The Love of Fighting

Trigger Warnings: (Substance Abuse, Bad Language, Physical Violence)

She was pretty sure her ribs had cracked.

Her head buzzed, her eyes felt like they were set to pop out of her skull. Blood leaked out her lip as she gnashed down on the mouth guard. She felt fevered; as if at any moment, her body would burst open in a grenade blast of ruptured vessels and shattered bone. Still, none of that mattered. None of the pain, or sweat, or blood.

She caught her opponent on the left side of her jaw, and felt the bone snap out of place. His head snapped back like a rope gone taut, then settled. Still, even as she moved in for another, the ref was moving to get between them. Still, it didn't matter. He couldn't stop the next one from connecting, and that was what she wanted. She wanted this guy to hurt, and hurt bad.

April was tired of this. She was tired of being a spectacle, but there was no way to escape it. Women's boxing, like most every sport with "woman" attached to it, was a fringe sport that saw little appeal or money. So it came down to the same thing that most every other thing that lacked wide appeal did. Spectacle.

April, despite hating it, was a good spectacle. It had started when her promoter, an ex-friend from high school, had signed her up for a local event that was...less than respectable. It wasn't mud wrestling at least, but the indignity of having to compete in the "Belle Brawl" for a bunch of drunken idiots with their dicks practically in their hands was beyond infuriating. Even more so when she realized it was a work: the other "competitors" being women who'd barely had a slap fight, let alone a serious match.

So when some asshat in the crowd had declared that "Any man could beat a professional woman at their own game" she pointed them out and accepted the challenge. The event hosts thought it was all in good fun, until April put the guy over the ropes with a hook to his nose. He'd needed stitches to his face afterwards. That had seen her get banned from the space entirely, but that wasn't what bothered her. No. What had bothered her was that after she'd beat his face in, they were more amused by a drunken moron getting his ass beat "by a woman" than anything else that night.

April loved fighting. Beneath it all, she loved it. Some part of her had always wondered if the part of her brain that was supposed to like cooking and make-up and social media got punched out of her skull by her brother at a young age, and replaced with a need to fight. It also might have been the steroids that she had to take when she was fifteen, but she knew it was more than that. She remembered being almost five and seeing old fights on sports channels, legendary moments with Sugar Ray Leonard, Mike Tyson, Marvin Haglar. She wanted that. She wanted to feel the punches, the sting, the coolness of the towel as a coach yelled at her to fight this way or that way. Fate could be a cruel bastard when it wanted to be though.

April was never going to be in the national or world stage. Not for lack of trying, no, she'd been to recruiters, gyms, registered to other promoters. The problem was that she was just another girl in a hyper-competitive market where only the most standout characters made it. She just wasn't that. She could give and take punches, go the distance, all that, but she lacked that spark of charisma, that talent that made all the difference. So she was resigned to being "the girl who fights like a boy" in stupid circus matches.

That was when she went for the steroids again, and that was when she knew it was over for a real career with boxing, or any other sport. She didn't even know why she'd started using them again; her stint with them had been purely medical back as a child.

Part of it might have been frustration, or a lack thereof. The drugs made her angry, and anger was the right fuel for the fire in her new, less reputable line of work as a underground fighter. She got to feel the crack of bone and split of meat, just like she wanted, but it wasn't real. It wasn't the call she wanted. It didn't even pay the bills. Half the time, her opponents would either hold back or be picked out of a deliberately less skilled group to "even the odds".

So she worked for the respect she so desperately craved by beating it deep into every idiot they put her up against. She was hoping that the many hospital bills would either frustrate or convince the organizers to send someone worth her time to fight her, and it was tonight that she was going to get her wish.

The guy, just from looking at him, made it apparent that he knew his way around the ring. His ears were cauliflowered like leather, and his left eye was...off. Not enough to be noticable if you weren't looking, but there was something there that was wrong. She made a mental note of that, a weakness that she could exploit during the fight. He was about her age, young but not too young, and he had a haggard look to him that screamed "drugs". Not now, but maybe at one point in the past. "Another scrounger" she'd thought as she first saw him.

It took place at an old public pool, the indoor building more a husk now. Still, the sunken arena had been hosed down, and the other "contestants" had had their turn, leaving noticeable red marks here or there in the concrete half-sphere. April could feel her opponent staring at her as her "coach" talked about what she was going to do. Not that it mattered. The guy was obviously more fodder for her spectacle, "The Burning Beauty" or whatever they called her, despite protests.

The mouth guard went in, the roar of the audience a dull pounding in the back of her head as she slid down the sloped pool side. On the other end, the guy came down. "The scrounger" she nicknamed in her mind.

"Ladies and gentlemen! Have we got a closing match for you here tonight! You know her, you loooove her, the woman with the fiery right hook, April Holloway!" She didn't react. "She's gone undefeated for the last year, against some of the savagest men we could find! Each time proving that she too is a powerful opponent and fighter, despite being a girl!" She glared up at the MC, but there were a bunch of "ooo's" at her, as if begging for a reaction. She simply looked at her opponent, internalizing the anger, letting it wash through her like equalizing pressure.

"Yet, perhaps this time she will meet her match against our newest fighter, Bob...Jacobson!" He gestured and the man, Bob, as it was, did an awkward wave. There were some claps and a couple boo's, but again, he didn't much notice, going back to shaking his gloves. The two approached as the ref did, shouting over the crowd: "Alright, it goes until you either tap out, you're on the floor, or I think you might die! Nothing below the belt-" He blinked at April as he said it, another spark of rage flashing through her. "-and no hitting while someone's down! If you got all that, touch gloves!"

She reached hers forward, and so did his. Hers were that classic bright red, his were royal purple. "Good Luck" he mouthed, a genuine emotion. She sneered in return, and then they pushed away.

They got three steps when the bell rang, a phone alarm set to a speaker. It was on.

She went in. His stance was alright. He looked like he'd had some training. Maybe a couple of lessons at some point. It didn't matter. She was going to destroy him.

She jabbed, getting a feel for his reactions. He blocked, elbows up, swerving a little here and there. Kiting her around. The boo's started soon after. People wanted blood, a quick finish to a bloody night. They didn't want footwork. So she waited till he was too close to the wall, then cut him off by faking her direction. She got in-

and immediately felt her ribs that had just healed take a bad gut punch. The scrounger had seen her moving in and went for the body. Unfortunately for him, she was used to that. Boys didn't like to go for her face, and she was ready with a counter, straight to his wobbly eye.

But he surprised her again. He took the punch and ducked back, rolling out of a hug and backing up again. The crowd stopped booing, but it would start again soon. She was thinking on how to approach when he attacked. She felt her ribs flare again, and snarled, locking him down before aiming right into his solar plexus. His wheeze told her that she'd hit true, but it didn't stop the punch to her ear from screeching like a chalkboard as the drum tore.

It continued like that, each exchange wearing the other down, two badgers bloodying each other's noses as they fought a subtle war of attrition.

By what was the third round, April had never felt more alive. Her head was buzzing, the rush filled her veins like molten gold. She had to tear her coach away before heading back in, two seconds before the announcer hastily rung the bell.

The scrounger was bruised and battered, she'd been twisting her gloves as she connected so often that he looked like an octopus had attacked him, bloody splotches all across his bare chest. He was shaven, she noticed, but that didn't matter. It was time to dance.

Jabs exchanged, she grunted as he went for her face for the first time. Then a second. Then a third. Each time, she had to go on the defensive. Was he getting a second wind? She peered out from her shielding wrists, smiling, and then stopped.

There was a fear in Bob Jacobson's eyes. A fear that she recognized only in one way. The pure opposite of what she was feeling right now. He wasn't enjoying this. He wasn't holding back or planning. He was genuinely hating every second of this.

She was so struck by that that she didn't see the hook. It went right into her eyes, and everything went dark.

-

The two fighters were sitting by the road. The bus wasn't due for another hour, and they were both beat to shit. Bob was slapping his knees in silence, April leaning on the partition.

"So who taught you?" She started up after getting tired of the quiet.

"My Dad." He put his tongue in his cheek. "You?"

"No one, self-taught. Spent weekends at a gym getting anyone willing to spar."

"That's admirable." She waited again. "So are you blind in that eye?"

"Yeah." He paused. "Sorry, I know you probably don't like fighting-"

"I love fighting." She hastily cut in.

"Oh. Well, probably not against...you know..." He pointed. "Underdogs, to put it lightly."

"It's fine. You won after all." She waited a minute. "And I'm on steroids, so I lose any right to complain about disadvantage."

He pursed his lips. "You shouldn't do that."

She shrugged. "Hey, its my body my choice."

He nodded. "I respect that. I don't respect someone who thinks they need that crap to fight good though."

"Why should I care? In fact, why should you care? You didn't exactly look like you enjoyed that just now."

"Because you love fighting?" He looked at her. "Or do you just like pushing people's buttons?"

She was about to respond harshly when she thought about it. "Shit."

"Yeah." He sat back. "You know, this was probably the most fun I've had in a fight in a while. I kind of swore to never hit a woman but-"

"Seeing what your Dad saw in it?" She joked. He did not respond. "Hey I didn't-" She paused. "Shit, I do need to stop with this stuff. It's making me a turbo-bitch. I'm sorry."

"He nodded. "It's alright. I had a lot of practice being tolerant to assholes. And to be honest, you don't really look mean, just..." He looked at her, his good eye wheeling over her face. "Angry."

"You got that right." She cracked a knuckle, wincing. "I got everyone watching me like I'm a circus act, like I'm an orangutan that can do math or something, except at least they don't ogle the orangutan when it puffs up, you know?" For some reason, she felt like opening up about this. It might have been post-fight clarity, but who knew? "They don't really look at me seriously, and I just- it's eaten away at me I guess. I dunno, maybe I did the drugs cause it felt like, "what was I supposed to do?"

He nodded. "I get that. More than you know."

She took a deep breath. The spring air was cool and fresh, and grass poked free the pavement. "So what about you? You got some weird reason to look like a murder victim pre-murder mid-fight?"

He laughed. "I do, but its going to take a bit more than a night time bus stop to get it out of me."

"How would I?" She crossed her arms. He thought a moment, but it was cut short by the approaching bus. "That looks like mine."

She waited for him to say more. "Tell you what. I may not like fighting, but I had fun fighting you. So if you really want to know? Get clean of that stuff and come to the basketball court on 4th and West. You know it?"

"The one with the Algerian food truck always hanging around?"

"Yep. That's the one. You do that, and I'll give you a rematch. Ok?"

She watched as he stood and stretched, a tiredness to him that she had never known. "Sure."

Then with a wave, he was gone.

Sitting back, she stared up at the sky. The perpetual orange glow of the city stared back. And for once, she wasn't angry, not even about losing the match.

It felt good.