Hex-Rated

by Jason Ridler

  “Groovy.”

  A minute later, Fulton was in a mask, too. It had a bladed top, like a sideways metal Mohawk, with a visor instead of eyeholes, so he could see far better than I when it came to the periphery. There were no mouth holes, though, so he probably tasted metal instead of mud, sweat, and old spit. Fulton didn’t ask anyone to shove him into the pit, but slid down the dirty side feet-first as if skiing down a dirty mountainside in sandals.

  His presence began to leak more magic, primal and unnerving. He paced back and forth, riling up his own anger, his shadow long in the orange torchlight. The shadow pointed at me with a jagged finger. “Your job, scab, is to take a beating until the very end, when you get a lucky punch in and win. That’s the story. David and Goliath. Simple as dirt. When I fall, raise your hands in victory, I yell cut, and then Riley the stunt cock can get to work with the cunt twins up there. Can you follow?”

  I nodded, but hearing him use the C word turned my hands to stone.

  Fulton barked orders about lights, camera gauges, and mics and we became washed in a mix of tiki-flame illumination and modern blasts from the open-face and Fresnel lights. Shadows grew as I paced back and forth. “Whatever happens, Josh,” Fulton screamed, “do not stop rolling. We are using everything in this scene. No second take. Only going forward. We don’t have time for anything else. And the crowd, you better roar. You got that?”

  “Yes, Fulton,” came nervous young voices from up top.

  “That didn’t sound like a roar,” he barked as if this was his first day as drill sergeant in boot camp. An agitated roar followed. “Let’s finish it.” He turned to look at me. “Once and for all. ACTION!”

  CHAPTER 36

  AND THEN HIS SHOULDER CHARGED INTO MY GUTS AS HE PLOWED me into the mud wall.

  Above me and below the night sky the whirl and sizzle of camera and light blended with the strange screeches of women and a handful of men. I stole a glance while breathing out the pain. Around the lip of the pit like rows of jagged teeth were beautiful women and men. They were punctuated by black cameras and stage lights like a jumble of blistering eyes and dark orbs, a monstrous spider gazing upon two flies in its web that fought each other knowing all victories were doomed.

  At the crest stood Octavia, purple robe fluttering over the lip, legs as white as bone.

  Dirt hugged my back, crumbling over my shoulders as Fulton pulled back for a haymaker. My knees dropped as his fist cut the air. A shower of dirt filled the eyeholes as he yanked out his fist. “Good!” he said. “Keep dodging until I say stop.”

  I smiled with dirt in my mouth. “My pleasure.”

  Fulton’s boxing skills shut the lock on my smart-ass mouth. Army trained, he was jabbing and holding his body to the side like a pro, exactly like a Thracian gladiator would not. He mixed up his combos to keep me on my toes, and I got tagged a few times in the ribs so hard it strained my lungs as I fought to get another breath. He was picking me apart and toying with me like a bully. I was thrilled it was being filmed for posterity.

  Because I let him hit spots. Spots that were tough. My shoulder. My pec. He thought bruises were victories and was getting cocky. A left cross sliced toward me and I pulled back in time to smell the blood and dirt from his hand where he’d cut his knuckles on my bones and flesh, an invitation to sepsis courtesy of me.

  “Good,” he said, breathing ragged. “You dance like a faggot! Keep it up!”

  Spasms of fists, knees, and swinging backhands revealed something else: he wasn’t just a boxer. His stance changed, hugging the earth with his toes . . . and before I knew it Fulton was a blizzard of chops, kicks, knees . . . Karate time! A Chop Suey of martial arts that white guys seldom know.

  “Now you’re scared,” he said as I pulled away from a claw against my masked face. “I can see it in your eyes. Good. It’s on camera. Now I want you to fight, like your life depends on it.”

  Fulton lunged, clawing for my neck, and I side stepped and pinwheeled my forearm to keep his killing hands away. Momentum had him stagger in the pit and dive both hands into the wall of dirt. “Faggot,” he said again, tearing himself from the wall and pointing at me. “Come and get what’s coming to you!”

  I desperately wanted to suggest that Fulton’s ire at men who liked men was probably a deep-seated resentment against his own nature, as Oscar Wilde put it, and that if anyone should champion a Roman lifestyle and Greek view of love, it was him. Instead, I ran around the pit backwards while his rage grew with the chase.

  “Stand still, fucker!”

  Fulton launched himself like an angry football and crashed so hard into my guts I doubled over, but not before grasping him in a hug and spinning so when we crashed, it would be him on his back.

  The impact knocked out his air and jutted his visor so all I saw was a slit full of darkness. “How’s this?” I said, driving my knees on his shoulder.

  “You’re fucking with the wrong monster,” he said, his voice gruff and low. “Get off of me.”

  I slapped him once, hard, shaking the mask like a gong. “I thought Davey was supposed to beat Goliath.”

  “Get off!” He flailed, so I patted his sternum with a baby punch that looked as lousy as a punch-drunk brawl in skid row, but it snapped pain through his nervous system and held him still.

  “That’s a nerve punch I learned from a man who could kill a gang of Green Berets before his morning soup. But don’t worry, I’ll keep up appearances.” I gripped his wrists, then had his dead fist punch me to the side. I rolled him on top of me so we could keep fighting and have some alone time while Octavia oversaw the rising tide of her movie.

  I smashed my mask against his and drove it down so I could see through the visor to his bloodshot eyes. “Where is Maxine?” I said.

  His pupils dilated. “Who the fuck are you?”

  “Answer my question, Fulton,” I said, smashing his fists against my ribs as I mock groaned. “And Nico. Where are they? Tell me, and I’ll let you walk out of this pit without a scratch.”

  His eyes went wide and lose with terror laced with fear. “You . . . you’re the detective . . .”

  “I’ve been called worse by better. Now, tell me where they are. I know they’re here. Where? And what did you do with Nico?”

  Her name slapped him. “You have no idea what you’re fucking with.”

  I drove an elbow into his ribs, hard enough to bruise with the promise to break if he laughed too hard. “Neither do you.”

  Above, the roar of the crowd was dying. “Fans are getting bored,” I said. “Guess you better tell me know before I knock you out. Where are Maxine and Nico?”

  At Nico’s name, laughter came out of those eyes as his pupils twisted into red Cheerios. “You . . . you’re fighting in your own grave! Ha! HAHAHAHAHA!”

  That should have been a warning, but the movement was overwhelmed by the strip of magic touching my tongue: and in a hair-trigger second, I felt darkness ripple through Fulton like the first tremor of the End of Days.

  Then his forearm wrenched itself from the earth and bashed me into the dirt. High above, lightning crackled against the black sky. A storm wasn’t coming, it was being born. I thought all of this while on my back, seething from pain and holding ribs that I’d protected with my right arm—the right arm that currently felt stuffed with cotton drenched in Novocain.

  Raindrops smacked me at strange intervals. A Morse code from above that clearly said “Well, Brimstone, this time you’re fucked.” Fulton seemed to gain mass as his arms raised, hands punching the sky, teeth thick and hungry for death.

  “GRAAR!”

  Ever see a strong man hit the high striker at the carnival? Shooting the puck right at the bell? Well, I was the puck, and the slippery dirt wall was the bell. Fulton dropped his arms and kicked me like an army sack of dirty laundry, and pain from every ounce of this godforsaken day snapped open: my cheeks, my chest, my hands, and worse.

  I flew across the pit. I landed to find another kick crashing m
y cuts and propelled me towards the far mud wall. I’d need an encyclopedia to keep up with all the variety of shitty I felt when I hit the pit floor with rain on my back. Steps away, Fulton seethed, muscles rippling with a dark fury and now the taste of magic was puke in my mouth. With both hands he grabbed his helmet and tore it apart. The face it revealed had analogues with Scottish warriors covered in woad, or berserkers high on bloodlust and belladonna. His body seemed to have gained at least fifty pounds of angry menace since I’d hit the pit.

  Through the hazy pain, I manged to be grateful Fulton wasn’t shooting his mouth off about who I was. Just in time for him to growl “BRIMSTONE, ruining my anonymity.

  He sprang like a wolf with paws up. I sucked in pain and pulled my knees in tight before launching them at his descending solar plexus: right at the pit of his stomach.

  My feet jammed in here, heels first, and hit muscle hard as an oak desk. Shock bolted through my shins, but the impact of his momentum and my force also jarred Fulton enough that he staggered back. Enough time for me to kip up . . . not though time to plan any more offense. Rain thickened as the situation soured.

  Fulton’s Karate Time fighting style was half Special Forces kill-centric move sets, all murder and no philosophy, plus the disposition of a bear after it was stung by a thousand wasps. Fury-fed punches and a flurry of ax kicks kept me bouncing around a pit that was turning into the chocolate milk of the grave beneath our feet, dodging as his berserker heart pumped him forward, the crowd roaring as if t was all part of the show. And he was winning.

  Jabs stung my ribs and face, I blocked kicks with my forearm, and my bruises got bruises. Fulton cut like a butcher who just started his day shift and had something to prove. My blocks sagged, my dodges cut too close, but his pace was still full rage. Normally a man would tire with all this exertion, but whatever magic was in him was like a perpetual motion machine. If I didn’t attack, this pit would be my grave.

  Thankfully, rage turns men stupid.

  He clasped me in a bear hug, the dumbest offensive move in the history of violence, but Fulton’s strength at crushing the wind out of me did a good job at trying to make it a contender.

  Up close and personal, his face was all teeth and red Cheerio eyes. The same berserker who had crushed Izzy’s office, who had probably torn Nico from her room, was back. All Hyde, no Jekyll. He roared with wide mouth and eyes, locking my arms at their side, lifting me from the ground, crushing my kidneys with my own arms and leaving his noggin exposed.

  Jaw loose to absorb the impact, I drove my masked forehead into Fulton’s. The first time, I grunted more than he did. The second time, he actually stretched my back out so that my spine wanted to shoot through my neck. For the third, I drove down and pressed hard until the roaring maniac’s shit breath gargled some of the blood that was leaking into his mouth from his crunched nose.

  His arms broke off their assault on my shaking rib cage long enough that my arms could slip out and my feet could touch terra firma before he wrenched me again. So I started feeding him enough elbow sandwiches to stuff a hippo. The last one caught him in the throat. Finally, those killing arms were off me, and his big mitts were around his throat. Gasping, trying to dislodge his maladjusted Adam’s apple, Fulton stumbled back from me. His face was a half-chewed ham sandwich with too much ketchup.

  Time for more offense.

  I attacked from the side, jabbed three times. Each shot was knocked away by heavy hands, but they weren’t meant to connect. Hit, run, making him move. Make him feel weak in his strong body. Fear sets in. Bad ideas form. Especially for a guy who was all about offense.

  A killer straight right that would knock the earth of its axis came in like a telegraphed message of my own imminent death. I slid away from it, snaked my arm across his, and let his momentum carry him forward as I curled around his back and secured his neck in a blood choke. This little move was a home run. Pulling back, I wrapped my legs around his guts and sunk in my arms like a python. Rain smacked us both as I tried to crush the larynx of a madman. It was only a matter of time—

  —until both meaty hands gripped my masked skull and started to squeeze. The world blotted out into a haze of red mosquitoes floating through my vision. The strength of those hands could have crushed God’s balls. My ears popped, eyes crushed closer together, jaw about to snap. He was out-crushing me.

  And I heard Edgar laugh.

  Poor James! Such a softie now. A pretend gentleman who forgot what he learned on the streets of Oakland, where the first rule is: the street ain’t fair.

  My internal lights flickered against the encroaching abyss. There was Nico, Maxine. And I saw the dead . . . hungry eyes of darkness, awaiting my arrival.

  Screams from the primordial goo of my brain surged forth. My hands clawed onto Fulton’s face with malicious intent and accuracy, muscle memory from Fuji’s training and too the countless times I’d fought for my life in alleys, rail yards, and ‘bo camps across this violent country, childhood memories etched in blood and horror, a skill set of maiming and mayhem unleashed.

  The fingers of my right hand dove into the jelly of Fulton’s right left eye socket, pushing hard and going knuckle deep. Then, they clasped and yanked.

  Lightning cascaded and thunder followed, as a shriek shot out of Fulton’s mouth with shotgun impact. He dropped and I landed on my feet. I raised my hand to the crowd and showed them the eyeball, the strands of viscera wrapped around my bruised forearm. Fulton bucked like a bronco and tossed me against the dirt and mud walls that were covering my skin with layers of filth. He ran around the pit, hands over his face, screaming like a feral child until he collapsed on his knees. I picked myself up, unable to drop the eye, hand locked with violence.

  Above, the ring of onlookers cast a disturbing pall. Their faces were pure deadpan. Even Haley and Rachel had the emotional reflection of two porcelain dolls. Even in the gore rain and mud, I could taste the foul magic.

  And at the lip, arms crossed, face full of imperial indignity, stood Octavia.

  “Where are Nico and Maxine?”

  She grimaced. “Who are you?”

  With a shaking left hand, I tore the laces off my mask. It smacked mud. Rain tagged the scraps, bruises and wounds on my raw face as I looked up, hand still in a fist, eye dangling. “My name is James Brimstone.” Night silence held my name. “Private Eye. You will hand over both women to me. Now. Or I won’t be responsible for what happens next.” Of course, I was a half-naked man in a pit with an eyeball tied around two fingers, so my threat sounded better than reality would allow. But, when in doubt, posture. “And hurry up.”

  Octavia smiled, beautiful and vicious. “You desire to see our star?”

  “Now.”

  “As you wish.”

  Octavia took a step back from the lip of the pit, casting her gaze like a rusty school marm made of disapproval and royal indignation.

  The rains eased. The taste of magic vanished from my tongue like a blacked out memory. I have loved that taste of absence for as long as I can remember. It was among the greatest flavors of my life, one that I was banking would get richer the further away I ran from Edgar.

  Right now, the absence tasted of lesions, absences and openings that were not natural.

  While Fulton quivered on the mud floor, I waited. And then I heard it. Soft sneakers on grass, coming close.

  Under the set lights, a familiar hooded figure stood, first glimpsed leaning upon my office door, last seen at a motel.

  Two thin hands pulled back the hood.

  Nico, face full of scars, glared down. “James.”

  “Nico? Are you okay?”

  I’ve seen more horrors in my time than most grindhouse theaters combined, but nothing prepared me for what dropped next.

  Her scars rippled, and then undid themselves as if they were zippers closing upon themselves. “My name is Tabitha Vance.”

  The last name punched me like a comet. Fulton’s eye slide down and dropped from my fist.<
br />
  “Daughter of Edgar. The man you murdered.”

  My jaw hung like a rube watching a geek show, so I barely registered as Nico . . . Tabitha . . . hexed the air with a finger. Fulton pulled himself out of the fetal position like a Jack in the Box. His haymaker hit my temple with the force of God, and I could not take my eyes off the woman whose hands danced in the air with magic I couldn’t taste, playing Fulton like a heavyweight puppet until the punch landed and I went crashing into the dark.

  CHAPTER 37

  ONCE UPON A TIME, BEING KNOCKED OUT WAS A RELIEF. A PAUSE ON the world. A space in between the land of the living and the great unknown. If I were more of a transcendentalist poet, I’d romanticize this gutter as something darkly fascinating, a seductive caress of night before morning broke, the swoon of gothic romance. Live long enough, though, and the swoon was pregnant with shits, critters, and kin of your dirty past, clawing at you, mouths of acid eating a path through the darkness to sup on your guts and more.

  I won’t tell you what hid in my swoon, but rest assured it was no land of milk and honey or peace and tranquility, but a blighted planet of horrors and screams.

  When water smacked my face and tore me away, I wasn’t just relived. I was grateful. Grateful that I wasn’t swooning, and grateful it wasn’t Nazi ice water. “Thank you,” I muttered, half-delirious. Spit and water dribbled down my sore chin. One drip later, a hand cracked against my face, and the spray followed my face as it cracked to the side. Burning torches and rain made my nose itch as I pulled my head up . . . and felt my hands high above me.

  “Awake, James Brimstone.”

  My hands were tied tight above me, my heels taking almost all the pressure of my weight, burlap rope burning my wrists and ankle. I was tied to some kind of metal stake, painfully straight and with no give. I was elevated, a few heads taller than the crowd of onlookers. About ten yards away was the pit, the mansion a black hole down the back yard. Everyone’s look was glazed and hard, even the one-eyed beast Fulton, who wore a red bandana over his gaping eye socket.