Page 10

They move skillfully.  They feint at one another, testing.  The crowd yells.  “Come on!”  “Hit him!”  “Take him down!”.
She looks around the crowd again for the young girl.  She is gliding along the edges, scanning the ground.
“That kick, that left kick!”  The man behind her, the one who grabbed her wrist is shouting.  She quickly realizes the words aren't directed at her.
She's lost sight of the girl.  She wanders around the crowd, occasionally looking up at the stage.  At one point, she ends up next to one of the fighter’s coaches.  “Jab and sweep, James!  Jab and sweep!”
There are some heavy exchanges of strikes and then the ref breaks the action.  The crowd murmurs at one another and shout at the stage.  “He's gonna kill you with that hook!”  “Yeah!”
The fight starts again.  One fighter catches the other with a roundhouse kick to the head and drops him.
Cheers and boos erupt simultaneously.  The ref grabs the standing fighter’s hand and raises it high in the air.  The two men walk around the stage once and then over to the metal staircase.  The crowd becomes silent as the fence door opens.
The guards step aside and allow the fighter to walk up to the metal door with no knob.  There is a click.  The door opens.  The fighter pounds his chest with both hands and strides inside.  A moment after disappearing into the darkness, his decapitated yet bloodless head comes rolling down the metal staircase.  The door swings shut.  The crowd roars