Radiation Face

by Phil Skaggs Jr.

  I finally get to the Bishop, home of All-in Fighting. It’s blue painted brick building with a pair of purple doors and a sign over the doors that reads “Fght tonght! Mane Event: Jerry Lince vs. Brad ‘The Fst’ Copper”. Jerry Lince is the non-mutant. Figures he’d get the one “i”.

  I walk through the doors and I’m hit with purple and red neon and a buzz of voices down the hall. There’s a line of normal looking people and a few that look like me. I get my money and get my hand stamped by a scruffy looking girl. A bigger, scruffier looking dude is standing next to her. He nods and I move on down the hall.

  I grab another flyer. I left the spitwad at home. There’s about eight matches lined up besides the headline bout. There’s only pics of Lince and Copper on the flyer so I know that Copper is the mutant. You can see the big eyes and twisted expression on his fist. He’s got oversized hands. I guess that’s where the nickname “The Fist” comes from. I have no idea how they do things. I wonder if it’s a normal/mutant match up all the way down or they just mix it up with whoever. I hope they mix up.

  #

  Three matches in and I’m hooked. These guys are on a different level than what I’m used to. It’s kind of intimidating. We were scrappers out in Middling. We had a gym, but it was nothing more than a place for a few us to get together and spar. We had matches set up from a few towns that were in the radiation circle. About four or five. They were wild, bloody messes.

  But these fighters have finesse. They have skill. They have an ability that I’ve tried to take from every video I could get my hands on. It’s amazing. I want to go home and train. I need to find a way to get to this level.

  I notice some girl from across the way. She looks familiar. I didn’t notice her before, but now I can’t help it. She keeps staring at me. She won’t take her eyes off of me. Even when I make eye contact with her. I break away first. I don’t know what’s going on with her. She might be a mutant chaser. I hope not. I’m not looking for anything more than what I have with Melanie. I turn back to the fight at hand and watch a guy in black shorts. He’s got a barrel chest and his face looks like he’s been around the block a few times.

  He’s straddling a guy in white tights. The guy in white looks like it’s been around the block too. And filled with radiation. He’s got bumps and sores across his head and neck. His jaw is large and wide. He has a tongue that doesn’t seem to want to fit in is mouth. He’s on his back holding up his hands trying to block the guy in black. He brings his legs up around the man in black’s neck and throws him to the ground and with three swift punches to the head the man in white is standing over his opponent with his tongue hanging heavy out of his mouth. His blood coming down his forehead, mixing with his opponent’s. He let’s out a scream and dances around the cage. I look at my flyer which has been crumpled and twisted in my excited hands. His name is Willy Barnes. The crowd cheers and he raises his fists high in the air and smiles.

  #

  The bouts end anti-climatically. The last fight wasn’t that great. They danced around each other and the human won with points. It didn’t look like anything special. But the fights before it. They made me want to get in.

  I stood around the back of the building near the locker rooms hoping to catch someone that seemed important. As I wait, groups of girls and guys walk by as they enter in cheering for the champ. It’s madness. The place is clearing out and I still wait for someone to walk out of the locker rooms. I start to get nervous and think that maybe there’s a back exit that everyone is taking.

  Finally, Willy Barnes emerges. He’s flanked by two men. He’s talking to them about the fight and I hear tidbits of their plans for next week.

  ‘Rest up, Willy. Your next one’s not for a few more weeks.’ says the man to his left. A large, round guy with a black t-shirt that reads “The Fist” across the front with some weird looking designs surrounding it. His face’s left side bulges from his skull.

  ‘How many more you got lined up for me for the season?’ Willy asks.

  ‘We got a few more. Still trying to get those bigger ones, but you gotta learn to play the game a little. I could get some big fights then. You’re good and everyone likes you.’ The guy on Willy’s left says. He’s got a tie and button up shirt on with a big smile. Nothing’s wrong with his face.

  ‘I fight how I fight, Tommy. You know that. Just get me what you can. Russel, I’ll see you at the gym Tuesday morning.’ Willy breaks off from the two and I give him a few steps before I run up to him.

  ‘Uh, Mr. Barnes.’ I raise my hand on instinct as I say it.

  ‘Hey, how’s it going, kid?’ He reaches his hand out as if he’s waiting for something. I grab it to shake. ‘No, kid, what do you want me to sign?’

  ‘Oh, uh, sorry, Mr. Barnes. Nothing. I don’t want you to sign nothing.’ I smile.

  ‘Just a handshake? All right.’ He grips it hard then turns away.

  ‘No, I had a question.’ He stops. ‘How does someone sign up for this?’

  ‘Sign up for this?’ He looks me over.

  ‘Yeah, sign up to fight. How do I do that?’

  ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Seventeen.’ I fudge a year.

  ‘Well, first you need to be eighteen. Second, you don’t want to do this. It’s a hard life. Go do something else. You don’t want this.’

  ‘No, I do. I used to fight back in Middling.’

  He stops and turns back to me. ‘You a Middling kid?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I used to live near there for a few years. I got out of Wheeler before it got stomped down for those monsters’ nests. It’s a nice place.’

  ‘I know. My dad moved me out here though hoping it would be better. Normal.’

  ‘Good man.’ He clenched his large jaw and exhaled. ‘Stick with what’s normal. You’ll do better. Now, I gotta go. I got things to do. Glad you enjoyed the fight. It’s always better outside of the cage.’ Willy turns away again and heads out the front door. He stops to talk to the large scruffy guy at the ticket counter for a second then heads out. I follow behind and heads for the bus while he heads for the parking lot. I get on the bus and head home. I want to get to bed so I can get up early for my run. I still have a long ways to go.

  #

  It’s Monday, I get up and run. My time has gotten better and my endurance has increased a little. I’m feeling pretty happy.

  My mom’s getting ready for her first ultrasound later today. Dad’s going to knock off work early and head to the doctor’s to see how the little guy is doing and see if it is a little guy or little gal.

  I get ready and head to school. I’m going to have to dig around a little and see how I get my foot in the door over at the All-In Fighting.

  School goes just about as well as possible. The teachers are the same bunch of jerks they always are. So are most of the students. Melanie isn’t anywhere to be found. Though I caught her walking down the hall once. She decided not to bother looking at me. Probably won’t be seeing any of her in the near future.

  I sit by myself at lunch as usually. All the popular kids go outside to ear which leaves plenty of room for most of us rejects to grab our own table and not be bothered.

  I’m eating a sandwich and some chips I packed for myself when a familiar face starts walking my way. She’s the same face I saw at the fight on Saturday night. So she’s in my school. I probably saw her floating around. Might even be in a class. I try not to make any eye contact with any of the students. It just leads to being hassled.

  She has a nice enough face and body from what I can tell through her dark make up and dark clothes. She’s dressed like some Addams family cousin. Not really my thing. I’ll have to brush her off. She’s probably one of those mutant chasers who’s into all kinds of freaky things. Watching horror flicks probably gets her off. I really don’t want to get into that no matter how pretty the girl. I’ll just wait until Melanie comes back around.

  ‘Hey.’ She sits down at the table. Bold.
‘I saw you at the fight the other night, right? That was you.’

  I keep my head down and I make a display of eating my sandwich with as much sound and visuals as possible. These kinds of girls take even the slightest bit of contact as encouragement. I gotta just be completely oblivious.

  ‘You a fighter?’ She asks.

  I keep eating.

  ‘Can you talk? Look, you don’t need to be an asshole.’

  She decides to play the same game as me after that. She sits there and doesn’t say a word. She just sits and waits. It’s starting to get on my nerves. I don’t have a lot of patience when it comes to people. I expect them to say their shit to me and move on.

  ‘Look, I’m not interested. I’m already seeing someone.’ I finally come clean. ‘It’s great that you’re curious and all that shit, but I don’t have a weird shaped cock nor do I piss out of my ass or any other fucked up thing you’re thinking. Alright. So now you can move along and tell your friends you talked to the freak show.’

  ‘What the hell?’ She pulls her face close together and looks like she’s about to smash her hand across my face. ‘Seriously, what the fuck? I’m not into you, dude. That’s not happening. Not happening. Sorry.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’ I’m sure she’s just trying to save face. ‘Then what do you want?’

  ‘I just wanted to talk. That’s all. I saw you at the fight and thought maybe you, oh I don’t know, would want to talk.’ She raises her hands up and stands up away from the table.

  Shit. I swallow my pride. ‘Hey, wait. Sorry. My bad. Rough day and all.’ I hope she turns back around. I’m hoping she’s been going to them long enough that she might know how I could get in one of those fights. Or even just know who I should talk to. Anything.

  ‘Rough day?’ She has her arms folded across her chest.

  ‘Yeah, rough day. Any day here is a rough day.’

  ‘It sure is a shithole filled with real shitheads.’

  ‘You don’t have to convince me.’ I offer her up a seat and she takes it. ‘Look I’m really sorry again. I’m just not used to people wanting to talk to me. It’s kinda weird.’

  ‘I can understand that.’

  ‘I figured.’

  ‘You did.’ She raises an eyebrow.

  ‘Yeah, the whole goth thing. Probably doesn’t play well with all the happy, smiling faces.’

  ‘Oh.’ She looks down at her clothes. ‘Yeah, not too well.’

  ‘So, um, what’s your name?’ I ask.

  ‘Sam. Samantha. You can call me Sam. You?’

  ‘Abe.’

  ‘Cool, Abe. So let me ask you again. Are you a fighter?’

  ‘Yeah, I fought a little back in Middling. We had events every few weeks fought all the local guys. I was pretty decent. How’d you guess?’ I give my bicep a feel. It doesn’t feel especially telling.

  ‘Oh, how you watched some of those fights. Like you were studying them or something. Everyone else was looking for blood. But you were kind of wrapped up in the whole thing. You had that fighter look or whatever you want to call it.’

  ‘I did?’ Awesome. ‘Yeah, I started training again. Going to try and get into the bouts around here.’ I put down my sandwich finally. ‘You know how I would do that? I asked some guy there and he kinda blew me off.’

  ‘Really?’ Sam leaned on her elbows. ‘They’re pretty lax with letting anyone in. Especially y--uh...’

  I look at her.

  ‘You mutants.’ She finally says.

  ‘Ah. I see. Are we hard to come by?’

  ‘Up here you are. Everyone usually stays below the radiation line.’

  ‘I saw a few fighting the other night.’ I say.

  ‘Yeah. Most of them are shipped in. A few get lucky and fight well enough to stick around. But that’s only a few.’

  ‘Okay.’ I say. The bell rings. ‘Well, how would I get my foot in the door?’

  Sam grabs her books. ‘That’s easy. Walk in there on a Wednesday and ask for a tryout. You fight. You do well, you’re in. You don’t, well, you get your ass kicked.’

  ‘This Wednesday?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  I smile and throw my bag over my shoulder and head for the next class. I sit there writing vague notes about the Civil War then take a few more classes and head home.

  #

  Back home I’m hitting the heavy bag. I know it’s been awhile since I’ve been in the cage. I’m probably not ready yet, but I feel like I should test myself. I want to test myself. I want to get in there and see where I stand. I think I’ll hold my own. Probably won’t take a slot in the next bout unless it’s quite a few weeks away so I can get some real training in. Get up to the level I know I can be. Shouldn’t take too long. But I want to step back into the cage.

  The heavy bag buckles under my punches and sways. I jab and feel the shock of the bag against my fist and feel it travel up my arm and into my shoulder. I get a few more jabs in and hit with a hook. The feeling is great. I keep going. I keep hitting until my arms are too heavy and my breathing is deep. I rest my hands on my head and do some squats. I don’t count. I just do them until my legs give out. Then I rest and do them again.

  The sun goes down and I’m still squatting and then trying to punch again. I try to get this all in. Tomorrow I’ll rest. Then Wednesday I’ll fight. Just to see where I’m at. Not take any offers unless I know I can get the training I need in before the real fight.

  Mom calls me in for dinner. They have good news. The baby looks healthy. Everything is well. They show me a picture. It’s a weird shaped shadow with some gray highlights. I’m not sure what I’m looking at, but I’m happy for them. Dad is excited and already talking about my responsibilities as an older brother. Also about getting a job. He says he’s going to get me an application to his place if I don’t start looking on my own. That’s not something I want. He works on the border doing clean up. I mean he supervises so that’s not so bad. I’d be a grunt. Cleaning up radiation shit to make sure it doesn’t go any further north into Keystone and the surrounding areas.

  I tell him I’m looking and smile. I say I might have found something downtown. That I’m going back Wednesday to find out if there’s anything there.

  #

  Melanie texts me this morning right as I’m finishing up my run. She wants to meet before school starts. I’m okay with that. I’m nearing the park that she lives by so I tell her I’ll meet her there. I take my time getting there and try to cool down.

  Melanie is waiting at the usually spot. She looks a little more nervous than usual. She usually wants to meet a little later when it’s nice and dark and most of the households around the neighborhood have drifted off to sleep.

  I nod to her and start to take my shirt off. I’m drenched in sweat. She seems to like it at first, but then she pushes me back.

  ‘So who’s that girl you’ve been talking to?’ She asks.

  ‘Girl?’ I wonder who she’s talking about.

  ‘The dark hair and goth shit.’

  ‘Oh. Her?’ I don’t know how she found out or why she gives a shit. ‘She was just someone who wanted to talk to me. Why do you care?’

  ‘I don’t. I just wanted to make sure you weren’t out slutting it around and getting mutant AIDS or something. I don’t need that.’ She walks in close again.

  ‘Oh. Yeah, don’t worry about that. She’s not my type.’ I bring my hands around her waist and pull her in. ‘She was just someone I was talking to.’

  ‘Whatever.’ Her hands are on my shoulders. ‘So where were you Saturday? I missed you.’

  ‘You missed me?’ I almost lose it, but I manage to stifle the laughter.

  ‘Yeah! I missed you!’ She snaps through gritted teeth and a foul scowl.

  ‘Alright, sorry. Just didn’t think you were that kind of girl.’

  ‘Oh? What kind of girl did you think I was?’

  ‘I think you already know that.’

  ‘Shut the fuck up, you goddamn mutant.’<
br />
  I pull her in close and smile. ‘That’s the kind.’

  She kisses me and I kiss her back. We try to hurry but I end up late for school. She calls in sick for the morning. She doesn’t want to be seen coming in too close after me.

  #

  Someone tripped me as I walked down the hall. A lot of others laughed as my books scattered across the floor. ‘Fast feet, fighter!’ Someone that sounded like Ken shouted as I caught myself.

  In class, my lab partner. The lowest nerd on the social ladder spiked my lab experiment with something. The whole damn thing exploded in a gooey green mess. The teacher had me stay after class to clean everything up which made me late for my next class. The teacher nearly sent my down to the office, but she wasn’t interested in filling out any of the paperwork. So she just had me sit to the side of the class and face the window. Not something I expected to do in high school, but there you go.

  At lunch, I try to mellow out. I grab my sandwich and chomp away. All the cool kids outside again. Thank god for good weather. I try not to think about the day cause when I do all I can think about is someone getting the snot kicked out of them, and as I’m swinging away then the rest of the school jumps in and I’m up to my ass in punches and scratches. And at some point I stop fighting back and I just lay there and take until I drift away to death. Let them deal with the aftermath. I can’t imagine many of those bastards would give a fuck.

  But I’ve got til Wednesday. I just have to get through these next few days and I’ll be in that cage. Just get through the next few days.

  ‘Hey.’ It’s Sam.

  ‘Hey.’ I reply. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Nothing. Schools sucks. So on and so on.’

  ‘Yeah, I hear ya.’

  ‘So are you going downtown tomorrow night?’ She asks.

  ‘Yeah. Definitely.’

  ‘Are you, uh, fit?’

  ‘Am I fit?’ I hold up both my arms and flex.

  ‘Yeah, but this is pretty serious stuff. It’s not wherever you’re from.’ She looks me straight in the eye. ‘These are people who train like six days a week.’