Michael Seidlinger - The Laughter of Strangers

Basic fighting stance—

Keep your fists up.

Keep your chin down.

You keep your chin tucked in and down because you are most vulnerable there and on either side of your head (temple shots are deadly).

The more likely a punch will cause your brain to rock back and forth inside your skull, the more likely you will get knocked out.

Get hit under the chin and the impact is like your own personal earthquake.

HAYMAKER

And for the final punch, one that is the most common because it’s the one that people use by default, and by people I mean everyone; this is the punch of a drunkard, the punch of an angry individual.

It is the punch that requires zero training.

I’d say this is the one punch that hurts the most.

Too bad it often hurts the person throwing the punch too.

How to throw a haymaker…

There is no “how.”

Just throw it. Like so—

And if it connects, like it does with Black Mamba, right to the side of his head, it’s lights out for him.

Meaning it’s lights out for me too.

If it weren’t for the boxing gloves, I would have broken my hand.

Either way, the referee, nonexistent until now, appears near Black Mamba’s fading body.

The count begins.

The audience has been cheering, laughing, howling, the entire time.

I return to my corner.

The same series of actions repeated:

Spencer shouting, spit, take in water, and exhale.

ARE YOU LISTENING?

And I’ll say — yes.

Totally. If only because it’s the one answer I have yet to give.

Hey, can I ask you a question?

What do I look like right about now?

Now that I’m here, I can’t get myself to go back out there. I should. They want to see me. I’m the talk of the industry, and maybe the whole country.

Number one fighter—‘Sugar’ Willem Floures.

Not that it matters much.

They are all disappearing; every time I look away, they disappear.

Them—

All of the would-be better versions of me, disappearing.

All I’m left with is myself, free from self-improvement but fixed in time with nothing to look forward to without looking back.

And I don’t know where they are going. I don’t know where they’ve gone. They know everything, though. Wherever they are, I am no longer. They replace me, showing the world that I’m a fraud. I get the last laugh though, because if they tell anyone, they only end up hurting themselves.

Their identity is my identity.

Spoil mine, spoil yours.

So they better lean towards silence if they don’t want to hear the world’s laughter.

HEY, ARE YOU THERE?

He knew.

We knew.

What was his alias?

No, not Executioner. The other guy.

BLACK MAMBA

THAT’S THE ONE

MAMBA? YOU THERE?

I don’t hear anything. The house settles, exhales a low rumble, and the basement’s temperature lowers, cold enough to be a chiller.

I look away just to see if another will escape.

Thankfully a few seem to have fallen asleep. I could definitely use some sleep but if I did they’d all disappear. Funny to think I haven’t yet explored why they disappear at all. Is it because I am fulfilled, exactly who I want to be?

Is it because I’m satisfied with the end result of the fight?

Is it because I now understand who I am, or is it because, as number one in the league, there is irrefutable proof that I am Willem Floures? I am number one, which means the world considers me the peak of the identity. No one else is quintessentially ‘Willem Floures’s as I am, and that has nothing to do with the fact that maybe I started the league. Maybe I am the first to be Willem Floures.

Maybe I’m not. I don’t feel like I need to know the difference.

Fact: What’s my name?

There you go.

HEY, ARE YOU THERE?

I tend to the TV. Someone has to watch the TV; otherwise, it’ll cease to exist. The same goes with the people that populate each show. If there aren’t enough viewers, their shows will be cancelled; their careers will suffer. They won’t receive as many offers, auditions. Their futures will be a future with less work, fewer opportunities. Their lives will reflect their identities: narrow, negligible. It’s why you really want to put yourself out there. You want to do whatever it takes to make that name, your identity, be a brand that is immediately recognizable.

Look at me:

Spewing media-speak.

It sounds like I’m delivering the intro to a seminar on brand awareness.

I’m way too drowsy, too high on the painkillers they gave me, to be taken seriously. At this moment, my body looks like a battlefield post-airstrike.

But I feel absolutely nothing.

Everything I hear echoes out like it’s being repeated by two separate voices. Everything I watch is in slow motion. This movie on TV is supposed to be nonstop action but I really think it would have been more effective if the action star ran faster, the death scenes more plentiful, and the explosions a little less exaggerated. But hey—

It’s just my opinion.

Maybe not even that…

It could be the painkillers.

HEY, ARE YOU THERE?

What?

HUH?

Are you there?

AM I WHERE?

What?

WHO’S TALKING?

I was going to ask you the same question.

WHAT?

What?

WHAT IS GOING ON?

What?

STOP TALKING

Okay.

GOOD

Where do we go from here? I tune into the silence of the basement. Look over my shoulder and notice that one more has disappeared. That leaves seventeen left. I admit that I don’t feel much of anything at the moment. The impossibility of their kidnapping right on down to the impossibility of the numbness I feel somehow having something to do with their disappearance:

It registers at face value.

The inherent value being…not very much. Apparently.

Carrying the numbness, the most I can manage is keeping my focus on the TV and so that’s what I do. Through the haze of painkillers, the movie either ends or my attention span splinters to nothing.

Whatever happens I end up flipping channels every thirty seconds.

Meanwhile I bask in the silence I have decided to be the most perfect victory. I pass by one of the sports channels where, big surprise, they are talking about the fight like it was a barnburner.

Did it really look like a barnburner?

Hmm?

Special mention of both of our aliases.

HEY, ARE YOU THERE?

No answer of course because whoever’s left is right here in the basement with me. The rest of the league is out to get me. That is, to say, the majority vote being against the idea that I have made some great accomplishment.

I turn to them, “Hey…have I accomplished anything?”

No answer because I haven’t.

No answer because their mouths are taped.

No answer because I decide the nature of the silence and I’ve decided that it should be all encompassing.

If I am unable to understand, I don’t want to be able to feel.

If I am unable to feel, I don’t want to see anything that’ll remind me of what I’ve mentioned above.

If I am unable to see, I certainly don’t want to hear anything.

I just want to watch TV.

Watch other identities take the spotlight.

Skip to the next sports channel.

They analyze the version of the fight that didn’t happen. If they had been watching, and I mean really watching, they would have blocked it from memory much like I did.

The only evidence of victory (and loss) is my beaten, broken body.

Fact: It’s the same as any fight.

Their favor always fades long before I can recuperate.

I DON’T KNOW

That being said, I don’t really know how I got here.