Charlotte After Dark

Chapter 26: Grow Where You Are Planted, Part III

"We should start with the basics," Abel told me, positioning himself in the middle of the room.

I looked around me, taking in the room around me. The room was pretty large, adorned with weapons and devices that ranged from small to large, simple to complex, and modern and ancient. The floor had no mats, but was the same hardwood I had seen all over the rest of the building. There were targets on the other side of the room that were so torn up, they were almost unrecognizable, and standing dummies that had large gashes, or whole chunks missing from them.

"The basics of what, exactly?" I asked, tracing the tip of a nearby dagger that was positioned amongst a whole display of knives.

"Let's call it: self-defense," he replied.

"Self-defense from what?" I questioned.

"Cormac told me you like to ask a lot of questions," Abel observed, taking off his sweater to reveal a plain white shirt underneath. He threw the sweater over a nearby chair and returned to look at me.

"It's in my nature to be that way," I responded.

"I'm not in the business of looking for answers. I'm in the business of surviving, and you should be too," he said. He looked at me with a look so serious, it probably could have frozen over a pot of boiling water. His brown eyes were warm, but as he overlapped his arms across his chest, I knew he was trying to get me to understand the importance of it all.

"All right," I relented. "Show me how to survive."

"I can't show you anything," Abel laughed. "You need learn it."

"All right then, teacher. Teach the student," I said.

"First, I want you to get past me," Abel said, standing resolute in the middle of the room.

"That should be easy. This is a big room," I replied.

"Then show me. Get past me, and grab that shield from the wall," he challenged.

"Ok," I let out a sigh of concentration. I stood right across from him, mirroring his body. I looked past his head at the dented shield that adorned the wall behind him. It was a blank and dented shield with no other marks, and was dull in the light of the room.

I felt my feet lift off the floor, and my arms pulled close to me as I made my attempt. I tried to use my speed the best I could, charging to his right, but as soon as I made my first few strides I felt the unfamiliar feeling of pressure around my neck. Abel grabbed me so tightly around my throat that he probably would have snapped it in half if I were still human. He wasn't finished however, and he picked me up off the ground, slamming me to the ground by my neck with all his weight, without even the semblance of trying.

I felt like I had melded with the ground, unable to get up. I wasn't sure if it was physical or psychological, but for lingering moments I wasn't even able to pick myself back up.

"You should never go for the obvious," Abel warned me. "I knew what move you were going to make before even you did."

I raised myself up on one arm, rubbing my neck with the other and mincing as the momentary pain began to pass.

"Sounds like pertinent information you should have told be before," I said.

"You wouldn't learn then, would you?" Abel said, offering me his hand to help me up.

I shot him a look of aggravation while I dusted off my palms. I let my arms fall to the side, squaring off my body to match his once more. I squinted my eyes, trying to find some sort of tell radiating off of him. He was still, like a statue carved of perfect ebony marble, with no tell in sight.