The Prizefighter.

This is my first foray into crime fiction. After falling on October 27, 2021 and shattering every bone in my right wrist and ankle, I taught myself how to write using strictly speech-to-text on my phone. "The Prizefighter" was one such story.

The straight razor rested, ice cold and ruthless against the quivering child’s neck. A powerful, bejeweled, and monstrous hand manipulated it and the boy’s jaw.

The Champ had to shake off the look of pure terror in his mind’s eye as the arena rocked electric and sensational. It seemed to be an organic form in and of itself, swaying, stomping, hooting, and hollering: the crowd that came to see him fight that night in his hometown of Chicago melding into one mind and one body.

The acrid smell of high class cigar smoke, stale popcorn, sweat, and hot dogs with no known origin beyond the vendors’ wares stung his nostrils as he ran up to the ring with both gloves held high. Various men in sharp Italian suits patted his shoulders as he entered: “go get ’em kid!”

The massive, bejeweled, monstrous hands rubbed his back in the training room. Thick cigar smoke reminded him of the fire and brimstone sermons of his youth in the Baptist Church with its hellish sulfuric scent as it wafted like some dying whore about his face, teasing faux luxury and pleasure.

“Alright Kurt! You can do it!”, his coach Mickey bellowed as he took Kurt’s cape off, rubbing his sculpted ebony shoulders, giving him a drink of water, and finally his mouth-guard. “He ain’t got nothin’ on you kid!”, the ancient Irishman, schooled in street fighting among the toughs and dregs in the dingy back alleys of the Bronx, continued “you’re the Champ! Now show this sorry ass young buck why!”

The Champ was backed into a corner that would haunt him for what seemed like millennia to come. He had been raised to be responsible, to die with his boots on, and never abandon his principles. He feared looking into the yawning void of failure would destroy him.

In the opposing corner sat the menacing “Tijuana Tornado” Jose Rodriguez, who decimated a vast list of opponents both vicious and green to finally get his crack at the World Champ of the Heavy Weight Division. He stared the champ down with an evil and spectral eye. It bored right through even a seasoned pugilist like Kurt “The Killer” Jones.

What is the measure of a man? His physical prowess? His earning power? His status as provider for his family? His courage in the face of adversity? His steadfastness toward his own essence?

“The Killer” cared about the title. And the belt. Still, he fought for his honor first and then his family. They needed the money badly despite their patriarch’s status as Heavyweight Champion of the World.

The roulette wheel turned like some hypnotic sideshow attraction. “Always bet on black”, the Champ mouthed to his entourage of busty women, MMA fighters, upper-crust business men in tailored suits, and bodyguards. The Champ dropped twenty grand on the color. The ball spun faster than a pinball machine as the Champ just watched.

“Double zero!” called the croupier.

The MC’s calls drowned out in the Champ’s head as he announced both fighters in their respective corners. All the fighters focused on was displays of bravado and psychological intimidation as the referee finally called both to the center of the ring saying, “Alright! You know the rules. Let’s have a good clean fight!”

“You need how much?!” the gruff Italian bellowed. “You’ll have to do something for me,” he said, putting his huge hands on the Champ’s battered, stoic, ebony face, “you may just get out of your hole if you do.”

The Champ looked out into the front row of the crowd where the men in the fine suits sat. A stocky one in the center of their trio with a black suit and tie made a cutting motion across his throat as he stared back at the Champ. A chill went down The Killer’s spine as both fighters knocked gloves and waited for the bell.

In the rear of the arena, Mickey looked deep into the Champ’s dark eyes, “you sure you wanna do this, Kurt?”

No one in that hotbox of an arena knew something was about to happen with the Champ that never did in his 18–0 record…

He rolled and rolled unable to get comfortable in his nightmarish sleep in the hospital’s physical and speech therapy ward that night, waking in a pool of a cold sweat after the Tijuana Tornado’s otherworldly left hook in the fourth round: a punch so hard it seemed to have been wrought in iron in the halls of Valhalla.

He awoke with a powerful start. His cradled his head in his massive hands as the former Heavy Weight Champion of the World started to cry. The void of his hospital room at night enclosed like a dark vice around him. No one ever stopped by to see him.

Every night was the same. Every night he was reminded of his technical knockout of the Tijuana Tornado in the 4th round. Every night he was reminded of his perceived failure. His moral ineptitude. He could not even express himself properly to talk about it in here with the psychiatrist or social worker or speech therapist. The Champ could not physically utter the secret that tore his broken body and psyche further in two. The secret that he had to keep as a man for his family’s sake.

The doctors say that the blows he sustained from such a long career in the ring — and a pivotal blow from The Tijuana Tornado — damaged the speech area of his brain in much the same way as a stroke would. Near total aphasia.

He worked himself to the bone rebuilding his strength and slowly began expressing himself in grunts and nearly inaudible utterances. He also took up drawing, producing drawings of two figures in a ring at graphomaniac speed.

The insomnia continued despite a vast cocktail of sedatives and sleep aids prescribed. He couldn’t sleep. Just dream. It was the same dream night after night. A monstrous, bejeweled hand in an Italian suit chased him around the ring. It was coated with the blood of his little son and wife.

After eight months of pure hell in that hospital, a breakthrough finally happened. The Champ couldn’t stop crying in speech therapy when something miraculous took place.

“I…I…I…” he mouthed.

“Yes, Kurt!”, said Beth Anne the therapist in adulation, “you can do it!”

“Didn’t… t… t… t…ake… a… d… d… dive!”

His speech faculties slowly returned over the coming weeks. He slowly explained to Dr. Djuric the shrink how hubris killed his family, his best friend, and almost him. He would not abandon his honor and throw the fight when the mob demanded it despite his considerable gambling debt to them.

Soon after Kurt “the Killer” Jones won the fight, his wife, eight-year-old son, and Mickey were found floating in the Chicago River with their throats slit and 9mm slugs in their heads.

The Champ would never sleep again. Every night their faces haunt him, bloated and wretched with the decay of a watery grave. Every night he is coated in their blood as they scream a never-ending chorus of “WHY?!”

To this day, the former Heavy Weight Champion of the World wanders the streets of the metropolis, disheveled, unrecognizable, a long, sage-like beard, with all the trappings of homelessness, muttering to anyone who will listen: “I didn’t take a dive!”

Wess Haubrich is a freelance true crime journalist who recently branched out to short fiction after a hospital stay from shattering all the bones in his wrist and ankle on the dominant side of his body. Follow him on Twitter here.