Hansel 2(An Erotic Fairy Tale)(5)

I grin.

Fuck me hard—just how I like.

Cause this guy is a motherfuckin’ pro.





*



Leah





He’s holding his own—barely.

The girl beside me screams like she’s being stabbed every time the other guy—Howard—gets a hit. My head throbs. My heart throbs. It feels like this has been going on for hours, although I know it’s probably only ten or fifteen minutes.

Hansel makes contact on the other guy’s side.

Howard strikes out, popping Hansel in his raised forearm.

There’s a brief break in the brawling. Hansel and Howard circle one another. Hansel’s fists are dripping blood. His left eye is swollen almost shut.

Howard backs away, then jumps close for a rib-shot.

Hansel stumbles a little, then straightens up and grins. The crowd cheers, and deep down in my shredded heart, I hate that grin. It’s one I’ve never seen before, and there is nothing good or glad about it. It’s just…pure suffering.

“Does he come here much?” I yell to the bouncing girl beside me.

‘Edgar’ seems to have a lot of fans.

“What?” She glances at me. I see her mouth the words to my question, and I see the understanding on her face as she gets it.

“No.” She shakes her red head. “Never,” she mouths. I can’t hear the word at all, because they’re going again.

Hansel gets him in the belly.

Howard doubles over.

It’s a fake-out. Howard bounces up and smashes his bare fist into Hansel’s temple.

I shriek as Hansel flies back, his shoulders and elbows catching on the rope that lines the ring. He staggers up, and Howard is on him: throwing punches at his chest and sides.

The girl beside me wails.

I can’t even speak as I watch his neck snap back once, twice, three times.

Then he spits out blood and goes for Howard’s throat.

Hansel wrestles the pro fighter to the floor, not via his superior technique, but because he’s fighting dirty. Going for the throat, the eyes, the mouth.

He gets his hands around Howard’s throat and despite Howard hammering away at his chest and sides, Hansel won’t let go.

Howard’s fists get slower, and I start to feel a rush of panic.

A second later, the dinger starts to ding ding ding ding ding ding ding!

“ANNNNNNND THE WINNER IS…EDGAR FROM THE ENCHANTED FOREST PLEASURE CLUB, fighting for The Dave Thomas Foundation!”

I watch in awe and horror as two big men in black pants and gray jackets grab Hansel by his arms and drag him off Howard. He grins a bloody grin and lifts his fist up. Someone puts a giant, gold mug in his other hand, and he wobbles just a little as he climbs out of the ring.

He’s wearing only a pair of black swim-trunk looking shorts. My eyes cling to his broad, blood-streaked back as he’s led around the ring, past a crowd of mostly women congregating in the middle of the fighting arena.

Every move he makes is like a needle poke to my already fragile heart. He rubs his forehead and mine aches. He rolls one shoulder up and leans his ear against it, like his neck is sore. I want to go ask if it is. He stiffens his big body while he poses for a picture with someone, and I watch as a woman in a bikini rushes up and fills his golden mug with liquor.

Hansel.

All I can see from my seat, twenty-something rows up, is his broad back and shoulders, hunched a little as he takes a drink. Another scantily clad woman puts her hand on his shoulder, saying something to him.

Someone turns the music up, and the next pair of fighters enter the ring to less fanfare than Hansel and his opponent. Everyone around the ring is still gathered around him. A third woman is there now, stroking his shoulder, leaning close to whisper in his ear.

So strange to me, seeing him here. Almost stranger than the club, because this place is almost ordinary. It’s hard for me to comprehend that he lives here, that he’s sailed on through time and space, growing, changing, and I should see him in a common place like this.

Every detail of him lights me up inside. The dampness of his hair. In the bright lights of the arena, I can see the subtle wave of it; he wears it short now. How short? My fingers want to feel each little hair. I’m intrigued by his nape: the strength of it. I can see the muscles flexing as he looks down at his drink, occasionally glancing up to say something to a female fan as he and the men in jackets move slowly toward a metal door to the right of the ring. The way he looks up as another woman hands him what looks like a shirt. The way he takes it from her, nodding slightly. His arms are art, the biceps bulging slightly as he pulls the t-shirt on. The elegance of the inside of his elbow; I can feel it deep down in my belly. That part is soft. I remember how soft. His forearms are flawless; where they were lean and lightly muscled when I knew him, now they’re taut and hard. His hands. What to say about the beauty of a man’s hands? And those are my man’s hands.