1,000 Word Challenge: Shallow Victory

Note: This was my submission for the first round challenge. The genre had to be Ghost Story. The location a boxing club. The item was neon sign.

The single light bulb above the eight uneven limestone steps cast a pale light that didn’t reach the edges where no doubt the rats waited. When they were youths, Carmen and Ricky took the steps two at a time much to the chagrin of Tony, the club trainer. One time Carmen slipped on the thin fourth step, slapping his elbow down hard on the stone, and costing him a spot in an upcoming tournament.

Those were the days when the room below was a respite from the chaos of the outside world. Carmen’s dad was a drunk that beat his wife bloody for sport, and Ricky didn’t have a family per se, he simply lived with a string of uncles and aunts, few of which he shared any blood with.

Descending the stairs at midnight to the boxing club housed below the VFW was a penance now for Carmen’s sin. With each step, the rats scurried in the shadows, hungry to witness his shaming. The sound of a glove popping a heavy bag below echoed to his ears above. Carmen sighed, his ribs still aching from the night before, and continued down.

The stairs opened to a cavernous room neatly organized after another day of training. To the right was a row of lockers with a bench in front and beyond was Tony’s office. The trainer was still going strong after 40 years of sparring with punks like Carmen and Ricky. Scattered around the room were heavy bags, speed bags, medicine balls, dumbbells and jump ropes hanging from hooks. At the top of the walls were promotional posters of bright yellow, pink and green.

The lighting was fine during the day with bulbs hanging from the rafters at regular intervals, but during his visits the electrical current was dim except for occasional surges when a bulb emitted a beam well beyond its voltage. The only natural light came from a window well on the opposite wall. At night, it revealed the flashing orange glow from a neon sign advertising for the bar across the alley, reminding Carmen of a traffic sign warning people away.

The ring, with droopy ropes and a canvas covering a plywood floor, was centered in the room. Ricky paced in the ring in ratty shorts and a pair of black boxing gloves. He was still the tall, muscled boy of 17, but his eyes were ringed black and his skin still had the grayish tone it had when they pulled his lifeless corpse from the river 20 years earlier.

“Evening, Ricky,” said Carmen, while removing his shirt. Ricky never spoke, just wore that same accepting gaze Carmen first witnessed that summer day as Ricky struggled in the water and Carmen pulled the boat away. The gaze clearly stated, “That’s the way it’s going to be then.”

Carmen grabbed his old gloves from the top of the lockers. Outside the ring, the rats squeaked and a snake hissed from some dank corner. The closer he came to Ricky the hotter, more humid it became. A pool of water collected at Ricky’s feet. The stench of death and the river filled Carmen’s nostrils. A worm crawled from Ricky’s mouth, and Carmen’s stomach nearly turned.

“I can’t keep going like this,” Carmen pleaded. “It’s been so long. I’m sorry!”

If Ricky considered the plea, nothing reflected in his eyes, which had been blue but were only black now. He raised his gloves, his signal to begin.

In life, Ricky was only a week removed from winning his final amateur match before leaving for the Olympic team camp when he climbed on the boat that fateful day. He was quick with a long reach and dominated Carmen, which was also true outside the ring. Grades, Ricky pulled good ones. Girls, he got the best, including the one Carmen wanted most. Breaks, the world was bending over for him. Carmen, on the other hand, the world never ceased squatting on. The difference in luck poisoned a friendship, and Carmen’s jealousy – the one thing he certainly inherited from dear old dad – planted dark thoughts and hardened his heart.

Ricky’s first jab darted to Carmen’s right and landed on his tender ribs. He doubled over. Ricky didn’t attack again until Carmen brought his gloves back up, and then the ghost moved in with a wicked combination that peppered Carmen’s midsection. Each glove felt like a brick being slammed into his flesh. Carmen stumbled away, spitting blood into a bucket in the corner.
 
Some nights Carmen let Ricky bash away. Others, when he was really fed up, he thrashed wildly, sometimes landing glancing blows on Ricky’s clammy skin. Sometimes the sessions were 10 minutes of pounding, and other nights Ricky jabbed away for an hour.

Ricky satisfied his latest need for a pound of flesh with an upper cut that tagged Carmen in the nose, buckling his knees. Blood gushed down his chin and a canvas of stars painted his vision.

Ricky walked through the ropes and floated to the floor, his essence slowly diminishing as he went. The rats scurried away, the room cooled and the puddle of water drained away as if a plug was pulled.

Dazed, Carmen thought about that last summer when they were 17. He lost at everything, and he was losing his only friend.  Ricky borrowed the boat from one of their boxing acquaintances as a chance for reconciliation before he left town. Carmen brought the beer and knew that Ricky couldn’t swim.

They were drunk and arguing when Carmen landed his first and last good punch on his friend, sending the young boxing star into the river. For once, Carmen won. Ricky flailed in the water, and their eyes met as Carmen pulled away. It was a shallow victory. The satisfaction lasted less than a minute.

Carmen turned the boat back, but his friend was lost. He staggered to his feet in the ring, sobbing just as he had that day 20 years earlier.

1,000 word challenge: Lysandrium Treatment

Note: I am planning on entering an online competition where you are provided a genre, location and object that all must appear in a story that is a 1,000 words or less. I'll have 48 hours to write the story. Below is a practice one from an example: Sci Fi, Drug Rehab Center, Wig, that I wrote. Hope you enjoy. I'll try an post my entries once the competition begins.

 

 

Down the corridor her steps kept time for those lost in it. Edna paced in rhythm and habit past closed doors with patients sleeping off their last fix of Lysandrium. She wore heels and stepped with force off the tiles, knowing in the waning hours of slumber, her time would count the patients into a new reality. Dr. Puck developed the process over years of trial and error for those addicted to the sleeping potion used for crew members for deep space travel missions.

Considering the numbers, the trafficking of humans beyond the stars seemed not worth the human toll. If Dr. Puck’s theories were true, then thirty percent of crew members experienced mild to severe addiction to the narcotics that keep the body young and mind in limbo during voyages hundreds of light years away. That’s the theory he offered for publication. In their long, private discussions, he insists the number is likely much higher.

“Don’t forget, so many go and don’t return. The politicians blame all those on malfunctions with equipment, unforeseen asteroid fields and contact with hostile beings, but that’s not always the case. I think some crews have nearly one hundred percent mental breakdown. Complete catastrophe.”

Dr. Puck’s passion enthralled Edna. Working with him tingled the very nerves that had pushed her toward becoming a nurse. And, Dr. Puck, he was so…. She nearly stopped pacing, but caught herself. Only a few minutes away from reanimation, and she nearly blew it. If only he’d let his guard down about mating with colleagues. Other nerves tingled with that thought.

 ***

 

“What time is it?”

 “It’s evening.”

 “That’s not what I asked!” The patient yelled. The man thrashed his head back and forth, and when that didn’t have enough effect, he slammed it back hard into his pillow. His wrists were secured to the metal rails that ran along each side of the bed. His door was the first to open that night, and he was the first to wake. Nights like this, she earned her money greeting all these pour lost souls.

 “Please, calm yourself. We need you to be calm.”

 “Then tell me what time it is?” The Lysandrium-rich mind fixated on time.

“It’s getting near time for you to return to teaching. We need to get you well.”

“Teaching? I’m no damn teacher.”

***

“Please, I just want to sleep. Don’t you understand?” The Lysandrium-rich mind longed for sleep, but couldn’t without a fix.

“Mr. Roberts, you’ve slept so long already. It’s time to wake and to live.”

This man was grossly overweight, and his stomach slipped out from under the cotton white t-shirt issued to all the patients. He sat in a white recliner, the walls were white, and he wept.

“Why do you keep calling me that name? I know that’s not who I am.”

“What is your name then, Mr. Roberts?”

He wept.

“I don’t remember. Please, can I just sleep some more?”

 ***

“God, what don’t you understand, you dumb beast! I need to know what time it is.”

 Two days and this patient had not relented the business about time, meaning he’d likely need to cycle through another small dosage of Lysandrium. Dr. Puck called it resetting. The mind remained fixated in a past a thousand years gone while the body had moved through space and time. The mind longs for returning to its previous environment, but that world is gone. Sometimes with enough cycles with the drug, the mind finally adjusts to the new reality often by fixating on something else. Edna shivered whenever Dr. Puck brought the particulars up. Why had man ever reached for the stars?

Edna closed the door, resolving to confess her love for the doctor after her shift.

***

Edna sat quietly next to Dr. Puck in the community room. It was her first time near him since he rebuked her affections a month earlier. Fifteen of the patients from the previous cycle had progressed to actualization sessions.

“I’m scared to ask it.” The patient seated across the table from them said.

 "Scared to ask what, Ms. Conrad?” Dr. Puck asked. He made a note on his handheld computer without looking at the patient. Edna loathed that he sometimes ignored them. Didn’t he understand the confusion they were feeling.

“Was I a man when I came here?”

 Dr. Puck laughed. It was a good impression of a real laugh.

 “I am a good doctor, Ms. Conrad, but I am not that good.”

 The patient, impossibly thin and bald, wiped at her eyes. Edna’s heart broke a little. The drugs were so unfair. They robbed these folks of everything, even their identity.

"I just remember being a man, that’s all.”

***

It wasn’t a date. Dr. Puck had made that much clear. The two sat alone in the cafeteria, eating the mush served to everyone in the facility.

 “The Lysandrium breaks them, Edna. You should know this better than anyone.”

 “The lying. I can’t handle the lying.”

 “It not a lie. They used to be someone, but that mind is broken. We build a new one.”

Edna slurped the mush into her mouth. How had she ever loved this man?

“Do you even care for them?”

“Edna, they are my life’s work.”

“Did you ever care for me?”

He swirled the mush around his plate, before tipping it and letting it slide onto his tray. Taking his napkin, he wiped the plate clean until it shined. Before she could react, he reached across the table and pulled her hair.

He tugged once and hard, and she yelped as it tore away from her scalp. Stunned, she glared at him holding what she clearly could see now was a blond wig in one hand and the plate toward her in the other.

"Care for you, Edna? How could I not? You’re my greatest success.”

Dropping the wig and the plate in front of her, he left Edna staring at a face in the plate.