The crowd ooohed and aaahhed above their heads.
"Monk, no!" Cleese shouted, shoving his hands up and away.
Immediately, Monk stopped struggling and, for a moment, simply stared at Cleese. His expression was a whirlwind of emotions scrawled across a slack and deadened slate. He was confused, but still hungry; his rudimentary brain conflicted over which was the more pressing need. The important thing, to Cleese"s mind, was that he"d stopped trying to take a bite out of him.
Cleese quickly cleared his head and decided right then and there that if he wanted to get through this s.h.i.t alive, he had better start acting like a fighter or else he"d end up just like Monk. And as a great man once said, "f.u.c.k that!"
From his position on the ground, Cleese let go of his hold and threw four fast punches. Two rights landed at a point just to the left of Monk"s right temple, effectively stunning him. The next left hit Monk just under the nose, shattering the cartilage there and opening a spigot of thick, black blood. The last punch came in hot on the heels of the last one. It hit Monk right under the chin, shutting his jaw with a click. The acc.u.mulated force of all four punches landing within a span of a second or two sent Monk up and off of Cleese. As Monk collapsed to the side, an arc of blood flew back and painted a thick stripe of red onto the sand.
Cleese jumped to his feet and, for good measure, threw his back into a front "field goal"-type kick which sent Monk"s head snapping upward. His body went slack and he collapsed onto the sand.
Overhead, the crowd once again did their thing.
Cleese watched as Monk slowly crawled away and then painfully pulled himself up onto all fours. His friend moved with what looked to be excruciating pain. His face twisted up into an agonized grimace with his every motion.
The whole d.a.m.n thing broke Cleese"s already broken heart.
This is what they have done to my friend.
Standing there staring sadly at the millieu around him, an idea suddenly occurred to him. Maybe it was possible to tap into the man Monk once was. After all, he"d obviously retained his fighting style from before. He"d reacted to the sound of Cleese"s voice just a second ago. Maybe there was a way to reignite the man"s now dead brain by memory recall.
f.u.c.k... at this point, it was worth a shot.
"Monk!" Cleese shouted. "MONK!"
The old man slowly crawled up and sat back on his haunches. His hands fluttered lazily over his shattered nose, vainly trying to stop the flow of blood. He stared up into the glaring lights from his kneeling position on the sand, his mouth falling open and slack like a carp"s.
"Monk!" Cleese repeated.
Monk stared blankly into s.p.a.ce.
Cleese tried again, "MONK!"
Monk slowly turned his head and looked at Cleese. His stare remained empty and soulless, but a small spark of recognition could be seen smoldering deep within.
"MONK!".
It was obvious from his reaction that Monk was at least slightly able to recognize his name when he heard it called to him. Surely, if that spark was there, there must be a way to fan it into a roaring fire.
"Monk!" he shouted. "MONK!!"
The dead man looked away sadly and stared into s.p.a.ce for the longest time. His eyes roamed the pit as if his mind had just tuned into a radio station no one but he could hear. He turned his head and his eyes fell back on Cleese with a heartrending finality. Monk"s clouded gaze seemed to bore through to Cleese"s very soul. It left him feeling a terrible coldness inside. Then, as if a sun slowly dawned across his slackened features, Monk painfully blinked and then he drew a stuttering breath.
"Cleeeeeeesssss..."
f.u.c.k me...
Cleese stepped back and dropped his hands to his sides. Staring up into the lights, he blinked away more of his tears. He narrowed his eyes against their harsh brilliance and squeezed away his pain. Around him, the stadium"s air had gone-whether in reality or merely in perception-utterly silent. Cleese looked back and felt his heart twist once more as he gazed into his friend"s sad, doomed eyes.
"Monk? You with me, Buddy?"
Monk sagged in his own skin as if, deep down, he was ashamed of what he was, of what he had become. He turned his face away and sheepishly fumbled at his clothing. With noncompliant hands, he tried his best to straighten away the wrinkles and stains from his shirt"s fabric.
"Cleeeeeessss..." he groaned sadly.
"Monk..." Cleese sighed, letting the situation sink all the way in. "No. Not you..."
Bit by bit, Monk"s gaze slowly rose and finally settled once again on Cleese"s now tear-stained face. The dead man stared for a long time as if he was off, lost in thought. His expression looked almost like he was listening to a voice from far away. His internal radio quietly whispered its message from across the veil of Death. For a second, he made no further movements. He simply stared at Cleese, moving his mouth in that constant chewing motion.
And then...
"Cleee... sssssss," Monk moaned. "Kiiii. Meh..."
"f.u.c.k..." and tears came anew. "Monk..."
"Kiiii... Meh... Cleeesss!!"
Monk crawled arthritically across the sand, painfully prostrating himself before Cleese like an over-whipped dog. He continued to keep his head down, but reached up and grasped at Cleese"s hand. At first, Cleese was reluctant to let him take it, but he figured that he"d be able to yank it back if Monk fell back on instinct and tried to bite. At least that was his hope.
"I can"t, Monk." Cleese hissed, and the dam that held back his reservoir of tears finally broke completely free. "Not you, man... Not you."
Monk slowly raised his gaze and looked Cleese dead in the eye. For a moment, Cleese was dumbfounded by how ravaged his friend"s face was. His gaze was rheumatic and the enamel of his teeth looked stained and pitted. It broke his heart to see Monk like this; beaten, dragged back to life and now abandoned to be ingested by the Pit.
Hadn"t he worked hard enough or long enough for them here?
Couldn"t he, of all people, be spared this indignity?
Monk slowly reached up, his fingers fumbling at the gauntlet on Cleese"s arm. He stared and never broke his gaze from Cleese"s, but his hands moved with a clandestine secondary agenda. His fingers ran over the metal like a blind man reading Braille.
At first, Cleese thought he"d been wrong and his friend"s need to feed was going to win the battle for his soul. For a second, he was sure Monk was going to try to take a bite out of him, but finally, he felt his friend"s fingers touch the release mechanism and pause.
Monk stared intently at Cleese and repeated, "Kiiii... Meh... Cleeessssss!!"
Then, Monk pressed down on the metal latch.
The metal spike sang out of its sheath.
Monk slowly looked up at him with dead, pleading eyes and released his grip on the gauntlet. They were the same eyes Monk always had, only now, the pupils were milky and clouded over.
"Cleee... ssssss. Kiiii... Meh... "
Monk reverently bowed his head and offered up the nape of his neck. Cleese looked up and away, into the light, and lovingly slid his fingers into Monk"s hair.
Now, he too asked of the Light that same question, the one that The Dead seem to always be asking, but never had answered.
Why?
The moment hung in the air like the body of a suicide; soulless and as heavy as the sin itself. The Light... as always, kept its thoughts to itself.
Cleese slowly raised his right hand as if it weighed a thousand pounds. He gently placed the tip of the spike against the small indentation at the base of his friend"s occipital bone. Oddly, Cleese flashed on the mental image of an old woman wearing a boxy coat standing in an elevator long, long ago. The memory of the taste of bubble gum flitted across his tongue. The image of two young boys-one wearing an eye patch and another with a turtleneck raised impossibly high-flashed across his mind"s eye. A small, well of dark blood pooled where the tip of the spike cut into Monk"s greasy skin.
"Ye.. ssssss," Monk whispered. "T"aaang... yooooo..."
Cleese stood silent for a moment and looked around the pit. His mind reeled back over all that he"d seen and done since stepping off that f.u.c.king helicopter so many, many months ago. He thought of how his life had changed-both for the better and for the worse. From where he stood now, it had once looked a h.e.l.l of a lot better.
The league had f.u.c.ked him and f.u.c.ked him hard, that much was sure. They"d treated him like s.h.i.t since the beginning and, despite the money and the supposed affluence, that had never changed. He saw that all too clearly. The sickening part was that they"d expected him to just bend over and take it all... and he had. G.o.d help him, he had. Willingly. He"d always thought that his soul could never be bought, but he now knew he"d been wrong.
He knew it could...
He could even tell you the exact amount on his f.u.c.kin" price tag.
And to think... They"d f.u.c.kin" set him up-twice-and they"d played him for a chump more times than that. And those f.u.c.kers hadn"t shown one ounce of remorse over it. Not over Chikara. And now, not over Monk. Who knows what kind of s.h.i.t they"d done to Monk over the years or what strings they"d pulled in order to get him here in this place tonight.
But in the end, here they all were. Together.
Monk, treated like dirt for years and then retired before he was ready, he"d been thrown away unceremoniously with little to no fanfare much less respect. He"d been discarded without so much as a thought or kind word. But even that was not enough for these motherf.u.c.kers. No, they"d knowingly sent him off to be killed in some rat-f.u.c.k farm league where, as everyone knew, safety was never a high priority.
And what did he get as thanks for years of loyal service?
His reanimated corpse was sent back into the pit to fight some more.
And then there was Chikara... Yeah, that particular wound was still far too tender to poke at. Her memory was one that would haunt him, he knew, for the rest of his life.
Well, f.u.c.k this...
One look into Monk"s eyes told him everything he needed to know.
He was outta here. Gone like the f.u.c.kin" wind.
The League could, if they were very quick, kiss his lily-white a.s.s.
They"d taken far too much from him to sit still on this one. There was just way too much pain and far too much loss for him to just kick back and forget everything that had happened.
Both to him and to the ones he loved.
And besides, now he had a bankroll-and a sizeable one, at that. He"d been very cautious and had surrept.i.tiously stashed away as much of the money as he could get his grubby little hands on. He"d been careful to continually move it around, never letting his wealth rest in any one place for too long. It had all been stashed in enough different places and in enough different countries that no one-not even those knuckle-f.u.c.ks Masterson or Monroe-could find it.
And speaking of Masterson and Monroe...
There were two scabs Cleese didn"t mind poking at now that this was all said and done. Those two f.u.c.ktards needed to know a bit of the pain he now felt. They needed to feel a bit of the same loss. Cleese was sure that he"d only need to think on it a bit and some version of a fair and sensible adjudication would occur to him. Soon, it would be payback time for them... and payback was a righteous and vengeful b.i.t.c.h.
But first...
Cleese returned his gaze to the back of his friend"s head and closed his eyes.
"You know what, Monk?" he said in a hushed tone.
He slowly opened his eyes and took a long, slow look around the pit for what he was sure was to be the last time. He saw the bodies piled about him, the blood spattered sand, and the cameras behind the gla.s.s. He smelled the copper-tainted scent of spilled blood and ichor. And as the sound of rhubarb rained down on him from overhead, he smiled.
"Let"s go home, Pal," he said with a sigh. "Let"s you and I go home."
Cleese closed his eyes and ran his hand through his friend"s salt-and-pepper hair. He gripped it and gently pushed his head just a little further forward. For a moment, the world seemed to go silent, and in the soundless void, the memory of his dead friend"s voice echoed: E-I-E-I-O.
"Abso-f.u.c.kin"-lutely..."
And Cleese drove the spike home.
Hegira Weaver stood alone outside of the stadium, alternately breathing in the cool night air and sucking hot smoke from a Macanudo. Both helped, in some small way, to suppress his sense of grief and indignation. The air helped clear his head. The cigar was symbolically being offered up to the memory of his friend; in memory of Monk. How many of these d.a.m.n, cancerous things did the two of them smoke together? he thought. He ran his tongue across his lips, tasting the fine tobacco, coughed softly, and came to the decision that it had been too many.
He glanced around the loading docks, watching the flurry of activity as the groups of thick-necked Teamsters worked at breaking down the pit and all that came along with it. Large, muscular men heaved beams of metal as if they were balsa wood while others-the ones with clipboards and small, bookish demeanors-ran after them like kittens craving affection. They scurried around busily jotting down identification numbers on invoices like accountants with an obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Weaver pulled another mouthful of smoke from the cigar and rolled the heavy tobacco taste over his tongue. His exhalation was like plumes of cotton set adrift on the night"s still air.
They"ve killed my friend.
Tears welled up in his eyes and he forced himself to choke down the lump that grew like a goiter in his throat. Monk had been his buddy longer than he could even remember, longer than he wanted to remember anyway. Since his Dora had died, he"d been the only real friend Weaver had. The person who"d cared about him and vice versa.
And now...
Now, he was dead... and, thanks to Cleese, dead again. Weaver had felt a little bit of himself die tonight when he saw that spindle turn to reveal what had once been his friend. Over the years, Weaver had come to love this sport, but at that moment, that love withered within him and died.
Still, though...
He was thankful that Cleese had been there to do the right thing. Weaver didn"t lay blame for any of this at Cleese"s feet. He"d sent Monk back into the Land of The Dead with some small sense of honor. He"d also denied those b.a.s.t.a.r.ds in the expensive box seats their Big Finish. He"d taken from them the one thing they"d wanted more than anything, the thing that would sell more of their precious tickets, get them their f.u.c.king ratings. Instead, Cleese had provided something that meant more-more to Weaver at least.
Weaver drew in another mouthful of silky smoke.
The sound of a side door suddenly opening startled him and the big man looked around the front of the truck against which he was leaning. Deep in the shadows, a figure carrying something big and heavy over his shoulder moved like a wraith in the darkness. Whoever it was, he was a large guy and he moved with dexterity of a thief on the prowl. From the way he continued to scan the area with his eyes, it was obvious he didn"t want to be seen. For a second, Weaver caught his silhouette against the reflected light from the trucks and suddenly recognized the form as one he"d seen before.
"Cleese?" Weaver questioned of the inky blackness.
For a second, nothing; then, a barely audible voice hissed at him from the shadows.
"Weaver?"
Weaver cast a suspicious glance around to see whether or not they could be noticed by any of the Teamsters or pencil-pushers and then walked quietly-almost nonchalantly-over to where Cleese stood lurking in the darkness.
"You...uh... going somewhere?" Weaver asked.
"Ay-yup," came his answer from the gloom.
"Care to share?"
"Not really. I don"t want anyone asking you if you know where I"d gone. If you don"t know, then you can"t tell anybody."
"Fair enough," he said and drew another puff from the Macanudo. The expelled smoke drifted off and dissipated in the cool air. "Can I ask why?"
Cleese set the heavy duffel bag he carried over his shoulder down and stepped deeper into the blackness. If he was going to take a minute to say goodbye to Weaver, he was d.a.m.n sure going to keep himself hidden from inquisitive eyes.