Chances Are...
Chapter 2

Copyright© 2017 by Stultus

While we continued to play our card game, Drake pocketed his stolen silver coin with obvious satisfaction and loudly laughed about the daft dame he’d hoodwinked. Then after finishing his beer, he disappeared for a while with the rest of the other street bosses for a meeting upstairs with the big man, but it was a fairly short one apparently, and about a half hour later they all reappeared downstairs. Oddly, our local kingpin himself, Connor, was now seen walking towards our table, stopping just briefly along the way to casually greet by name some of the rest of his minor minions and henchlings by name. Like his father, Connor knew everyone who worked for him, even at the bottom rungs of his organization. Unlike his father, these sorts of sudden unanticipated encounters were generally not violent ones, or expected to become so.

Pilsner and I stood up from our card game, the pair of us in tandem and bowed our heads slightly and said ‘Sir’ in clear and hopefully respectful tones of voice, as he greeted us in turn.

“Otto! Another round here of whatever Chancer and Pilsner are having and also bring us three glasses of my usual.” He commanded of the bartender, while warmly greeting each of us and clasping each of our hands. Connor could act with the common touch and play the benevolent local community leader when he chose to do so, but it was quite unusual for him to want to speak with us at all, let alone for him to offer us drinks!

Glancing towards the bar, I noticed that even Drake looked a bit puzzled, but he lifted his beer cup up to me when I briefly gave him the raised eyebrow in a quizzical look, hoping I suppose for some sort of clue to the great man’s mood and inclinations towards us peons. He shrugged, but we didn’t have to wait for very long to find out.

“Drake’s got a very important appointment for later tonight and when I asked him who he could count on for a small escort to get him there safely and quietly, he suggested you both could do the job. A quiet trip ... no trigger boys, no one packing heat!” He said, pounding on the table hard with his fist, for emphasis. “Straight transport job, just him and a pair of other lugs. Are you game? Can we depend upon you two?”

Fuck ... well, there was only one acceptable answer to that question. Any other alternative would probably result in our lifeless bodies taking a late-night plunge into the river later tonight.

“Certainly Sir, we’re available ... and you can depend upon us.” Pilsner quickly squeaked out, with rather more enthusiasm and zeal than actual sincerity. But depend upon us for just what?

Otto came over himself, bearing two fresh beers and three whisky glasses, each with about two fingers of what was probably very good expensive stuff reserved for the Boss. That was another first ... seeing Otto actually bring service to a table. Here, you picked up your drink at the bar, or, if it was for someone significant in the organization, Knuckles would make the table delivery.

“Good ... good. Now, drink up fast!” Connor said, and then he made a brief Irish toast and downed the glass of whiskey.

May we get what we want,
May we get what we need,
But may we never get what we deserve!

Then, we downed our glasses too. Yeah ... that was indeed some really good expensive stuff!

“Alright then, the details. Pilsner, you still clanking about in that old beat-to-shit dark van? Good ... you’ll need that tonight! You see, my boss, Westside Jonny called me tonight asking if I could send three of my very best street fighters. Every outfit, racket and mob family on the island is sending their top thugs too. Maybe from the other Boroughs too. Orders, he said, from on top, The Five themselves! They requested the toughest and best of my lot ... for a very unusual promotion opportunity. It’s for a very special audition ... for one of the very top players ... Doctor Fate himself!”

Suddenly my blood ran as cold as the Hudson river itself and I began to wish that someone would just shoot me now and chuck me into its welcoming waters, and we’d be safely done with it all ... with our minds and souls intact and unspoiled.

The world is full of criminals. Most are penny ante, like Pilsner and me, then there are the tough boys, gunsels, minions and their street-lords like Drake, then bosses like Connor, and yet bigger and more powerful organizations and crime families that run the districts of the island, under the direction of the Five – the Kingpins of each of Megatropolis’s five boroughs. And then there are the so-called costumed ‘super-villains’, who are mostly not formally affiliated with the Syndicate. Most, if not all of them, are just plain crazy, from what I heard and read in the papers and I’ve never wanted anything to do with any of them. Most outfits, like ours, very wisely don’t either.

Doctor Fate lives in a very special world of genius-level craziness all his own and I’ve heard plenty of rumors suggesting that he’s undoubtedly one of the very top five criminal masterminds around, anywhere. He’s also said to be very, very, very insane ... well beyond just the usual evil maniacal cackling, hand-wringing and plotting to rule the world sort of criminal overlord. For starters, Empire Island, or Megatropolis, the state or even the entire nation are all just chicken-feed to him.

I don’t think that megalomaniac even wants to rule the world ... it’s too insignificant to him.

And I was going to take Drake and a pair of Connor’s other top thugs to meet him? We must have looked as pale as ghosts, because the boss just laughed at us, slapped us both hard on the backs and told us to sit and drink our beers and wait here for Drake and the others to give us our instructions. His business with us done, the big man paid us no further mind and left to return upstairs to his domain. It would have been kinder if he’d just plugged us, right then and there.

Drake came over in a few minutes to join us at our table and the other pair of happy candidates soon joined us too, all three of them in a rather too merry sort of mood. I decided that we were probably already dead, so there was little point in worrying about the details. So, I smiled and kept sipping my beer and let the others do all the talking, and Drake was in just the mood to wag my ears off.

“Fate only ever keeps a dozen underlings as lieutenants,” he whispered to me, excitedly, “exactly that number only, to handle all of his mundane affairs. They’re always the best of the very best ... the meanest nastiest killers that can be found, anywhere. Undoubtedly, there will be something of a trial, some sort of try-out, but you two won’t be involved in that. Your job is just to get us there in secret and then bear witness back here to the boss and to his boss, that we all followed orders. More importantly, to report if any of us gets the job and becomes part of Fate’s inner organization ... or not. I’ve heard that the Syndicate of the Five Boroughs has been eager for a chance just like this for several years! Every time before now, he has recruited from a different major city, taking only their best, the cream ... but now he’s here in Empire City and this might be my... our, only opportunity!”

Yeah, Drake’s ego was slipping out from behind its usual thin mask. The guy had been a cocky son-of-a-bitch even before he went into the Army and spent four years killing Japanese that just refused to ever surrender until they were all virtually exterminated on their home islands.

He didn’t speculate why he ... or The Five, wanted to have any part of Fate’s very special sort of irrationality, but I could guess. The top notch of costumed clown-villains didn’t indulge in the mundane street crime that Connor and his higher bosses controlled. Gambling, drugs, loan-sharking, prostitution, protection rackets, smuggling and petty burglary wasn’t their style. The so-called super-villains did flashier stuff like big bank and jewelry heists; bold public crimes guaranteed to make the front pages of all the newspapers. I supposed that the Syndicate could still be useful to the costumed villain groups for fencing loot, or assisting with other minor operations, like perhaps gun-running. Or maybe The Five, the kingpins of each of the Five Boroughs, just couldn’t stand for someone else to be raking in a fortune without them getting a slice of the action.

The Syndicate of the Five Boroughs was supposedly established during the war, allegedly by Meyer Lansky, to peacefully divide the interests and profits of the various ethnic criminal organizations of the five major regions of Megatropolis. Theoretically, the most two powerful Italian cosa nostra families hold two of these supreme seats, and I’ve heard that the Irish and Jewish criminal organizations each have one. As for the last position, I don’t think anyone knows, but I’d bet it’s probably someone otherwise entirely legit, like from Wall Street or Midtown, representing the monied classes and the greasing of the current political machine. They’re not called Tammany Hall anymore, but really nothing has changed at city hall (or at Albany, the state capital either) since the days of Boss Tweed.

Everyone, everywhere in every borough of Megatropolis has their hand out ... openly or otherwise ... especially the politicians and the cops on the street. It’s all just business as usual.

What was in this for Drake? Well, that was much simpler. A chance to work with Fate was a sure way to build up his criminal career resume to elite status. Not to mention, it was a way to access weapons and other technology that no one else on the streets could match. Even with just a few energy blasters and death rays in the hands of his followers, an ambitious young man like Drake could topple bosses and rule the streets, any streets he might take a fancy too. To you or me, the odds of winning this sort of trial tonight didn’t seem realistic, but to Drake (and his ego) the potential rewards were well worth the risks.

From what I’ve read in the newspapers, especially the popular tabloids like The Gazette that avidly follow the capers of the costumed clowns, heroines and villains alike, Doctor Fate normally only dealt with really scientific sorts of crimes, like cutting-edge experimental gizmos, thingamajigs and stuff, or arcane artifacts of reputedly very powerful or especially weird magic. Perhaps, his special flavor of megalomania was a touch more restrained in public than for most of his costumed kin, but he did on occasion send long egotistical speeches to the press, just like all the rest. The difference being, perhaps, that Doctor Fates esoteric ramblings made less than no sense to anyone not committed to Bellevue Asylum!

More than these scant facts, I didn’t know ... and really didn’t even want to know another thing more about that lunatic! As for meeting the villain in the flesh, I was certain that I was going to regret it!

Drake bought us another round of beers and even ordered Knuckles to procure the lot of us some nice thickly sliced roast beef sandwiches, and Pilsner and I tucked them down fast! Frankly, after that feast, the first real substantial food we’d had in at least a week, we were both full and happy enough with the world to not much care what sort of catastrophe we were about to blithely walk into.

Also in addition, Drake promised, we’d be paid a hundred dollars each for our time! For a ‘yard’ each ... a C, there wasn’t much that I wouldn’t do ... except use a gun, and everyone was on orders not to carry hot tonight. Pilsner and I don’t use guns anyway ... we also didn’t make $100 during most weeks of day labor and scrounging either. Just for the offer of a few beers and a brace of warm roast beef sandwiches, we’d have happily volunteered to have done the job for just a sawbuck each more, but wisely we both kept our mouths shut around our betters as much as we could for the next hour, until it was time to leave.

As I noted earlier, Drake was a decent neighborhood local boss, especially for the tough streets of the Abattoir itself. Drake could handle anyone in a straight-up fight and he was pretty smart and generally fair in his dealings with underlings. He had no shortage of attitude and he was generally always a bit over pleased with himself, but he could be reasoned with, usually ... even when his temper was up. Sometimes he had work for us, like pick-ups and deliveries, but never anything violent. He had leg-breakers for that sort of thing, and he liked to handle the rub-outs himself. He was also as tough as a rhino and a mean SOB in a street fight. He liked knife-work and other folks said he was a good as they come with a blade in his hand.

He was also a mean drunk, and after a few cold ones or shots of whisky his mood tended to get nastier, and tonight was no exception. I’ve heard some folks around here say that sometimes after just a few drinks that Drake would start to tell old war stories, from the brutal fighting that he saw in Japan and then Korea. Already he was a bit on edge, eager and good and ready for the fight to come and we still had about an hour’s drive to get there, up in the northern part of Empire Island.

The audition was to be held at an old portside warehouse along the Haarlem River near the borderline between Dutch Haarlem and the East Barrio, an area I wouldn’t have set a toe in at high noon, let alone gone to for a vicious trial-by-combat at midnight. Pilsner was already too nervous and wound-up to drive, and somehow he’d talked Otto into topping off his battered tin hipflask with a bit of the Old Ordinary, which he kept sipping on nervously while muttering to himself in the passenger seat for most of the drive uptown. Corn Whiskey’s alright, I suppose, but when I’m flush I prefer the spicier taste of rye myself.


Drake and the other two brunos picked by Connor, a pair of tough street soldiers named Miles and Dom, sat quietly in the back of the darkened van on the old mattress on the floor and nervously waited out the ride. We were supposed to deliver them to the warehouse just before midnight, and to garner as little external attention to ourselves as was possible. We were to be no more than fifteen minutes early and under no circumstances were we to arrive late! Pilsner’s old beat-up black painted van was perfect for this job. It had no windows on the sides or back, except for the driver’s and passenger ones, for anyone to see us or look inside. The sides of the van still had some faded vestiges of the old painted business signs for ‘Pilarski Scrap & Salvage’, but you would have had to have been right up close to it in very good daylight to have a prayer at reading it. Once we loaded our passengers inside, they could sit in the back on an old mattress, quite entirely out of sight.

While driving, I tried putting on the radio for a while, but like the rest of the van, it had seen better days. Some Haarlem station was playing some sweet bluesy jazz, but the dashboard speaker was putting out too much static and crackling to hear much of what the lady songbird was moaning about. The music started to put Drake’s nerves on edge and he bellowed at me to shut the damned thing off, so I did, and we rode from then on pretty much in total silence.

We passed by a couple of police patrol cars heading uptown, but they showed no interest in us. A bit later we had a brief concern about a pair of motorcycle cops that followed us discreetly for a block or two in the south Barrio, but they had other Saturday night problems to concern themselves with and they soon turned off onto another street.

The dock and warehouse region of the north Barrio near our destination seemed entirely deserted. Every other warehouse or building in the area was dark, without a single snooping nose or eye to be spotted. We’d made fast time going uptown and now needed to kill about ten minutes before we were supposed to arrive, so I just circled the wharf area, slowly. We hadn’t seen a living thing around for ten blocks, not even the odd street bum or wharf rat. Even the rats didn’t hang around here, except in pairs, for safety. I laughed at that thought ... back home in the Abattoir, even the rats were too scared to be seen at night, and risk becoming someone’s dinner.

In my neighborhood, the old slaughterhouses around West 39th Street are mostly all gone now, moved down to below 14th Street now since the war, most of the four legged vermin moving there with them. Some things don’t change though ... anything moving around the Abattoir on four legs is likely become someone’s dinner. Most folks there and in much of the lower Westside are too poor to much care how and where a meal comes from.

When Drake’s, Mile’s and Dom’s watches all agreed that it was a safe time to arrive, I drove the last two blocks to the address and pulled up to the doors of the old abandoned warehouse. Stopping the van, I turned to wish Drake and the other ‘good luck’ but the words caught and remained unspoken, stuck in my throat.

For a while when I was upstate at the pen a few years ago, I was sort of friendly with a lifer who had the next cell to my left. He was a veteran of the war too who had seen and done violently appalling things that perhaps might even have made Drake turn pale. Both in the Army and once he back home in Queens. He read a lot, like Pilsner, but mostly religious stuff and he talked a lot about fate and luck and some oriental belief called Karma ... that what you do comes right back to you, sooner or later. I had to admit that that made sense. Even the bible says, clearly, that you’ll reap what you sow.

Drake, and the other poor sods facing their challenge tonight, probably needed all of the luck in the world to survive ... and the crazy bastard had probably jaked his by pointlessly stealing that dropped silver coin from that odd older skirt. Now ... I just had this sudden odd feeling that Karma’s wheel was about to turn on him, perhaps in certain revenge for that thoughtless casual action.

No, the words just wouldn’t come ... and I realized that I was now holding everything up while I was lost in thought.

After flashing the headlights three times the door slid open just enough to briefly inspect and then admit our three candidates, along with a dozen or so other fellows, unloaded from other arriving vehicles. I could now see the lights of several other vehicles arriving behind us, too. Then a guy with a full black bodysuit and complete head mask holding a dim red-light flashlight then came out and gestured for me to roll down my window, which already was. I couldn’t tell who he was or who he was working for ... and that was probably the idea.

“Yooz drivers, take that van around back and park with the others in the dockside loading bay. No lights or loud noises. There’s a loading door back there you can use to come in. No heaters ... nothing on you bigger than a jackknife. You cause any trouble or bring us any unwanted attention and you’ll wish you hadn’t been born! Stay in the back out of the way and keep your fucking mouths shut or you’ll wish you had! Be ready to deal with your stiffs afterwards, when everything’s done and over ... it ain’t part of our job!”

Stiffs? I didn’t like the sound of that and now I was getting all apprehensive again. At least the guard sounded like a local mug, and not one of Fate’s outsiders. Pilsner had sipped enough whiskey that he didn’t seem to care what happened next ... so long as it didn’t happen to him! It was a good thing the small flask was mostly empty now; much more and my friend might have been legless.

I parked around in back as instructed, and anticipating what could be a hasty getaway I even backed the van up to the edge of the warehouse loading dock, just close enough to the platform so that the rear van doors could open up. If we did need to drag away three stiffs, then I wanted to make it as fast and easy as possible! I counted about a dozen or so other nondescript small passenger and cargo vans parked nearby. Another van like ours was just coming around the corner to join the collection, lights off and moving slowly and cautiously, like we had just done.

After parking, I put on my battered old hat and tugged it down low over my eyes and then wrapped my coat up tight around me while guiding Pilsner, who was more than a bit unsteady on his pegs. Once out in the cool spring night air he started to sober up fairly fast. It was fucking dark all around us with no outside lights on the building or along this section of pier anywhere near us, and Pilsner never had shit for night-vision, even cold sober. Mine was nothing to speak of either, but after a bit of stumbling about we found the stone steps going up to the loading dock easy enough.

We lurched about some more trying to find our way inside and followed a small crack of light to the rear delivery entrance. Once inside the central area was brightly lit enough that we could see our way through the shadows of the back corner where we had entered. We sidled our way past several small groups of other drivers and assistants, just enough off to the right side so that we could just manage a clear view of the main section of the warehouse, where apparently the scheduled performance was about to begin.

As my eyes adjusted to the gloom, I could see that the central area still wasn’t very brightly lit but I could make out what was going on well enough. The lighting above and to the sides wasn’t generous and the light bulbs mostly seemed to be of the darker red and blueish sort. Enough light for functionality, I figured, but not bright enough to be easily noticed from outside. Probably the old windows up top of this abandoned old warehouse had all been painted or boarded over, but it was too gloomy to tell which.

The central combat pit was of interest though. It was set up a bit like a four-leaf clover, with four large circles of sand with an even bigger round arena platform in their center that was probably about three or four feet higher than the other circles. The candidates were drawing random lots now and being sorted to their starting positions by a group of black clad minions just like the bruno that had met us upfront. Over four dozen young killers, three of the best fighters from each crime outfit in the city, were being divided up in equal numbers and sent to four waiting areas, each near one of the outer circles to prepare for the start.

By prepare ... that seemed to mean, to strip down buck naked. At least for the start, they were going to fight it out to the death, bare handed and nude! I only saw one dame present, a moll, I think, of one of the contenders, cheering (quietly for now) from the shadows just over to my left. I spared her a second look and it was worth my time. Even in the gloom she was a dish. She was also already enjoying the show a bit more than the rest of us palookas. I didn’t envy her guy, stripped and standing out there waiting in the sand for the blood sport to begin. She looked expensive to maintain, and her presence alone suggested that she was the sort of skirt that got off on watching prize-fights or just watching street guys give each other the gashouse treatment, beating themselves senseless. She probably liked it plenty rough in the sack too; I had no doubts about that!

“It’s an arena pit, like a modern-day Roman Colosseum, where the candidates, like ancient gladiators, are going to all fight it out to the death ... bare-handed.” Pilsner whispered to me, while nervously reaching into his jacket for his almost empty flask once more, but in his anxiety he spoke a bit louder than he had likely meant to be. Pils was the brainier one of us and he killed a lot of his spare time at Empire Island’s main library, reading ... damned near anything and everything. Myself, I’m no stranger to a book and I don’t mind kicking back with a good hardboiled whodunit or an adventure with a lot of action, but that ‘old history stuff’ will put me right to sleep.

“Exactly, that’s the point of all of this!” Some guy on our left whispered back to me, giving me a little poke with a finger for emphasis, which I didn’t much appreciate, but I kept quiet about it. A dapper gent, obvious a street or hood boss with a taste for expensive suits, but not quite the same sort of pretty boy like Rags was.

“Name is Leo, by the way ... now my boss, Washington Heights Harry,” he continued, “managed to be present at the last one of Fate’s private auditions, last fall in Chicago, at another old slaughterhouse ... how appropriate! Fate had the contenders kill each other with just their bare hands, and when it got down to about a ten or so challengers he laughed and they tossed in a half dozen assorted small weapons for the finalists to finish each other off with. Just a couple of knives, clubs and maybe a short sword or two. Man ... it was a complete and utter bloodbath, Harry told me!”

“I’m Chancer and my pal here is Pilsner. So, did someone survive to win?” I asked.

“Two did, each pretty broken and stuck enough to be bleeding out, the both of them, but still on their feet at the very end. Fate then did something to them. Changed them ... altered them, he said. Harry told me that when it was over, they were now unscratched, perfect even. Golden men, he said, but maybe not entirely human anymore either.”

“And the rest ... stiffs?” I was pretty sure that I knew the answer to that question already.

“Yup ... all of the rest. That was the first thing he had his two new accepted followers do ... kill all of the wounded. Brutally, without mercy. Hell, Harry told me that they even ripped apart all of the guys that were already dead, just shredded them like they were rag dolls, ripped all their arms and legs and heads off ... just to make sure. Then they killed about half of the mugs in the audience too, anyone that didn’t run like hell from the place fast! And they laughed while doing it!”

“Cold ... pretty fucking cold.” Pilsner murmured, offered us both a final swig from his flask. I’m not much for whiskey; can’t often afford to indulge in it, but it burned sweetly going down and I felt a little warmer, as it soothed some of my anxiousness and fear. It wasn’t going to be me, out there in that arena, but I didn’t think that I was much going to enjoy the show.

I was about to ask our new friend Leo about a few other things, but just then a central yellow spotlight appeared right over the middle of the arena and the low murmuring of the crowds and the anxious contestants fell suddenly silent. Something was about to begin and no one wanted to miss anything, but the silence continued and nothing happened for a very long, increasingly nervous minute or three until a growing darkness, like a ball of sheer pure black energy, appeared above the central platform. The sphere sparkled with a bit of a purple light, as if it was composed of lightning. It grew malignantly for a moment and then was gone in a flash, leaving just a lone figure where it had radiated. A human-like form; the semblance of a man seemingly composed entirely of plasma energies without material flesh.

Doctor Fate had appeared. The world’s most famous or infamous super-villain had indeed arrived ... but perhaps not in the flesh, so to speak. Possessing mortal flesh was undoubtedly too petty and too limiting for a being of his caliber. His outward appearance looked human, more or less, but his form was entirely composed of energy and his face lacked almost all distinguishing features. I could see almost nothing except two reddish-orange glowing areas where eyes should have been. No nose, no mouth, no hair or even ears. No clothes either. He didn’t seem to need them anymore ... a creature beyond any need for mortal weaknesses.

The best description I could relate later on when describing Doctor Fate, was if someone had taken an iron or stone statue of a man and then heated it up in an ultra-hot furnace until it not only glowed, but utterly radiated unlimited energy around itself. Blackish purple in basic form, with irregular pulsating brighter energies within. A being now entirely composed of energies not entirely of this world.

The criminal master-genius looked around at his audience of mere puny mortals and I’m certain that he first sneered at us all in derision before he began to speak. The voice seemed mostly normal but a bit shrill, as if it was being electronically produced from thought and then somewhat amplified. I suppose Fate didn’t have a mouth, lips or even vocal chords to speak with anymore. The words though were clear and quite emotionless, but they sounded a bit clipped and truncated, so perhaps they were some sort of a mental projection, his thoughts made into sound with the precision of a machine.

“I have come seeking out the best ... those worthy of uplifting to perfection. I cannot abide inadequacy in any form! Those of you who would serve me must prove their worthiness to obey my every utterance as a commandment! Demonstrate to me your adequacy and with your bare hands go kill now all those who are inadequate, then come to me here for your reward!”

And thusly, did the grand melee in the arena begin!


Drake was pretty easy to spot, inside the left-most sand circle with a dozen or so other candidates, and he seemed to be doing just fine, right from the start. He was from the Abattoir, after all, and had been fighting for most of his life. If his first opponent was stronger, then Antony was faster and he fought a tactical duel. When the next foe was quicker, and something of a skilled martial artist, Tony bull-rushed and unrelentingly hammered him up close. Now I knew why Drake was reckoned to be an expert at hand-to-hand fighting. Soon the dozen or so men standing in his circle became just a handful.

“It’s like that bad sword and sandals movie we saw at the Saturday matinee last month,” Pilsner muttered, double-checking that his hip flask was now quite dry. “Except worse, and in glorious bright Technicolor too.” It was. This particular arena of death was going to ruin any hope of enjoying any more Roman gladiator movies at the cinema for years to come.

Miles and Dominic didn’t fare quite so well from the start. I didn’t know them, or their crimes very well. Probably, like Drake, they were both stone-cold killers, but I hope Karma treats them more kindly anyway in their next lives. Miles was strictly a street brawler and I think was outclassed right from the start. He went down fast and I never saw him get back up. Dom was off on the further right side circle and he was playing it fast, mean and dirty. It reminded me of a grade school playground fight. He started off by throwing sand in his opponent’s face, then going straight for the vitals with hard, repeated kicks to the groin. The chump he was fighting went down and he rolled fast out of the battle ring to clear his face and as he stood up just outside the ring boundary, one of his buddies was right there close at hand and handed him something.

It was a small revolver ... and in an instant the sore loser had fired off five shots, two of which killed Dom and the next three hit some of the other nearby main contenders. I was sure that this had not been a smart idea.

In an instant, Doctor Fate reacted, grabbing the poor dumb chump and his equally stupid pal with a massive spectral hand of glowing dark purple-black plasma and drew them towards him. The morons began to scream the moment that they were enwrapped in its energies, but the pain and horror was only just beginning for them. The chump fired his last bullet at near pointblank range, but it passed harmless right through him.

“I cannot abide disobedience ... or failure.” The grim being growled.

I had to turn away from most of what happened next and Pilsner began to violently throw-up at just the first sight of what the super-villain did to those poor fools. It was like he first turned their flesh all inside out, merged their pools of quivering flesh into a formless blob, then incinerated them, burning them both alive without killing them, and then liquefied the still living hapless remains. Somehow ... the formless flesh of the two Rubes found some means to scream ... and scream ... and scream.

Finally, at long last, when the cries began to fade away, the Doc loudly slurped up their mortal essences and gooey remains like an obscene crimson milkshake ... right down to replicating the same exact sound that your straw makes sucking up that last little bit remaining at the bottom corner of your glass.

“Continue!” he then commanded, and once more the rest of the contestants battled to reach the central arena.

It was loud, messy and violent and most of our group of drivers and attendants had little reluctance to watch and even cheer on every appalling moment of it. The bystanders all started to move in closer toward the central arena so that they could see everything up close and not miss a single moment of the fights.

I’d already seen more than enough bloodshed and was quite content to remain back in the shadows until the whole brutal business was done with, but Leo had grabbed my arm and pretty much frog marched me up along with him and his pals, to closer ringside seats near the edge of one of one of the outside sand pits. Pilsner shuffled along behind us, his face deathly pale from his vomiting, unwilling to be left alone back in the shadows.

At the very edge of the side arena closest to us, cheering at the top of her lungs, was the moll, close enough already to the action that every blow struck sent blood and sweat flying out to splatter her nearly all over. She had gore decorating her face, dress and stocking-covered legs, and maybe something that was once someone’s ear had adhered onto her short Bolero coat. Her eyes glowed with mad delight as she laughed and cheered, as the remaining naked blood-covered men in the sand just a few yards away from her fought and died. It seemed like her man was still in action, and she relished every moment of the blood sport.

No, I didn’t envy her champion in the least ... her passions were much too exotic for my taste.

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