CLAYFIGHT PART 4

Time is closing in.
One week before the fight, Stephanie calls me to let me know that arrangements have been made to send a private plane to the flying field located but a few miles from my premises.
I am speechless, but I don't get angry. Instead, I ask her, is she not aware that the world is well on its way to doom and destruction? That humanity has defiled and insulted Nature, not listening to its warnings before recently? There is a reason they call it the Climate Crisis, and use of classical aero planes will only aid in the killing of our planet. I say, that I will travel by my very own construction, a solar driven jet pack of both speed and manageability. I prompt her to do the same, and I go even further. I tell her that she may not travel to the Cayman Islands by flight - unless she can get her hands on a solar plane or some such vehicle. I forbid it. She insists on the contrary, asking how she will get there. I tell her to take the boat. She says that by boat, she probably won't be able to make it in time for the fight.
To that I reply, that it will be over so quickly, that she would never have made it there anyway, had she even traveled by time-machine.
This stumps her, and I hear her swallowing saliva. I do not intend to be mean spirited, but in my humble opinion, you do not attempt at soiling Nature and get away with it without a brisk correction.

As the deep and breathing world of Everia turns to surface beneath my feet, I jet vertically toward the skies to the humming engines of my very own creation. At first, there is a stream of baby blue, turning to a whisk of white, with the occasional shocked bird obstructing my view of perfect harmony. Transgressing to horizontal motion is the only real compromise to my air-borne endeavors, entailing the slight risk that the machinery will short fuse, causing me to surrender to the tug of gravity.
This does not happen, nor has it ever. Confidently and undaunted, I shoot over the ocean and the lands.
Somewhere over Central America, a helicopter starts following me. Suspecting a terrorist murder attempt or a drug related kidnapping, I am just about to press the hyper drive button – which will get me well and beyond any helicopter and most airplanes, but use up all the fuel in the process, leaving no time for the batteries to charge – when I see the helicopter door opening, letting out a white and red banner reading: GOOD LUCK, STEPHEN STONE!!!
Inspecting the vehicle further, I am greeted by a smiling man in sunglasses, waving and giving the thumbs up. I wave back and accelerate.

The landing is as blessed from altercation. As I swoosh in over the Cayman Islands, descending in a smooth arc, I take take in the surroundings with pleasure – shimmering waters, palm trees breezing, pale sands, wonderfully inventive architecture with white and beige villas running along narrow streets full of trade and amusements. There is a crowd of people there to greet me as I descend upon the square, a chaotic flicker of cameras flashing, microphones dangling in front of my face – there is even a big band playing Caribbean flavored marching music. I touch ground right by a large marble fountain, shooting out long and thin gushes of water from fish' mouths. While removing my jet pack from off my body in the haze of people, I am greeted by a gentleman presenting himself as my coordinator. Apparently, there is a car waiting for me less than a block away, ready to take me to my hotel, where all my expenses will be paid by the Fighter's Association. Feeling in a rather jolly mood – perhaps from the shift in oxygen uptake – I let off a laughter and pad his shoulder, telling him that I will not be sleeping in any sort of indoor housing structure. The last night before the Grand Opera, I will be spending on the shore with a lonesome fire burning in front of my sleeping face. I simply give him the jet pack and tell him to store it until my departure.
Before he leaves, he tells me not to forget the pre-game press conference which is scheduled in less than four hours. I tell him that Stephen Stone is not in the business of forgetting things.

At the pre-game press conference, I get to be in the presence of my opponent for the second time. This is is much more interesting, more intense, although Clayman is quiet and reserved, as had the spirit of mixed martial arts gone right out of him. My musings seem to irritate him only a little, and I get the sense that I will require no more than a Whisk of the Weakling to send this derelict skyrocketing downward to grace the filthy floors.
His manager and the goons from last time is present as well, the aforementioned slouching in his chair by the table next to his star, and the others standing behind the couple with dogged facial expressions and statue-like poses. Behind them all, the flag of the Fighter's Association. The hotel conference room we're in is rather cramped, but very bright and clean – as sterile as these places always are, smiling stewards passing by the press posse every once in a while, bringing us refreshments and alike. I am sitting alone by my table, a pitcher of lemon water and a fruit basket in front of me.
Asked to perform another one of the by now famous limericks, I offer to do even better – I will follow a Rhyme pattern of my very own devices:

Clayman, the Clayman, a shaved chafed-faced caveman
from the States, on a plane to the islands of Cayman
to be taped while he's shaped into a rather stale man
Ok, man, I'm game – let's get in it to play, man

Met by laughter and applause, I am asked how important it is for me to win, and how I would describe the upcoming fight with my own words.
I tell them that I have all to win, because this fight is to the death.
The room turns quiet for a short while, as Clay Huntington stares at me with his mask coming off slightly. Seemingly taken aback by my harsh words, he mumbles into the microphone: “All I know is that if anyone dies – it's not me.”
I wish Stephanie had been here to see this. Naturally, she is not present. If she decides to journey, she will not be arriving until two days after the fight.

When I have shaken off all the fans and journalists, I go down to the shore, watching the sun set in purple and yellow, the soft clouds looking back at me, calling me back. As night falls, I light a modest campfire, and lie down on a blanket. I have never felt calmer.

d

Clayman's concept is devised by a video-game manufacturer, makers of the praised 1994 Super Nintendo hit Clay Battle, which was one of the games that set the starting point to an era of 3D-graphics. As one may understand, they are one of his biggest sponsors, using his name to keep the Clay Battle franchise breathing. As I am writing this, the Playstation 5 version has just arrived on the store shelves. I must admit to have taken a peek at games like these, fishing for inspiration and ideas for creating new moves and techniques. Most of them are utterly disappointing and uninventive, Clay Battle 5 being one of just those. The only styles interesting enough to copy from any games, were those of the red haired green demon of the forest in the Street fighter games – Blanka – and the cool Capoeira of Eddie from the Tekken franchise. I learned them both down to every last move, and even built on them in ways both amusing and breath taking.
However, the ploy seems cheap and uncreative, Clayman entering the boiling arena accompanied by a group of ladies in costumes that is supposed to resemble, yes - clay. Overtly caricaturized bosoms and curves, and 1960's pin-up hair, all in bulky clay. The mismatched music of Rock Boy's blending of heavy metal, country and rap only adds to the confusion. The fighter himself is swept within a long, golden robe, atop his head, a crown. The correlation of the themes utterly escapes me.
I observe all this from inside the locker room, on the LCD screen placed above the exit door. The room is posh and luxurious, comfortable furniture, training equipment of different kinds – even a refrigerator filled with Crokoade – the chocolate thirst-burster. The shower room is large and sparkling clean – it looks like something from a design show, classic ancient Greek and Roman sculptures joining one's acts of cleanliness amidst plastic vegetation and marble pillars.
On the screen, Mo Horgan, the host, rallies up the crowd to enhance the sense of bloody war. There is a light show taking place, and quite the spectacular one. Red, white and blue crossfading into green, purple and yellow to blue, yellow and red and so forth, the strobes so intense that it is somewhat hard to make out the multi-leveled, circular stands which seem never to end. Flashily glossy graphics - designed and executed in a rapid, nearly subliminal fashion – let the viewers know our bios and fighting history, sided by airbrushed and otherwise manipulated images of us both. All introduced and commentated by Mo Horgan and his sidekick, whose name I do not register.
They go on to present a short pre-filmed segment where Clayman and I are interedited in a dramaturgical escalation of conflict – a brief recounting of all the events that led up to the two of us deciding to go toe to toe, and responses from experts as well as laymen and fans all over the world, sharing their thoughts, predictions and feelings about the event. As expected, most put their faith in Clayman – even though many express that they wish it were otherwise - but there are those who have been apparently swayed by my performance in Chicago, and cannot hide their doubts for the possibility that the unimaginable might too happen. To me, this is all of little significance.
The stadium is surprisingly big. Only having seen it on the screen so far, I can assess its grandness, giving a hint of the gladiatorial clash about to commence. Of course, my fight is the highlight of the evening, the real reason everyone is present – but there have been fights going on all night. I have sat here and watched the sloppy tactics of hooligans not worthy of the cells dying as they take blows to the cranium, imbeciles who seem unable to carry out the most basic of combinations without falling flat on their bums.
As soon as I got to the dome, led by functionaries right down the gigantic underground parking garage and via the security booths, on into the building's long corridors – I told them that I demanded not to be disturbed until just before the fight. I meditated for two hours – the hardest and most focused spell I have ever tranced for – assuring me that everything would work out exactly as I had planned. The Kanai tribe in the rain forests of Gabon taught me what is as close to magic as ever I have known. The ability to cast people – although a mere slight – into a dull sort of semi-amnesia, or what most closely resembles a lighter hypnosis – will indeed be required on this special occasion. The twirly painted symbol on my chest, I breath deep and hard, letting out my air without any strains in my body. Each second an eternity yet less than the least of time, I dwell in the illuminated darkness, the locker room liquidizing around me, swirling and spiraling to find a new form, a new body. Freezing into concreteness, it shatters like a glass window, leaving me in the brightness of the strange machinery that is hidden beneath the surface of which I am part. I have never felt closer to my theory than at this very unmoment.
There is a knock on the door. The yellow and red dressed upper teen functionaries greet me as I unlock and open. The time has come.
The second I exit the locker room, I hear my name shouted out from the screen, while at the same time getting the same audio input from reality, although muffled through the concrete walls making up the rather creepy yellow and green basement complex part of the stadium. The lighting turns me to thinking of vomit and urine, intoxicated, violent fools cursed by my Wombat Wobble – a move I have merely prototyped, not invested any time in detailing to its fullness, on account of being not only awkward and clumsy, but also very painful to perform. I doubt that I will be executing the Wombat Wobble tonight.

Tonight, the people are my mistress. In the form of animals roaring, they lie down and spread their legs. I enter, penetrating the willing worshipers. Much as the skin I drew from poor cow Lulu to craft the wanderer's robe I carry on my shoulders, the crowd is ripped right off its own body at my appearance.
But I reside within the depths of my tranquil mind. The air is cool and the smell of popcorn defeats the bitter odor of ten thousand people. Mo Horgan is standing alongside the announcer – an oiled-up, dandy-looking, stretched olive skin man who seems to be about my age - by the cage, surrounded by slim-fitted women in their mid-twenties, in tight and small outfits, shining like their made-up, glitter-sprinkled faces. Electronic fireworks go off at my sides as I get closer, obscuring my view, letting me observe nothing but intense white sparkles while hearing their provocatively shrill frizzle dampen the human voicing coming at my ears from all directions. I cannot even make out what music is being played. When the fireworks are switched off, I'm walking up the small set of stairs leading me right into the cage. Being at a distance to properly investigate my surroundings, I look to the front row of the stands, where sunglasses for some reason seems to be a mandatory accessory -perhaps it is because of the electronic fireworks. Overfed men in expensive designer suits and women who seem about as interested in the event as I would be in watching them perform anything or other – with the occasional tattooed, bald shaved, spike-wearing fighter in tight tee shirts and denims, spread out among the wealthy. The announcer exclaims to the crowd and the TV-monitors: “The Brit Beast – the English Elder – Stephen Stone!”
Mo Horgan touches my shoulder as I enter the cage. The warm spotlights on my face and shoulders, everything around me oily and yellow except for the strand of white hair falling down in front of my left eye every minute or so. Stretching his calves and rolling neck along with torso, he's there, in the cage.
We're close.
Clayman.
I'm coming for you.

“You're a prick”, he says into the microphone held by the announcer. Mo Horgan has sneaked off to the commentator's booth. The judge, honored Philippine Doka-tendo ex-champion Valan Harpa, is softening up his aging limbs against the cage.
“You think you're better than everybody else with all your shit”, he says. “But I'm gonna prove to the world that talk is cheap. You're just a phony, in the wrong place at the wrong time.” He seems rather moved, as if more than just playacting for the cameras. I must have gotten to him fairly well, which is a good thing, since it will throw him off his focus and decrease the quality of his performance on all levels.
The announcer shifts the microphone to let me speak. The crowd has gone quiet, tentative, expecting surprise, things new and unforeseen. “We're here”, I say, “in the esteemed Mega Dome on the strikingly beautiful Cayman Islands, agreed to go into combat for fourteen rounds, or until one of us either give up, or is put out of capacity to carry on the fight, resulting in a knock out loss. Mr. Huntington, I would – with your consent – like to alter the rules for this specific fight.”
My speech is soft and moody, succinct tonal shifts and vocal quirks lurking at every word uttered. This is where the Kanai tribe mass-hypnosis is to be inserted. The symbol on my chest radiating its lulling chant at everyone watching – the announcer, Mo Horgan, the crowd, Stephanie at home in the United States watching the program on her Widescreen, and every other of the millions of home viewers – everyone except Clay Huntington. It would be no meaning defeating a person whose mind you have altered.
Casting spells, as I have mentioned, is incredibly demanding on the psyche, and to reach beyond inflicting a mere apathy and passiveness in the spelled upon, is out of my capacity. Fortunately, this is all that I require to fulfill my purpose. During the less-than-a-second it takes for the enchantment to penetrate their minds and laying itself down as a soft membrane on their unconscious for the next few hours, I watch how their faces turn blank and dreamy, losing their connection with the physical world, making bonds with that of ghosts and spirits. Clayman, unaffected, notices it too, and throws me a quick, confused glance before shaking it off and returning to the masquerade, where he has just been – for once – unaccompanied by his fellow masks.
As the spelled regain all their senses, I turn to Clayman, and I speak: “To the death, I say, Mr. Huntington. To the death, wouldn't you agree?”
This puzzles him. Giving off a faked smile of insanity, he spits: “I'll kill you, asshole!” He starts walking to and fro in the cage, bumping his fists and murmuring words of encouragement to himself. The crowd sounds quite a lot – whistling, wooing, booing, aah-ing and applauding. As I watch them, I am no longer sure that the spell had even been needed for them to accept such a bloodthirsty premise – but such conclusions are very easy to make when you have already seen the outcome.
“I shall be honored to have you try”, is my reply. “Brave warrior.” Roaring applause and screams set off from the stands.
The announcer smiles wide and expressionless, giant row of white pearls glistening through the eerie, tribal and shadowy scenery.
A hardly noticeable smile flutters by in the corner of referee Harpa's mouth. Having grown up in the poverty-ridden streets of Manila, propositions like these must not be at all alien to him.
Gradually, as the air between myself and Clayman gets ever denser, the crowd embraces this new scenario even further. People want but to be surprised – they crave new components, new variables, new dimensions. The game of life is well understood in one who has worked on a theory of the Ultimate Structure, where the same concepts are sought and embraced. The need of vexation is as innate in the human intellect as any other feat or theme. New images, new memories, new taglines – a chipped and buckled line of progress is deemed more worthy and valuable than stagnation and normalization carried out to their perfection.
An eternal moment shared by fifty million people, is worth far more than the life of a man. This is the purpose exposed. One must die, and one must live.
Mo Horgan, situated not far from the cage, is whacking the table with his palms, shouting joyous words I cannot hear.

d

His first blow once again reveals his loss of punch drive. He is quick, indeed – compared to the average fighter, who I am not. I almost feel ashamed of how quickly this will all be over. As I dodge his advancing, I hear the crowd activating as if they themselves had taken a fist to the gut. I have no visual conception of the audience at this point – my eyes are much too focused on Clayman – and I know that the same thing will soon happen to my hearing. All that will enter my ears by then, is strained breaths and scraping heels. If, however, something out of the ordinary were to occur outside the direct physical context of the fight – the cage – such as a terrorist attack, a tsunami breaking the steel walls of the stadium, or someone approaching the cage to try and join in the fight – I would be the first to know, since my unconscious is more than human. Not by birth, but thanks to the way I have nurtured and cared for it, constantly exposing it to new, difficult but maturing challenges. There is nothing within a certain mile radius that escapes register from my mental book of records – known or unknown – and it is far greater than the area these premises cover.
I attack, time stopping its perpetual motion. Space is a sequence of 3D imaging, an elusive camera which I can turn within my mind to alter my view around the whole scene as I please. Sped up ultra rapid, the sound of my feet from that of a cricket jumping tall grass, to the eternally downwardly modulating clicking of the audio message received by a space venturer from his colleague who has just gone beyond the event horizon of a black hole. Objects and shapes around me dilating and retracting, my arm's length subtracted and added to its thickness as I bend it backwards, charging it with kinetic energy. Upon releasing, the shockwaves ripple the veil.
My Strong Reaction Nuclear Slingshot Dispenser, lands at his right temple like a collapsing skyscraper, blooding his eyes as oozing spittle jets from his loose mouth. I pull back to register how the damage affects his already limited movement. The boxer's bumpy motion has lost some of its usual smoothness, and his feet are less coordinated. In a controlled manner, I slide back and forth, right to left while never letting him out of sight. I expect him to switch to wrestler mode at our next altercation, but that will not change its outcome – how perceivable. They are all so machinated, so in discordance of independent thought and using creativity to find new ways of solving problems – even the rebels and entrepreneurs are shaped and formed. What a sad coincidence that our successors have lost the capacity for free thought in the first period in human history where free thought is truly free.
I charge my left leg, preparing to crush his kneecap with my Kick of Kong, a subtle variation of the leg attacking techniques developed within the art of Doka-tendo, as a sort of homage reference to the respected judge Harpa.
At my stretched leg shooting across the cage, I notice a loss of balance, and fall on my back, realizing that my fall must have been brought on by sweat soaked up by the floor, just before my head hits the strangely soft and hard fabric mat.
He has flown on top of me in less than a second. But he reacts predictably, and I manage to swoop to the side before getting trampled by his bandaged heel. This presents me with a grand opportunity to take out his leg still. The Kick of Kong having failed me, events from weeks past fluctuate in my mind's eye, stopping at my short journey through the jungles of Everia.
The Dummy Dance fastens him, as did it the deer. Scissoring his thighs, I reach out my arm and grip his collar bone so hard and tightly, that I can pull away the other arm, supporting me against the floor. As his collar bone snaps, I heave my lower body at the side, dragging his encumbered legs with me. Using my free hand to manipulate the nerve wirings behind his kneecap, his body turns loose and soft. Now you understand why I chose to call it the Dummy Dance, for does he not resemble a dummy - workless limbs, face emotionless?
We crash to the mat in unison – the difference being that while I touch down as the vibrant body of a breathing, pulsating, live organism - he will soon be dead.
To my great disdained surprise, I see his foot destructively lashing at my chin, hitting me before I have a chance to react. Pulling back to run my hand over my jaw to confirm that it is indeed broken, I understand that the kick was not by him administered – for it was way to perfect in its force and speed, more like those of my own – but merely an unfortunate reflex, a consequence of my dabbling with his nervous system.
In a drunken blaze of pain I charge at him, on his knees center stage - some of the life in his eyes starting to return – and shatter his teeth with one of my oldest moves: the Barks of Cerebus, whose series of blows may seem furious and uncontrolled to the outside observer – but is guaranteed on account of the recipient, to make out a coherent patchwork of patternized pain.
There is a natural order to the body of technique I have developed – the one makes a smooth and logical transformation into the other, a symmetry whose flawlessness cannot be questioned. While the combos go on, the brutal Barks of Cerebus elegantly evolves into the art of Chuvio – each individual technique associated with a specific color within my mind – hitting becoming ripping going back to hitting, as glowing specks of ocean blue become a night sky filled with gaseous red clouds of stardust. When the first jet of blood squirts onto my face, his lower jaw is destroyed, gone in a gushing swamp of various shades of red and levels of density, and my clawing Chuvio having torn at his soft palate to such an extent that his whole upper row of teeth and gums are on their way of coming off. I will not let this go on much longer. I am a warrior – not a torturer. Torturers need to keep their victims alive to perform their deeds – warriors need have their opposing warrior taken from life. Clayman's face so swollen and distorted that I can no longer see his eyes, his mouth unable to form but the most primitive of utterances. I do, however, suspect that he is not aware of his surroundings at this point, much like a gazelle giving into a vicious herd of hyenas.
Judge Harpa is pacified, along with all other observers – they all know what is happening and what they see – but they do not see the world in the same way they would if I had not cast a spell upon them. They have nothing against what is happening at this moment – many of them even see it as an unusually entertaining evening. There is no one that will attempt at stopping me – perhaps, no one that even could.
As I feel bone structure giving way to the insisting fists, eye-sockets punctuating, and a brain sending out its last desperate alarm signals to the rest of the body – all in shock – I know that it is over.
I have defeated Clay Huntington.
The former Ultimate Fighting Champion of the World is no longer. Heavy breaths drawn, I get down on one knee in front of his body, and the bloody mess all around him. I bow my head and raise his lifeless arm to the skies, salute him on his way to the plain of those deceased in battle, whereafter I gather strength and lift him up. Carrying him against my chest, I exit the cage and keep going for the exit. The reaction of the masses and personnel inquires me not – there is no more to this story. I have taken the blood soaked token I warranted for, but it is not after I have returned to Everia with the body, separated it from its head which I strip of flesh and skin to shine as a skull trophy on the wall of my rectory – after I surgically remove his heart and dine upon it to sparkling wine in cups of mystery while watching the medial aftermath in the comfort of my theater – that I feel at peace.

d

Air circles the yard in the early evening dimness. Invisible locusts play as drops of rain start prickling from the blue gray sky, and she dissappears into the wild, Mamo and Styx following her as if attached to her shoulders.
I had a disturbing dream where Chiba attacked and ate her, and I start feeling uncomfortable.
The remaining mystery to the universe starts making a sort of sense to me – if somewhat elusive and abstract – but I am much too distraught to conduct theoretical work.
What have I done?