1
Culver City Forum, Los Angeles, CA; Now:
"Alright, listen up, you vomitus, pustulating nut-rashes! Quit yer pansy, pussy-footin' around this friggen hockey rink! I wanna see Hounds' heads hittin' the glass, and pucks flyin' hard and fast at that abomination the other guys call a goaltender!"
The coach of last season's Mild Weather Goons hockey league champions, The Los Angeles Priests, was one exuberantly ruthless and mean son of God. He was the most foul-mouthed ex-man-of-the-cloth you'd find anywhere this side of the hemisphere. When he spoke, he spit. His thick, gray mustache resembled the carcass of a caterpillar stiffening on his upper lip with a brow so rigged it cast a shadow over his beady brown eyes. And his chin – nicked with old scars under stubble and satire – looked as rough and as stern as the sound of his raspy voice whenever it'd claw its way out of his throat to speak. He never seemed not to sweat at any point in a league game, and during practice he'd smoke cigars and yell obscenities like, "You call that a slapshot, you sissy! I could slap my meat harder'n that against yer mother's chubby cheeks!" or...well, other such obscenities thereabouts.
"Marty! Get yer ass out there and don't come back 'til you get me a goal or a penalty for misconduct! Jimmy, you're my Designated Decoy! Make pretend like you gotta miserable shit's shot in Hell at being a viable threat out on that ice, plant yer pudgy ass in front of that goal, and don't you fucking budge! You eat that goddamn puck and spit it in the net if you have to! We're down by two, you dipshits! That's three goals too many! Let's show these mutts why God gave man a set of balls and two hands to grab his dick with, and use those tools to fuck the fight out of these soulless rodents! Do you get me?!"
As a team, the men on the bench all answered in unison, pounding the butt-ends of sticks against the floorboards below their skates.
"Praise the Priests!!"
"Amen! Alright, now go out there and GET YOU SOME ASS!!"
Marty "The Monster" Grimson was the Priests' star centerman and, in all likelihood, the most badass beast of a man ever to play the game of ice hockey with any sort of skill or grace at any level of the game. He was six-foot-six inches tall, two hundred and fifty-something pounds, and had fists like fucking lead hammers. His eyes and prominent features were chiseled and dark due to his mixed ethnicity – the Caucasian in him being anything but pure, while the Native American blood that coursed his veins was nearly as ancient as the culture itself. He kept his long, brown hair in a single braid as a tribute to his mother's memory, honoring her heritage the only way he knew how, but also as a rebellious "screw you" to his father who could leap backwards off a cliff into a garden of jagged spears for all he cared. His stubbornness at times was as unyielding as a mountain, but his temper was often as sporadic as the wind. He very likely could've played professionally if the National Hockey League wasn't so averse to his prowess causing permanent physical damage to their "oh, so" costly and unexpendable star players. (Not that their reluctance to sign him was of any real consequence. His place in his city, and in this story, was not to be a sports hero to all the little kiddies of the greater Los Angeles community. When compared to that of national championships or lucrative marketing contracts, the weight that the likes of this man's life will soon hold would be utterly transmundane.)
The blades of Marty's skates crunched the ice below him with his every stride, growling hungrily in the presence of their opponents. The cold air over the surface of the rink was heavy with humidity but a welcomed breath of freshness from under the thick protective pads that buffered his bones from his enemies.
The Anaheim Hell Hounds were a reputable opponent with several men nearly the size of Marty who were just as mean and twice as ugly. One such unfortunate monstrosity was named Jean-Claude Le'Duprie: a black French-Canadian mountain of muscle who'd played for more teams in the league than he had teeth left in his purple gums (which would be saying more if he wasn't missing so many). He was a brawler that didn't have much finesse on his skates but could really shoot the puck well if you set him up with a perfect pass.
The 3rd period face-off was back at center-ice. The Hounds had just scored, making it six goals to four in their favor. The crowd was sparse but proving themselves a part of the game by way of their encouraging cheers for the L.A. home squad. Marty was the Priests' face-off man while Le'Duprie rooted himself directly across from him, grinning toothlessly, chewing on his mouthguard, mocking Marty's "professional integrity."
Le'Duprie spit off to one side and blood and saliva splat on the ice beside them, his lip busted open from a competitive skirmish the two had gotten into late in the first period. Marty smiled back at the visible proof of his victory-tally, and Le'Duprie's cocky grin abruptly became a bit more businesslike than provocative.
"Alright, ladies, there's only two minutes left in this game." The referee decided to set the pace for the rest of the contest before putting the puck into play. "Let's try an' do this by the book. Either of you two assholes drops the gloves again, yer gettin' yerself a full game-misconduct. We clear?"
They didn't bother to answer. They both understood entirely – but that little intrusive fact wouldn't change their demeanor if things escalated and became heated. But on the other hand, Marty meant to win this game and wouldn't be able to do so while sitting in the penalty box.
He loosened his grip on his stick and placed his blade on the ice, focusing his attention toward the dot at the center of the face-off circle. Le'Duprie got his stick into position next, but never took his eyes off their real target: the logo dead-center in his opponent's chest.
When the whistle blew, and the puck dropped, Marty swept it between his legs to his defense, leaning forward with his head down to shield the play. But Le'Duprie ignored the puck entirely and thrust the shaft of his stick across the Priests logo on Marty's shirt instead, knocking him back flat on his giant and unsuspecting ass. The crowd unleashed a uniformed "Ooooo!!" afterward that hummed through the arena, sympathetic to the force of the blow.
Le'Duprie didn't bother gloating over his fallen adversary before he went straight for the defenseman with the puck, oafishly hacking across the already scarred ice. (If Finesse could complain, it'd have Elegant on speed-dial, bitching about the Hound's gross neglect of both.)
Marty – winded, hardly able to breathe through the fire in his lungs – found enough strength in his hunger for retribution to get up and skate for the offensive zone. The impact of his teammate being slammed against the boards behind him caught his ear, so he looked back to see who had control of the play. Boards swaying, crowd roaring, his defenseman was down, but so was Le'Duprie who had stumbled over the player he'd felled and greeted the ice with the side of his face; the ice wasn't surprised he'd said hello. (Neither was Finesse, if you'd ask Elegant.)
The puck was already headed up the rink when Marty's left winger escorted it into the Hell Hounds' zone. The winger cocked his stick, threatening to shoot, forcing the Hounds' defenseman to throw himself to the ice in a bold attempt to block the attack, but the Priests' forward held fast—
Lowering his stick, he slipped the puck behind him to a trailing Marty at the top of the zone, the Priests' captain cutting across the ice with unopposed authority, still pushing through the pain it caused him to breathe (nursing hot knives in his lungs only adding to his thirst for retribution). Jimmy, Marty's right winger, had skated ahead and "planted his pudgy ass" in front of the net just like his coach had said to and, in doing so, had an honest-to-God, "miserable shit's shot in Hell's" chance at being a viable threat. He was screening the goaltender's line-of-sight when the behind-the-back pass found the blade of Marty's stick. The Priest captain wound up, pausing to pick his target, and ferociously blasted one toward the net for the two feet of space between Jimmy's skates and the goal...
Through the eyes of the young Priest, the shot came at him in slow-motion, but his reaction time was just as tempered. His first thought went to his "family jewels," and he cringed in a futile attempt to protect his manhood. Not that those tiny, hairy duds were worth a damn to his mom and pop, but the term still held merit concerning the fragile, though otherwise superfluous nature of the said bodily ornaments. In any case, the speeding puck smashed into the inside of his unassuming stick-blade, deflected between his own legs and those of the sprawling Goal Keep's, then found a path to the back of the Hounds' net.
"Yeah! Alright! Strong fuckin' work, Jimmy!"
The Coach raised his fist and yelled over the applause of the few thousand fans in attendance before Jimmy opened his eyes to find he was being credited for the goal.
The Hounds' goaltender slapped a frustrated stick on the ice as Marty and the rest rejoiced for a brief, but perhaps premature carousal. Marty gave Jimmy an encouraging pat on the helmet while the others congratulated themselves with wide grins and head-bumps.
"Right place, right time, my man. Good hustle."
"Shit, Marty... You shot it at me on purpose, you asshole!" Jimmy wasn't upset; he was just venting, still a bit wound up and probably feeling a little guilty for getting credit for the goal without hardly lifting a finger to score it.
Marty laughed at his seriousness and gave the back of his hockey pants a tap with his stick as they headed for the bench.
On the opposite plank of wood, Anaheim's head coach opted to slow things down and call for a timeout. He was an older man than the coach of the Priests, probably in his late sixties. He had a glaring scalp with heavy, white sideburns, wearing a painfully orange warmup suit decorated by his teams' logo: the snarling maw of a vile, houndlike beast with hellfire for a fur coat. The Priests' coach, Coach Gary Carver, remembered some of his opponent's old-style hockey tactics from way back around the time of the square puck and wooden skates. The prick was as ruthless as they'd come and instructed his team with a blatantly conniving, unsportsmanlike prickishness to match.
Marty and the rest of the boys huddled up at their bench, wiped sweat from faces and splashed water in mouths. The hometown crowd was riled up, but a team like the Priests didn't draw much more than three or four thousand to any given playoff game.
"Alright, we got ninety-seven seconds to go get us another one and take this game into O.T." His team zeroed-in on his words as he set them loose. "Marty, I want you back on the ice. Jimmy, you earned yourself a break, sit yer ass down. Carl, Donny; you two stay on D. Terry, Mac; you're with Marty." He looked around at his team nodding in unwavering compliance. They were focused. Determined. Hungry.
"Now, I know this prick. I know what he's thinkin'." Coach Gary tapped the side of his head. "He'll put that sissy Tobin on the wing and tell 'im to do whatever it takes to draw a penalty. Keep yer fucking sticks on the ice! Don't get called for some bullshit infraction when this dick takes a dive and yer pokin' yer shafts at his pucker." He paused briefly, inspecting the eyes of his men to be sure his instructions sunk in. "Win the face-off. Crash the net. Get that fuckin' goal! ...Praise the Priests!"
"Amen!!"
The boys echoed their mantra with a cheer then skated for their positions at mid-ice.
The Priests weren't necessarily Sunday churchgoers or driven by any particular faith in God. Their puns and catch phrases were closer to sacrilegious slander than divine worship – a delicious irony outlined by their coach who God had abandoned years before when his fourteen-year-old son was killed. (An incident that held little relevance to the score of the game, but one that would be of insurmountable significance in days to come.)
A flustered Le'Duprie waited impatiently at the face-off circle, his eyes two acidic vats of boiling resolve, eager to defeat and/or disfigure anything skating in his way.
Marty took an extra moment to let the big bastard simmer and glided toward his redheaded left winger, Mac, before positioning himself for the draw.
"Mac, listen," he covered his mouth when he spoke to avoid his words casually drifting into the ear-holes of a Hound, "I'm gonna let Shit-Face win this one." ("Shit-face" was what the Priests called Le'Duprie on account of his deep brown skin tone and unbearable breath. It was certainly childish and a bit distasteful, but it stuck to the miscreant like a bad rep. on school grounds.) "When he wins, it'll go back towards his right D. Head straight for him. You'll catch 'im off guard. Strip the puck and look for me. I'll be headin' right back up the middle."
Mac nodded; Marty spit; the crowd buzzed.
Le'Duprie also covertly conspired with a winger before the draw, (just as likely to toy with the Priests' psyche as much as to formulate a plan) then drifted to center-ice where he met his nemesis head-on. He mumbled some backward vulgarity under his breath, gave his helmet a smack, then locked his stick into position at the dot. (His English swears were always a little off. When one wouldn't make much sense, the other just wouldn't seem as insulting as he'd intended.)
"What's the matter, Shit-Face? You look worried." Marty smiled provocatively, the two of them so close their helmets clacked on contact.
"Hell Hounds don' know no fear, Martee." Jean-Claude's accent was apparent but diluted with a pinch of U.S. temperament from years of living in the states. His skin was unshaven, his purplish lips swollen and chapped. "Think your choir boys c'n handle the heat?"
"Won't be the first time we've pissed on yur campfire."
The referee pointed at Marty's stick and the ice, signaling for him to get into position. Their breaths swirled in the frigid air and Marty noticed the focus and intent roiling in Le'Duprie's eyes. This time Jean-Claude was slightly more involved with the play than before Marty had put that last one past his goalie.
Marty, figuring his opponent was focused on the draw, glanced at his winger Terry to sneak him a wink. Terry nodded, knowing Marty was signaling for a pick when he made his move.
The Ref's whistle chirped and the puck dropped.
Elite athleticism on ice ensued.
Marty headed right through Le'Duprie like a sledgehammer through a cement wall, knocking him off balance, skates carving swaths in the ice beneath his blades.
Le'Duprie had won the draw and swept the puck back before being pummeled, but, by then, Mac was already on his way to intercept. The Hounds' D-man tried getting the biscuit to his blitzing centerman; Mac's stick said no. He deflected the attempt Marty's way just before the graceful brute crossed into his opponents' zone. Puck finding his blade, Marty paraded it boldly across the blue line, heading for the 'tender while the crowd's posteriors grew heavy on the edges of their seats.
Marty thought for a moment he had a clear path to the net, but the last of the remaining D was closing in. The Hound defenseman lunged with his stick outstretched, desperate to make a difference, and swatted at the puck on Marty's blade sending it fluttering into the air. The D's momentum carried him through the Priest's skates and knocked him for a spin. But Marty turned ire to focus and hunted the puck in its path, choking-up on his shaft like a bat so to crack the rubber component in mid-decent – and the fleeting moment carried the emotional weight of thousands, jam-packing a single second with minutes of timeless uproar—
Flakes of ice took flight from the flailing body of the sliding defenseman. Fans jumped from their seats, spilling beer and nachos onto the already filthy aisles. A man in the stands sprung up and knocked his wife's drink into her half-eaten popcorn – next to them, a child's mouth and eyes were wide in awe of the action unfolding on the ice. And behind him, a man wearing an orange and black Hounds jersey, spewing chunks of food from his mouth over relative obscenities, clenched the hotdog in his hands hard enough to squeeze ketchup, mustard, and mayonnaise out both sides of his fists—
As Marty's stick collided with the puck, it gave into the force of his swing, bending backward like an archer's bow; and when it caught up, it catapulted the cold rubber for the top right corner of the net. Flying for victory like a line drive into centerfield, it flipped awkwardly end-over-end, scattering ice shavings off it like exploding shrapnel...
In a groin-splitting, last-ditch effort, the goalie dropped to the ice and extended his glove, covering as much space above his leg-pad as he could. But when the knuckling-puck hit his glove's lip, it tumbled just over its edge and trickled past the plain of the goal-line to gently – ever so gently – kiss the back of the net—
Mwah.
The red goal-light burst on and the siren blared, haughtily announcing the Priests' success.
Quickly the boys reconvened at their bench amid a union of congratulations at tying the score, six to six – the crowd around them roaring its approval.
Adjacent to the revelry, Le'Duprie's scowl toward Marty and the rest of the Priests warned of an evil scheme brewing between cauliflower ears (those acidic vats for eyes spilling hot fury on the ice through the sweat over his brow). From the bench Jimmy caught the glare by accident and the two had made definitive, offensive eye contact. Bathed in maliciousness, the look shot chills up Jimmy's canal. Le'Duprie's eyes may as well have been surgical scissors on account of the young Priest feeling his balls drop off when the Hound threw him an evil smile to top it off. Thankfully Marty was gliding in from center-ice, skating in front of the bench, and conveniently eclipsed the impact of the psychological neutering Le'Duprie was performing on his young teammate.
Jimmy tried to shake it off and pick his "stones" back up from the floor when the Coach started laying out their next plan of attack.
"Okay, kids, listen up. Good work out there, but this game ain't over. Terry – yer gettin' double shifted. Marty – third time's the charm."
"Sure you don't want me to sit this one out, Coach?" Marty thought he was funny.
His coach thought otherwise.
"Don't get cocky." A stern shake of his finger countered the remark. "But this time I want Terry on the draw. Marts, you take left-point. Jimbo, yer on right wing. ...Jimmy! You listenin' to me?!"
"Uhh...yeah, Coach, left wing."
"Right wing, you nut-less putz! Right!" Jimmy's scattered focus drew the eyes of the whole squad. "God damn it, Jimmy, quit playing with yer nads and pay attention!"
Marty looked down at his teammate, seemingly not nervous himself but a little concerned. "You okay, man?" he asked, sneaking his worry under the voice of his coach.
"Huh...?" Jimmy was still rattled from Dr. Ball-clipper's heinous sneer. "Yeah...yeah, I'm cool, Marts." He glanced back up at his captain, disguising the discomfort in his eyes with a shrug.
Marty nodded back, unconvinced.
The Coach's plan was simple: Win the face-off and move as a unit over the blue line. Jimmy gets the puck on goal and Marty and Terry crash the net to sniff out the rebound. If all went well they'd get an offensive-zone draw if not a game winning goal.
Marty had more tip-ins and goals off rebounds than any other player in the MWGHL (a semi-professional hockey league comprising of eleven other teams spanning the west coast, Arizona, and Nevada). He was a monster on offense and not because of his size, but because of the "soft hands" he played with that had tallied such tall numbers against opposing squads – and these Anaheim Hell Hounds were not without casualties in his private war on stats.
After getting their strategy straight, the boys perused onto the ice while Jimmy hopped over the boards and got into position. And as if Le'Duprie could smell Jimmy's perspiring fear, he stared purposely at his mark, spitefully ogling, planting his vile seed of hurtful intentions. Marty saw the look from the Hound captain and started to piece together why Jimmy had been so distracted.
He responded accordingly.
"Hey, 'Shit-Fuck!' " He mocked Le'Duprie's bumbling curses with an awkward word-grouping of his own. "I'm over here, asshole!" His two large fingers pointed back at his own eyes. "Keep yur eyes on the prize!"
Le'Duprie snorted and spit, sniggering obtusely.
Jimmy felt more comfortable knowing Marty was on the ice but couldn't bring himself to get settled. He was trying to avoid looking the Hound's way and, in doing so, had a hell of a time remembering to place one foot in front of the other.
When the Ref dropped the puck, Terry won the draw. Marty peeled back, and Jimmy headed up-ice, following the habitual motion of his skates. When Marty inherited a lovely saucer-pass from his D-man, he sent the puck up off of the boards and across the rink for his dazed-and-confused winger.
So far, everything appeared to be going as planned.
Jimmy slouched against the weight of Le'Duprie's stare pounding at the back of his helmet, heart nervously racing, skates closing in on the Hell Hounds' zone. Apparently he had a touch too much adrenaline fueling his stride, however, and ended up a step ahead of Marty's pass, crossing over the blue line a hair offside. His coach was likely screaming and spitting, cursing Jimmy's lack of execution, but Jimmy couldn't hear him. He barely heard the whistle when the Ref blew the play down.
He lowered his guard to take a breath, anticipating a moment of tranquility...but had to cut it short when he saw Le'Duprie barreling toward him. A blurred image of Marty stood pointing in the background, yelling something – probably trying to give Jimmy a heads-up. But it was all he could do to brace himself for the blow.
The play was dead but Le'Duprie went that extra mile and came in for some overly aggressive, late body-contact. He crashed into Jimmy and sent him smashing against the boards, leading with the butt of his stick and an elbow up high.
A snap inside Jimmy's torso, like the muffled crack of knuckles under gloves, perturbed his excited mind. Then an elbow met his jaw and plowed his head into the glass behind him with the boards giving in to the impact so generously that they flirted with the fans in the front row. Helmet flying from his head and fluttering over the glass, the crowd recoiled with a sympathetic groan for the smaller winger. The hit was clearly too late to be legal – but protesting it after the fact wouldn't stop the damage that had been done.
Like a battered lump of snot, Jimmy slid unconscious down the boards and slumped to the ice with Le'Duprie sniggering above—
"That's IT!!" Marty rushed in from behind, head full of steam, losing both his gloves to the promise of battle. "I'm fucking sick of yur shit, Duprie!"
Le'Duprie, still basking in his stolen glory, gladly turned to face his aggressor – but Marty had already unleashed the cannons—
The Priest landed a hard right even before the Hound could face him, spinning Jean-Claude back in the opposite direction and uprooting another tooth from the bone with the force of the blow.
Regaining balance, Le'Duprie raised his arm to his face, casually nursing the damage with a sleeve.
"Fuck you, Marty, you fuckar poosey." He probably meant "fuck you, Marty, you fucking pussy," but the interpretation was questionable and, as always, up for debate. After his failed stab at an insult, he dropped his gloves and spit the blood from his busted gums on the ice. "You wan' to go? ...Le's go."
Without a glitch or breath of indecision, Marty squared off, left arm outstretched, grasping for a fistful of jersey. Le'Duprie kept his arm stiff like a stanchion while grabbing some cloth of his own, ducking the next punch thrown, competing to fix his footing.
Tugging and shoving while swinging their free-arm rhythmically at each other's skulls, the force from the two dueling gladiators whipped them in awkward circles. It was a fist flinging frenzy, full of bare, bloodied knuckles and enraged, lumped up, vein-swelling foreheads. For twenty long seconds their blows were in sync, equally pounding the shit out of each other's angry veneers.
Eventually Marty caught Le'Duprie off balance and landed a zinger to the side of his helmet. It popped up off his head like it was spring-loaded with a hair-trigger attached to his ear and bounced off the ice beside them. While Marty was off balance, another tethered blow from Duprie found the Priest's jaw, but it slid off his face without doing much more than touching-up his 5 o'clock shadow. The missed punch caused Le'Duprie to lose his footing and he fell face-first into a freshly stacked knuckle hoagie.
Skates growing roots in the ice, Marty pulled his sprawling, sparing partner toward him, putting all his weight into his next right cross. His fist nailed the side of Le'Duprie's cheek so hard it knocked the burly bastard out cold, buckling his knees and dropping him with the blow.
But Marty, still seeing red, didn't stop at his victory strike that'd already won the battle. He saw the limp body of his friend Jimmy hitting the ice in his mind and felt the need to further punish the dog who'd hurt him. So he directed another hit for his opponent's nose and inadvertently forced the back of his skull into the unforgiving ice.
The sound of it was sickening and jarring enough to snap him out of his rage.
He let loose his handful of jersey.
Jean-Claude's large body fell indolent on the ice.
Marty hadn't noticed, but the entire staff of linesmen and referees were draped over him, digging for leverage, meaning to pry him from his opponent's body. They were frantic, surrounding him like he was a wild animal with sights set on disemboweling a child. His mind started jumping at the exaggerated drama in an attempt to piece together what exactly had happened:
How many times did he actually hit him, he wondered. He thought he'd only cracked him once after he lost consciousness – but as he looked at the body of the man lying on the ice, his heart dropped from the sight of the damage his fists had inflicted. Duprie's face was wrecked, with an appalling collection of blood pouring from what looked like the back of his skull that congealed into a thick, dark puddle behind him...
The arena of spectators was so silent the voices of the refs and coaching staff could be heard from all corners of the Forum. Trainers hovered over Le'Duprie and Jimmy's fallen bodies. They were lifting Jimmy onto a stretcher but no one would risk moving the Hound from where he lay.
Marty was almost catatonic, his teammates guiding him off the ice.
He heard voices behind him, like words from a distant TV that someone left on in another room – "He's not breathing! He's not breathing! Get the medics!" – but couldn't muster up the will to react. He was coherent enough for an instant, however, to utter one word:
"Jimmy...?"
He wasn't sure if Jimmy was alright, and for a moment, that was all that mattered... Then:
"Jimmy's good, man. Jimmy's gonna be alright." Terry found enough control to get Marty off the ice and into the locker room. "Stay here, Marty. Just...try not to hit anything else." He sat him down, in a bit of a daze himself, and rushed back toward the crowd.
Marty put his face in his hands and his stomach wretched. His head was spinning.
Flashes of his fists pounding Le'Duprie's skull into the ice exploded in his mind. Hit after hit after hit. Blood dripped from his knuckles and poured from the fresh cuts in Jean Claude's face like a red river from a black mountain—
"Fuck!"
Furious with himself, he threw his knuckles into the hollow tin of a locker. Head heavy and stomach weak, lost to a tumult of emotions he didn't know what to do with, he stood up and tore away his equipment, half of which was already hanging off his body. He didn't understand... He couldn't wrap his brain around how it all went down...
Stumbling, aimless, he mindlessly headed for the showers, following some autonomic, after-game routine, and caught a glimpse of his angry, blood-spotted face in a mirror.
He turned away, ashamed of what he saw, not willing to own-up to the sight of his own rage...
Still only partly disrobed, the shower seemed like a swell place to start to wash away his sins, so he turned on the flow and tried rinsing the spilt blood from his face. He could taste the aftermath in his mouth and spit spastically trying to push the memory of it as far away as he could. The light broken by the spray pulsated from bright to dark, flooding his senses, and he tried wiping the blur from his vision but couldn't focus past the gore on his face that'd stuck his eyelashes together in sickening clumps. Water pounded against his head as hard and as loud as Le'Duprie's fist had moments before and, for an instant, he thought he might still be fighting, so he covered up to protect himself, ducking the raining blows of an invisible foe.
He felt the ground pull out from under him just before a loud crack sounded behind his ears – and those surrounding, pulsating lights that continued to antagonize his consciousness then took an ominous stroll toward black...
The last thing he saw through the haze of his disordered mind, before losing the battle of light versus dark, was the half-translucent delusion of Le'Duprie's bloodied veneer brooding over him, his eyes angrily willing him to slip into a nauseating and guilt-ridden nothingness.
2
"Marty..."
He recognized Terry's voice even before opening his eyes.
"Yur gonna be okay. Yur in the hospital... We're gonna get you fixed up."
Flashes of light passed through the skin of his eyelids, rushing over them from above, and he realized he was on his back but moving. Muffled sounds led to cloudy vision when he opened his eyes. His head throbbed, his surroundings spiraling into context, slowly coming into focus with Terry's face taking shape above.
"What...?" He wasn't sure where to begin.
"You blacked out, man. Doc says it's a concussion. Looks like you cracked yur head on the shower floor but yur gonna be fine. ...Just relax." Terry sounded nervous but sincere.
"Where's Jimmy?"
"He's here too. He's gonna be okay. Got his own room and nurses and everything."
Other voices emerged from a haze of jumbled sounds; technical medical babble he couldn't make heads or tails of. He wasn't sure at first why he was where he was, but a flash of his fist hitting Le'Duprie's face jumpstarted his memory—
"Duprie...?"
The hesitation in Terry's eyes put fear in his heart.
"You need to rest, man. Just take it easy, okay?"
"Duprie?!"
Marty needed an answer, insistent in his tone. He couldn't "take it easy" without knowing what had happened.
But Terry didn't want to give it to him. Marty saw in his eyes that he couldn't bring himself to say the words.
"Goddamn it, Terry... Duprie! Where is he?!"
All the sounds he had just uncovered with consciousness retreated twice as fast into a haunting silence over the next few seconds that passed.
"He...he didn't make it, man......" The words eluded him, and the only two he could think to utter were like blood-soaked cotton balls in his mouth. "He...he's dead."