Head swimming Justice staggered through the crowd, vaguely aware of a distant woman’s voice screaming about an overdose. Justice wasn’t aware that the human brain could delay processing sound though so his inability to understand everything said around him was profoundly disturbing. More than once, before reaching the cage, he lost the thread and didn’t know why he was going there. “Okay, this ain’t you, it’s the pills she slipped you. Still got this…”
Justice got a good look at the announcer who had been chattering all night; he looked like a Disc Jockey; neon colors, shirt with a turned up collar, sunglasses indoors. Ridiculous. “And here is the challenger, at six-foot-three and two-hundred and seventy pounds; the man whose name is also what he throws… This is Justice Haymaker!” the announcer had then paused. “Weird, looks like the challenger is by the bar. Folks, help Justice on his way to the cage, will you?” The announcer wasn’t talking, but he had been, and this is what he had said. So many hands had guided him to this point where, now, one last man stood out of his way, holding the folding chair he had been sitting in. Justice nodded then started going the wrong way around the cage, away from the door.
“He’s radiating heat” someone had said. When? So many words, echoed, nonsense now lacking their context. Justice couldn’t help but smile, and he did, looking like a maniac. His heart pounded rapidly, trying to escape his chest, his skin was a deep red and he broke into a frightening laugh as security grabbed him, directing him back towards the door to the cage before he could walk a full circle around it.
“Okay folks, both men are in the cage. Remember, the referee is only here to start and end the match because rules are for suckers! It looks like our challenger has either been drugged or is on drugs but that’s okay here! This might be a great play by Champion McVeigh’s corner if, indeed, they are responsible. If it’s performance enhancing; who cares!?”
Justice shook his head. No longer in the crowd things were a little more clear. The announcer fell silent for a moment and he could take in his opponent, all seven feet of him. Monstrous arms, unrealistically big, enlarged head with a green mohawk on it, legs that were big but only because they carried this man around, not because he focused on them. He could use a leg day, in fact. Then, finally, eyes falling on the bulging stomach of this giant, Justice fought back laughter. “Aw … ain’t that some shit. Man…”
“Oi!” shouted the giant, getting Justice to make eye contact. “You want this?” He held up a bizarre patent leather weightlifting belt with golden plates.
Justice laughed. “Not really, no.”
“What do you mean no!? You think this is funny, mate?” growled McVeigh. “I’ve had shite bigger than you. Don’t you know you’re in bloody danger?”
“Why are you covered in nipples!?” Justice pointed and laughed hysterically, causing McVeigh to break away, looking around at the crowd. Justice was referencing heavy acne all over the big man’s body. “Dude, seriously. Where’s the milk come out!?”
A loud “crack” rang out as McVeigh hit a wild, wide swing, punching all the way through and sending Justice tumbling end over end. Funny how Chad was concerned he wouldn’t be able to fall down when he got hit; this guy’s leverage and weight would move Justice even if the punches didn’t actually hurt him. Actually, it felt good! No doubt this was another effect of Scarlett’s drug snuck into his drink because, otherwise, how could that horrendous punch feel like a hive full of friendly bees giving Justice a thousand kisses?
At any rate the crowd didn’t care for Justice’s internal process. All they knew was that a crazy man with a big grin on his face was pulling himself slowly up using the cage and not using his legs; some comedy to go with the action. They erupted as McVeigh raised his arms in mock victory before strolling confidently over towards Justice. “You simple or somethin’, mate? Think it’s smart to antagonize a man twice your size?”
Justice finally got his feet under him, just in time to look McVeigh in the face. “Thank ya kindly, sir. Not too many times someone called me ‘smart’.” He giggled for a moment before McVeigh grabbed him by the jaw, mushing his face up.
“Huh, skin’s proper leather, like an addict; tough. Eyes all fucked up. What you on, my son?” The giant wasn’t asking out of concern. His smirk communicated clearly that he believed his night just got a lot easier.
“Truth be told, sir, I have no idea!” Justice confessed through forcibly puckered lips. “She said but all I remember are pills–ff!” Justice grunted lightly as McVeigh put on a show, hammering his ribs, left and right, seven times then cocking his right hand back in an exaggerated fashion. “Redhead done filled my drink with pills!” an overhand right overbalanced Justice who caught himself, fingers hooked in the mesh of the cage, not quite going all the way down. Still, nothing hurt, not that this guy was likely to do too much damage, but even a bug bite hurts if everything’s working correctly.
“That’s too bad. I thought maybe this would be a challenge! Do you even know who I am?” McVeigh all but picked Justice up by the hair before pushing him back into the cage by his throat. “I’m the bleedin’ Underground Combat League champion, dammit! Say my name!”
“Uh … Nipples?” Justice cackled. “Wait, no, dude, I know. It’s Nipples McVeigh!” He blinked several times before stroking the hand at his throat lovingly. It felt like silk!
McVeigh, however, just about choked on his tongue in rage. “Nipples!? My name is Brutus! Brutus fucking Mcveigh!” Dancing backwards, pulling Justice out, McVeigh hurled him up and over by the head. Justice hit hard but rolled to his feet, falling into the cage, his face catching on the mesh to keep him mostly vertical.
“Justice! Listen!” it was Scarlett! She was up front and got out of her seat as Justice got near. “Justice! Can you understand me!?”
“I am not sure” said Justice. “ Are you the redheaded lady with the happy pills or just blood in my eyes?
She didn’t like this much. “You have to listen. I hear you’re tough, really tough, but if you just let McVeigh hit you there’s no telling how far he’ll go. He keeps a hammer, ball pein hammer, in a hidden pocket. Watch for the hammer!” Justice disappeared from sight as McVeigh lifted him up again.
McVeigh buffeted Justice effortlessly, using the sweet science to keep him upright through punch placement alone. Justice would tip right, McVeigh would punch him left, and so on. It was clear to the crowd that McVeigh toyed with his victim but, now, he was breathing hard. This was a man who got strong by just being big and stayed as big as he was through chemical intervention and self-medication. Grabbing the southern powerhouse by the shoulders he steered him to his knees. “You really are making it easy on me tonight, aren’t you? Fine…” With that Brutus McVeigh made a show of dancing back, touching the cage, then getting a running start to take Justice Haymaker’s head off with a charging right hook. It was the kind of blow that would rupture a heavy punching bag.
Justice hit the canvas, a remarkably hard wooden platform, the cotton sailcloth covering it doing very little to improve the surface. He smiled; everything around him was beautiful, the crowd’s cheers, the referee entering the cage because it was unclear what was happening, Brutus McVeigh screaming in pain.
Huh, that was weird. The giant was howling, the pitch of his voice going dangerously high. Suddenly the referee was over Justice. “Hey there.” he said to the man in the striped shirt.
The ref’s facial expression changed from one of urgent concern to idle curiosity. “Uh, okay … are you able to continue?”
“Oh yeah, I’m good. Real good!” exclaimed Justice. He was, in fact, chemically imbalanced to the point where he barely knew what was going on but he was too far gone to know that.
“Well then. Are you able to stand?”
“Probably.”
The referee started to pop up but lowered himself again. “Well, are you going to stand? The people want a fight and the big man is waiting for the word from me.”
“Do you want me to?” Justice asked with a smile.
“What? Me? That’s not my department. If you don’t get up you lose.” explained the referee. “But if you do get up you haven’t done much so far. The people are getting pissed. Maybe work on that?”
“Yeah, alright” grunted Justice, sitting up then all but gliding to his feet. He dusted off his jeans and Hawaiian shirt. “Oh shit, my shirt’s gettin’ dirty.” Flapping open the multicolored fashion abortion had miraculously survived the beating Justice was absorbing. Whipping it off he flung it into the crowd with flair. Erupting in shocked applause, they caught Justice’s attention. “You want more!?” he shouted, pulling his muscle shirt (okay, undershirt) off as several women shrieked.
As Justice, feeling very sensuous from his MDMA overdose, started to fumble with his belt he heard a roar from behind him. Turning back he saw McVeigh, eyes fixated on him, manhandling the referee. “Are you fucking kidding me!? Get out of here!” Flinging the much smaller man aside McVeigh started to stalk Justice anew. Striking the canvas the ref lay very still, seemingly having hit his head.
“Whoa, careful, big man. Ref seems a little fragile … like a baby! Or a zebra. Or a … baby zebra…” Justice trailed off, staring at the referee in his striped shirt.
“He was gonna end the fight! Said I can’t continue because you broke my fuckin’ hand! I don’t know who the fuck you are but there’s no fuckin’ way I’m givin’ you my title because you got the skull of a caveman!”
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“There’s that word again!” Justice laughed as Brutus McVeigh charged.
Swinging with his left hand, the right one hanging limp and worthless, McVeigh missed by a country mile as Justice caught him on his hip, turned him, and flung him backwards into the cage. His massive girth moving at that speed reshaped the cage; braces breaking free on the bottom and the corner struck by McVeigh’s body stabbing out almost a full foot foot off the wood and canvas platform. The crowd cried out as one in fear and retreated in a flurry of chaotic movement.
Justice looked on in shock. “Now I know that ain’t right.” Casting about he saw the unconscious referee, a second man in the same shirt checking on that guy, McVeigh pulling himself up from the canvas and there was Scarlett, looking concerned. “Hey, what was that you were sayin’? Oh … wait a second.” Justice blinked several times rapidly, thrown off a bit as Chad came up behind Scarlett, putting an arm around her. She looked down, shame-faced. “You … know each other?”
As Justice struggled to put it together he was oblivious to the crowd, already loud, a high-pitched shrieking took over just before a massive cracking sound and a white flash stunned Justice. McVeigh was back and hitting harder than before, somehow. He just managed to roll to his back as the giant fell upon him, the broken hand leaning hard into his throat.
“I’ll kill you! You think you’re the first to fuck with me!?” shouted McVeigh as his off-hand came crashing down and the world flashed again. There was something in his hand. “You’re just the latest victim!” and he continued on, bouncing Justice’s head off the mat. Head swimming, pain dulled even beyond his unusual tolerance, Justice became aware that he was hurt as blood started to spray with each blow, flowing from his forehead and into his eyes. McVeigh stood up. “Where’s the undercard referee!? This son a whore is done! You don’t call the match fast he fucking dies!”
Justice’s reason, having left him before he even entered the cage, nagged at the back of his mind. A high-pitched whine dulled his hearing. He turned his head, seeing Scarlett grabbing the side of the cage, crying “I’m sorry! Just give up! Don’t let him hit you again.” She looked more red than before. Justice blinked, struggling to see.
Behind her Chad was yelling too. “Now, you fucking redneck! You hear me!? I know you’re not done. Now! It’s magic time!”
Magic time. They hadn’t discussed a code word for when Justice should end the fight but now did seem like a good time to stop playing patty cake, what with all the blood loss. He started to sit up but a massive weight fell upon him again. McVeigh, shouting again, but Justice didn’t hear him.
He was struggling to make out what Scarlett and Chad were arguing about. They were together, that was clear, but she said before that her boyfriend was a monster. “You didn’t tell me he was your fighter!” he was able to make out. Unsurprisingly, Justice’s head bounced off the canvas again. More blood on that side of his head, no doubt.
Shoving Scarlett to the floor, Chad hit the cage, roaring. “Don’t you lose goddammit! Finish this fucking fight or your girl gets it. You hear me!? Win or Renna is done for!”
To this point Justice was loose and easy, so loose that regaining his senses had proven an insurmountable challenge. Somehow though, seeing Scarlett abused and hearing the threat to the woman he loved, made him rigid from head to toe. The next blow with what Justice now recognized as a hammer did nothing but cause him to turn his attention to McVeigh, who jumped a little, seeing every vein and crease bulge and pinch, merging with the crimson mask of blood to make Justice look very much like a monster. An instant later McVeigh was screaming because Justice had grabbed his broken hand and was crushing it now much more thoroughly.
With his free hand Justice shoved McVeigh off, actually rising about three feet into the air and bouncing once, the replacement referee dancing away to avoid the titanic Briton. The giant, in a panic, staggered to his feet and clutched his hand. He looked to Justice who had picked up the dropped hammer. “No! No, I give up!” He then fell silent as Justice effortlessly snapped the fiberglass handle of the hammer and tossed the pieces aside.
Hauling back Justice swung at McVeigh in an uncontrolled fashion, a haymaker, his namesake, hand open, and, in spite of the size difference McVeigh tumbled as it struck him across the shoulder and back. The endless chatter of the announcer had stopped, the first ten rows were empty and the crowd looked on as if bearing witness to something supernatural. Justice roared, the sound reverberating off the walls, wine glasses shattering and everyone cringing.
Looking around, a caged animal, still unsure of his course of action, Justice settled on abusing the cage. Gripping the rear of the cage at the top he pulled and, with a squeal and a loud pop two sections separated, creating a large gap. Justice stalked quickly over to McVeigh who struggled, unable to rise by himself, clutching his mangled hand, dragging him to the new gap. Justice couldn’t understand anything said to him, not by the referee and certainly not the blubbering from the giant. Justice shoved McVeigh’s neck into the gap and began to bend the metal back as McVeigh shrieked, sure that he was about to die.
And the bell rang, deafeningly, it was so near to him that it’s all that Justice could hear. He stopped, releasing McVeigh, and staggering back a little. Two men immediately ran to aid McVeigh, becoming aware right away that they needed tools to free him. Casting about Justice saw a well-dressed man in an expensive pinstripe suit pressing a white towel into the hands of the referee, flanked by an older gentleman in suspenders who was fixated on Justice. Feeling his tenuous grip on sanity, suddenly afraid of himself, Justice exited the cage, making a beeline for the backstage area he’d never made it to previously.
As he passed by Justice brushed up against the announcer’s table, pushing it quite a bit with the incidental contact and bringing the loudmouthed D.J. back to reality. “Uh, ah, your winner and the new champion of the Underground Combat League…” He trailed off, realizing that his winner wasn’t sticking around but managed to recover. “Justice Haymaker! He’ll be getting his belt in the back, folks! Uh, everybody get another drink as we start to tear down the proceedings. I know that was dramatic but the afterparty is still on starting in one hour!”
Finding the locker room, a leftover from an office gym used by employees when this was a proper business, Justice ran cold water and started trying to get the blood off. It worked some but not very much with his hair and beard. He drank some water as well, trying to focus, and it felt like maybe his body was now trying to fight off the poison he’d been fed. Interestingly, he noticed that his wounds had stopped bleeding and, indeed, looked old, as if they’d been healing for days. He looked at one very small hole near a larger split and, inside of five seconds, he saw it seal completely. “Well ain’t that somethin’?”
“Holy. Shit. What was that?” shouted Chad, Scarlett in tow. “That was the craziest shit I’ve ever seen in this place and that is saying something.” Justice looked at him intently in the mirror. He had a thin coating of white powder under his nose, dispersed in his very nineteen-eighties mustache. He’d clearly tried to wipe it away but doing it dry wasn’t about to clear it all away.
“Thought I heard somethin’ awful. But … that can’t be right. Man have to be nuts to say somethin’ like that to me.”
“Ah, gotcha. Hey, it ain’t your fault, there was a lot of noise in that arena. Chaos. Spilled drinks all over, drunk idiots screaming. Hell, poor Scarlett here even took a fall, didn’t you, baby?” She didn’t reply, still avoiding eye contact with both men.
“Yeah… About her. She drugged me. That on account of you?” Justice asked point blank.
Chad flinched, placing a thumb on his sidearm as he always did when he got nervous. “What? That? Justice, buddy, I’m sorry but I had to protect my investment.”
“I thought I was your investment.” said Justice, half turning away from the mirror.
“No, no you’re my employee, my tenant, but my investment was the bet I made. A massive bet that paid off bigtime.” Chad patted a briefcase. Justice guessed that the case was why Chad was a few minutes behind him. “I knew you’d win but, first, it had to look like you were going to lose.”
“And I get forty percent of that, right? You get your big payday, we get our papers and our cut and that's it. I’m done. Right?” Justice was still tensed up, head-to-toe.
“Ah … we should discuss this in the car. The UCL guys can wait but we got more important matters, right? Like money. Our money.” Chad paused. “Your money.”
That relaxed him a little bit. “Whatever man, lead the way. I’m all turned around in this fuckin’ place.” said Justice, still annoyed but feeling increasingly like himself. Certainly he wasn’t about to admit that the triple dose of Extasy still had him a little confused.
“Alright!” said Chad and he led the way to the parking garage. The trio moved in silence, Scarlett bringing it up the rear. Justice stole a look behind him every so often, fighting the urge to check on her.
Exiting into the garage Chad waved his claim ticket which was taken before the bulky valet ran off to grab his car. “There we go. Justice, while we’re here, before we’re in the car and your reaction might be … bad for people in a moving vehicle, I need to tell you something.”
“Oh?” Justice tensed up again.
“See … earlier, when I was in my basement, I didn’t just follow you in. I was already there.”
“You mean my apartment. Why the fuck you in there without me, Chad? I know Renna didn’t let you in.”
“Well, that’s just the thing. I was … pretty broke. Some bad men spotted me the money for tonight but I had to provide them with some collateral.”
Justice knew something was very bad when Scarlett started backing away. “What the hell are you on about, Chad!?”
“Well, there were these kids I hired. I know you met them. They were supposed to delay you long enough for me to get the collateral. Instead, I took you when you got back home in record time and they got the collateral for my bet. They … kind of kidnapped Renna.”
Already at his limit, Justice heard those words and instantly picked Chad up by the throat. “You took my girl!?” he growled, Scarlett screamed and a loud bang rang out throughout the parking garage. Justice fell to his knees.
“Shit.” muttered Chad. “Shit, Justice, you scared the hell out of me, man. I am so sorry. Yes, some bad dudes have Renna. Human traffickers. Slavers…” He muttered and shook his head. “But you really should’ve kept your cool. If you had there wouldn’t be a thirty-eight slug in your belly.”
Scarlett started to cry as Justice pulled his hands away from his stomach, bloody. “You’re gonna take me to ‘em, Chad. Y’hear?” muttered Justice.
Distantly Chad’s Camaro was heard to turn on. “What’s that?” he asked, still holding his pistol. “No. No, see, they’re coming to get their repayment later tonight. Why would I do that?”
“You done seen what I can do. You’ll take me to them … or I’ll start tearin’ pieces off you and makin’ you eat ‘em.”
Pause. Chad busted out laughing, a high-pitched, frantic, cocaine-fueled shriek. He realized in that moment that it was time to cut his losses. “Well, shit, man, I was looking forward to a long future working with you. Figured you’d be motivated to buy her freedom, like on a payment program, but if that’s the way it is then this is goodbye.” Chad touched the barrel of the gun to the top of Justice’s head.
Almost in a blur the gun was pushed aside and Justice had it by the barrel, it went off once and he twisted it out of Chad’s hand. Teeth grinding together, he stared Chad in the eye, grabbed the butt of the gun with the other hand and bent it, ultimately ripping the gun in two.
“Wha … how? No. You can’t…”
Rising back to his feet Justice felt at his belly where the bullet was lodged, pushing in on the tissues surrounding the wound and pulling the bullet out to show Chad. “So which do you want to eat first, motherfucker!? Fingers, toes or do I just feed you your own fucking balls!?”