The crowd watched the two men with ever-increasing tension. Things had gone bad when they ought not to have. This was senseless and the violence that simmered could only come from such beginnings.
They circled them as they circled each other, eyes glinting, looking for a weakness. For a moment they could take advantage of. The taller man swung, the thinner man ducked and countered, the crack of knuckles on cheekbone making everyone wince. The punchee shook his head, reacted quickly and caught his opponent on the ear with a disguised left. The taller man howled at his success, the thinner wailed as the pain shot through his head like a bullet through a watermelon.
Taller charged suddenly, grabbing Thinner around the waist, and the two fell to the ground. Each struggled to get on top, rolling side to side, elbows and fists flying when free. Thinner succeeded holding taller’s arms with one hand and beating his face with the other. A tooth went flying as it stuck to Thinner’s knuckles after one thundering clout. Taller freed his hands, tried to buck Thinner off him but Thinner had him trapped between his thighs. Taller reached up, put his hands inside Thinner’s mouth and pulled. There was a shriek and a tear and there was the slightest pause before the blood began to flow from Thinner’s newly widened muzzle.
He leapt up, the blood flowing through his fingers while Taller got to his feet. The crowd were baying. They pushed them together. There was a frenzy of punching, fist against fist, kidneys, ribs and faces were pummelled. During one close encounter Thinner smashed his forehead into Taller’s nose, not so much breaking it as shattering it, dark blood dripped from it and it became shapeless and pliable on his face.
It went on. Eyes puffed up, knuckles bruised and swollen, the mixture of blood and spit on the floor almost causing them to slip. Still the crowd wanted more. It was primal. There would be no mercy. The only way to win was to finish the other. Survival of the fittest. They clashed again. Roaring like bulls. The sickening thud of skull on skull, of fingers snapping like dry twigs, the snorts as they hawked up mucus and blood and saliva and the tired splat as they gobbed it away, the exhaustion leaving most of it running down their battered chins.
Thinner stood, breathing deeply, the pain of his mouth like a million wasp stings. Taller was hunched over, hands on his knees, trying to get enough air into his lungs through his mouth, his fragmented nose useless.
“Enough”, cried the principal onlooker. The crowd bellowed its dissatisfaction. They wanted a winner. They wanted a champion and a corpse.
“ENOUGH!”, he bellowed. “I SAID ENOUGH”.
They specators slowly became silent. The critical murmers barely audible. The sense of frustration hung in the air like a soupy fog. They waited for the man to speak again.
“Twenty, will you take these two cunts about the back and hose them off? And Dave, next time Pete asks you for a couple of Scampi Fries, just give him some”.
Just a wee tiff, not a barring offence?
Ah no. Ron doesn’t mind the odd bloody and vicious skirmish.
I take it you’d be barred instantly if you asked for a creme de menthe frappé?
What a lark! Beats lap dancers and withered old strippers.
Depends on his mood, Conan. He might just deign to give you a Listermint Colada.
Maggot – see, it’s not all bad down here.
I’d like to see priest baiting in pubs – pit bull vs priest would reverse the pub’s flagging fortunes.
I could pay to watch that all right.
Warm up act – Rottweiller vs gaelgoir ?
Cunt should have bought his own scampi fries. Always the same, tapping gaspers and pints. Fuck him, proper order……..
Scampi fries are like crystal meth to him.
Cashew nuts –
I’d bludgeon a sick old lady with her own crutch just to get a handful of those addictive bastards.
Are Scampi fries made from real scamps?
“Roaring like bulls. The sickening thud of skull on skull,” Holy shit, must have taken a wrong turn on tinternet, turns slowly, walking towards the door, hope the fuck I don’t get stabbed in this hell-hole…..
More likely to get stabbed in the bomb bay truth.
Twenty Major – The (Non Gay) Irish Ernest Hemingway / Herman Melville of our times.
I am going to Rank the opening line of this story # 16 of the best opening lines in literary history. Right Between.
15. The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new. Samuel Beckett, Murphy (1938)
And!
16. If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. – J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye (1951)
Of Course….. no one is exactly paying me as a literary consultant so – I may not be in what one would call the Majority opinion …. then again the Majority opinion is usually horse-shit.
The sandwich between Beckett and Salinger. I am honoured, Doodle.
Damn, if that’s a Monday night in Ron’s, what the hell goes down on a Saturday night?
Oh, that kind of thing doesn’t happen on a Saturday. People are concentrating too much on drinking to fight.
Took a writing class in 1986- the main point the teacher made- not sure if he was right – but that any good story will have elements that normally do not go together. The thing – or style that is cool about yours is you accomplish the same thing – but you take the reverse or mirror image of that and do it backwards so that the elements that normally don’t go together – in actuality are the initial perceptions of situation to the reader.
Its almost if you played the Musical Notes Backwards of a song- and for 93% of it sounded like a Traditional Jazz piece but the last 7% showed that it was – and actually had been since the Beginning – a classical piece
There probably is a name for that – and as I got my 9 Credits in English and stayed as fucking Far away from that building as possible the rest of my time in the University – I do not know it.
Enough of this praise for 20M – you’ll give him ideas above his station!
He’ll write a book, and the thoughts of something worse than Folkapalooza and ginger albinos is terrifying