Seth moved. It wasn’t a wild swing. It wasn’t a haymaker born of anger. It was a mechanical brutal response wired into his nervous system through thousands of hours of repetitive stress training in kill houses in foreign deserts. As Cameron’s hands clamped onto the jacket, Seth brought his own left hand up in a tight short arc. The blade of his forearm smashed into the inside of Cameron’s left elbow. It was a precise strike to the radial nerve.
A sharp electric jolt shot up Cameron’s arm. His fingers involuntarily sprang open, deadened, and numb. His left grip failed instantly. Before Cameron’s brain could even register the pain, Seth’s right hand shot forward, not in a fist, but as an open palm. He didn’t aim for the jaw. He aimed for the center of Cameron’s chest right at the sternum. Seth stepped into the strike, driving off his bad knee, channeling his entire body weight through his shoulder, down his arm, and into the heel of his hand.
Thud. It sounded like a heavy sandbag hitting a brick wall. The air violently escaped Cameron’s lungs in a wet ragged gasp. The force of the blow lifted Cameron’s lead foot off the ground. He flew backward. He didn’t stumble. He was launched. He skidded across the slick epoxy floor, his bare feet squeaking wildly, before he crashed back first into the edge of the blue tatami mat. Silence descended on the gym. Real silence this time. The kind that sucks the oxygen out of the room.
The guy filming lowered his phone. Cameron lay on the mat, his face pale, his mouth opening and closing like a landed fish as his diaphragm spasmed desperately trying to pull air back into his paralyzed lungs. Seth stood in the entryway. He hadn’t broken a sweat. His breathing was slow, deep, and rhythmic through his nose. He looked down at his hands, his knuckles slightly white, feeling a sudden intense disgust with himself. He had let the cage open. He had reacted.
He adjusted his cheap windbreaker, pulling the collar straight. The zipper rattled softly in the quiet room. “I said,” Seth murmured, the words meant for no one but himself. “I didn’t want any trouble.” He turned away from the gasping boy and the frozen athletes, stepping back out into the freezing, relentless rain. The heavy glass door swung shut behind him, cutting off the bright, sterile world of the gym.
The rain was freezing now, turning into a slushy mix that slapped against Seth’s face the moment the gym doors sealed shut behind him. He walked to the curb, head down. He didn’t feel like a hero. He felt sick. His beat-up 2008 Honda Civic sat parked in a yellow zone, the engine ticking as it cooled. He grabbed the door handle slick with icy water and pulled. The interior smelled of stale french fries, damp upholstery, and old pine air freshener.