Gluttony Bay

by Matt Wallace

  It’s past eleven p.m. when the referee steps to the middle of the ring to begin the next battle. He’s a goblin who was a big television star in the 1970s, until he ran afoul of the Goblin King. His punishment was the most severe in the goblin world; he was cursed to age like a normal human. Forty years later, you can scarcely see the devastatingly beautiful creature that once existed beneath several layers of wrinkles and fat and grey.

  The referee calls the next two combatants to the center of the ring. Ritter is stripped to the waist, his feet bare and his hands and fists wrapped in athletic tape. It’s his third fight of the night, and his dark hair is pasted to his scalp with sweat. There’s a small cut across the bridge of his nose, but he’s otherwise unscathed.

  His opponent is a satyr with a bronze, rippling torso and long dark curls. They match the color of his woolly legs, both of which end in polished, amber hooves.

  “You both know the rules,” the referee reminds them. “There ain’t none. You fight till one of you can’t get up or gives up. We clear?”

  Both opponents nod silently.

  “All right, get to it!” the aged goblin instructs them.

  Ritter immediately begins moving his feet in time with the satyr’s ginga, the constant, repetitive dancelike movements that are the basis of capoeira. From the ginga a skilled mestre can launch spinning kicks with utterly devastating momentum behind them. Not to mention hooves are a great deal harder than human feet.

  Ritter tosses out a few quick, retracting jabs experimentally. Timing an opponent who is in constant motion like this one can be extremely difficult. He decides to wait and counterstrike.

  Sweeping one of his hind legs far back, the satyr springs forward and launches the first of three lightning-fast spin kicks. Ritter ducks the first, then the second, popping up and quickly meeting the third with a windmill kick of his own. Their legs meet in midair. The satyr’s goatlike limb is more powerful, and the impact hurts Ritter like hell, but it succeeds in stopping his opponent’s momentum and momentarily throws the half-man off-balance.

  Ritter rushes forward while the satyr’s back is exposed to him, but he’s made the very human mistake of forgetting what he’s fighting. The satyr recovers before Ritter can close the distance, and rather than waste time turning around, the creature leans forward and places both hands against the canvas mat, mule-kicking Ritter square in the chest with both hooves.

  Pain sizzles both atop and beneath Ritter’s skin, and the impact sends him careening backward into the ropes of the ring. He bounces off of them and charges forward at his opponent, who has already returned to the familiar motions of his ginga. Ritter feints quickly to the satyr’s right and then leaps into the air, both feet leaving the canvas as he delivers a spinning aerial kick to the left side of the satyr’s head.

  Both Ritter’s feet and his opponent’s body touch down on the canvas at the same time. The referee quickly leans over the satyr’s inert form, checking for signs of consciousness. With no signs of movement, the goblin waves his arms, signaling an end to the bout and declaring Ritter the winner.

  The reaction of the crowd is mixed and largely based upon whether or not the patron had their money on Ritter. But there are many cheers; it’s his third dominant performance of the night, and this crowd knows talent when they see it.

  Ritter climbs down from the ring, his breathing shallow and the receding adrenaline rush leaving his blood cool. A group of perhaps a dozen small, round, mud-covered boggans all holding winning tickets cheer him from their plastic-covered seats. They’re swilling brown bottles of Corona Familiar that look absolutely gargantuan in their stubby little arms. Ritter gives them a polite nod and holds up his still-taped hand.

  A properly grease-covered taco cart has been wheeled into the ballroom for concessions. Ritter makes his way over to the white-mustached old man and what looks to be his dark-haired granddaughter crewing the cart in their stained aprons.

  “Cazadores, por favor,” he requests.

  The young woman, with a more-than-enthusiastic smile, serves him a shot of the tequila in a small plastic cup like the kind found atop liquid cold medicine bottles.

  Ritter quickly knocks back the shot, grateful for the slow burn. He hands the plastic cup back to the girl.

  “Uno mas.”

  She pours him another shot and Ritter makes it disappear just as quickly.

  “Gracias,” he says in an alcohol-constricted voice.

  “You want something to eat, my friend?” the old man asks. “You don’ wan’ make yourself sick.”

  Ritter nods. “I’ll have two, with carne asada.”

  He reaches into the pockets of his jeans for the sweaty wad of bills there.

  “The shots are on me.” A voice he’d recognize amidst the clamor of even the most raucous crowd.

  Cindy is holding a Styrofoam cup in one hand and several betting tickets sorted among a shock of cash in the other. She walks up to Ritter with a big grin on her face, draining the remaining contents of the cup before tossing it. She peels off several bills and folds the rest, tucking them into the pocket of the fatigue jacket she’s wearing.

  “How’d you make out?” Ritter asks as Cindy pays the young woman for his order.

  “Well, now, it went against all my instincts and all empirical evidence to bet on the white boy, but it did pay off.”

  The old man hands Ritter two corn-tortilla tacos on a paper plate, the fresh flank steak steaming under a bed of freshly chopped cilantro and onions. Ritter gratefully accepts the plate, dressing both tacos with salsa verde from a small plastic tub before picking up the first one and stuffing half of it into his mouth.

  “Bronko has a gig for us,” she tells him.

  Ritter takes his time chewing and swallowing, his expression never changing. “You can handle it.”

  “See, now, nah, I can’t. I’m not any kind of wizard.”

  “Neither am I.”

  “You’re as close as we got, and we need you.”

  “I can’t go back yet.”

  “Until when? You’re forgiven? Until you’ve done enough penance? Is that what this is? The last time you did this shit was when you found out your old man kicked, and I figured, hey, he’s working through some grief sprinkled with daddy issues, but this here—”

  “What do you want from me, Cin? Seriously?”

  “You didn’t know what Allensworth had planned for the kid, all right? Gun to your brother’s head, you made a damn decision. Who would’ve done different? Point ’em out to me.”

  “I didn’t want to know. That’s the truth. I couldn’t undo what I did, so I closed my eyes and hoped it would all turn out ice cream and unicorn farts.”

  “And? Nobody died and you’re not perfect. Now what? The rest of us are moving on here, Ritt.”

  “Lena isn’t.”

  “She’ll get over it!” Cindy insists. “Or she won’t. Either way, she’s not the only one there, man. We here, you’re team. We all here because you came and got us and brought us here. That’s on you, and you don’t get to cut and run.”

  Ritter hurriedly finishes the last of his tacos and crumples up the paper plate, dunking it in a nearby commercial trash bin.

  “I can’t go back,” he repeats after several long moments of silent thought. “But I’ll back you up.”

  “How?” Cindy asks impatiently.

  Ritter grins, just a little, and although it’s an almost entirely rueful expression, it still does Cindy’s heart good to see it.

  “I happen to have a proxy available,” he says.

  HOME INVASION

  Lena hasn’t slept in her bedroom since returning home after the night of the two inaugurations. Without Darren, their apartment feels too much an empty, alien place to her. She almost wishes James would’ve stayed in Darren’s room, and though she’s neither asked nor offered, Lena supposes it’s too hard for him, as well. She’s had Nikki over several nights, and it helped, but Lena feels like she’s exhausted that fa
vor, even if her friend would never tell her so.

  Lena has even found herself looking up Dorsky’s contact in her phone half a dozen times, but even at three a.m., she’s realized reopening that door is more trouble than it’s worth.

  Instead, she’s nested in their living room, practically erecting a pillow and blanket fort around the secondhand couch they bought together with their first paychecks as line cooks in the city. Not that any of the comforts help; she can barely sleep, netting perhaps two solid hours on a good night. Every noise in the dark has her reaching for the retractable aluminum baton she keeps under the couch. Every dream waiting behind her eyelids is a nightmare.

  If it weren’t for binge-watching shows on Amazon Prime, she’s not sure what the state of her sanity would be.

  Lena stands in their kitchen after midnight, cracking fresh eggs into two ramekins, each lined with a strip of bacon. She’s preheated their small oven. She doesn’t whip or otherwise beat the eggs; merely sprinkles the top with dill, smoked paprika, and a pinch of pepper Jack cheese. After baking for ten minutes, she’ll have two perfect bacon-wrapped eggs with golden, oozing yolks ready to be pierced.

  Lena has just put the ramekins in the oven when she hears knocking at the front door.

  It’s not forceful or urgent. The knocking is entirely neighborly, except Lena isn’t friendly with any of her neighbors and it’s the middle of the night.

  She hesitates and then reaches for a scaling knife from the gleaming set in a block on the countertop. She carefully tucks the blade inside the waistband of her pajama pants and covers the handle with the hem of the Old Navy tank top she’s wearing.

  Padding silently to the door in her bare feet, Lena stares through the peephole, and her breath immediately catches in her throat.

  It’s Allensworth.

  Lena backs away from the door, mind racing.

  “Miss Tarr,” his weary voice addresses her through the door, “you’ve once again greatly overestimated the thickness of this portal. I can hear every step you take on the other side. Please do open up.”

  Lena sighs, looking down to double-check that the scaling knife she’s secreted isn’t visible. Satisfied, she steps forward and snaps the deadbolt, opening the door.

  He’s wearing the same black Adidas jogging suit he wore when delivering Darren’s and her employment contracts for Sin du Jour, what seems like a lifetime ago.

  His Rottweiler, Bruno, heels obediently by Allensworth’s side.

  “What do you want here?” she asks bluntly.

  He laughs that mirthless, imitation laugh of his and shakes his head.

  “I do, however, enjoy your forthrightness, Miss Tarr.”

  Lena doesn’t say anything, simply waits.

  “Inviting us in would be out of the question, I suppose,” Allensworth says, glancing over her shoulder at the apartment beyond.

  “You suppose right.”

  “Very well. Understandable. You’ve been through quite an ordeal as of late.”

  Lena feels equal amounts of disgust and rage twisting into one pulsing knot in her gut. She has the deepest urge to quite literally slam the door in his smug, perpetually lying face.

  Her next words drip like blood from her lips.

  “Why . . . are . . . you . . . here?”

  “I have news about Mr. Vargas.”

  That very benign sentence manages to break through the veil of red draped over Lena’s world.

  “Darren?”

  Allensworth nods. “I’ve secured his release and I’d be quite happy to take you to him now if you’d like.”

  Lena begins to take a step forward, not even thinking, the very notion of seeing Darren again, alive and safe, overriding even her most taciturn sense of logic.

  She stops.

  “Why didn’t you just bring him home?” she asks. “Why do I need to go to him?”

  “I can do that, certainly. I’m on my way to sign him out now. I simply thought you’d want to come along, his being your very best of friends. That’s all.”

  In that moment, Lena can’t decide which enrages her more, the fact he’s lying about Darren or that he really thinks she’s a big enough moron to buy such an obvious lie.

  “I don’t believe a goddamn motherfucking word you say,” Lena informs him. “I know you did that to him, whatever it was. I know you’re making some kind of big power play. I know you think we’re disposable. But you’re just a wannabe dictator. And that’s dictator with a little dick.”

  For the first time since laying eyes on the enigmatic figure, Lena sees Allensworth frown.

  It’s like watching the sun burn through a matte painting of false sky.

  “Miss Tarr, it brings me far more pleasure than it should as an individual of my station to inform you that while you have been a stubborn pain in my ass from the day Byron hired you and your simpering little roommate, I am finally taking steps to excise that pain.”

  “So, I’m fired?”

  Allensworth smiles, grandly and genuinely, revealing perfect ivory veneers and a hint of perhaps the pinkest gums Lena has ever seen not in a Hollywood starlet’s mouth.

  “My dear, sweet girl . . . beneath that ex-military swagger and Internet-feminist mouth, you really are just cloyingly stupid, aren’t you?”

  The strange arms that seize Lena’s head and neck from behind are less like human limbs and more like winter tree logs wearing cashmere suit sleeves. Her throat is squeezed into the crook of a massive elbow while an equally massive hand presses the back of her head farther into the chokehold. Lena smells heavy musk and feels the wide body of a portly man pressing against her back. Her bare feet are no longer touching the floor.

  Lena instinctively reaches up and claws at the man’s arms and leather-gloved hands, but he’s impossibly strong and it’s as if his body is cemented in that position. She knows how to counter a rear naked chokehold, was taught countless times while grappling on a practice mat back in boot. There’s no leverage she can gain, however, and no force she can exert to pry herself or her attacker’s arms free.

  Lena can feel her eyes bulging, bloodshot, out of their sockets. Her neck is already numb and her head full of cotton. Spittle runs over her lips unchecked. She can’t breathe. Allensworth and Bruno are blurry shapes in her narrowing field of vision, but neither of them moves from where they’re resting at the threshold of her door.

  Lena knows in seconds, she’ll lose consciousness. She forces her hands to abandon their futile ministrations, dropping them to her waist. She gropes at the band of her pajama bottoms until her fingers brush cool plastic. Her right hand closes around the grip of the scaling knife and pulls it free. Meanwhile, her other hand reaches up and grips the expensive material of the suit sleeve constricted around her neck.

  Unable to look down, Lena uses the hold to guide her trajectory as she jams the blade of the scaling knife into her attacker’s arm, once, then twice, then over and over again in rapid succession. At first, he rocks her body from side to side, attempting to maintain his grip on her, but eventually a guttural scream fills her ear and the arm disappears from around her neck.

  Lena drops to the floor, gasping for air until she finds herself hacking on it, feeling as though she might vomit. Ignoring the sensation, she commands her weakened, oxygen-deprived body to its knees, standing and turning to face her attacker.

  The large man has backpedaled several feet, clutching his punctured arm. His jet-black Armani suit is impeccably tailored, as is the matching executioner’s hood draped over his face, obscuring his head and neck completely save for two eyeholes. The irises beneath burn gold with flecks of crimson.

  Lena extends the scaling knife and widens her stance. There’s blood on the blade, on her hands and arms. There’s blood on her chest and staining her tank top. She tries to ignore the macabre, triggering sight and coppery smell of it all.

  The executioner rushes forward with a growl. With one swipe of his uninjured arm, he slaps the knife out of Lena’s h
and. Before she can react, that same arm reverses its trajectory and she’s backhanded across the cheek and jaw with shocking power. Her legs seem to flee from beneath her and she crashes into the floor as if launched by a catapult, the entire left side of her face numb and stinging at the same time.

  She feels his heavy footsteps advancing on her more than she hears or sees them in that moment. Shaking her head and blinking rapidly, Lena pushes away from the floor with her arms, bringing one knee under her for support. The other knee she draws close to her body, loading it like a spring. Lena focuses through her brain-addled haze and zeroes in on the executioner’s right leg.

  With all the power and momentum she can summon, Lena drives the heel of her left foot directly into the front of the man’s knee. He might be large and thick through his limbs, but none of that padding is protecting his kneecap. The vulnerable area emits a sickening pop as the executioner’s leg bends just slightly backward at an awkward angle. His advance halts, and he seems almost confused.

  Then the report reaches the man’s brain, and he begins to scream and scream.

  Lena gets her feet back under her, still crouching low. In the midst of his agonized throes, the executioner reaches inside his suit jacket with his still-bleeding arm. Lena sees his hand emerge, coiled around the grips of a large semiautomatic pistol. Her eyes widening, she dives for his right leg, tackling him by his folded knee. The now one-legged giant topples, crying out even louder in pain and rage.

  Lena quickly scrambles up his prone body, both hands reaching to secure the pistol on which he’s managed to keep his grip. She wraps one hand around the barrel to secure the weapon’s slide, her other hand working to pry the executioner’s fingers loose. He’s still stronger than her, maintaining his grip like a vice, at least until Lena jams her fingers into the puncture wounds of his arms and begins digging.

  The executioner howls anew, and his hand unclenches just enough for Lena to pull the pistol from him. She quickly rolls away before he can reach for her, rising up to one knee several feet from where he lays.

  The executioner sits up. Without thinking, Lena extends the pistol and pulls the trigger once. She doesn’t even hear the shot that follows, only sees the man’s hood burst like an overstuffed bag of feed. It’s like pressing a deactivation button on an automaton; the man sits there on her floor, arms slack at his sides, head slumped towards his chest.