The sticky tar clings to me as I push myself up. I’m not sure if Endo is being sporting or just trying to prolong my suffering, but he gives me time to collect myself. I shake out my arms. My fingers are cramping up as the muscles in my arms try to shift back in place. I’m lucky he didn’t break them.
He comes at me again, this time leading with his fists. The man’s a blur, punching from every possible direction with the quickness of a striking cobra. I focus on blocking. If I attempt to strike back, I’ll just leave myself open. He batters my aching arms, and despite my best efforts, he lands a few solid blows. To my cheek. My ribs. My gut. This last one pushes me back, hunched over, sucking in air. My heel hits something solid, and I start to fall.
When my body reaches a thirty degree angle, I catch a glimpse of what’s beneath me. Nothing. I’m falling off the side! My only escape. I embrace it and let myself drop.
Then I stop, hovering out over a 325-foot fall. Endo has me by the shirt. When I reach out to wrench his hand away, he catches my wrist, yanks me up and flips me. After a short flight, I reach the terminus of my descent, landing square on my back. I’m wracked by coughs, as I roll to my knees and climb to my feet. Endo stalks toward me again and resumes his merciless assault, this time landing more punches than not.
A slap strikes my cheek. An open-palm slap. The man is fucking with me. Humiliating me! Before I can think, I lean into his punch, absorb it with my kidney and throw my hardest jab. I’m not sure whether it’s a good punch or because of the sudden reversal in strategies, but the strike connects hard with Endo’s chin, snapping his head back. While he stumbles back, I crumple to the roof, clutching my side, wishing I had arms like Shiva so I could clutch the rest of me.
Endo rubs his jaw. Blood drips from his mouth. “You can’t win.”
His arrogance is really starting to grate on me. As he closes in to resume my beating, his guard up, I lose my patience. With an angry shout I charge forward, linebacker style, arms spread wide. He makes me pay for the sloppy move by driving his foot into my crotch, but momentum and anger carry me past the pain.
I hit him hard, lifting him off the roof. I can feel his elbow driving into my back, again and again, but the pain is numb. Distant. It’s like when you have a headache and someone tells you to bite your finger, one pain driving the other away. Whatever he’s doing to my back can’t compare to the pain in my balls.
I jump, lean forward and slam the much smaller man into the roof, allowing my shoulder to compress his belly. He shouts in pain. Satisfying pain. Before he can recover, I fling myself away from his fist and wrap his lower limbs in a vicious leg lock. When I’m done with him, his days of prancing around me will be over.
I squeeze hard, eliciting a scream of pain from Endo. His muscles tear. His ligaments stretch, ready to snap. “You can’t win!” he screams again. Before I can wonder why he’s still convinced of victory, I feel a burning sensation spreading through my thigh. The burn transforms into mind-numbing pain, and my brain screams at me that something is fundamentally wrong with my body. I lean up to look, my side roaring in pain, and I see what’s happened.
There’s a knife in my leg.
26
The part of my mind that hasn’t gone numb, quickly takes stock of the injury. The blade is buried in the muscle of my leg, to the right of my femur, nowhere near my femoral artery. So I’m not going to bleed out. But that’s a weak bonus when you consider the fact that I’ve still got a fucking knife in my leg.
And then, it’s not. Endo pulls the blade free, and the pain loosens whatever grip I still had on the man. While I scream through grinding teeth, Endo rolls back to his feet. His face is flushed with pain and anger. I nearly had him.
My eyes find the knife in his hand. A small, two inch blade. The damage to my leg won’t be severe. While I climb to my feet, mental gears spin, tumblers fall into place, and I come to a realization.
Endo could have killed me. Probably several times during our fight, but certainly with the knife. I checked for my femoral artery because in a fight to the death, that would get the job done. And Endo certainly has the skill to have inflicted the wound, even while leg-locked. But he didn’t. He stabbed my muscle. With a small blade. The effort was enough to free himself, but not to seriously wound me. Sure, I’ll be limping for a while, but I’m far from dead, or even incapacitated.
Fists clenched and head tilted to the left, I share my discovery. “You’re not actually trying to kill me.”
Endo is expressionless for just a moment, but then his shoulders sag in defeat, and I understand: Endo wasn’t trying to kill me, but he needed me to believe he was. That was the plan all along, but I couldn’t be told.
A vibration moves through the roof, nearly knocking me over. “The hell was that?” I ask.
Endo, eyes wide, reaches into his pocket, removes a device and pushes a button.