The Natural Science of Violence

A story-in-progress, although I never picked it back up.

 

He steps out onto the cool, worn pavement of the street, only to be burned with looks of  hatred. In his hand he carries a club of sorts, a strong wooden one, decorated in scrapes, dents and other battle scars. His brow is pressed low against his eyes, his stare like stone pressing against the opposition. His grip around the handle of his war club tightens, the dust that lie upon it flickering faintly in the dim sun beams.

All cease fighting at this moment; the moment that is marked as his return to the paved battlefield. Our man is back.

                 His dignified strides shorten as he makes his way to his brother, lying face down in the gutter. The blood slowly trickles into the grate from the boy’s pulpened  face, which is no longer recognizable to those who knew him, with one exception.

                Our man kneels down to examine his kid brother, flecks of bone and flesh stick to the boy’s torn shirt and hair. The blood flows freely down his pale cheeks and everyone just stares. Rage boils in our man’s heart, and he wets his fingers with the boy’s blood and smears the redness like war paint under his eyes in streaks of warning. He stands over this pile of meat and finds his rival in the crowd; a man with pain embedded in wrinkles across the whole of his face. He carries a bloody bat at his side, small bits of bone and flesh stick to the grain of the wood. Our man wants him for himself.

                And so the fight ensues, fists pounding flesh and muscle, cracking and splitting bones in shards. Our man swings the club around his shoulder with a mighty force, as he once did so long ago. Both of his fierce hands grasp the crude handle now, his muscles tensing as he delivers his first blow in years. It’s a natural science as his body remembers its violent past, each neuron firing in an ancient, designated order.

                Slamming and slashing, his brain remembers how to react. Duck, hit, duck, fist, knee, gut, face, pain, blood, back off, spit, get right back in again.

                His temples pulsate and those who dare to stand against him see them vibrate with every swing. The fear in their eyes tells our man that they know what it means to fear the lion, fear the reaper, fear God.

 

His club is covered in meaty pulp; his skin and clothes drenched in deep crimson blood. The old man, the enemy, smirks in our man’s direction, but this time, his eyes flinch only for a moment.

 

 

**This is where it dies out for me...**

Author's Note

Give some suggestions of what you see as a possible way for this to go. Maybe this is a dead end road... I don't really know.

Reviews

[Jonah Hawthorne]

It's a start for sure, but I see what you mean by not finished. My only suggestions for where to go with this is to explain the history with his rival and who his friend was, and maybe add some more emotion from the main character. Otherwise, I could only ask to find out why there is so much fighting and why the main character has not been in the fight for so long.

Present tense is difficult to maintain, and usually only works well for shorter pieces like this.

The only mistake that caught me was "that lie upon" should probably read "lies upon."

[Phil Kuhlman]

Hmmm, I'd say after that point, when you go into how "our boy" wins, maybe try a few flashbacks, go into how it all started, how he got to be "our boy", what the violence means to him as an animal *don't make him too human, works better if he works off of instinct like Robert Howard's Conan*, and maybe even go as far as to show the real monsters behind all of it, whoever is actually supporting/creating the environment for violence to flourish. Just some ideas, I like how it's going though.