This is the 29th in a series of 365 Flash Fiction stories I’m writing. You can find out more about the challenge here.
Punched Drunk, by Jonathan L. Lawrence, 31st December 2012
Word count: 631
Theme: heroes gone bad, sports stars, drunks, shenanigans
The story:
“Duck, duck, dodge, pivot,” Harry Carlos called out.
The kid in the ring dropped his fists and walked towards the ring.
“This isn’t fighting old man,” he said, snottily. Just then his sparring partner hit him across the side of the head. Not so hard, but it sent the young man sprawling. He jumped back up and tried to hit the sparring partner, repeatedly, and missed every time as the sparring partner ducked, and dodged it.
“This is fighting, punk,” the old man in question called up into the ring. “You’ve got a strong punch kid, but you’re not fast enough, and if you don’t learn to avoid punches, this will happen.”
“What?” the kid said turning, and then the sparring partner punched him again.
The kid recovered quickly though, and swung back hitting his sparring partner, connecting with his right hook. The sparring partner hit the mat with a thud.
“Like I said, strong punch, no skill kid,” Harry Carlos said. “Now get out of here, and stop wasting my time.”
“You can’t treat me like that!” the kid said.
The old man pulled a small wad of cash from his pocket, and threw it into the ring. “Full refund, of course sir,” he said, “Now get out of here.”
The sparring partner was picking himself up, “You know, it is a good punch right,” he said.
“Yeah, but the kid only wants to punch. If we got him a prize fight with a punching bag we might be able to help him achieve something, but right now he’s god for nothing. It’d waste my time and his money.”
“Yeah, money would be a fine thing.”
“Oh yeah, I gave him a wad of one dollar bills. His fee’s in this pocket,” he said waving a different wad of cash.
“Genius,” the sparring partner said taking off his head gear and gloves. “Let’s get pissed,” he added.
“Victor, Victor… I thought maybe we should be sensible and invest this money, if we’re wise, we could enjoy it much longer,” Harry said.
“Invest it in what?” Victor asked confused.
Harry doubled over laughing, “You should see the look on your face.”
“What?” Victor asked even more confused.
“I was joking you punch drunk loon, of course we’re going to get drunk. Fastest seventy dollars we’ve made in a long time.”
That night as the two drunks rolled around the bar, a thickset man walked in.
“I’m Michael’s dad,” he said menacingly.
The two boxers broke out in hysterics, for reasons in their drunk state they couldn’t understand.
The laughter ended as Victor was thrown across the bar, the bar tender quickly ducking out the way, then Michael’s Dad picked up Harry by the front of his shirt, “I always wanted to punch a champ,” he said as he swung quick left, and let the drunk fall to the ground.
He turned to walk away, and stopped as he heard laughing behind him.
“You think having your ass handed to you is so funny, old man?” Michael’s Dad asked.
“No,, no, its not that, no,” Harry said breaking out in spurts of laughter while pointing somewhere behind Michael’s dad. That’s when Victor who’d snuck round the bar, caught Michael’s Dad with a left hook.
“You don’t stop when you reach someone’s face, pansy, follow through. Lesson given,” Victor said and rejoined Harry at the bar, where he propped him back up against a stool.
“Easiest seventy bucks huh?” Victor asked.
“Plus, I got hit better than that by a nun,” Harry said, as he downed another drink. “Think he’s going to move?”
“He will, we’d be best to be somewhere else if we going to get drunk,” Victor said, fighting the drunkenness already.
“Sounds good,” Harry said, eyeing up his last thirty dollars.
Aspiring 