"This is inhumane," Harris shivered, clutching his leather-bound Sherlock Holmes tight to his chest. "We're being treated like…like…"
"Like prisoners?" Arthur looked up and punched a fist into the pale sky. "I'm not a number—I'm a free man!"
The yard's sparse vegetation resembled quills on a balding porcupine. Clusters of prisoners roamed the football field sized yard. Loners shuffled from group to group, trying to decipher the politics of cliques. Take away the state-issue drab and it could have been middle school recess. Those with a baseball or football played makeshift games of varying rules, mostly consisting of vociferous, chest-puffed arguments about the specifics of said rules. Others grunted under secondhand workout equipment near the cellblock door. Arthur and Harris scanned the olive sea, playing a dire game of 'Where's Waldo.' The body-builders were right out, as were the gang-bangers, sportsmen and anyone near a guard.
"I'm still not sold this is going to work," Arthur said.
Harris, leather book hugged to his chest, pointed across the yard. A man spun circles with hands outstretched, prophesying a 'plague of kittens.'
"What about that guy?"
"Nuttier than squirrel plop." Arthur shook his head. "We have to pick someone with more marbles. Crazies are too unpredictable."
Every rustling footstep, each puff of white breath and heartbeat played like the ticking of an omnipresent clock. The sun had already passed its zenith. Soon, the darkness would wrestle light underground. Death's icy breath tickled the napes of their necks. In twenty minutes, exercise would end and they'd be remanded back to their cells to await execution-by-riot. It was act now or forever rest in peace.
"Ha!" Arthur clapped and pointed to the corner opposite. "Mr. Meditation."
A prisoner sat in the lotus position at the far end of the yard where two lines of fence met. His lips moved in a set pattern, a looping mantra on every breath. Bald-headed and emaciated, with wisps of beard billowing in the wind, he looked as if a stout breeze could carry him up and over the prison wall. Years of smoke and sun gnawed his skin to yellow leather. He sat, eyes closed and face placid.
Harris tilted his head to the left. "Yeah, I think I can take him."
"Doesn't seem right," Arthur said, "picking a fight with a pacifist."
Harris cracked his knuckles, adjusted his pants ever so slightly. "You still have…the thing?"
"Strapped right to the ol' twig. You sure it's not gonna…?"
The duo marched, careful not to jostle, toward Mr. Meditation.
"Shouldn't yet." Harris said. "Dunno about your bits though. It's slightly radioactive."
"Radioactive?"
"Slightly. You ever been in a fight?" Harris said. "I got shoved in line for a Star Wars showing. I told a Wookie he looked like King Kong."
"So we're about a hundred meters out of depth."
"Give or take," Harris shrugged.
Harris and Arthur stopped, ten feet from their mark. The meditator's murmurs rose and fell like waves on a beach, the sound soothing but without form.
"So," Harris said, "who wants to punch the hippie first?"
Arthur put out his hand, his opposite fist hovering over it. Without a word, Harris did likewise. Three shakes and a throw later, Harris, by virtue of his paper-covered-rock, won the dishonor of first strike. First taking a deep breath, Harris crept to where the man sat. Slowly, he lifted a clenched fist to his ear.
"Kumite!" Harris' blow never came close. Without breaking his lotus, the hippie caught Harris' fist and flicked him ass over elbows.
"Oh bugger." Arthur, stomach lurching, ran toward a certain beatdown. Eyes still closed, the hippie kicked a spring-loaded heel directly to Arthur's guts.
"Oi!" Arthur doubled over on the ground. "His feet are jackhammers!"
Harris, coughing, pushed up from his knees. "I don't think he's a hippie!"
The meditating man unfolded from his lotus and sprung to a fighting stance, bending gravity and kinetics. The Irregulars recovered to see him smirking. Someone in the crowd yelled, "some idiots are fighting The Death Fist!"
"He's got a nickname!" Harris cowered. "Oh god he's got a nickname!"
"You said the guards would come!" Arthur massaged his groin.
"We go together on three!" Harris said. "He can't hit us both at once."
"Yes he bloody well can!"
Smiling, the Death Fist ripped the collar of his shirt. Olive fabric fell away, revealing anatomical perfection and a veritable storybook of tattoos.
"I knew we should have hit the kittens guy," Harris moaned. "One… Two… Three!"
One doesn't earn the nickname 'The Death Fist' by plucking posies and skipping through open fields. The erstwhile hippie pivoted on his left foot and hit first Harris, then Arthur with a beautiful, brutal roundhouse kick perfect enough to make Chuck Norris cry. His foes dropped like empty sacks. Death Fist, cackling, stalked to Harris. His muscled body obscured the sun.
"It's Bruce Lee!" Harris shielded his face with his forearms. "I'm going to be curb stomped by Bruce fucking Lee!"
The Death Fist raised his foot, but the expected heel never landed. Harris saw the man's lank, muscular arms flail as a guard shoulder tackled Death Fist from behind. Light again poured over Harris. The lethal heel brushed Harris' ear as they tumbled to dirt.
"Get offa me!" The Death Fist thrashed against his captor. A second, and then a third guard—not worried one iota by the Irregulars—jumped atop the Death Fist. Two dozen guards smothered the melee while Harris and Arthur were rolled onto their bellies and cuffed. The prison alarm whooped through the yard, warning shots fired skyward.
"All prisoners—back to cell block for head count." A voice droned over the PA. "Repeat. All prisoners back to cell block for head count."
Rough hands jerked Arthur and Harris to their feet as guards wrestled Death Fist. He screamed wicked laughter, blood bubbling to his lips. "Let me at them! Let me at them!"
"You fuckers really don't get it do you?" The jack-o-lantern guard thrust the butt off assault rifle to Harris stomach. "Get 'em the fuck out of my face," the guard swung his rifle toward the cellblock door. "Put em in the freezer. A night of solitary should cool these assholes off."
Faces bloody, bodies thrumming and pulsing with pain, Harris and Arthur sighed. After a week of watching dominoes fall toward them, advancing closer to the fatal blow, something had finally fallen their way. It felt like ripping the shiny paper back from a long-desired gift. The guards walking them into the cellblock furrowed their brows to see smiles beaming through the bruised faces. So far—so good.
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