Every gasping breath felt like I was drawing air into the blast furnace that my burning lungs had become. My limbs didn't seem to want to do as they were told as I pitifully half crawled, half dragged myself alongside him on the cell's concrete floor.
It's a Hell of a thing when the adrenaline falls away. All of the energy had left my body like melted ice draining through a pulled drainage plug on a cooler. Leaving me empty and hollow except for the pain.
Reaching the wall I rolled over and inched my back up it one tiny scoot at a time until I was finally in a seated position next to him. He coughed and involuntarily spit up some blood onto my pant leg as my eyes looked up at the concrete ceiling above us.
“Fuck you” he croaked
“Yeah, I know,” I responded weakly without looking down.
I tentatively reached up to touch my nose and immediately regretted it. It hurt but the sharp pain from the gentle contact made me wince. More concerning was the low crackling sound so quiet that had it not been coming from literally inside my face I wouldn't have been able to hear it at all. I was fairly certain he had broken it.
This moment we were in, him and I, was my doing. He certainly wasn't without guilt but leave no doubt about it, I was the reason we were half dead on the ground. I reached over to open the lid on his locker box, my swollen and bleeding hand protested being used as I fished out a pack of cigarettes from amongst his belongings.
He moved to get up and stop this but groaned and continued to lay next to me instead. I pulled a square from the pack and allowed it to hang loosely from my lips as I began the difficult process of getting the book of matches from my pocket without actually putting my hand in it. My knuckles and fingers were too damaged to attempt such a foolish thing.
“Roll onto your back” I muttered to him as I worked my way through this process. I could hear the shallow rasp of his breathing where he laid next to me. When he didn't immediately respond I repeated myself more forcefully, “Roll onto your back. You might have a cracked rib”
“How the fuck you think that?” He asked wheezing while still laying there.
“Because I've had them before” I answered while desperately trying to make my weak and shaking hands strike a match.
I indeed knew it well. If I was right, he was feeling a strong pain in his chest, particularly when he inhaled or coughed. Even though the damage was located on his side, he would've been feeling it in his entire rib cage every time it punished him for taking a breath. Every expansion would be a reminder of the original moment it had happened. Because he was shirtless, I was able to also see the swelling and bruised skin, adding to my certainty.
This suspicion about him suffering that particular injury only made the fact that our war had ended with him scooping me up to slam me all the more impressive. He had managed to hook an arm between my legs and get my feet off the ground. Unfortunately for him, given the state of we were in, that maneuver had done as much harm to him as it did to me as he'd gone to the ground too with me landing on top of him. My head and shoulders smacking on the cell floor the same time my torso was crushing his own head into the unforgiving cement.
The blood coating the inside of my mouth was sweet with a hint of salt, perhaps from sweat, with a consistency like melted butter. I examined my teeth with my tongue, searching for anything that was potentially loose or outright missing. Grateful that they seemed to be as I remembered.
Then there was the blood on my hands, both his and my own. It had soaked into the cigarette paper from when I had originally put it to my mouth. Though I didn't care in the least. Finally getting a match to strike I held the tiny flame up and lit the cancer stick I was so desperate for.
I hadn't been considering this moment when I first entered his cell. Threats he had made while talking about me had traveled quickly through the prison news network to my ears and I wasn't one to suffer the lingering potential. Right the fuck now was always the correct time.
I knew as I pulled the cardboard that prevented the lock from being able to latch within the plate that I wasn't approaching a loud mouth. He earned his own well deserved legends within those walls. His head snapped around to look at me the exact moment the heavy steel door locked behind me. Immediately recognizing and accepting the situation. I waited for him to stand from his rack and square up before we began.
Taking a drag from that bloody cigarette I basically moaned “oh my God” while exhaling a wispy plume of smoke. It was indisputably the best tasting thing I had ever experienced. The bitterness of the tobacco drowning out the taste of blood as I focused on it as if nothing else in the world mattered. The smell crept up my damaged nostrils as the sizzle of the drag filled my ears.
Taking my advice, he rolled onto his back alongside me with a few low curses. I glanced down at him with none of the animosity I had harbored when I entered his cell. Perhaps I just didn't have the strength for that. Maybe he had beaten it out of me. My midsection spasmed which caused me to grit my teeth and him chuckled below me.
I didn't interfere as I watched him grab the side of his rack and slowly pull himself up. I simply observed while taking another drag as he pulled himself up to sit on his bed as if he had a bag full of stones weighing his body down. Common sense told me to not allow him to get above my seated position but reality would've prevented my body from responding even if I had been inclined to try.
Leaning forward with his forearm on his thigh, he extended his other arm with his palm up towards the open locker box beyond his reach. Silently flapping his fingers in a “gimme” gesture. With a groan I rotated and grabbed the pack of cigarettes before handing them to him.
His right eye was completely swollen shut with a thin strip of blood already beginning to congeal in the crease where it puckered. The hue of red on his swollen black skin almost gave the impression of something glowing under the surface. My own eye socket hurt from where he'd gotten me as well, but the fact that I could see from both eyes meant the damage wasn't as severe.
He fished out his own matches and lit a cigarette and I knew he was enjoying the same euphoria I had experienced only moments before. His physical reaction was every bit as predominant as I imagine mine had been. Rapture. Pure uncut rapture.
We had met in the middle of that cell. An 8×6 foot space with a bed rack, desk, sink and toilet made absolutely nothing else an option. We were both in our prime, the very peak of our respective physical and combat capabilities. Had this same fight taken place a year earlier or even a year later, it would've been fought by two differently abled men.
Toe-to-toe, a battle of attrition in its purest form, neither man was ever beyond the reach of the other. Here there would be no opportunities to dodge or get out of the way. No fancy maneuvering or dancing around. No chance to recover or catch one's breath. This was close quarter combat as it was meant to be. Who's body could withstand the accumulating damage the longest. Nothing more, nothing less.
I was messing with my nose again like some kind of a curious masochist. Getting punched in the face, while not new to me, was always a bizarre experience. Before anything else was the strange smell, like someone had struck a flint where your nasal cavity disappeared into your skull. Immediately after that is when the pain sets in. It even made my teeth hurt for reasons I could never understand.
“Did you have to lock the goddamn door?” He asked, his voice filled with irritation. Because only a guard could open it, there was no way out where we didn't get busted and carted off to the Hole.
“Yeah” I answered flatly before taking another drag.
“Why?”
“Because fuck you, that's why.” He knew why I did it and I wasn't about to start explaining obvious things to him. He was a banger and I wasn't about to allow any of his boys to run in behind me and turn this into a “honky in the middle”, ping-pong beat down.
In the center of that cell we unloaded on each other. Neither man holding back. Grappling and trying to get the best angle to do the most damage with each punch, head butt, knee and elbow. Each time I connected with his jaw or forehead, it felt like I was hitting a rock wrapped in some kind of rubber. Each connection with a cheek felt like a clap. Even the shot I landed on his nose, though I was certain it hadn't broken, felt like hitting a tough eraser.
Body blows were a bit more universal with a few exceptions. Like when a knuckle cleanly fits between a pair of ribs like the spokes of a gear. Or like the clean connection I made with his diaphragm directly. The brief initial resistance of a tensed torso, feeling almost as if my fist may bounce back, quickly giving way. The point of impact felt as if it were failing in sections. My fist going deeper as the unyielding sternum and ribs above scraped across the top of my clenched fingers. Instantaneously the air burst from his lungs and out his mouth all at once like a popped balloon.
Watching his movements, or lack thereof, I knew his body felt just like mine. Excessively sweating and overheating. Muscles that were heavy and stiff, especially in the legs. Though I doubt he felt the pain in my throat from where he had gotten me in a headlock to choked me. Each time I swallowed it felt like my spit hit a shelf somewhere inside my neck. The sensation almost made me nauseous each time.
“How's that beef?” I asked with my raspy voice as I began to force myself to stand. He didn't answer. Instead he watched me reach for anything I could get my hands on to pull myself up. He didn't interfere. He simply watched me regain my feet with that cigarette hanging out of my mouth. I stumbled over to the toilet with my back to him, leaned back as I took one last, long draw on it, then exhaled the smoke with an equally long sigh. I tossed the butt into the bowl as it extinguished with a hiss and turned back to face him.
We stared at each other for several long moments. I could barely hold myself up as I wobbled in front of him, swaying on my feet like a drunk. I could feel the warmth of my bruised and bleeding face as I flexed my busted and swollen hands. His one open eye never wavered from my gaze as he licked the gash on his lower lip.
He wasn't afraid of me. We can do this until one of us dies. We each knew the other had it in him.
“Man, sit yo dumb ass down” he said with a motion of his head implying the spot next to him. I regarded him briefly before shuffling over and gingerly lowering myself to sit on the rack.
“I had a visit tomorrow,” he commented almost sadly after hitting his cigarette again. Acknowledging that we'd be heading to solitary confinement soon.
“Just blame me” I responded with a shrug that made the side of my neck cramp.
“I am.” He then paused before adding, “bitch ass honky, fucking up my visit”. I think the latter part had been more him talking to himself than me.
Throwing his cigarette butt past me into the toilet, he pitifully reached to grab the pack and light another. Holding it towards me so I could have a second one too.
“Nah, I'm good,” I said, shaking my head. Perhaps I didn't want to cheapen how good the last one had been.
We sat there in complete silence until the next range check where the guard discovered the two of us half dead inside the cell. That was the longest, most painful walk to the Hole I had ever made. I recovered in there for the next couple of weeks but still looked like I had been beaten by a team of coal miners with shovels even after I had gotten out.
That was the only fight I had ever been in that no man spoke about afterwards. Not him, not myself, not our friends, not even the gossips. Not anyone. We each, him and I, simply went on with our time as if it had never happened with the exception that our conflict had been wordlessly settled over those bloody cigarettes we shared.
I don't even smoke, and that story made me want a cigarette.
Good one.
I’m exhausted just from reading that. Good work.