arm bar triangle—

  Dad’s voice echoed with the crowd’s chants: “every crowd hates a quitter…no matter how nice or vile…endurance breeds respect…take everything he’s got, scream like the world is ending, but don’t give up!”

  Snap!

  His elbow popped out the wrong way. Then, his shoulder was dislocated. Wrist broken. Familiar wounds from the stretch circuit.

  Milkwood screamed, hoarse and crackling, like a dying animal. God, he thought, I feel stupid—

  The crowd’s voice bled into one single word, thumped into his head: TAP! TAP! TAP!

  He clawed, one-handed, to the side of the cage, gagging in fake agony, knowing he deserved the real thing, knowing that even a fine fighter like Jeet couldn’t give him the beating he deserved for hitting the kid—

  Ravenous faces stared back at him. They wanted him to tap, to do what he always did and take the beating no one else could take, and then give up…

  He shut his eyes.

  There was Malcolm. Nose busted out of joint. Worse than anything that shitheel brother of his had done.

  He clawed up the cage, and the crowd hushed.

  Jeet hung upside down from his arm, head in the sawdust, eyes on his in disbelief.

  Hanging by the links, Milkwood got up on his feet and Jeet broke the hold, tumbling away and standing again before Milkwood blinked.

  His forearm was bent. Red and white bone stuck out from one side. It was broken but Milkwood could see it starting to mend…shit.

  Jeet raised his fists. “Give up. I don’t want to kill you.”

  Milkwood raised his right fist. “Don’t worry. You can’t.”

  The ref just shook his head and crossed his arms. “Bring it!”

  Jeet snap kicked again, hoping for a knock out, straight into Milkwood’s hand. The crowd gasped, and before it could push out its breath, Milkwood thrust his foot up so hard Jeet’s whole body flipped and he landed on his guts. Jeet scrambled up, straight into Milkwood’s knee, and went to all fours. Blood gushed from Milkwood’s wounds, and the seething hunger ached his heart…which was slowing.

  Damn it. I’m running through blood like a leaking toilet. I need to end this—

  A boot to the head sent him back to the chain links as fans stumbled back.

  Jeet’s face was awash in bright rivers of red blood as he stood on rubber legs. Milkwood’s mouth twitched. So bright, red, and tasty…

  No. This guy ain’t a shit.

  And that moment let Jeet charge, yank Milkwood’s head down, and hammer him with his own flying knee until the teeth that had reborn were swallowed in pulpy gulps.

  Instead of cracking his skull with elbows, Jeet backed away. “Just give up,” he said, under his breath. “I will kill you.”

  Anticipation stained the air.

  And Milkwood felt it. “Like a brisk wind on a wet neck,” Dad had said. “Like gaining ten pounds of muscle with every breath, knowing it’ll vanish in three beats of a rabbit’s heart.” The crowd turned. No longer throwing pennies. No longer maki
ng fun. They were almost on his side; he just had to push them over the edge.

  He raised his right fist. “Good luck.”

  And they cheered.

  “Kick his ass, Milkwood!”

  “Yeah, fat man!”

  “Kill that guy!”

  The ref called them to the centre. Jeet’s eyes were furious. And it was time to bring it home. A smile curled on Milkwood’s lips, then vanished as he said, “Thanks, Dad.”

  He snapped a jab faster than a bullet, sending Jeet stumbling. He charged, right hand slung back like a hammer, and gave a battle cry like something vile being born too soon—

  His fist broke through Jeet’s guard, slashing into his jaw, sending his neck spinning. The life popped out of his eyes and he dropped into the sawdust like a corpse. But he was breathing. There was no point in counting. The ghost had left the building.

  Roars drowned the ringing of the bell. The Ref raised his one good hand. But as Milkwood’s arm began to stitch itself, and the blood leaking out of him darkened, he did not think how this would look to the bloodsuckers chanting his name. He walked through the cage door as dozens patted his back.

  Arms dropped and there was a clear view of the bar. Hope rose in him.

  But the kid was gone.

  And so was she.

  He took one step past contender’s row and his eyes were dancing in red lights.

  I can’t win the kid his freedom if I’m dead…

  He plunked his ass down, made a sling of his soaking red t-shirt, and prayed the kid wasn’t doing what he thought he was.

  CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

  TOBACCO JUICE STAINED DIZZY’S lips black on his grey face, but never dribbled out to the ground. Slowly, he caressed a bandolier of rusty darts across the worn, torn shirt covering his pigeon chest. The shirt might have been white back in the dark ages, but was now coffee-ground brown. Dizzy Colt moved like a sedated, six-foot snake, but each movement hinted at a liquid speed. He took a long, phlegmy inhale as he approached.

  “Baltic sweat on this scruff,” Dizzy said, voice like cement wheels grinding through tar. “Long time since I ate one of these Latvian treats—”