Tom and the Violence Police

 It was October 31st, the night of Halloween. Children were out with their parents, and teenagers were out at parties or the movie theater, watching the scariest flick they could find. Adults without kids to take trick-or-treating were occupied with three options. Most adults were safe at home. Most. Some adults, the ones who weren't at home, were part of a ghostly Halloween cult called Bloodfight. The rest of the New York adults were being brutally beaten to death by this very cult.

As the rain thundered down the city, its gleaming lights muddled with dirt and water, Tom sat. Tom sat on a hard metal bench that was dripping with rain, unfazed by the gallons of water that had soaked through every dry fiber in his vintage Levi jeans and tight MTV shirt. It was 1:27 AM, and Tom sat with his hands in his pockets and his thick blond hair blowing in the midnight black rain air. A chocolate-brown squirrel scittered up to him and cocked its head to the side, as if asking what one could possibly be doing at 1:27 AM that was important enough to be drenched in the freezing cold. Tom didn’t give the squirrel any notice. He was focusing on something far more important. 

This was the fifth fight he’d watched today. The first fight had been broken up by the police in a matter of minutes. As was the second fight. And the third. And the fourth. This fight was the only one Tom had watched tonight that hadn’t been caught by New York’s violence police the moment it started. The violence police had gotten a little out of hand. Tom had taken little notice of the rules they had made in the past few weeks, stating that anyone who got into physical contact of any kind with a stranger was to be arrested. This was thanks to a new group that Tom saw as nothing more than irritating, who called themselves “Bloodfight.” Tom thought this was a childish and annoying name for a cult, but he could admit that it fit their legacy. Their main goal was to go around New York starting fights that didn’t end until someone died. 

Tom sat on his uncomfortable bench, and he watched. He didn’t know why the violence police hadn’t caught this on their radar yet, but he didn’t care. It gave him more time to silently watch the Cult’s next fight continue. About one hundred feet away, two men were fighting. The fights were always men. One of them was shirtless, his muscles perfectly cut and visible. It was impossible to tell if the substance pouring down his chest was sweat or just more of the never-ending rain. His head was shaved as close as it could be. He looked to be Chinese. His partner, or rather, enemy, was a skinny white man, about in his twenties, wearing Nike sweats and a lime green sweater. His jabs and hooks were precise and hit the Chinese man without error every single time. Head, body, head, body. Jab to the nose. Uppercut to the rib. Hook to the temple. The white man was barely breathing hard, but the Chinese man had a black eye and blood pouring down his torso. It was probably coming from his nose. Tom decided that the white man must be from the Cult, as he was obviously the attacker. 

Tom gave himself five more minutes to watch the men continue fighting before the violence police showed up. But miraculously, the ear-piercing sirens and flashing lights never appeared. Eventually, the Chinese man, about five foot four, fell to the ground. Tom sighed and hauled himself off the bench with an effort, kicking the squirrel away in the process. He lit a cigarette and calmly walked over to the white man, who now had his victim in side control and was sending sharp knees to the ribs. The Chinese man was struggling, but not hard enough. Tom walked slowly and carelessly, as if he were merely approaching a librarian to ask her if he could possibly avoid paying the fine for his girlfriend’s late book. 

The white man was punching his prey, but his double hammer fist delayed as the LED light from the 7/11 nearby became blocked from a peculiar shadow. He wiped the blood off of his gnarled hand as the Chinese man shook violently, and watched the shadow behind him grow larger and larger, closer and closer. Eventually, he decided to turn around and see who it was. Another annoying nitwit he could kill. The man turned his head and saw Tom, a tall man in a tight MTV shirt that, soaked by the rain, left his bulging muscles nearly bursting through the fabric. His face was barely visible due to the rain, the darkness, and the tangles of wet blond hair plastered over it. The face was frightening nevertheless. 

The white man paused beating his short partner long enough to make an obscene gesture at Tom and snarl, “What do you want, city boy? Cops ain’t here to save you from getting beat twice as hard as this shorty once he’s dead.” The short Chinese man kicked his left leg out to try and nail the white man in the eye, but the white man in his green jacket shoved his leg away and twisted his foot in the wrong direction, ensuing a horrible crack. Tom stared at the green-jacket man. “Bon voyage,” he said, and without spending more than twenty percent of his effort, he simply threw a straight jab into the man’s jaw. The man collapsed to the ground, his eyes rolling toward the sky. 

The Chinese man, saved from the Cult member, looked into Tom’s ice-blue eyes in terror and amazement at the same time. Goosebumps pricked on his light skin, shivering in the cold. He looked unsure if Tom had just saved him or was about to nail him just like the green-jacket Cult attacker. The Chinese man looked over at the skinny white man who had just paralyzed his left leg. He was lying on the hard concrete, a little bit of blood spilling from the spot where Tom had hit him. “He’s not dead.” Tom said. His voice sounded younger than he looked. Gravelly, probably due to his chain smoking. “He’s just knocked out. He’ll wake up soon with a nasty headache, and his Cult friends will start looking for you.” Tom sounded bored as he spoke. The Chinese man stared at him silently. His jeans were ripped down the side, and his shirt was discarded by a dumpster, stained in blood and tattered with holes. His chest rose and fell, rainwater running down it, as he took jagged breaths in an attempt to ignore the blistering pain of his twisted left leg. 

“I don’t trust the violence police, so if you’d like to live, I'll take you back to my place and teach you how to fight like a man should. You embarrassed yourself out there.” Tom said eventually. The Chinese man finally spoke. His voice was soft, difficult to hear over the thunder, and shook slightly from his pain. “How could I have known I’d be the next one attacked? It’s happening everywhere.” 

Tom looked at the man as if he had just asked him if a meat grinder would make a fun treadmill. “Bloodfight tries to kill everyone they lay eyes on. This idiot who can’t even take a jab but somehow managed to beat you to a pulp is going to be tracked down by the rest of his cult morons soon. I suggest you don’t return home and come with me so I can teach you how to survive the real way in this kind of danger.” He paused. “What’s your name?” 

“I’m Jordan.” The Chinese man said. It looked like it was painful for him to speak. “Well, Jordan, I’m Tom, and I’ve watched five fights today. Yours wasn’t even in the top two for the bloodiest. But the police never came to stop your fight, and if I didn’t come and help, you’d be dead at some point in the next ten minutes.” Jordan winced. “Can you help me learn to defend myself?” Tom nodded. “On one condition.” Jordan squinted through the black darkness of midnight and the pounding rain. “What’s that?” Tom smiled. “You have to pay it forward.” 

Jordan looked confused. “What do you mean, pay it forward?” he asked. Tom put his hands in his wet pockets impatiently. “I’m making an organization to beat this annoying cult that’s killing the men in our city. I’m going to teach the civilians how to fight so that when Bloodfight jumps someone, they’ll know how to beat up their attacker.” 

“What’s that got to do with me?” Jordan asked. “Everything I teach you, you have to teach three more people. Those people each have to teach three more people, and so on. Then, in exactly one month from now, we’ll all meet at my house and fight each other to see if we know how to apply our skills.” Tom stated matter-of-factly. “It’s not that complicated. The city will be safer this way. With a big enough army, we can kill the Cult and everyone will be safe again.” 

Jordan thought for a moment, forgetting his pain. “This sounds even more malicious than the Cult itself… I’m not really interested in learning to kill people.” 

“But they’re bad people. It doesn’t count as murder if they’re bad people.” Tom said, exasperated. Jordan shook his head. “You’ve got some weird philosophy. But could you still… Could you help me get somewhere safe? I can’t even stand up.” Jordan said, his bruised and mangled face pleading. Tom shook his head. “Either you’re in, or I leave you here to get destroyed by this white dude when he wakes up.” 

Jordan closed his eyes in resignation. Neither man spoke for two full minutes. A siren began blaring in the distance. Finally, Jordan opened his eyes, and Tom saw a determination in his disfigured face that hadn’t been present in the five minutes he’d known him. “Fine. How do we diminish this cult?”