My head fell forward, my shoulders slouched, and I stared at the black stains on the concrete beneath me until spots appeared before my eyes. Behind me the debating voices rose, and the sound of hands shaking the doors reverberated. Long after the debate had reduced to a few mumbles, and the prisoners retreated back to their quiet corners, and after the sun had set and the light beaming from two high windows faded, I still remained silent, thinking only of Thais.
I had nodded off at some point, and then snapped awake when the heavy metal door at the end of the hall opened with a groan. I remained sitting, while other prisoners jumped to their feet and peered through the links into the slim walkway as Driggs shuffled his way through, two armed men behind him.
“Pick me!” one man shouted, his skinny wrist poked through a hole in the door, reaching for Driggs.
“N-No, not me…p-please, don’t take me,” pleaded another.
“I’ll go! I’m ready!” said another.
“Fuck him! It’s my turn!” argued the woman across from me. “And I want you! I challenge you!” She pointed at Driggs, her thirty-something face twisted with rage.
Driggs’ hand sprang forward and slapped against the fence so hard it bulged inward and bit her in the face. Grabbing her nose, the woman stumbled backward.
“You’ll get your turn,” Driggs taunted her, walking past.
She threw her body against the door. “Fuck you, Driggs! I’m gonna kill you! That’s why you won’t let me out of here—you know I’ll fucking kill you!” The chain-links shook chaotically.
Driggs kept on walking, a grin set in the corner of his mouth. He stopped before walking past my cage, turned in his worn leather boots, and looked in at me.
With audacity and ease, I stood, and I walked forward the few steps that separated the back wall from the door. I looked at Driggs with the eyes of a man who feared nothing, a man who wanted this opportunity. I had an idea about why I was in this cage, what I had been brought here for, what the woman and several other prisoners wanted to be a part of so desperately. And although I had no interest in complying, I knew too that it was a way out, and that was all I cared about. I would fight if it gave me an opportunity to escape—I hoped prize-fighting was what this was all about.
Driggs studied me for a moment, smiled smugly before walking away.
I was the one throwing myself against the door then. “I volunteer!” My fingers coiled around the thin chain-links, the force of my hands I felt could’ve crushed them if that were possible. “I volunteer!” I roared.
Driggs looked back at me.
“Oh, you’re going to fight tonight for sure,” he said. “But you’ll be going last.”
My confidence surged when Driggs confirmed it. Fighting I was good at. Fighting I could do. Fighting I wanted!
“Why wait?” I said eagerly, trying to convince Driggs, shaking the fence now with the same fury the woman had.
“Because you’re going to be the main event,” Driggs revealed. “You’re the one who’s going to line my pockets tonight.”
“Why me?” I asked, confused.
“Yeah! Why him?” another voice called out.
“Because he’s the only one of you worthless shit-stains whose got that look in his eye.” He raised his voice over the others. “I don’t have the reputation of being the best talent scout in Paducah for nothing!” He laughed.
Then his voice lowered, but there was something dark in it, and he said as if only to me, “Besides, the things a man will do for a woman, often turn a man into an animal.”
My teeth ground together within my tightly-clenched jaw. I shook the door violently, throwing myself against it trying to get at Driggs. “Where is she? Tell me where she is!” The blood rose up into my head like mercury in a thermometer; I could feel the veins pulsating in my temples.
Driggs ignored me and continued down the hall where he stopped in front of Peter Whitman’s cage.
“How’s that shoulder doing?” he asked Peter.
“Uh, it’s uh, still sore,” Peter answered, failing to hide the apprehension in his voice. “It’s uh…it’s still hard to move.”
I pressed my face to the door; I couldn’t see Peter inside the cage, but I glimpsed Driggs standing outside. His arms were crossed, his head cocked to one side as if he were contemplating. Then he snapped his fingers, pointed at Peter’s cage and said, “He’s fine. A week has been more than enough time to heal. Bring him.”
“No! I can’t fight! Look at me! I’ll be killed out there!”
“That’s the point!” Driggs laughed.
One of the armed men adjusted his gun strap over a shoulder and then he unlocked the cage. Peter’s shouts and pleading filled the room, and the sound of him struggling against the man, until he shoved Peter out of the cage and into the hall, hands bound. He fell forward against the cage across from his, and went to his knees, unable to break his fall.
The man I saw was a glaring difference from the one I once knew. Peter’s boyish-looking features were overrun by dirt and sweat and rampant facial hair; around his once playful eyes, dark circles had set in, making him appear tired and weak. And he was emaciated to the extent he hardly looked like the old Peter at all, but instead some wispy, frail, broken young man of twenty-four who could only be identified by his voice anymore.
“You were always a good friend, Atticus,” Peter said as he was being pushed in the back with the barrel of a gun. “If you love that girl, don’t ever stop looking for her.” Our eyes met as Peter was pushed past my cage. “If anybody can get out of this, it’s you, man!” The farther away he got, the louder he shouted. “Kill them, Atticus! Kill them all!” And then his voice was cut off as the heavy door groaned and closed behind him with a booming echo.
With my hands still clutching the chain-links, my head dropped between my rigid shoulders. Then I drew back my fist and slammed it into the flexible door. “Goddammit!” I roared, and then slapped the door with the palms of both hands.
I paced.
“Sorry, but your friend won’t last one fight,” the woman across from me said.
“She’s right,” the man with the stringy yellow hair added. “He held off for as long as he could. When they brought him in here a week ago he was hurt pretty bad; kept moaning about his shoulder. They won’t put a wounded guy in a first-fight; they let ‘em heal first.”
“Why just the first fight?” I asked.
“The first one is always to the death,” the man answered. “All the fights after that one are…well, basically whatever Ravinia wants. But first-timers are everybody’s favorite because somebody always dies.”
“Who’s Ravinia?”
The woman scoffed. “A sick, twisted bitch,” she said. “But I admit, I like her; got her man’s nuts crushed in her fist twenty-four-seven.”
“Lord Maxima,” the yellow-haired man put in. “He’s the leader of this place. But his wife, Ravinia, is who calls all the shots.”
The door opened again suddenly, and their voices fell silent. All eyes were on the unfamiliar man who stepped into the room at the end of the hall.
“Cages three, four, ten, eight, and fourteen,” he said to another man behind him. “All newcomers.”
“Driggs said cage eight is off-limits,” said the second man.