Only in the Face

It always got its blood.

He was chubby but in that stocky way a man gets when they aren’t tall and thin and gone to fat but have a hidden layer of old muscle on their bones. Probably had been a laborer or furniture mover and now he was drinking a six pack a day and downing a bag of Cheetos while watching big time wrestling on channel 2. He was covered in hair, dark and thick, his head and jaw unruly and except his upper lip which he must have shaved quickly, probably only minutes ago. It was stubbly and had red spots of fresh blood coagulating on it. The beard was shiny, and she wondered if he’d bothered to use some kind of fancy beard oil on it or if it was just sweat.

She was ready for him or the one behind him or any of them standing outside the ring of upturned shopping carts everyone sarcastically called ‘the cage’. Trash barrels burned with black smoke in random spots inside ‘the cage’ giving the onlookers plenty of light for a good show. She was wearing her hubcaps; 1989 vintage Chevrolet’s Chevette on the front and 1974 Malibu on the back hanging to cover her uncomfortably gauze bound breasts. Her hands were wrapped up properly with the same kind of gauze; protect the joints, cushion the soft flesh, and keep the knuckles from breaking. Oh she was ready, she was gloriously ready and the violence was like a taste in her mouth that she always thought of as some fucked up Ben and Jerry’s ice cream flavor. Something like “Punching Punch” or “Angry Vanilla”.

Shirtless and shoeless the guy stepped onto the dirty cardboard laid in the center. She stepped on right after him and the cage’s caller pushed two carts apart to get in. He pointed at her and said “Stan!” and every cheered. “It’s Stanzen goddamit!” she yelled back but he ignored her and the crowd was already cheering. This was her fourth go and they liked her. She didn’t give up and they liked it when it drug out. The caller pointed at the guy and said “This guy.” And a couple of people clapped but no one knew him and they were more interested in what she was going to do. “You know the rules?” the caller looked from one to the other and they nodded. “Don’t fuck with me got it?” the caller looked back and forth again and they both nodded. No one was going to fuck with the caller anyway. He was six and a half foot tall ex-navy seal and apparently lived in a gym because he had muscle on muscle and had been known to hit someone so hard they didn’t ever get back up. It was a rhetorical question in a place where rhetoric was the least important thing.

The caller dropped a hand and it was on. She stepped up to the line scribbled thick in sharpie on the middle of the card board and put her foot on it. Before ‘this guy’ did he pulled a Bic out of his pocket and clicked it a couple times until it lit. Then he touched it to his beard and his entire head went up in blue flame. That was when she realized it wasn’t dirty that made him look oily it was actually some kind of oil. His eyes widened and went crazy and he stepped on the line and it was on. He drew back for a hard right hook and she threw two quick jabs right into his burning face. The oil stuck to the gauze on her fists and brought the heat back but it didn’t matter. It was a stupid gimmick and she didn’t care. His fist came around hard and smashed right into the side of her head ringing her bell like a church on Sunday morning and she could swear she heard God grunt in sympathy but she didn’t go over.

Pulling back for the follow up, his left fist swished by her nose and she leaned in with a hard straight jab into his right eye, the orbital cracked under the impact of her strike and she felt the skull shift as her pinky popped out of place. A smile came to her narrow tight lipped mouth. She couldn’t hold it back. The gleam of her bright white teeth seemed to light up the alley like a beacon. The fifty or so people outside the cage lost their shit and screamed like a bunch of heathens. He had adrenaline though and the smile lasted only a split second, something that could have only been caught on slow motion film then wiped away by his knobby laborer’s fist when it smashed through her jaw cracking a tooth and blurring her vision. She paid a lot for dental work and it really pissed her off he basically just gave her a medical bill.

She instinctively threw an upper cut that hit him in his man tits and the slapping sound of her fist into his chest immediately drew the caller’s ire. “Face only!” she waved at him to let him know she knew. He knew she knew. He liked to get bully with people. She pulled back and dodged another hook. It was all he was throwing. He didn’t know how to fight he was just trying to hit her as hard as he could and the crowd loved it. They were screaming and yelling and some were chanting “Stan! Stan! Stan!” and she wanted to hit the caller for that. One was holding his cell phone to film it and the caller grabbed the phone then broke it in half and threw it in a burning trash barrel.

She looked at ‘the guy’ and about threw up. His hair was gone replaced with red blistering skin and his beard was little smoking wisps, burnt skin where hair had been. His eye was bulging where she hit it and he had bitten his lip through blood was streaming down his chin and dripping off it. Breathing like a man running up hill in the heat he swayed and threw another and another. She fought down the bile and jabbed three times quickly each whiplashing his head back but he didn’t care it seemed. He leaned in through the blood and blisters and bit down on cracked teeth then swung again. She let it hit her in the back of the head, leaning forward to take it knowing it would hurt his hand more than her head.

The crowd roared, the caller spit on the ground, and the cage got its blood.

The cage always got its blood.