Soul Mates

by Thomas Melo

  The competitors paced in their corners as the referee barked out the orders they were to follow, the most important being that if the other competitor gave up, there was not to be a solitary blow landed following this. This rule could mean the difference between a dead combatant and a live one. They shadowboxed as they paced back and forth, never breaking eye-contact with their opposition, lest they be considered the weaker of the two, just like in the animal kingdom. Truth be told, they were both afraid because of the knowledge that this fight could be the last moments of their lives, but also equally amped that they could walk out of the arena instant millionaires. Their only charge for that fee?

  Beat your opponent into submission…or to death, if he doesn’t possess the sense and humility to surrender…and by God, give them a good show.

  * * *

  The Imperial Suite was where the board of directors had their private viewing of the events in the Super Chasm, and where the public suites, Tyler, Lilith, and the rest of the board (plus a few home-wrecking secretaries and girlfriends) took in the festivities.

  This 5,000 square-foot space situated in an outcrop built between the 1st and 2nd levels boasted floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the fighting decagon and spanned at least thirty feet in length. The suite itself was decorated with gaudy marble columns as soon as you walked in and onto the marble floor, and the short foyer leading to the main sitting/viewing room was lined with gladiator armor. The motif of the Super Chasm was unquestionably reminiscent of the Roman Colosseum, however, it still maintained its own unique identity, for certain. The differentiation between the two motifs is hard to articulate, however, if you have ever been a guest in the Super Chasm, you most certainly know what those subtle bits of variance are. Was it slightly theologically demonic?

  Comfortable black leather couches were positioned everywhere a spectator could possibly want to sit to watch the event. There was even a television on the wall in the bathroom, which was located in an alcove off the main foyer. In case a member or guest of the board was having trouble seeing the action from a distance, there were 42-inch flat screen televisions speckled around the suite. As a matter of fact, there were 23 of them.

  There were also two fully stocked ten-foot bars. Not only were the bars stocked with the typical beers, wines, and liquors that the emblematic guest would surely ask for, but it was also stocked with lavish top shelf liquors, imported beers, and aged wines that the most priggish wine-taster would feel privileged to consume. Decadence is what I am trying to get across to you.

  “Come on, Lilith, a toast!” Jayson called out from one of the bars, as he carefully brought over a tray full of champagne flutes topped-off with Dom Perignon to the long leather couch positioned up to the flowing wall of windows. This was where the rest of the board of directors were situated preparing to watch the first battle between the contenders. They were all lost in their own conversations and discussions of the future of this venture as the strobe of the flashes from smart phones captured this momentous occasion of the Chasm’s founders all together in the same room, bringing in the maiden bout together. They all rose from their couches and grabbed their respective champagne flutes.

  “To everyone who made this possible. To all of my fellow investors, to masses of degenerates who lined up to fill our arena to capacity, the persuadable politicians who saw the potential for exponential revenue growth in this fine city,” Lilith started, as everyone laughed at the quip aimed at the fans, save for Tyler, who had felt minute emasculation after having the ceremonial toast stripped from him. Lilith continued with a couple of minutes of grandiosity, speaking to the promising future, the wealth they would all accumulate, etc., but during all of it, if Tyler was being honest with himself, he would admit that Lilith was seen by the rest of the investors as holding not just as much decision-making power as Tyler, but more. And why not? Even though Tyler and Lilith held equal shares in the Super Chasm, if Tyler thought back to the construction of the Chasm, did the board and laborers come to Tyler for the final say in the daily minutia, or to Lilith? For the most part, they went to Lilith. Perhaps it was Tyler’s somewhat sexist assumption that a fighting arena, a male dominated sport, defaulted to the man for some charge and command. Out of everyone there in the Imperial Suite familiar with the Swanson couple, even those coming to know them intimately over the course of the construction of this business venture, he was the only one who saw things that way. All of that aside, she was a great talker. She could talk an anorexic into going out and eating a six-course meal. Coming up on the close of her oration, the strobe flashes from the camera phones below intensified as they all raised their glasses in a circle and toasted to “success.”

  Down below and high above the Imperial Suite outcropping built into the arena, the crowd was on its feet losing its mind, cheering in anticipation of the first match between the two contenders. The fighters ceased shadowboxing and pacing and listened intently to the referee’s final words on the scarce list of rules.

  It was time.

  “Fighters ready!?” the referee bawled. The fighters nodded, their mouthpiece-holding, Neanderthal-looking jaws aimed at the ground, their eyes locked into their opponent’s soul.

  “Are you ready, ladies and gentlemen!?” Rocky Vada bellowed into the microphone so loudly that his jugular could be seen protruding from six rows back. The crowd answered with a thunderous roar that shook the Chasm to its core and may have actually registered on a seismograph that was buried under Sierra-Conrad Observatory eight miles from the Vegas strip.

  The referee took over once again with his next command: “Let’s go, men; fight!” The roar of the crowd, still not over their first wave of adrenaline, piped back up with the fight command and extraordinarily quickly quieted down in an intense bout of concentration on the match. The fighters came out and touched gloves, not because they really respected one another–how could they when they intended on killing their opponent if need be–but because it was a tradition that embodied the fighting world since the beginning of the sport…sort of like breaking a bottle of champagne over the bow of a new ocean vessel to christen it. The fighters circled one another and kept their distance at first, dancing around the decagon, one with determination, and the other with spurious fortitude. Karson moved in, sure of himself as Stockton backed up in sync with Karson. Stockton threw out a jab that completely missed Karson as they danced with each other in the center of the decagon. Karson moved in again and this time Stockton’s fist connected with Karson’s forehead. The force of the impact launched the sweat off of Karson’s forehead as the crowd cheered the first hit of the night.

  “Oooof! That had to have rocked his brain a bit, huh?” Tyler said to no one in particular in the Imperial Suite. The entire board of directors and their plus-ones and plus-twos took up the span of the window looking down onto the decagon.

  “Karson is finished, you watch,” Lilith said, taking a swig of top-shelf whiskey.

  “The fight just started, Lilith. How could you–” Jayson challenged good naturedly.

  “You can see the look in Karson’s eyes,” Lilith interrupted.

  “What look?” Brad Laurentia, one of the other board members, asked.

  “The look that is screaming ‘what the fuck did I get myself into?’”

  By this time, Karson had fought back sheepishly, as he appeared to be thinking of a way to get out of this situation without taking a dive. Destroying his credibility, and the credibility of the Chasm during the maiden fight, was not an option. With the knowledge of the cast of characters (save for Tyler) who ran the Chasm, Karson believed he had a much better chance of survival in the decagon than to disgrace this arena.

  Ask and ye shall receive.

  As Karson distracted himself with his thoughts, rather than reacted like the instinctual fighter he had always been, Stockton pummeled Karson with a one-two combination made up of not the typical jab, followed by a stronger punch, but concocted of two devastating haymakers, one which shattered K
arson’s nose and the other put his lights out as his eyes rolled up into his head and he fell backwards, without an inkling of a brace for his “lights-out” fall to the ground. He was incapable. Karson hit the mat at such a flat angle that he actually bounced about six inches straight up into the air before his limp body settled again on the mat.

  The crowd banged on the seat backs, banged on the floors, yelled, screamed, and pitched a fit, for now all eyes were on Stockton. In any other fighting competition, the fight was over, but not in the Super Chasm. In this case, this fight would be over once Rayce “The Stock-Boy” Stockton said so. He moved in and went down to his knees to straddle his unconscious opponent as everyone in the audience and in the Imperial Suite waited to see the fighter’s next move.

  “What the fuck is he doing? Karson’s out. He’s out!” Tyler said, this time to Lilith in particular.

  “What are you talking about hun? You know the rules of the Super Chasm. He doesn’t have to stop.”

  “Wait a minute, wait a minute. The rules state that if the fighter doesn’t give up, the opponent can continue, but Karson is out cold!”

  “Right, and he’s out cold, so he can’t surrender, can he?” Brad, whom Tyler despised ever since he began paying attention to how Brad would look at Lilith, explained.

  “This is fucked,” Tyler concluded. “Well, yeah! What do you think all of the uproar and protests about the Chasm was about?” Tyler answered himself mentally.

  “The Stock-Boy” straddled Karson, getting ready to finally earn his prize money. As the audience prepared to count how many deathblows would be thrown, for which there was a side-bet in place at the bookmaking kiosk, the fire that burned fervently in Stockton’s eyes and carried him through the short, but intense, fight flickered out and humanity flooded back in. His cocked right gloved hand, stained with Karson’s dark rich blood dropped to his side as he waved to the referee and shook his head in the universal back and forth “no” shake of his head.

  The referee had no choice but to declare Stockton the winner, but even an untrained eye could see the referee’s face riddled with displeasure and frustration. When Stockton got up and the referee raised his arm in the victory pose, the mild applause was quickly overrun with “boos” from the audience.

  “What the fuck!? Is this guy kidding me!?” Brad yelled, as his champagne flute exploded against the wall after Brad hurled it across the room. “Finish the fight, you pussy!”

  “The fight is finished, Brad!” Tyler argued.

  “Oh really, Ty? Well, in my experience, after a fight, there’s an applause, not thousands of people booing in discontent!”

  “I’m sure the main event won’t disappoint. Relax, Brad,” Lilith interjected.

  “Yeah, trust me, the fighters in the main event are psychopaths. They won’t disappoint,” Jayson assured. That would have to change, not only to quell the discontent of the non-Chutmas, but more importantly of the Chutma board members and partners, which was most of the board.

  “They had better not, because if you keep sanctioning fights between pussies like this,” Brad pointed, his finger turning bright red where it was pushed up against the glass, “then this place is finished in two months.”

  “Brad, even the threat or potential for a death in the ring will keep asses in the seats,” Lilith said, and then turned to Jayson. “But he’s right. Eventually, we’ll have to make good on that promise, otherwise the numbers will dwindle…slowly but surely.”

  Jayson promised that as with any job, his judgment would only sharpen, and that he had confidence in the remainder of the fighters he had enlisted. While Jayson explained his case to the rest of the board, Tyler made his way to the bathroom, where he sat in his suit on the toilet with his head in his hands, looking like a forlorn gargoyle on his perch, going over again and again in his mind how he could have been so mislead by not only the board of directors, but his wife. His wife. How could she be so heartless? Inside Tyler knew she was not like other women, didn’t he? Surely he had been over this before in his own mind. You and I have spoken about it ad nauseam. After all, Tyler was blessed with an enviable memory. Yes, he remembered the examples of her dark guile, misdirection, and let’s face it, her downright uncanny ability to actually control situations over the years. As he recollected, he quickly dismounted the toilet bowl, got to his knees, and vacated the contents of his stomach.

  * * *

  The maiden bout of the Chasm left the board of directors shaken and unsure about the future of the venue as the ebbs of discontent surrounded the group while they observed from the Imperial Suite. However hasty their judgment was, they understood the fast paced business of not only the city of Las Vegas, but of fads in general. You make your money when you can because nothing is forever. I’m here to tell you that they underestimated their audience…the followers of the Super Chasm weren’t going anywhere, and I am not only speaking in terms of that fight night, I am speaking in terms of the future.

  The second fight, and main event, between “Krag” Tyrone Washington and Gunnar “The Widow-Maker” DeStefano calmed the nerves of the dubiously hostile board of directors. This fight delivered everything the audience and board of directors could have hoped for…even Tyler, if he was being honest with himself. He can’t lie to me, I’d know. The main event delivered the superficial carnage that all other fighting arenas and sports brought, but tonight the Chasm separated itself from the rest. The main event resulted in death, and the audience could not have been more excited.

  The fight between Washington and DeStefano lasted four bone-crushing rounds. What could have looked like different martial arts disciplines squaring off to test which was mightier instead resembled a prison brawl with the professional prowess that high school students could emulate in the schoolyard after the final school bell rang. What the fight lacked in style, it made up for in action seven-fold. The two combatants punished each other, absorbing countless devastating blows. Before the fourth round began, when the referee asked the combatants if they wanted to continue after looking at their haggard and mutilated faces, DeStefano knocked out one of his corner-men (much to the delight of the spectators) for trying to convince the referee that his fighter had had enough. Luckily for DeStefano, it was not his corner-man’s decision to make, as per the rules. However, unfortunately for DeStefano, his trainer was right.

  As the fourth round started and the two exhausted fighters slowly circled each other in the middle of the decagon, Washington on feet as heavy as hardened concrete, and DeStefano on the most rubbery of legs, DeStefano mustered the last of his energy to throw a devastating right hook, which only found air. Washington seized the moment of vulnerability after DeStefano whiffed with such a furious punch and threw his own right hook, which caught DeStefano in his temple. The Widow-Maker collapsed immediately, and the entire spectating collective rose to their feet in anticipation of the ending of the fight.

  The spectators were looking forward to Krag quickly straddling DeStefano and counting along in primal screams with each one of Krag’s deadly punches to the head of a defenseless DeStefano, bringing him closer and closer to his expiration. However, we don’t always get what we want. Just ask Mick Jagger.

  When DeStefano went to the ground, Krag only stared at his dazed opponent on the decagon mat, who was unaware and precariously clinging to consciousness. The entire audience had already created an obvious, yet cleverly apropos, signature chant for the end of a fight. Thousands of spectators joined as one to collectively pump a thumbs-down into the blood-lust-poisoned air as they all chanted “END-IT! END-IT!” in unison. DeStefano rolled from side to side, willing himself to get up from the mat, knowing what it potentially meant for him if he was unable. DeStefano came to a rest on his back with his head in his hands, trying to regain his strength and equilibrium. Krag, the ice cold merciless killer who had once killed a man by shooting him, stabbing him, and drowning him, only stared back at his opponent in obvious contemplation.

  “Terrific
! Just fucking terrific!” Brad roared in contempt. “Is this pussy refusing to finish the fight too?” He turned his anger to Jayson with his meaty index finger. “Great recruiting job, Jayson! For our next match–if there is one after this cluster-fuck-why don’t you just get us a couple of cock-sucking boy scout troop leaders!” The room went silent, save for the sound of ice settling in Tyler’s drink. “You may have single-handedly fucked this place before we even got a running start!” After shifting uncomfortably on his feet, an emasculated Jayson split his concentration of near-panic between his surly associate and the action (or lack thereof) in the decagon below the suite.

  “Shut your mouth, Brad!” Lilith boomed in a voice that achieved the requested silence in the room, with the exception of the muffled sound of the thousands of spectators bleeding through the glass of the suite window. Her voice also frightened her husband, who could not recall ever hearing that threating other-worldly bass in her tone prior to this evening. “Just watch,” Lilith finished in a voice that juxtaposed her chilling tone brilliantly and horrifically. Lilith turned to look through the suite window and the others followed suit, occasionally sneaking peeks over at Lilith, worried that her anger had not truly left her.

  Krag glanced quickly at the referee, who gave a look that asked Krag, “What’s your next move, pal, because I ain’t stopping this thing. Not after that last fight. I could hear the owners shitting Tiffany tie-tacks from here!” Then, the referee actually spoke on the sly: “You better end this one, pal; they’ll tear you apart.” Krag didn’t know if the referee had meant the spectators, or the owners, but found it to be a moot question regardless.

  “I’m just thinking about how I’m gonna end this white motherfucker,” Krag informed. The referee backed away.