CHAPTER 35
As the skeletons began to spread out on Cici, Kopius returned his short sword to inventory and joined the fray. He came in fast with a firm grip on his long blade, yet in the two bounding steps it took to reach the first skeleton, Kopius could have sworn he had time to reminisce about his entire life. The slow-motion continued as his sword came into view, arcing towards the small piece of spine wedged between the skeleton’s shoulders and skull. In the moment before connecting with the bony neck, Kopius had the briefest sensation that he needed to pee.
The world came racing back to full speed when his sword clanged off the hardened bone instead of passing through it as he had anticipated it would. Vibrations shot down the sword and rattled painfully in his hand, up his arm until he released the weapon.
Baseball lexicon would tell you that Kopius had just experienced a ‘’stinger,” a common occurrence when a pitched ball is hit off the end or side of the bat, creating a violent vibration. At best they just hurt.
“Motherf—goddammit! That fucking hurts!” Kopius screeched as he tried to shake the numbing pain from his hand. Though he did not succeed in severing the head, he had managed to force two of the skeletons to collide into each other. The tangled pair did an impromptu pirouette before crashing to the ground, one on top of the other.
Kopius, still shaking his hand like he should have used oven mitts and was now paying the price, stepped up and kicked at the two as they tried to regain their feet. His feet swiped at hands finding leverage and legs creating footholds. He stomped down repeatedly on the two, entangling their rib cages by accident. Just as he remembered that he could set them on fire, an abrupt pain exploded from the back of his head. He stumbled forward, tripped over the entwined skeletons, and crashed to the ground.
Kopius rolled a few times but couldn’t manage the focus to pop to his feet. Instead, he was able to get on one knee and hope he was far enough away to get his senses back undisturbed. He shook his head a few times, and it was his turn to wince when he touched the injured area. Kopius wiped away the small spots of blood on his clothes and looked up to make sense of what was happening.
Two skeletons, like star-crossed lovers, rolled about the ground, failing in every attempt to get dislodged from one another. Beyond them were two other skeletons advancing on Cici. Most notably though, standing only a few feet to his side, was the walking set of bones that had sucker-punched Kopius in the back of the head.
“I see you over there, asshole,” Kopius grumbled. He located his dropped weapon and gave his stung hand a few flexes before retrieving it. Neither men had missed that the skeletons were slow by nature. Cici had already dispatched a fourth skeleton and was slow-walking the other two away from the ooze-filled pond. Kopius understood what he did wrong and used it to reevaluate his approach.
“You swung too soon,” Kopius mumbled to himself.
You’re out in front of it! He could just hear his old first- base coach yelling at him. Sit back! Let it come to you!
In his life on Earth, Cory was a big proponent of ‘‘personal space.’’ He enjoyed keeping a healthy arm’s length distance—if not more—from anyone, at any time, for every reason imaginable. Getting up close and personal was generally reserved for extreme measures, like violence or passion. No need to whisper in my ear when a head nod or hand gesture can do the trick, Cory would have to explain to his more extroverted acquaintances.
Nevertheless, Kopius had experienced the stinger because he’d clipped the bone at the end of his sword instead of further down on the sweet spot. He needed to move in closer.
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Taking a hold of the sword with both hands, Kopius ended evaluation time and advanced. His sword came down from a high arc, breaking the skeleton's arm midway up as it attempted to block the strike. The weapon continued its path and stopped with a THUD! as it stuck into the ground.
He pulled at the sword once, but it only wiggled. A half-panicked, second yank pulled the sword free, but as he came to stand, Kopius caught a boney foot to his chest that sent him tumbling. He hit the ground hard, landing on his back, and was surprised he hadn’t knocked the air out of his lungs.
Thankful for small favors, Kopius returned to his feet and readied his sword. His second attack came from the same high arc, and this time the skeleton struck back. With its remaining arm, the boney combatant threw a haymaker. Their kicks and punches moved much faster than their walking speed.
Kopius had to quickly tilt in order to slide under the strike. That slight adjustment put him in an even better position to level out his sword and shatter a bony leg at the kneecap. The skeleton flailed, trying to remain upright on its one tilting leg.
Whether by luck or by design, as the skeleton began to fall, it also managed to pimp slap Kopius across the face before crashing to the ground. The thing might as well have spit in his face and insulted his mother too because Kopius snapped. Blood seeped from twin gashes on his cheek all while he untethered his rage.
The ego–Kopius’s ego to be specific–is made up of millions of teeny, tiny pieces all held together by a sheen of testosterone and a prayer on the wind. There are ways to strengthen it. There are ways to protect it, but at the end of the day—for all its bluster and bravado—it is fragile, it is brittle and to many, it is fleeting.
To an ego like this, there is a level of disrespect that a slap to the face reaches that a punch does not–or even a spit since we are on the subject–cannot. In fact, they are not even in the same realm of existence, but we digress.
Now, the last time he had been slapped it had been by a woman, and if everyone is being honest, he deserved it. The last time he had been slapped by a man, he had also deserved it, but at least he could fight back—even if unsuccessfully. Being slapped by a skeleton was new and uncharted territory, and to truly understand the level of damage to Kopius's psyche after being hit that way, we would need to quote the entire broadcast of Herbert Morrison during the Hindenburg disaster: Oh the Humanity!
As irrational a reaction as it was, Kopius took the slap personally.
At first, Kopius reverted to his baser instincts: repeatedly stomping down on the skeleton with ever-growing violence. As if discovering the weapon in his hand for the first time, he changed his tactics to a more Neanderthal approach: bludgeoning the bony creature with his sword. After breaking off the remaining arm and removing the other leg around the kneecap area, Kopius went full murderhobo.
Grabbing what was left of both thigh bones, Kopius picked up the quadruple-amputee-skeleton and dragged it towards its two comrades still wrestling on the ground. The bones, still very much alive, wriggled in his grip, trying to get free. The skull made passing attempts to bite his ankles as it bounced and skid across the dirt. Once within range, Kopius used the disabled carcass like a carnival hammer and proceeded to create skeleton-on-skeleton violence.
The blows came down as if Kopius was trying to crack the planet in half; he hoisted and hammered with speed and focus. Absent was the perpetual moaning and groaning that generally accompanied his fights. There was no ‘’stop that’’s or ‘’take that’’s or any other diatribe narrating the scuffle in a play-by-play fashion. He gave this fight the silent treatment, with but a singular purpose: to beat the motherfuckers on the ground with the motherfucker in his hands.
Using the skull of his impromptu mauling device, Kopius pummeled the pair of skeletons. Their bones crushed and cracked, splintering off and flying in all directions. He never blinked, never flinched; hell, he barely took a breath during the whole ordeal.
Kopius bashed them until the skull of the one he was wielding finally dislodged and flew off into the distance. The rest of the body became disjointed and fell apart to the ground. He was left holding two thigh bones like a drummer in search of a kit. He threw the bones to the side and stomped down on what remained of the two skeletons on the ground, eventually severing both heads from their respective spines.
The tantrum ended when Kopius picked up the nearest skull and punted it.