The ring is the only place where for a long time Insimbi felt at home. It was serendipity which brought him there. Sent away from home, had to scramble and scrounge for basic survival. Had to fight even. Fist fights epaecially, with people twice his age and built. He'd to learn to win, because the alternative was to have it in the gut or nose, be trampled on and left to wither on the side of the road. Which wasn't an option. Those were days when he still had hope. When he still wanted to live, because he'd been brought to hold onto hope, especially by his father's mother before she died.
You fought over everything on the street. A mean remark, a girl, food which was a scarcity, plain ego and nothing else sometimes. And if you didn't want to fight you got lost and found another street. There was a reason why people loved to band together in groups. It was safer and more logical. Lone wolves have a very hard time trying to keep warm and breathing.
And so it was that on this particular serendipitous day some guy came where he was sat and spit on the rare takeaway box which was on his lap, a box to the brim with rare victuals. And he did that because Insimbi had said something about this boy's secret crash, a teenage girl who came to work in her father's shop over the holidays. She often shared half of what she bought with her pocket money with the urchins.
On this particular day she was dressed subpar, according to Insimbi. Who thought he had a point. The girl, he's forgetting her name, was usually immaculate. This didn't go down with the "chairman" of the current group who stood up to defend the girl's honor. Ostensibly. In reality they all knew he dreamt of one day having a way with her.
Insimbi remembers this day well. That's because it was the day he determined to prove himself once and for all. Humiliate this offender while his crash watched from across the road. And while his would be subjects saw him earn his stripes and always remember that he meant business.
He stood up and smashed the takeaway box, spit first, into the face of the other guy. Who didn't expect such a turn of events. Minus the audience he probably would have thrown a few threats around and pretended to be the bigger man. But not today. Not with all the noteworthy eyes looking at them.
He went on the attack. Blinded by anger. Which was his initial mistake. His second mistake was that he chose fists over any other method of assault. And Insimbi knew the ins and outs of a boxing fight. The punch which the other guy threw missed. He stumbled. His follow up was equally miscalculated. Insimbi dodged. He missed again. Stumbled the more for it. Insimbi's dangerous left hook landed and stunned the would be warrior. Who fell on the pavement, on top of drops of thick red fluid from his nose.
Not to be outdone and outshined he stood up, came back for more, only to find an Insimbi who was in the correct mojo for this. Left hook, right hook and uppercut later the bully tumbled to the concrete again. A perfect bundle of mess. This time to not recover as easily. The particular street had a new tzar. An improvement over the sluggard bully who did nothing but take a share of their meager takings each night. Shoppers, passersby and shopkeepers looked on while the streetkids celebrated. Throwing their new chief in the air.
Nearby law enforcement wasn't as amused. They pounced, the evil opportunists. Got both fighters before they'd gone far. Patted themselves on the back for a job well done.
"We've been having many reports lately that you've been mugging unsuspecting people. That's gonna end today," the senior enforcer said when they got to the camp. He leveled all manner of charges against the duo. They slept in a cell over night. Almost getting into another row, were it not for the other men sharing their cell.
But early the next morning what was their surprise when it was pronounced by an angry cell guard how some imbecile had paid bail for the duo and it had been granted. A well-wisher.
"It seems as though folks out there wanna be terrorized more by you idiots," he said as he unlocked the bar gate.
Which wasn't true. Tired of the duo's machinations this well-wisher was that he'd decided to take them in for some program where they'd channel in their inner aggression to achieve something useful. He said he'd seen yesterday's fight from his heavy-tinted vehicle and they could be trained to earn something for doing something which seemed natural to them. What he forgot to tell them was that this something would be especially useful to him.
But he promised the young, desperate and gullible pair the world and then the galaxies. They got into his car and would be taught to be killing machines.
_____
"So this fight, don't take it lightly," the ever present woman—called Hondo—is saying as they walk. "It's a life and death thing. But he's not much of a boxer, your opponent, and you are."
She's leading him some place she vaguely describes as a "cell". His new home for a while. "It's not as bad as an actual prison, but it's a cell nonetheless. Not too cosy of a place."
What is currently before them is called a goddam maze. They walk and walk and walk. They turn right. Turn left. Walk and walk and walk. Turn left. Sometimes it's almost as if they're going back from whence they came. He's thirsty and fatigued. The thirst is a queer phenomenon here. You don't feel that dryness or physical discomfort that's a result of lack of hydration. Rather it's a deeper thing subtly gnawing at an innermost part of you that you'd never quote conceived was real to your nature. Everything is just instinctive. You don't really feel, you don't really hear, you don't really smell. Rather you contrive from previous experience. A pencil falls on the floor, you know it makes a certain characteristics sound that's different from say a book falling. You don't really hear it in reality, but you want to, and you know that you should hear the sound, this desire and that memory are so intertwined in your mind that you actually think you heard the pencil fall. Yo actually think you smell the woman's perfume. What do you know? Maybe you want to hear her speak so much so that when she moves her lips you think she's said something. And you want it to make sense so much so that it actually does.
Then the fatigue. Which isn't as real as it's invented too. Your feet have been walking around this maze for what 'feels' like hours. There's no colour else besides the white floors and white floor. The white ceiling. The all white paintings on the walls. All white vases in every corner. With all white flowers. It's all designed to play with your mind surely. So you blink because now you can, desiring to feel sleep fill your eyes. To confirm this tiredness that you really want to believe is there. But it doesn't come. You walk on and one and on.
You look far ahead and all you see is a long corridor. But you don't take a dozen steps and suddenly there's an impediment in front of you. You've got to turn. Or you look up and see an impediment a few yards ahead. But you keep on walking, as if the wall was just a mirage in the desert.
Or a short flight steps appear from nowhere. They just emerge from the floor and you have to climb up or down. Or they disappear. Insimbi concludes that it's an all white maze of moving jigsaws. Somehow meshing into each other like lubricated gear cogs.
Dizziness you can start to feel, somewhere in your mind, fortunately.
"About that water. . . ." he says, looking around to see if he can get a fountain anywhere like the one which was in the ward.
"To your right," she says without looking back. "And make it quick. We've got things to go over before the fight."
Funny enough the wall on his right splits. Opening into a narrow passageway at the end of which is a water fountain.