| Episode 008 | |
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“Dead I am the sky, Rob Zombie, Dragula
In all the fights I’ve been in, there’s always that strange, surreal moment of calm. And the silence surrounds you as you stare at the man with the fists and he stares at you. Sure, there are brawls and back-attacks and sucker-punches. But there’s always that moment. And you rarely recognize it at the time. But looking back, you see that moment and you know, you realize, that the fight is now unavoidable. I stare at him. He stares at me. For a moment, I forget that he’s a monster. He’s got blonde hair. Or it was blonde before it got stained with blood. His skin is pulled back taut, while his eyes are recessed and hollow. Yet inside his deathly stare, I can see his bloodlust. He looks strangely calm as he perches there on the pile of bodies, his once-scientist body cloaked in a white lab coat and the graduation rings of his high school through his colleges. His mouth is stained with the blood from the arm he holds, while his hands are caked in blood, old and new. And yet, as I stand there, staring at him, all I see in his eyes is the most debase animalistic fury. He stares at me. He doesn’t see a person. He doesn’t see a fellow creature. He just sees one thing. Food. The instant everything happens in takes a lifetime. He leaps.
He Vaults
From the At pile of bodies Me
I swing my crutch at him. Both hands on the metal rod, I swing it like a baseball bat. I feel. I feel the impact. I feel the wet sound of flesh giving into the angled elbow-brace of the crutch. I hear the wet sound of the flesh giving way. I see the wet spray of blood. I smell the vile stench of injury. I taste fear. I feel the aluminum crutch bend violently from the impact. I stand up from the shot as he lands hard on the ground, his side bursting open like a pimple, dark blood gushing out. I leap back from the blood, terrified of it. I look up. He’s Coming Right At Me Something inside me switches. Like a gear that catches on a transmission. Even though the crutch is bent, I spin it unconsciously between my fingers. He leaps into a run from his injury, mindless of the gaping hole in his side. Unconsciously, I memorize the injury. He explodes into a full run. And the Wing Chun comes back to me. I swing my left arm in a tight circle, redirecting his lunged-forward hands. The motion is enough and I redirect his entire momentum. Against all reason, I keep my forearm against his. I stop seeing him. Now I feel him. The Arnis in me wakes up, and the crutch moves on its own, familiar and practiced. I slam the crutch into his side, driving the elbow support right into the gaping hole. The wet, soggy sound of weak flesh and fragile bones erupts violently from the impact. But he doesn’t even have time to fall. I follow-through with the exercise I drilled time and time and time and time and time again. I reverse the motion of the crutch, slamming it into his abdomen, mindless of the blood it sends spraying. The impact nearly knocks him up back onto his feet, but even then, I don’t let up. It’s not conscious. My body moves just like it always has. The third blow, what does it, comes down at an angle against the back of his head. Before contact is even made, I know. I just know. I can feel the impact before it happens. And when the crutch, bent as it is, hits the base of his head, and I hear the tell-tale sound of his vertebrae cracking like eggs, I know it’s over. I don’t know how, but I do. I watch as his head falls forward, hanging limply from his body. The taut monster falls to his knees, then falls to the ground. His body lands on top of his head. I step back from it, breathing hard. Thoughts of my Arnis School in Williamsburg come back. The Wing Chun lessons. Thoughts of my stunt riding crew. But all I do is stare at the monster at my feet. I stare at the body that lies there. I stare at what was once a man. I stare. I stare. And slowly, And slowly, bit by bit, And slowly, bit by bit, I realize it. I realize what shouldn’t be. I realize what’s impossible. I watch its body shift. I watch its shoulder’s flex. I watch its hands try to move.
It’s Still Alive
I stare in disbelief. I stare at the sack of bones and flesh, its blood pumping out from its side. Its neck is snapped. It can’t move. It can’t be alive. And yet, there it is. It flops on its limbs like a fish out of water. I can hear the sickening, gurgling sound as it tries to eat away at its own anger, its own hunger. It’s alive. I step back from it as it starts to skitter towards me. It’s rolling on its head. I can hear the tendons in its neck straining against its own weight. I look around the cafeteria. I’m alone. I look down at it. It grabs onto the marble floor and starts to pull itself towards me. I do the only thing I can do. The only thing I know to do. The one thing I don’t want to do. The one thing I have to do. I draw back on the crutch. I stand over it. I put my foot down on the small of its back, squishing its head, holding it still. I take a deep breath. I close my eyes. And I bring the crutch down right into its body, splitting open its skin and bones and muscles and organs. I lift the crutch back up. I bring it down again. And I lift it up again. And I slam it back down again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. |
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