Tevun-Krus #37 - NanoPunk

LAST FIGHT AT THE AMBER HOUR - A Short Story by @MadMikeMarsbergen

1

Amos "Zorro" Rankovic passed from this world yesterday afternoon, at approximately forty-five minutes and thirteen seconds past three. On the other side of the glass, his friends and family watched him die like an animal, and there wasn't a dry eye in the viewing room. Hearing the sobs of Zorro's mother was akin to having your own heart ripped from your chest and consumed before your very eyes, while the cannibal in front of you grins as the blood dribbles down his chin, staining his shirt with long, stabbing spills of red.

That's certainly how I felt in there, too numb to write my thoughts, just listening and looking, seeing the guards dragging the horrible body away, my eyes watering while I tried to make sense of what I'd just seen as Rita Rankovic screamed and howled and clawed at the glass. Her fingernails broke but she just kept clawing.

It's hard to believe such a renowned boxer, beloved by many and for so long, could be gone from this world in the blink of an eye. It all happened so fast—my head is still spinning. His arrest immediately followed the incident, his trial was expedited for reasons few understood, and his execution occurred the very next day. Just like that. None of it made any sense. He didn't deserve what he got. Fighting with the best of them, and then dragged down to darkness as the dirt was shovelled on his fresh-created corpse. It doesn't seem fair to me; just making an example out of him. Not fair at all.

Because it wasn't his fault. It could have happened to any one of those newly nano-augmented boxers, accidentally killing a man in the ring. Zorro just happened to be the unlucky first. And likely the last.

2

I wasn't even supposed to be at the fight that night. The last fight at The Amber Hour. My editor refused to put me on the fight-coverage story. Front-row seats had sold out months ago for prices only a nut or a fanatic would pay, and I certainly wasn't going to pay fifty bucks for a seat way up in the nosebleeds, where even Zorro would look like an ant fighting a slightly smaller ant.

Content with merely watching it on TV at some out-of-the-way pub—the name of which I can't and probably shouldn't remember, lest I be sued—I sat on a barstool, nursing my bottle of Jandover's Pale and contemplating how much I could afford to lose that night. You see, I'd placed a few wagers with a disgusting brute by the name of Swine; he was the guy to place bets with, and he loved to needle you about it until you won, in which case he'd disappear like your own shadow after the lights go out... That is to say, he'd still be present, but good luck finding him.

One hundred that Zorro would win the fight against Jake "The Rake" McReedy, another hundred that he'd win it in the second round, and two hundred it would be a one-hit knockout punch in said second round. Some very specific bets, I know, but I'd made a living off going with my gut, so this was more of the same for me. Meanwhile, I owed a friend three hundred for some primo white, which he'd already given me on the assumption I'd pay him later. We both knew I wouldn't be paying him—but so what? There'd come a time in the future where he'd need some drugs pronto, and I'd be the one to share... As it was in the beginning, and so it shall forever be. Amen. Selah. And whatever else the kids are saying.

"You gonna drink that swill, or take it home and fuck it in the mouth?" Gangly, another good friend and regular patron of that particular bar, said from behind.

I swivelled on my stool and saw the rheumy-eyed, drip-nosed bastard himself. "That depends," I said. "Do you have something better for me?"

He wiped the grey mucous leaking down onto his chapped lips. "To drink or to fuck?"