7

Interlude (6)

Jonathan swam in his dreams. He swam with his arms held to his sides and legs together, cutting effortlessly back and forth through the water. Like an eel. To the eel, there is no water, there is no breath or orientation. Jonathan saw specks of light and fishy crumbs floating through the darkness. He heard nothing, or maybe something, but only in the same way that the water was nothing and he was nothing as well.

The darkness took shape and became his office. A layer of sediment and greenish slime lay on the cubicles and laser printers, smoothing the buttons on multi-line telephones and gradually obscuring pencils left on desktops. Perhaps everyone had just stopped coming one day. With nothing better to do, perhaps the office simply sank a little day after day until it rested here. He swam down empty halls past unused fire extinguishers and folding chairs. He found himself in darkness again.

Jonathan woke up. He smiled.

The Champ (6)

It was an omen, a sign of things to come. The Champ didn’t know it though. How could he? He had been threatened hundreds of times. He has survived gun fights. He has survived those moneymen burning his house to cinders. He has survived and revenged the murder of his family. He has survived the streets of New York, Cairo, Tokyo, and Cape Town. The innocent skull of some beast is hardly something that could be used to terrorize a man as jaded as The Champ.

The Champ sat on a milk crate under the back alley lamp of a meat packing plant. A long jagged scar ran from his forehead, over his eye, and to his chin like a river. A circle of scar tissue rose from his cheek leaving the impression that he was painted like a doll. His mangled torso made it difficult to tell where his tattoos stopped and the scars began. His face told the story of a tormented man. He sat there shirtless imagining himself at the top of a pile of corpses looking over a scorched landscape. He often had this thought. His body looked like twisted rope.

The box lay open as The Champ looked in. The skull was surrounded by black candles and the entire contents reeked of death. This was not a foreign smell to this man. He pulled the skull out and studied it. It belonged to a small animal, maybe a cat? He wasn’t sure. The idea that someone had gone through the trouble of having him find it was more than he cared to understand. He tossed the skull next to the box. A sharp pain shot through his hand as it hit the ground. The Champ held his wrist tight but the pain continued. He felt a rage wash through him and stomped his boot onto the skull. A burst of white light shot out from under his foot as he crushed the skull.

The Champ thought once again about his pile of corpses and the weariness the skull had caused him faded away. He bent over the milk crate and picked up two loose gloves made of leather. He slowly pulled them on while watching the destroyed pieces of the mysterious skull. He then began to wrap some razor wire around the leather. He knew that this was the end of his reign. All his fighting, all his rage had finally caught up to him. He was old now. He traced the contours of the skull in his head. He couldn’t get rid of that image. Was it his destiny? Was that skull of some small mammal actually him? He hoped that it was. He decided at that moment that he would die tonight. Not as repentance for all of those he has killed, but as a man that consciously needed to hold his destiny in his own hands.

The Champ looked at his mangled hands. These hands have killed forty two men. He could see each of their faces in their death throws. He looked at his hands and made peace with them. Tonight he would beat the challenger bloody, but when they had thought that he has won he would allow that man to take his life, whoever he was. The Champ curled his lips into a gnarled smile and walked around the corner for his last great fight and the end of it all.

By Turbo