Crippled

“Where the hell is the goddamn delivery boy?” asked Joe Herzog as she laid in bed with ice on her swollen knee. The ice did a tremendous job of numbing her pain. Getting pissed off over a late breakfast burrito did not, as evidenced by her hissing noise. “Why does the damn tournament have to be a week away? This is horseshit! All that work for nothing!” She pounded her mattress and sent another jolt through her leg. “Damn it!”

Figuring it wasn’t a good idea to wait in bed for the delivery boy, Joe wrapped her knee in a heavy black bandage and hobbled out of the bedroom wearing just a white T-shirt and blue sleeping shorts. Every hop had her mumbling, “Ouch!” in a low, grumpy voice. Anybody who made it to the finals of a martial arts tournament only to go down with an injury would be grumpy as well.

Her tiny gnome body made looking at her hallway of trophies and medals a chore. Twisting her neck backwards just to look at second place accolades made her shake her head in disgust. “This is bullshit…this is fucking bullshit…” She resumed mumbling, “Ouch!” as she hobbled down the hall of shame and into the living room.

Resting across her tree stump table was a blue karate dress, one she wouldn’t be wearing again for a long time. Joe wiped away a singular tear with her finger before hobbling and cursing towards the table. “I should probably just set this damn thing on fire. Besides which, who the hell wears a dress into combat? It ain’t like…” She glanced at herself in the full-length mirror and frowned at what she perceived to be a lack of beauty. Joe sighed and sat down on her eiderdown couch. “I’ll get rid of that damn dress some other time. Goddamn knee injury…”

All Joe wanted to do was close her eyes and relax until her food got here. The throbbing and pulsating of her knee kept her eyes wide open no matter how comfortable she tried to make herself. And then…there was a knock on the door. More like a feverous pounding that got louder every time Joe tried to ignore it. “That better be my food or else I’m jamming this good for nothing leg up someone’s ass.”

The pounding of both Joe’s heart and front door resumed. “Yeah, yeah, I’m coming!” She hobbled over to the rune-covered entrance, where the pounding grated on her ears some more. “I said I’m coming, damn it! This better be good!” Reaching for the doorknob on her tippy-toes, she almost fell over as she swung the door wide open. “It’s about damn time! Uh-oh…”

It wasn’t a delivery boy. The only food this man was carrying was in his wide gut, about three hundred pounds worth. The scaly orange skin, the dragon-like face, the rotund frame, and the jeans held up by suspenders. A cold sweat broke out over Joe’s face as she fell backwards, giving her a better view of “The Chiropractor” Bargon Sevili. The moniker was silly to her until she remembered that amateur wrestling was his strong suit. She swallowed a lump and said, “Bargon…wha…what are you doing here? The finals aren’t until next week.”

Bargon leaned his drooling face down and said in a deep, raspy voice, “Yes, I know!” He slathered his tongue across his already slimy lips. “Sweet gee-nee girl! Lovable midget pie! Love muffin! Come here and let me…”

Joe screamed in terror before he could finish his cutesy-wutesy sentence. She scrambled to get back up on one leg, but kept falling over and sending more shockwaves through her crippled knee. Her clutches and whiny screams didn’t earn enough sympathy from Bargon to get him to wipe his smile off of his face. In fact, his deafening footsteps on the stone floor made Joe’s head throb worse than her knee.

Instead of trying to get up, Joe crawled across her filthy stone floor using just her elbows to drag her little body. Bargon took his sweet time in approaching his opponent, though the thudding of his boots didn’t help in giving Joe any comfort. She crawled so quickly that cuts and bruises formed on her arms. She swung her bedroom door open and crawled some more.

With adrenaline flooding her system like a biblical disaster, she endured even more scrapes as she hurried over to her wooden chest. She nearly popped her arm out of her socket reaching for the latch, but open it she did. Joe stood up on both legs, her sense of urgency allowing her to numb out her knee pain. The faster she dug through her belongings, the louder the footsteps pounded. Her hands shook as she fiddled with a metal object and some tiny shells.

She loaded the shells into her single barrel shotgun as fast as she could, though not without having to pick them up after dropping them repeatedly. “Guess who, sugar britches!” Bargon taunted in his saccharine ogre voice. Joe didn’t give a shit about her knee anymore. She stood terra firma in the center of her room locked and loaded, her bruised arms still trembling with fear.

The minute Bargon kicked the door open and said, “Ta-da!”, Joe pulled the trigger. She needed this easy victory over someone who was supposed to wait until next week to fight her. She needed to be in first place for once in her life. But the shotgun jammed and blew her backwards, sending her crashing through her glass window and into the grass. Shards ripped at her flesh. Her arms were embedded with glass. Her knee pain flared up to infernal levels. Little droplets of blood stained the grass beneath her. She whined and cried like the second place loser she was.

Even on soft grass and dirt, Bargon’s footsteps grew more obnoxious the closer he got to his victim. He had to squeeze his wide ass through the broken window, but he arrived at his destination all the same. He held the shotgun over Joe’s blood-covered face and snapped it over his knee. He discarded the broken pieces and dusted his hands off like it was nothing. Leaning his head down so that he could be eye-level with Joe, he said, “Give me your knee, you sweet piece of pumpkin pie!”

“Oh god…Oh my god…Please, just get it over with. Anywhere but the knee. Literally anywhere else!”

Despite Joe’s pathetic begging, Bargon indeed grabbed her by the injured leg, causing her to cry out in agony. After picking off a few pieces of glass and getting even more ocular juices out of Joe, he asked, “Are you ready, little darling?”

“…As ready as I’ll ever be…” whimpered Joe as she covered her face with her scarred arms.

“Good, because this is going to hurt like a bitch!” Bargon made good on his promise. He yanked on the injured leg and had Joe yelling in a high pitched, demonic tone.

It did hurt like a bitch. It was the most agonizing thing Joe had been through. But the best part about it? It only hurt for a few seconds. And then the pain was gone. Was she in heaven? Was St. Peter already opening the pearly gates for her? No, she was still on planet earth outside her home. She uncovered her face and wiggled her leg. No pain. She knew the injury was still there, but she didn’t feel like dying afterwards. “You…you really are a chiropractor? Um…uh…thanks?”

Bargon grabbed Joe by her shirt and leaned in so that they were nose-to-nose. His breath radiated with skunk odors, probably due to him not brushing his fangs in a long time. “I don’t need your thanks, Joey-Bowie. All I need from you is to be one hundred percent in the finals next week. That way, when I beat the living piss out of you, there’ll be no excuses. No knee injuries, no glass shards, no bullshit. If you lose to me and get second place again, you’ll have nobody to blame but yourself. You got it?” He threw her against the grass and said, “See you next week, sugar plum” before blowing her a kiss and walking away.

Any gratitude Joe felt for her opponent twisted in the wind when she noticed a foil-wrapped burrito sticking out of his back pocket. “Hey! That’s my breakfast, you asshole!”

Bargon pulled the burrito out of his pocket, unwrapped it, and took a massive bite out of it. With a full mouth, he said, “It’s my breakfast now! Besides, if you want to beat me in the finals and be a winner for the first time in your mediocre career, you’ve got to eat better than this. You’re getting a little chunky around the belly. See you soon!”

As the demonic ogre walked away, Joe clenched her fists and stood up, her knee staying pain free the entire time. She wasn’t thinking about burning her karate dress anymore. She wasn’t looking at her second place accolades with scorn. After a morning like this one, Joe Herzog had all the motivation she could ever want. She would train as hard as she damn well could. She would pump more iron, run more laps, and beat the training bag like it owed her a breakfast burrito.

With her muscles bulging and the shaky adrenaline morphing into raw anger, Joe shouted out, “You should have killed me when you had the chance, you fat pig! I’m not just going to beat you in the finals! I’m going to destroy your career! You hear me, Bargon Sevili?! You’re a dead motherfucker!” Joe raised her fists to the sky and let out a primal scream to anyone who would listen, letting them know that motivation was not an issue anymore.

Angel's Share

The rift between Alex Macintosh and her so-called “lord and savior” grew with every bigoted slur that came out of a preacher’s mouth. It was already a yawning chasm from an early age. Now it was a dark black hole that sucked all of the life out of her. Going to church wasn’t as fun as she remembered it being. The fairytales weren’t as fascinating. The loving spirit wasn’t as warm. Everything in this mega church full of enthusiastic worshippers revolved around money these days.

How much money could Pastor Shawn Hawkins swindle out of his followers? How much of it would actually go to the poor? How much of it would fund his vacation in Neo Hawaii? The deeper Alex dug into his bank account, the more obvious the answers became. There she was in a shadowy corner of the church tapping away on her smart phone and thumb drive. Her dark trench coat and equally dark scarf around her face made hiding in the shadows that much easier. It also helped matters that the thousands of people packing the arena were too busy praying for things they’d never get on their own.

“Ladies and gentlemen!” shouted a young man into the microphone. His voice temporarily jarred Alex out of her hack job, but ultimately she thought nothing of it and went back to work. “Put your hands together for the messenger of God himself! The angel from the heavens above! The warrior of worship! The preacher of perfection! Here he is: Pastor Shawn Hawkins!”

The raucous clapping and lurching from the congregation once again snapped Alex out of her work. They were so obnoxious with their zeal that she failed to concentrate on what was most important: getting Pastor Hawkins’s ill-gotten fortunes back into the hands of those who needed it. Just a few more bars of code…just a few more clicks…”Damn it!” she whispered to herself. She quickly covered her mouth considering where she was saying it, but still nobody paid attention to her.

As the audience clapped and some of them did back flips and cartwheels in the audience, Pastor Shawn Hawkins descended from the ceiling dressed in flowing red robes. He really was an angel from heaven with his feathery wings gently flapping and lowering him to the stage. “I’ve seen better wings on a plate of KFC,” murmured Alex as she struggled to focus on her hack job.

The raven-haired, thick-bearded Pastor yanked the microphone out of his hype man’s hand and motioned for his congregation to sit down and shut up, which they gladly did. Alex couldn’t believe the smiles on their faces, the tears in their eyes…and the dollar bills folded up in their hands. “Here we go…” she muttered.

Taking a karate stance in the center of the stage, Pastor Hawkins belted his sermon into the microphone like a heavy metal singer moonlighting as a fat-shaming fitness guru. “Sinners! All of them! Each and every damned soul outside of this church today will have no such access to the pearly gates! They choose not to come here and choose not to give their welfare money to the heavens above! They are vile! They are rotten! For every penny they pinch, they are keeping the Christian revolution from taking place! That will not happen on my watch! Can I get an amen?!”

“Amen!” said everybody not named Alex Macintosh, who still thumbed away on her smart phone, still chipping away at Shawn’s bank account.

Pointing his hairy finger out into the crowd, he shouted, “You see that?! The sinners and nonbelievers call that fanaticism, but I call it reality! God is your reality! This world we’ve created for ourselves inside this church is the only thing that’s real to us now! Forget the vegetable-munching hippies! Forget the rock and roll niggers! Forget the transgender fags! They hold no power of us!”

That last slur had Alex’s eyes watering with rage as she looked up from her screen to unleash a hellish look upon her tormentor. He couldn’t see her even as he flapped his wings and floated around the church, but she saw him with tunnel vision, so much so that she forgot to keep cracking the code. She wanted so much to rip his tongue out, but also knew that Shawn Hawkins was a martial arts expert and often used his trade to intimidate “sinners” into giving him money.

“I fly around this room today and I see heavenly beauty!” As if right on cue, congregation members grinned up at him and held out their wads of cash. “You’re not just giving me your hard-earned money. You’re buying something with your dollars. You’re buying a revolution! You’re buying paradise! You’re buying a weapon against the darkness of hell!”

Alex shook her head and got right back to work cracking the code. Pastor Hawkins’s words began to blend together in a cacophony of screaming and prejudice, so much so that Alex didn’t even notice him flapping directly above her until she saw his reflection in her screen. “Come on, damn it!” she whispered as she grew closer to cracking his password.

“Who said that?! Who in God’s good name said that in my church?!” roared Shawn. Alex dropped her phone in panic and almost shattered the screen. She crab-walked against the wall in an attempt to hide from her accuser. She even held her knees to her chest to make herself small. But there he was descending upon her, the flaps of his wings creating deafening whooshes, the anger on his reddening face palpable and tense.

“Come to me, harlot,” said Shawn as he held out his hand. Alex couldn’t. She was frozen in fear. “I said come to me, you devil’s whore!” He stomped over to her and her phone crunched beneath his army boots. The congregation stared at her with wide-eyed shock while Shawn picked up the remains of the phone and instantly deciphered what Alex was trying to do.

“It appears we have a thief in our midst, my children. Stealing is a sin! Stealing from the lord is a MORTAL SIN!” Shawn stared hellfire into Alex’s soul and she could do nothing but cower in the corner and shiver. He ripped off her scarf and revealed another “sin” to the congregation. The blond hair extensions, the white makeup, the poorly smudged blue lipstick, they all led him to one conclusion. “Transgender whore!”

Alex could feel the boos and “Whore!” chants radiating off the congregation and piercing her skin like daggers. She tried to stand up, but her legs were too wobbly and her head was swimming laps around this church. She eventually found her equilibrium by holding onto a stair railing. “Please!” she begged in a low, trembling voice. “Just let me go…I’ll never bother you again…it’s just that I…”

“Silence!” barked Shawn as he punched a hole in the wall next to her head, causing her to trip over her own quaking fear. She couldn’t even crawl down the stairs without Shawn placing his boot across her ankle. The harder he pressed, the louder she screamed. “You dare steal from a house of worship?! You dare steal from the lord almighty?! That is inexcusable! I shall send you to hell myself, you filthy whore!”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry! Please, just take my flash drive and take your foot off of me!” She blindly chucked the flash drive at him hoping he would catch it. However, her heart and brain pumped her with so many chemicals that she miscalculated how hard she threw it. It bounced off of one of his feathers and exposed wiring underneath. The hacking properties of the device caused even more sparks to shoot out of what was now revealed as his mechanism. The congregation gasped in shock while Shawn’s hardened facial expression grew soft with worry. He even took his foot off of Alex’s leg.

Trying to regain her breath, Alex pointed at the fake mechanical wings and said, “You see that, everyone? He’s not even a real angel. His money isn’t being used for a Christian revolution! He fooled you all! Thou shalt not bear false witness, anyone? He tricked you all into becoming bigots! He tricked you all into giving away your money to what will eventually be his expensive vacation! If you don’t believe me, look on that flash drive! Look on whatever’s left of my phone! The more you hate people like me and the other so-called ‘fags’, the richer he becomes and the poorer you all become!”

Shawn kneeled down beside his victim and smiled at her. “Don’t you get it by now? These people don’t care about any of that. They don’t care about you. Did they care when our president said he would grab a certain part of the female anatomy? No. Did they care when a certain Supreme Court justice was accused of doing much worse to said anatomy? No. These people know who the real enemy is and who their friends really are. They want entry into heaven. They know they’re not going to get it by listening to a transgender thief whore like you!”

“Is…is this true, everyone?” asked Alex. Her answer came in the form of angry stares from the congregation, not at the one swindling them, but at the one they were told to hate. Their hatred hurt her badly. She could feel her heart racing and her mind numbing to the violence that would become of her very shortly.

Shawn slowly stalked Alex as she crawled down the staircase. As soon as she moved too fast for everyone’s comfort, the congregation and their Pastor charged after her in a screaming rage. She almost tripped over her fear again when she tried to get up, but this time she bolted out of the emergency exit and set off a blaring fire alarm. Fire sprinkles set off even more sparks on Shawn’s mechanical wings and his congregation crawled on top of him to put out the electrical storm. Alex used this distraction to dash down the street, her legs trembling and aching the whole way.

She ran until she couldn’t do so anymore. Her lungs burned, her heart exploded, and her eyes dripped with wetness as she hunched over on the street corner. “How could they not care?!” she mumbled unintelligibly. “How could they not fucking care!” She stomped her high heeled boot on the ground and broke said heel in the process. “Damn it! Damn it, damn it, damn it!”

“Excuse me, Miss!” said a homeless man with sunglasses. “Can you spare me some change?”

How about that? He actually said the right gender prefix. But such a small victory was nothing to celebrate as Alex wiped away burning tears from her reddened face. “I don’t have a dime,” she confessed. After a silence hung between them, she pointed at the mega church and said, “But they do. Why don’t you go ask them yourself?” Alex walked away hoping at least one person got the message she was trying to send.

He's Only Thirteen

Gloria Summers’ heavenly soprano voice resonated throughout the empty church as she practiced her hymns. Standing at the altar with a purple choir robe flowing from her petite figure, she sang her heart out as though the church was packed for her performance. She closed her beautiful brown eyes and imagined applause and tears of happiness from the makeshift crowd. But when she opened them again, she didn’t see a single soul sitting in the pews. She wiped a tear from her eye as she remembered how this city had fallen on hard economic times. People would do absolutely anything for money, even if it meant endangering their health and forfeiting their position at the pews.

And then her concentration was broken as easily as church glass when a pounding at the doors boomed throughout the House of God. Gloria nearly jumped out of her dark skin and clutched a hand to her heart at the raucous sound, which continued to grow louder with desperation. She lifted her choir robe and hurried down the church aisle to answer the door. “Who could be knocking at this hour?” she asked herself.

When she opened the doors, a heavy presence spilled over her lap, almost knocking her on her ass. She managed to circle her arms around what appeared to be a dark-skinned teenage boy in a white karate gi passed out and shivering from the rain outside. Gloria dragged the young man inside and slammed the door behind her to prevent the cold from rushing into her church.

“You poor thing,” said Gloria while rolling the little boy over. Cuts and bruises covered his face and his tongue dangled slightly out of his mouth with a speck of drool hanging down. “Come on, little guy, let’s get you all warm and toasty.” The lone choir girl cradled the child in her arms and carried him to the back of the church, where a soft and warm bed just happened to be.

Gloria smiled sadly at the unconscious boy while stroking his damp black locks. “I’ll have some soup ready for you when you’re awake,” she said. It took her little more than three minutes to heat up a cup of noodle soup and present it to him with a plastic spoon nestled inside. Steam rose from the broth while triggering the child’s sense of smell. A few whiffs later and his swollen purple eyes slowly opened.

With a lisp that probably had to do with the karate gi he was wearing, he said, “Where am I? What the fuck is this?”

“I’ll let that dirty language slide for now, sugar,” said Gloria with a smile as warm as the soup. “You’re in the House of God, little man. It’s the safest place you can be right now. Whoever gave you those nasty bumps ain’t coming for you now. Here, have some soup. You’ll need your strength.”

The child snapped when Gloria handed him the soup, knocking the nutritious meal out of her hands and spilling broth and noodles all over the floor. The traumatized kid continued to thrash and wail about while the choir girl held him still. “Get away from me! I have to fight him!” shouted the kid. “Sensei Lector will kill me if I don’t fight him! Let me go, damn it!”

“Calm yourself, child!” belted Gloria while struggling to maintain a tight grip on the rambunctious kid. He nearly slipped out of her grasp when she mounted him and pinned his wrists down on the bed. The kid thrashed some more, but he clearly lost this battle. He could do nothing but shed tears hot enough to trigger the pain in his bruised eyes. “It’s no use,” he sobbed. “I’m dead! I’m never going to get out of that tournament!”

Gloria petted the child’s hair and gently said, “There, there, little guy. Like I said before, this is a safe place where you don’t have to worry about such things. No more fighting. No more bruises. No more blood. Just you, me, and the man upstairs. Now why don’t you tell me what’s going on between you and this Sensei Lector of yours.”

“You can’t do shit about it, lady,” snapped the child. “Saijin Lector is my master. He’s the one who trained me how to fight. I’ve been making a lot of money for the both of us beating the shit out of everyone in that ring. If he finds out I’ve dashed on him…he’s going to kill me!” Tears burned his black eyes once again.

Gloria lovingly rested her head on the child’s chest and said, “It’s alright, kid. You came here for a reason and that reason is to rest up. You know you can’t do this fighting business no more. You’re only a kid. Kids should be out playing and having fun, not beating people up in some dingy arena. Whoever this Saijin Lector is, there’s no chance I’m going to let him mess with you.”

“You don’t understand,” wept the child. “He’s a monster!”

“Of course he’s a monster, son,” said Gloria. “Anybody who puts a child through this much torture for a couple of bucks has got to be some kind of sicko.”

The child pushed Gloria off the bed and shouted, “He’s a real fucking monster!” A moment of tense silence hung between them and then Gloria shivered in fear while crab walking backwards. “I can’t stay here much longer! He’ll find me and beat me to death! You just don’t get it! He’s not just a monster! He has a whole gang backing him up! He can do whatever he wants to this city!”

“Not on my watch!” snapped Gloria as she stood back up and towered over the bruised child. “I don’t give up on those who come here for help and I’m damn sure not giving up on you! I don’t care what kind of monster you’re running from, because he ain’t getting nowhere near you! I’ve seen too much bad nonsense go on in this city! People getting shot dead in the streets, people losing their homes, people getting beaten by the police, it has to end somewhere! I say we bring it to an end one step at a time and that means getting you to higher ground!”

Another moment of tense silence hung in the air between them. The child snuggled further in his sheets after being the recipient of Gloria’s tough love, emphasis on love. He softly said, “My name is Danny. Danny Killian. What’s yours?”

“Gloria Summers. Nice to meet you, Danny. You’re a handsome young man despite all of the bruises.” She pulled the blanket over him further and gently said, “Get some rest, little guy. We’ve got a long day ahead of us tomorrow…”

The cracking sound of the church doors breaking down accompanied by deep demonic breathing caused Danny to cover his head with the blankets even tighter. “Stay here,” warned Gloria as she ventured out in the chapel to see what was up. Danny was right: there were monsters out there and one of them invaded her church with a whip in one hand and a tight fist in the other. “Holy-moly!” she whispered as she looked up at the seven-foot tall red fleshed demon, who came bearing fangs, horns, and sharp claws.

The demon brushed the wooden splinters from the door off of his brown trench coat and adjusted his fedora before saying, “Good evening, sweet cheeks! You wouldn’t happen to have a child about yay-high running around here, would you? He needs to come home with his daddy!”

“Some daddy you turned out to be!” shouted Gloria while she stood terra firma with her fists by her side. “You must be Saijin. Actually, I don’t give a hoot who you are! You’re in the House of God now and you’d better move your biscuit butt on out of here!”

“Or else what?!” bellowed Saijin, knocking Gloria down with the impact of his voice alone. “Is the man upstairs going to zap me to death? Oh, I’m so scared! I don’t know if you’re aware of this or not, but I’ve got a fucking whip and I’ve ripped a lot of flesh with this motherfucker! So if you don’t want to be the next one to be turned into human jerky, you’ll point me in the direction of that little brat!”

“I’m right here, dumb-ass!” belted Danny, who appeared at the altar shaking in either anger or fear (Gloria couldn’t tell). The child prizefighter’s fists were balled tightly as he entered his karate stance, feet apart, hips distributed. The more Saijin stared at him with those fiery eyes, the harder Danny shook.

“So, you’ve finally grown a pair of balls, little Danny. It’s about damn time! Tell me, little dip-shit: is that a urine stain on your pants or are you just happy to see me?” mocked Saijin with a yellow-fanged grin on his face. Sure enough, Danny tucked his chin and saw that his karate pants were dripping with stale golden fluids. His eyes were also pouring with sorrow and fear while Saijin laughed at him some more. “Holy shit, kid! How did you ever become a champion again? This whole time, I’ve been training a little chicken shit instead of a goddamn warrior!”

The combination of Danny’s tears and urine and Saijin’s mocking laughter caused Gloria Summers’ blood to boil. Her insides reminded her of what the church’s version of hell looked like: fire, agony, venom, and death. Her teeth clenched so tightly that her jaw ached worse than Danny’s. Her heart thudded in her chest like a hip-hop beat echoing from somebody’s car stereo. “Enough!” she roared before nipping up and elbowing Saijin right in the groin.

The demon doubled over in pain, but not without giving Gloria a devilish smile in return. Danny attempted a running strike of his own, but was quickly cut off by the choir girl, who cradled the protesting kid in her arms and dashed out of the church like a bolt of lighting. She looked back and saw that Saijin was upright once more and his whip was on fire.

He blasted, “You’d better keep running, you little harlot! It won’t do you any fucking good, but you can try anyways!” Saijin lashed his flaming whip around at various pews and set them ablaze. He even managed to pop Gloria in the back and send her crumpling into a bloody heap. Danny groaned in fury and tried once again to engage his former boss only to have Gloria use the last of her energy to hold him back and vacate the burning church.

The two of them stumbled down the stairs together while the church’s flames and Saijin Lector’s laughter rose sky high. Despite Danny’s raging protests, Gloria continued to hold him back and push the two of them down the streets until they were able to turn a corner into an alleyway. Even with the glowing flames producing hell on earth behind them, Gloria Summers and Danny Killian had found temporary safety.

“How could you let him get away with that shit?!” Danny sobbed. “I could have taken him! I swear I could have!”

Gloria hugged Danny’s head tightly and whispered, “Your fighting days are over, son. You’ve got to know when to run away. There’s no shame in being scared. It’s a natural part of life. You can’t just keep on going like this. If you didn’t die at Saijin’s hands, you would have died in that ring.”

“But it’s not fair!” Danny whined. “I need the money! I need to beat people up! I need to be tough!”

“There are other ways of making money that don’t involve that macho garbage!” yelled Gloria as she shook Danny. She hugged him once again and whispered gently, “I’m not going to leave your side. The church can be rebuilt, but you can’t be replaced, Danny Killian. I’ll make this right for you, son. Just trust me. You’ve trusted Saijin long enough and look where it got you.”

“But…but it’s not fair!” whined Danny again.

“I know it isn’t, son. There’s nothing fair about any of this. But we can make it fair. You just have to have some hope. Do you trust me?” asked Gloria with a reassuring smile.

Danny wiped away his tears and smiled as much as his swollen cheeks would allow before saying, “Yeah…I trust you, Gloria.” The two of them hugged each other and watched the church burn to its final ashes. Saijin would get his someday, just not tonight and not at the hands of a frightened child fighter.