That’s you, Executioner.
I see only the light above as you fall to the canvas, spitting blood.
Commentators spouting hyperbole, shocked faces seen from where I stand in the corner, still hopping on my feet, spry as any one of you competitors thinking you can claim what I’ve built.
I see this in the comforted silence of this house.
Confidence is hard to come by, and at the moment I feel renewed.
Push it all away.
I won’t play along.
I’ll let the pieces play it out, and let it be known that Willem Floures killed a man because he had to. Self defense.
But that’s not that interesting of a story.
He made a mistake.
He didn’t mean to — CONFESSION and RECONCILIATION.
The public enjoys a good second-chance story.
THE DARK PAST
GIVES WAY
TO FUTURE SUCCESS
How admirable.
I am seeing the glare of the headlights.
My eyes dry, and I wince, shutting them.
Mentality is everything.
But is it enough?
SILENCE AND LAUGHTER
Really though, despite all that I see and have seen, I know I do this to spare myself the worry, the discomfort, of what’s going on in the world.
The happenstance that happens to lay claim to the fact that Willem Floures is no pretty-boy, no professional with a clean record.
Just another identity tainted by criminal activity.
I push away the fact that it was my idea…
And more so the realization that I wouldn’t be here, wouldn’t be even remotely focused, on the rematch if it weren’t for burying my clean record for the resurrected fiction of a bar-drunk and blackout murder.
The only thing left is to take solace in a theoretical fiction.
I think about X, and what I could still do to him. I sit in the corner of the ring, with the basement lights turned off, and I dream up a scenario where the person I killed was part of myself.
Executioner found dead with a blade through his eye.
The scenario is as pleasing as it is alarming. I can feel the blade puncturing my eye, made possible only by the power of the mind.
Who would mourn the loss more than me?
I’d enjoy his death for a time. I know I would. However, eventually I would feel like I’m missing something. Willem Floures is only as diverse as the parts that populate his personality.
If one perishes, are we any greater for it?
I KILLED A MAN BUT WOULD ANYONE CARE IF I KILLED MYSELF?
In the dark, the silence takes me into a deep sleep.
When I wake up, Sarah tells me that it’s morning outside. The hysteria has subsided enough to leave the house. And today is a big day.
Today is the weigh-in.
I grip the flab around my stomach.
HOW MUCH WEIGHT HAVE I GAINED?
Weigh in my age, my lacking in pounds.
I wonder how much more baggage I’m carrying than Executioner.
Odds are, it’ll be a topic-of-interest at the weigh-in.
They’ll think about it, placing it in the perfect flabby folds of sensationalized and skewed fight analysis (favoring, of course, Executioner).
I only hope Spencer is right:
“They’ll be too busy thinking about the murder to focus on the pounds.”
THE SILENCE I PREACH
The weigh-in is predictably a clustered wreck of flashing lights, loud noises, and various lobbying media peons looking to pull me aside for a sound bite, a quick interview, something. I stand behind a blockade of paid-for guards, these crewmembers paid by the event planner to make it appear like X and I have big training camps. Actually, it looks like X has a fairly substantial crew, an entourage to be more exact. But yeah…
It makes me look important having six guards wearing black pushing through the gathered masses.
I walk the stage; find my cue, a mark of tape, where I stand and wait.
X does the same.
And then it’s lights, camera, none of the above.
Really it’s not that exciting.
Spencer talks to himself. What might he be talking about? I haven’t a clue. This whole thing is kind of simple. It doesn’t need to be anything more than what it sounds — a weigh-in — but then again every opportunity to extract is an opportunity to create spectacle and it looks like the “agent” in Spencer is coming to life as he shouts in the face of the other, grimacing when it’s his turn to shout back at Spencer. The cameras catch the little argument. So odd, then, when it fizzles, not amounting to much.
X and I refuse even a cursory glance.
Pretend we don’t exist.
Stand and look serious.
Wait until we hear it.
AUDIENCE APPLAUSE
Suddenly it gets quiet.
This is the cue that the weigh-in is about to begin.
The challenger goes first. Me. So whatever but really I hate this part. I’m nervous. I pretend that I’m not. I frown, holding onto the scowl, the sincerest form of expressing hatred for myself, as I take off my mesh pants, my shirt, strip down to only the thinnest possible form of underwear we could manage.
I look horrible.
I know I do.
Do I still have any muscle tone?
Anyone actually impressed with the way I look?
AUDIENCE SILENCE
It’s the worst kind of silence.
I make a note of the fact that when I step up to the scale, when they weigh me, when I flex my arms, the flash from the crowd’s cameras aren’t nearly as blinding as they should be.
Instead of my gaze being washed white in the glow of so many camera shots, I can see into a large crowd as they stare back at me, equally unimpressed.
I have flab on my stomach.
Where muscle definition should be clean I have little jagged lines, perforations made to be the byproduct of fat existing right under the epidermis. That is flab. That is fat from a decade or more of not taking care of my body.
This is the body of a boxer that hasn’t trained.
The training I have is the training of a man that’s been through a lot but maybe not yet enough to have it all figured out.
Flex, close my eyes so that I don’t see the number.
Tune out my surroundings so that when they declare my weight, I am elsewhere.
WEIGHT AT…
Don’t hear it.
AUDIENCE APPLAUSE
I don’t hear it, and I am ready to put my clothes back on. This is a beauty contest for broken beings. My body used to be cut to fit the make of a fighter, now my body is evidence of the fact that we cannot ever be the same.
We age.
We all change.
The lights dim as the cameras are set to ready.
X’s turn.
AUDIENCE APPLAUSE
Typically I don’t watch because I don’t want to confuse myself. The basic facts are enough to blur the lines of reality. How can I weigh so much when he can weigh so little? He makes weight without any problem.
I block out the fact that I might not have made weight.
I whisper, “Is it alright?”
Spencer sighs, “It’ll do.”
Not the kind of answer I wanted but…
IT’LL DO
The place washes white as X flexes, makes the weight.
I notice that he has the same scar on his back, the same one that I had when I was younger but has since faded.
I notice that I’m watching and that this can’t end well.
It involves a lot of self-scrutiny.
Watching, comparing, loathing.
Falling into myself, my own tendency to over-analyze becomes my cause to self-destruct.
Distantly, I know why Spencer isn’t worried that I didn’t make weight.
There will be a fight.
There will continue to be a number of battles. No one will deny the world a fight after what happens at the weigh-in.
AUDIENCE APPLAUSE
RATHER THAN