Sam

The old junkyard bustled with activity, people shoving for space around piles of assorted trash and finding seats on top of rusted cars. The horizon was broken up by a skyline of precarious junk towers and broken-down equipment and an old yellow crane looming above it all, cable arm swinging in the wind. There was a buzz of conversation, and sometimes money changed hands. A speaker system blared tacky music.

Sam was about done stretching inside the improvised fighting ring. It was closed off by wooden poles hammered into the ground with mismatched ropes suspended from them, making about a twelve-by-twelve foot square. The packed earth underfoot was covered by a sheet of blue tarp with a liberal amount of holes and tears for some careless fighter to snag a foot on.

Sam’s opponent, a fellow named Luke, stood opposite her, checking the bandage wrapping on his fists. He was taller than average, and looked like he had good reach with those arms.

That means I have to close the distance fast, get him on the ground. I don’t have a chance in a stand-up fight.

Sam gave her legs one last stretch and began bouncing on bare feet, trying her best to stay loose despite the nerves that were creeping in, threatened to freeze her solid. She popped her mouthguard in as the owner of the junkyard—who served as the announcer for these gatherings—ducked under the ropes and swaggered about the ring, delivering his usual drivel. Sam blocked out his existence, focused only on her opponent. The vaguely apologetic look in his eyes that seemed ‘sorry that I have to do this to you’ really pissed her off. She recognized it from most of the other guys she’d fought.

Of course, she couldn’t blame them especially. She was a woman going up against a man—they knew they were going to go through her like a rock through wet tissue paper.

She knew that, too. As did the spectators. Half of them were jeering all sorts of things, or laughing coarsely with their buddies.

But this time would be different. It had to be. She’d been training hard for it, after all. She'd learned from her mistakes, honed her technique. She was twice the fighter she had been just a year or two ago.

That would be enough, wouldn't it?

Sam realized the fight had already started when the spectators’ wild noise got louder and the junkyard owner scrambled out of the ring, snapping her out of her thoughts. Luke hesitated, looking at the retreating back of the man in charge as though he was still not quite sure about this whole thing.

If he had any qualms about fighting a girl, Sam was about to disabuse him of that notion. She darted forward, closing the distance between them in a second flat, feet sliding on rough tarp with a grating squeak as she shot low, arms outstretched.

Luke blinked, finally fixing his attention on her, but he moved too late to avoid the grapple. She got one of his legs, hooked the other with a foot, and tipped him over onto his back, spidering on top. He shot an arm out to tear her off, and she immediately focused all her attention on the exposed limb, wrapping himself around it and forcing him flat as she caught him in an armbar. Hands on his wrist and legs pinning his torso, she forced him wide, hyperextending his shoulder joint.

Luke struggled, off-balance, grunting. Locked down and without proper leverage to work with, the difference in their reach and strength didn’t mean as much.

But god, was he strong. She struggled to hold the submission, but he caught a handful of her clothing and hauled himself around to slip his head clear, then his torso. When she tried to readjust her legs to get his head in a lock, he caught her with a fist in her gut, driving the air clean out of her.

Luke slid free, climbing to his knees to stand back up. Refusing to let up, Sam kept after him and attacked his back this time. She wrapped her legs around his torso and wormed a hand in under his chin, tipping him back for a rear naked choke.

He struggled to break it; growling, thrashing, arms flailing wildly. Sam squeezed harder, harder, until her muscles screamed.

Just go to sleep, she thought, scarcely able to hear her own thoughts over the crescendoing roar of the crowd. Go to sleep, go to sleep, go to sleep.

She felt his resistance beginning to weaken, his body losing its strength as blood supply to the brain was cut. Sam gritted her teeth, straining to keep her choke tight, not wanting to let up even for a second.

The moment she thought she had him, he came alive again with a surge of power—somehow rising up even with her clinging to his back—and slammed them both back onto the tarp. His entire weight bearing down on her, Sam’s grip slackened as she let out a breathless gasp, her ribcage becoming a web of shooting pain.

Luke rolled around so they were facing each other, his face red and sweaty, eyes bloodshot. He dug his knees into her sides, pinning her beneath him, and she barely got her guard up in time before he began raining down fists and elbows.

Before long, it was all Sam could do to keep her arms up.

“Give up,” she heard him shout over the din.

She did not give up.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

She got a clean hit to his ribs at one point, but it was like he didn’t even feel it. The match was already over once he got the mount on her, but she held out another minute or two before a stray hit caught her in the head.

She woke up flat on her back, staring up at the junkyard owner’s unshaven face and smelling the alcohol on his breath, missing any memory of the last thirty seconds. Needless to say, she had not stolen a surprise victory in that time.

The junkyard owner gave her a pull from an electrolyte drink, and offered a consolatory clap on the shoulder when she was able to stagger to her feet.

Sam felt like one big bruise. She blew bloody snot to clear her stuffy sinuses, felt like her eyeballs would pop right out in the process with the pressure swelling behind them. Her arms were mostly numb from the elbows down, and her step was unsteady as a drunkard's.

Luke soon came over, holding her up when she nearly fell flat into a pile of awfully sharp-looking—and probably tetanus-loaded—metal refuse. “Good fight,” he said, his voice sounding muffled and distorted like he was speaking underwater.

“Yeah,” Sam grunted, not really in the best shape to be making conversation, physically or otherwise.

“You almost had me there a few times.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

Luke guided her over to an old spongy car seat and pushed her down into it, ignoring her weak protests that she could stand perfectly fine. He sat on the ground next to her, and they watched the spectators gather around again as the junkyard owner began hyping up the next fight on the docket.

“You know they do fights with women too, right?” Luke said after a while.

“I know.”

“You’d probably do really well there.”

“Probably.”

“I bet if you ask Toby about it, he’ll set something up for you.”

“I bet he would.”

Luke glanced at her side-long, leaned back and propped up on his hands, shoulders raised. “But you’re not going to do that, are you?”

Despite the fact that it lit her face up with pain, Sam managed a bloody smile. “Nope.”

Luke laughed. “Stubborn little bastard, aren’t you? I can respect that. You’ve got guts, that’s for sure.”

Sam didn’t have a compliment to pay him in return, so she remained silent, watching people mill about. Truthfully, she hated him. Or maybe she just hated losing. It being the eleventh time in a row did not lessen the sting of it at all. If anything, she felt the full weight of the previous ten come down on her at once.

“So…” Luke said after a while, clearing his throat. “Think you need to get checked out down at the clinic? I don’t mind coming with you.”

“I’m good,” Sam grunted, feeling at a tender welt on her jaw, grimacing at the pain. “I reckon they’re sick of me over there by now.”

“Then, how about a pick-me-up burger? My treat.”

Sam forced a tired smile, sparing the man a brief look. “As a date?”

Luke shrugged. “Call it whatever you like.”

“Sorry,” she said, sighing. “I’ve already got a boyfriend.”

It wasn’t true, of course. In fact, Sam wasn’t sure she’d ever had a boyfriend. Strangely, though, the well-worn lie had never felt like one, even when the man it brought to mind was five years in the dirt. Even though there hadn’t been anything more than friendship between them before he died. At least, not on his end.

Luke accepted the rejection gracefully, which she appreciated, and he helped her up again so she could begin hobbling home.

*

Getting to the apartment, Sam peeled out of her clothes as she shuffled toward the bathroom, letting each article lie where it fell. She dug her loser’s winnings out of a pocket—a sticky-red wad of crushed bills she didn’t remember picking up—and threw it in the general direction of the cash bowl on her kitchen counter, not bothering to check if she hit her target or not.

She took a hot shower, curled up on the floor for most of it, then gingerly toweled herself off to avoid upsetting her injuries. She ended up getting blood on it anyway—luckily she was using her old rag towel, the one that had definitely not been gray when she bought it.

After that she spent fifteen minutes cleaning cuts and gluing shut the ones that looked like they might open up again. Slipping into some loose clothing that wouldn’t rub on her abused skin, she went into the kitchen and chugged milk out of the carton and ate plain bread slices out of the bag.

She lasted all of thirty minutes in front of the TV before the oppressive weight of her thoughts became too much to bear, and she headed to the gym to blow off some steam. Strangely enough, despite her punch-drunk daze, she got that same feeling of being watched again. Was the woman on that bench looking at Sam over her newspaper? No, surely not.

Sam lost herself in the weights, lapsing into a trance where the pain in her muscles helped deaden her mind, and the simple, repetitive motions lulled her into blissful non-cognition.

Sam came crashing back to reality when she found herself throwing up in one of the gym bathrooms after what she gathered was a pretty brutal workout, though she recalled very little of it. Her nose had sprung a leak, blood mixing freely with the yellowish bile and wet bread chunks in the toilet bowl, and the pounding in her right eye suggested that she had burst a vessel or something. Her already calloused hands were rubbed raw, and at this point she was hard-pressed to think of a body part that didn’t hurt.

I guess I should remember to take it a bit easier next time, huh?

Sam told herself to cheer up. There was no use dwelling on her loss now. All she could do was rest so she could start training for fight number twelve.

Yeah, just gotta keep trying. All this work will pay off eventually.

Pay off… with what? Why am I even doing this?

At one point, she’d been fighting for herself, to meet Dad’s expectations. Then she’d fought for Will, to keep people from messing with him. But why was she still doing it? Why was she still clinging to it? Why did she keep taking fights she could never win?

Sam could still not come up with a good answer. She was slowly coming to realize that there was no answer.

She curled up in bed as soon as she got home despite the fact that it was only mid-afternoon, not bothering to take off her clothes. Before long, the cuts on her cheeks were stinging with salty tears.

Why did you have to go away, Will?

You always knew what way to go. What am I supposed to do without you?

That, at least, she knew the answer to. The only thing she knew how to do. Fight and train. Train and fight. Mechanically. Purposelessly. Until she went to pieces.