Featherwight Fred after Two Punches to the Head

It came like a swinging mace, colliding into his skull from one side, and then a sharp pain caught him from beneath. Water collecting in the gutter of his bottom jaw launched into the stands with a hard click of teeth as his bottom row crashed into his top mouthpiece. Mentally he was finished; physically he wobbled and shook, then his body admitted defeat, and fell in unintentional mimicry of an opossum putting on his best performance.

Though, where his body landed, was somewhat of a mystery for Fred, for he awoke to the sounds of cackling booms, explosions of white lightning, and the cool crisp rain that stung his ragged face like shotgun blasts of rock salt. Above him was a bruise of clouds, purple with yellow beams of light that cast blotches of green between lighter holes and spaces. In front of him, standing waist deep in a misting ocean, was a friend from childhood who had gone missing unexpectedly.

“Billy? Billy Blaston?” The man gave a small grin revealing a row of blinding bleached white teeth. He looked to be twenty-five and bore the same protruding forehead as he had always had, and still had that same Greek nose with the small bend at the end that was unmistakably Billy’s.

“We going to Shaker’s or what man?” he said. A loud steadily increasing popping sound followed by an enormous white crack of light that split the dark sky in half crossed the heavens behind him.

“Sure, but didn’t you. Didn’t you leave, or something? For good?”

“Leave?” A grin and a small twinkle from what must have been a distant memory grazed his face.

“Oh, I guess I did didn’t I?”

The smiling body that appeared to be Billy Blaston spread its arms and fell into the ocean current disappearing under the waves.

“Billy?” He scrambled into the tide that rose in increments of feet. Each wave collided and connected into larger bulging swells of ocean water, until he couldn’t feel the floor. He threw his head underwater and kept his eyes open in the blazing torrent of dirt dancing opaquely before him. A swirling blizzard of brown that hid everything. He groped blindly, and then he saw blood. His blood. And then he realized with a gasp of strangulating salt water, he was drowning.

His body fell like a speeding freight train off a canyon wall; he sunk for miles. Under the pressure, his eyes blew out and his lungs failed, his ears burst and his intestines knotted and relieved themselves like a squeezed tube of toothpaste. When he hit the floor he landed with a thud.

It was a white floor with splashes of red. Around him was the wild roar of fans and flashing of cameras. He struggled to his feet, and with one separating karate chop from a cautious referee, Fred lifted his gloves like before and began ducking and weaving, ducking and weaving.