No Flesh Shall Be Spared

leisurely glance up and down the street and then crawled back the way he’d come. Once back on solid ground, he came back toward Monroe’s side of the car. He kept his head down as he walked, his face remaining cloaked in the shadow beneath the brim of the hat. As he got closer, Monroe noticed the guy slide his hand into his coat pocket.

Monroe looked into his rear view mirror again and checked behind him. There he saw the Dart still idling, the car door still slightly ajar. Monroe lowered his gaze and prepared to talk to whoever the Dart’s driver was. He briefly took another annoyed look at the truck in front of him. He assumed that whoever this fucker in the truck was, he must have left his vehicle and just run off someplace.

Some people were just so damned inconsiderate.

Monroe glanced at the clock on the dashboard and momentarily thought of calling Claire. If this shit didn’t straighten itself out in short order, he was going to be late for their dinner reservation.

The guy driving the Dart had by now come up to the Jag’s window and knocked once and then once again with the meat of his knuckle. Monroe rolled his window about halfway down, enough so that he could communicate with whoever the guy was, but not so wide as to leave himself vulnerable should this guy decide to start some shit. He may live uptown now, but Monroe had once lived downtown and he still retained some of his street smarts.

'So, did this idiot leave his truck or what?' Monroe asked and leaned out a bit to look toward the truck.

'Not quite…' was the grumbled answer.

Monroe was startled a bit when he heard the voice. For some reason, the tone and timbre of it sounded vaguely familiar. Monroe wasn’t sure exactly where he’d heard it before, but he knew the tone from somewhere. Maybe the guy was a maintenance guy in the building or something. Suddenly, he thought he caught the scent of bubble gum on the air.

'Well, what the fuck then…?' he said, pointing toward the flatbed. 'How do people just do this kind of shit?'

The man outside bent down and stared Monroe full in the face. His eyes flared beneath the shadow of his cap and he smiled. The smile was malicious and shark-like with lips that slid back and exposed teeth that seemed impossibly white.

Monroe’s brain sort of stalled and he felt more than a little bit confused as he abruptly found himself face-to- face with the one thing he thought he would never see again: Cleese.

And yet, here he was… looking smug and lethal and all too real.

'I think that, right now, you have problems far greater than that fuckin’ truck, Phil.'

Monroe sat, mentally vapor locked as he tried to sort it all out in his head. A lot of information flitted before his brain in a cascade of images that didn’t seem to make much sense. Despite his best efforts, he just couldn’t make the connections fit.

He’d been on his way home.

He was going to meet Claire.

They were supposed to go have dinner.

There was a truck.

A Dodge Dart.

Some people were inconsiderate.

And now… Cleese?

It took Monroe a second to put it all together, but when he did, the conclusion he reached made his bowels suddenly loosen.

Cleese pulled his hand out of his pocket and drove it straight across the lower part of Monroe’s face. His head was pushed painfully back through the window. The blow rattled Monroe’s jaw pretty severely and he felt his mouth suddenly fill with blood.

'That was for what you did to Monk, you son of a bitch.'

Monroe’s head spun from the concussion of the punch and the world sort of tilted on its axis as a result. As he tried to clear his head, he reached over feebly and pushed the button to roll the window up. It was the only thing he could think of to put a barrier between himself and Cleese.

It was all for naught.

Cleese grabbed the window by its uppermost edge and, in a series of quick, back and forth yanks, he pulled at the pane of glass. The first tug rattled the glass in its frame. The second sprouted a spider web pattern that radiated out from the top down. The third shattered the window, sending nuggets of glazed glass cascading into Monroe’s rapidly dampening lap.

Suddenly, there were thick hands at Monroe’s throat and he was unceremoniously hauled from beneath the steering column and out through the broken window. Chunks of the still remaining window scratched his back and legs deeply, allowing blood to flow and soak the material of his pants. Once clear of the window frame, Cleese hoisted Monroe into the air and then slammed him heavily into the cement wall. The force of the impact rattled Monroe’s teeth in his jaw and shook his eyeballs in his head.

Again and again, Monroe felt his back and skull crash into the cement. His already dizzy world was further clouded and the black fog of unconsciousness slowly crept in. As his mind fought for some avenue of escape, two uppercuts plowed into his lower abdomen, kicking the wind from his lungs. Then, he felt his body arc through the air and pound onto the hood of the Jag.

Yeah… that’s definitely gonna scratch the paint.

Out of the corner of his eye, Monroe saw Cleese pull something dark and hard and round from his pocket. He clenched the ball tightly in his fist, his knuckles white from the exertion of holding it so tightly.

Then, the hailstorm of punches commenced.

Monroe only felt the first few as Cleese repeatedly pounded the heavy ball into his face and chest. Far off, Monroe heard the sound of his nose crack. Then, his cheekbones splinter. Small, hard chunks of enamel were torn from his gums and fell like pebbles to the back of his throat. The snapping of his collarbone took the breath from his lungs. His sternum ached from the repeated bludgeoning.

Out at the far borders of his perception, Cleese’s voice echoed in a stream of profanities.

And then, just as suddenly as it began, the beating stopped.

Monroe made a thick gurgling sound as he fought to catch a breath through the decimated anatomy of his face. So much for that 'unique skill set.'

As he lay there, Monroe wasn’t sure how severely Cleese had hurt him, but he knew it was bad. Blood flowed freely down his throat and he did all he could to either spit it out or swallow it. He tried as best he could to turn his head to keep himself from drowning. The thing was… he was only barely able to keep up with the flow.

Abruptly, Monroe once again felt himself being hoisted slightly off the car hood. Cleese had him by the lapels of his jacket with one hand and by the belt with the other. For some unfathomable reason, he felt his attacker pulling on the front of his pants. An unexpected and extremely localized pain suddenly erupted at his crotch.

Fighting for breath, he realized that Cleese had let him go. He fell back, splayed across the hood of the Jag. He lay there and groaned, alone with the pain in his face and a sudden weight in his groin. At first, Monroe thought Cleese might have stabbed him or cut him in some way.

Jesus… no!

Still trying to catch air, Monroe reached down into the front of his pants and felt around. Shoving his hand under his beltline, he discovered the small, round object Cleese had been hitting him with stuffed down deep into his shorts. The thing now snuggled against his balls like a purring cat. He reached down and got a hold of it by pressing the object deeper between his legs. Whatever the thing was, it felt like a metal apple with what appeared to be a fat stem sticking out of the top of it.

He turned his head and looked back down the ramp through the growing haze. Cleese stood a ways away, back beyond the Dart and just around the corner. His middle finger was raised defiantly.

'And that… is for Chikara!' he shouted, his voice echoing dully as he disappeared around the bend. The sound of his receding footsteps echoed in the darkness.

Monroe barely felt a thing as the fragmentation grenade exploded in his lap.