stench of unwashed bodies.
The noise hit him immediately, a physical force that made his jaw clench. It was a
chaotic wall of drunken shouting, heavy glass clinking, and the thumping, distorted bass of
a jukebox fighting a losing battle against the roar of the bloodthirsty crowd. Clayton stood
near the back, by the sticky, unfinished wood of the bar. He kept his shoulders rolled
forward, a subconscious habit designed to make his six-foot, densely muscled frame look
smaller, less threatening. He wore faded brown Carhartt pants that were stiff with dried
mud at the cuffs, and a plain, unbranded gray T-shirt stained dark with fresh engine oil.
He ordered a club soda from the bar, dropping a crumpled dollar bill onto the damp
surface.
"You look like hell, Clayton," Rusty grunted, sliding the sweating, ice-filled glass across
the sticky plywood counter. He didn't ask why Clayton wasn't drinking alcohol; he had
known the man long enough to know better.
"Combine died," Clayton said. His voice was a low, gravelly rasp, a sound that rarely saw
use these days. He took a slow sip. The sharp carbonation burned the back of his dry throat,
a small, grounding pain.
"Need cash?" Rusty asked, a knowing look in his bloodshot eyes.
Clayton just nodded, staring at the bubbles rising in his glass.
Rusty let out a harsh, wheezing laugh, wiping down the bar with a rag that somehow
looked dirtier than the counter itself. "Well, you ain't going to find no bank loans in here
tonight, brother. Just bad decisions and emergency room bills." He paused, nodding his
large, balding head toward the center of the chaotic room. "Though... if you're feeling
particularly suicidal, there's always the open challenge."
Clayton followed Rusty's gaze through the haze of smoke. In the center of the makeshift
ring—a twenty-by-twenty-foot square of interlocking, mismatched blue foam mats held
together by layers of silver silver duct tape—stood Trent Larson.
Trent was twenty-four years old. He was aggressively tanned, his skin an unnatural
shade of bronze for a Midwestern farmer's town. Even from twenty feet away, he smelled
violently of cheap aerosol body spray and manufactured testosterone. He wore tight black
board shorts and had his hands meticulously wrapped in white athletic tape.
He was bouncing lightly on his toes, throwing lightning-fast, flashy jabs at the empty,
humid air. A sharp *snap-snap* echoed across the room as his knuckles broke the stagnant
air. Trent ran a commercialized martial arts gym two towns over, a place with mirrors on
every wall and heavy bags that had never been hit with genuine anger. He boasted three
amateur MMA belts, a tribal tattoo wrapping around his swollen bicep that he couldn't
explain the cultural origin of, and the kind of loud, unearned confidence that made
Clayton's stomach physically churn.
It wasn't a churn of fear. It was a bone-deep, spiritual exhaustion. It was the weariness
of a man who knew what real violence looked like, watching a boy play a dangerous game
of dress-up.
"Three minutes!" Trent shouted to the unruly crowd, his voice cracking slightly at a high
pitch, fueled by an intoxicating cocktail of adrenaline and ego. "Anyone lasts three minutes
in here with me, you walk away with five hundred bucks cash! No gloves. Submission or
knockout!"
Trent wasn't fighting for the money. Five hundred dollars was nothing to him. He was
fighting for the narcissistic dopamine hit of watching someone lesser, someone poorer, fold
under his hands while a crowd cheered his name.
Clayton watched him throw a spinning hook kick. It was technically perfect. Beautiful,
even. The rotation of the hips, the snap of the leg, the precise trajectory. The crowd of
drunken mechanics, desperate mill workers, and rowdy farmhands collectively *ooh'd* in
appreciation.
But Clayton didn't look at the kick. He stared down at Trent's feet.
They were pristine. Clean, uncalloused, with neatly trimmed nails. They were the feet of
a man who fought exclusively on soft, padded mats under bright fluorescent lights, with a
striped referee standing by to blow a whistle and make sure nobody actually died. They
were not the feet of a man who had walked over broken glass, or trudged through blood-
soaked sand, or stood his ground when the world was quite literally exploding around him.
"Five hundred," Clayton muttered softly, still staring intensely into his club soda.
"Don't do it, James," Rusty warned, his tone instantly dropping the jovial, booming
bartender act. His voice was hushed, serious. "I mean it. That kid's broken two jaws this
month alone. He's fast as a whip, and worse, he likes hurting people. He enjoys it."