The Tales of Flesh and Blood

I Fight A Grown-Ass Man

Okay, so I was probably not in the best condition to fight a twenty-something-year-old man who looked as if he was an experienced street fighter at the least. What I was about to do was something that I wouldn't do until the seventh month of each year, when school was on summer break and everyone had a shit-ton of time on their hands - the perfect time to set up the yearly fights we had to prove ourselves.

One tradition we had was to rid ourselves of as many 'grabbable' items as possible, partly to assure our opponents that we weren't about to stick a knife out at them and partly because anything on your opponent was fair game. While it wasn't smiled upon, no one would stop you from grabbing that chained necklace around your opponent's neck and using it to your advantage.

For me, this meant tying my hair back in a bun. And, because the guys had to do it, I would have to take off my hoodie, which would give Ven a pretty good view of my still-bruised neck and slightly-swollen shoulder. Not something I wanted to show to the guy who had been bold enough to imposter Port.

Ven and his buddies were gathered up behind the apartments, smoking and drinking a bit of alcohol. Landon wasn't too far behind me, but he wasn't close enough to appear as if he was accompanying me. Whatever drug Landon had given me was working well - the pain in my shoulder had numbed down to the point where I didn't think about it when I stomped up to the pockmarked resident, grabbed two fistfulls of his shirt and shoved him back with enough force for him to spill his beer when he hit the wall. Before that, his buddies had been giving me whistles and jeering Ven - who had tried his best to smile through the cigarette he held firmly in his lips.

"You wanted a fight, huh? Well, you got one," I grabbed his bottle out of his hand and slammed it on the ground to the side. A few bystanders not far down stopped talking to look at us. I didn't care. "Let's go!"

I backed up to give him enough room. His hair was as wild as it was last time I saw him, but his eyes still had an edge to them that signaled he hadn't been drinking long. He looked at his shattered beer and gave me a look that wasn't angry or livid, but amused. It didn't help my temper in the slightest.

"You're out past your bedtime," he mocked, taking his cigarette to give it a good flick.

I grabbed a hair tie and pulled my hair back.

"Fists up," I demanded. "Right now. We're settling this."

"You're a girl," Ven noted. I laughed. It wasn't the best of sounds I've made.

"Oh, buddy, that's where you're wrong," I lowered my voice. "Security footage my ass. Put your fists up."

Ah, there we go. He looked almost confused, but that faded as quickly as it came. He gave me a brief nod, and without taking his eyes off of me, he slipped off his jacket and tossed his cigarette to the ground. After handing his jacket to one of his friends, he slipped off his plain white t-shirt. This, he merely tossed aside. I did the same with my hoodie, exposing my dark-gray sports bra for the second time today. Not something I wanted to get into the habit of doing. By now, we had managed to draw a small crowd.

"Oh, dude, that's Hale," I heard a stunned voice exclaim to a friend. "Dude, she's pissed."

There were other comments, too, but I was able to ignore them. I watched Ven's face as I backed up further to give him room, and we circled around until the apartment wall was to my left and his right. His eyes flickered to my neck, and then my shoulder.

"You sure you want to do this now?" he asked. It was the last few words he was able to say before I lunged at him, and my mind did what it always did when I got into fights as tense as I was right then: it flew. I wouldn't be able to recount every move that was made, and I briefly hoped that the cops wouldn't show up, because there was no way of settling the adrenaline that coursed through my limbs. Ven had tried grappling me around my midsection, but that was a move I'd learned to counter. I made sure to raise my arms - it was all I had time for, really - and when his arm slammed into my gut, I returned the gesture with an elbow to his turned head.