Gary McMahon - Silent Voices

“ No chodź staruchu ,” said the kid, his Polish wasted on Marty. “ Dalej, dawaj .”

Marty waited, waited, waited… smiled, bobbed his head and weaved a little, throwing wide a few light jabs just to rile the other fighter. He said nothing, he never did. He was a silent enforcer, a man who let his fists speak with a language of their own.

The lights flickered overhead, but Marty was only dimly aware of the change in illumination. He did not take his eyes off Aleksi. To do so would break the spell.

The lights flickered again, and that was when the kid decided to strike. He moved in surprisingly fast, going low with a decent shot to the body. Marty turned to the side and bent at the waist, not enough to dodge the blow completely but more than enough to absorb its immediate power. He responded with a short left hook, which caught the kid on the side of the head. The kid staggered, his feet shuffled backwards, and Marty slammed a good straight right into the centre of his forehead. He felt the dull jolt of the impact through his fist and along his forearm.

The small crowd made even more noise at this point, but Marty barely registered their jeering. He went in fast, double-jabbing all the way, and pushed the kid back onto the ropes. He lost his footing for a second, his left leg buckling slightly in his stance, and it was enough for Aleksi to mount a spirited retaliation. Marty retreated, blocking a barrage of mostly wild blows, and tried to work out exactly how far he was from the ropes on his side of the ring. He couldn’t risk grappling with this one; he was outweighed by at least two stone, and had less reach. He had to keep on the move, ducking and dodging and wearing the other guy out with combination shots.

They stood toe-to-toe for a moment, trading blows. Marty used his defence, and was pleased to see cuts opening up on the other man’s face: a long gash across his brow over the left eye, a nick in his cheek beneath his right. Blood washed down his face, thinned by the adrenalin in his system.

Marty took too long admiring the damage. He felt a glancing blow to the temple and reeled; he was rocked immediately by another quick punch to the cheekbone, this time from the big right hand. Then, just as he was beginning to think he’d misjudged or underestimated the kid, he saw what he’d been expecting from the beginning. The Polish kid dropped his right shoulder an inch or so and feigned with a left, preparing to unleash his main shot: the big looping right. Marty struck before the kid had time to consider his next move: a straight right, catching Aleksi on the chin; he followed with a double-left jab, and then finished the combination by throwing all he had into a sweet right uppercut that he dragged right up from the floor.

Marty felt the bones in his hand compress as the blow made contact; it was a good one. The kid toppled to his right, his hands going down, the arms limp, and staggered backwards towards the ropes.

It was time to finish him. Most fights lasted only seconds, very few more than a couple of minutes. In the movies, they went on for a long time, but in real life they were scrappy affairs, consisting of brief bursts of energy and longueurs of heavy breathing and grappling. But there would be no close contact fighting tonight. That was not in the script.

Marty moved in for the kill.

Left, right, left, left, right… boxing all the way, not brawling, and using his training and experience to subdue the other man. The kid was flagging; he didn’t know what to do. His big weapon had failed him, and he had no craft to fall back on. Blood was smeared across his face; the light in his eyes went out.

And then it happened.

Just as the kid slumped back onto the ropes, a strange transformation occurred. It did not last long, just a flash, like an echo of a memory, but suddenly the Polish fighter was no longer in the ring. Leaning against the ropes was a huge, oval torso with stubby little legs that ended in hands instead of feet. The face was made up of large, heavy-lidded eyes, two holes for a nose, and a lipless mouth that was more like a thin crack in the flesh-coloured shell.

This was no longer the Polish street fighter.

It was Marty’s old friend Humpty Dumpty.

He threw one punch after another, laying into the image, trying to make it go away, to crack the shell. His vision blurred and then flickered, and the egg-shaped monstrosity changed back into a big loose-lipped Polish kid with blood on his face. But it was too late for Marty to do anything but continue his assault. He kept punching, his fists aching, his fingers crunching, and could do nothing but wait until his terrible rage was spent. Anger drove him on, fuelling his body and inuring it to the pain in his hands. He was once again the child whose father had beaten him for no other reason than to toughen him up, who grew into a teenager who burned and lacerated his own body so that nobody would ever cause him pain or beat him in a stand-up fight.

Just as Marty thought he might black out and enter the darkness where a bastardised kid’s rhyme lay in wait, sung through a crack in the world, he became aware of many hands upon him, an arm wrapping around his throat, and people pulling him off the other fighter. Realising what was happening, he went limp, his arms hanging loose at his sides, and allowed himself to be dragged away without further protest.

His opponent lay on the ground, his young face a mask of red. He was not moving. He did not even seem to be breathing.

What have I done? thought Marty. Who did I become?

At last, the audience had fallen silent. This was too much, too harsh for them to process. They came here expecting violence, and they had faced absolute savagery. Marty realised that he was screaming, but the sound was nothing that could be described as words. It was just a long, wailing lament, a cry of rage at the things that had pushed him to this point and driven him to fight with a demon from the pages of a children’s book.

“Get off me,” he cried, shutting off that other noise — the one that made him sound as if he’d lost his mind. “Get the fuck off!”

Who the hell was I trying to hurt? Not him — not the kid.

As the figures released him and backed away to give him room, he got to his knees and stared at them all. The ref was shaking his head, Erik Best was smiling, and a few of Best’s heavies were trying to stop the Polish corner crew from climbing into the ring. Marty held up his hands and stared at them. The white wrappings were coated with blood.

Nobody can hurt Marty , he thought, recalling the years of self-damage, of extreme body conditioning, and the insane physical tests he had put himself through before the age of thirty. Nobody hurts Marty… not even Marty.

Best stepped forward and bent down, trying to be heard above the clamour. “That was some fucking show, marra,” he said, grabbing Marty’s shoulder. “But I think we need to get you out of here before it all kicks off.” He squeezed Marty’s arm, earnestly.

Marty nodded. With Best’s help, he stood, feeling shaky and ill. The egg-shaped creature was no longer in the ring, and when he glanced beyond the ropes, at the people being herded away from ringside, he caught no sight of it anywhere in the vicinity.

“Quickly. This way.” Best guided him to the edge of the ring and lifted the top rope. Marty stumbled through, falling onto his knees as he hit the dirt on the other side. He looked up, staring at one of the ceiling lights. The bright spot held his gaze; it pierced his skull, burning into his brain, and once again he saw the terrible stunted image of a grinning Humpty Dumpty. He closed his eyes and twisted his head to the side, trying to rid himself of the horror.