Dances with Monsters Read online

  Dances with Monsters

  D.C. Ruins

  Copyright© D.C. Ruins 2014

  The right of D.C. Ruins to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in retrieval system, copied in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise transmitted without written permission from the publisher. You must not circulate this book in any format.

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Chapter One

  The kid had been coming to the gym every night religiously for three months.

  Every single night, usually around nine-thirty p.m., he would hurry into the gym, hurry to the bag, the one that was furthest away from the bustle of the gym, and get to work. He kept his head down, only focused on his task at hand, and when he was through, he wiped the bag down, pulled off his wraps, and was out the door.

  He was a skinny kid, always drowning in his baggy clothes. He was short, a little pipsqueak at probably five-four, maybe five-five on a good day. Probably in his late teens, if Heath Riley was going to harbor a guess; he was small enough to suggest even younger, but there was a self-assured air about his movements that could only come with age. Rex said he remembered the kid from when he came to join, looked like a skinny baby-faced ése, he said.

  He was definitely quiet; he never asked to work out or spar with Heath like everyone else did. In fact, he never sparred with anyone. He came, worked out on the bags and the weights, and went home.

  Some nights he showed up earlier, around seven, but usually it was later in the evening, after nine, and he always worked out for an hour and a half at least and left. Sometimes he was even still there when Heath finished running the gym and actually locked up at night at eleven. Heath just never had the heart to interrupt him; poor kid was probably getting picked on at school and came to the gym after he did his homework or chores or whatever it was that kids in school did at night. He never talked to the kid other than to wait for him to finish up and unlock the front door so the kid could leave. The kid never talked to him, never looked at him; just came and went.

  No one—Heath, Rex, or Jameson, the new guy—was really sure what the kid's name was; they didn't keep strong tabs on the clients—they didn't have to. Even with the super-influx of new business thanks to Heath's sudden and reluctant rise to fame, everyone pretty much knew each other or were quick to get to know each other. At least, all the guys spoke to each other on some level or another. This kid never talked to anyone and would shut down and back off if anyone tried to talk to him. Heath had seen Rex try to start a conversation with him, to see if he'd wanted to get trained or spar or something. The kid had literally dropped his head and turned his back on Rex, walking away even as Rex had been talking.

  At first, Heath figured it really didn't matter if the kid wanted to talk or not, wanted to spar or not. He paid his $35 every month without fail. But then, he started hearing more and more about the skinny little weirdo in the corner with the bags who never spoke to anyone, and curiosity got the best of him. Going through all the records and applications of the guys in the gym, Heath deduced the kid had to be Drew Carnevale; it was the only name he didn't really recognize and couldn't immediately put a face with mentally.

  Not that he'd have been able to do that—see the kid's face—anyway. The kid, Drew, always came dressed in a hoodie in some shady of gray, black or blue with the sleeves cut off, over an oversized T-shirt with sleeves that billowed down to his skinny elbows, baggy sweatpants to match the hoodie, and Nike Jordans. The large hoods on the sweatshirts he wore were always pulled up and there was always the brim of a baseball hat sticking out from under the hood, pulled down low over his face. So low, Heath didn't understand how he was able to do his bag work. He also wasn't able to understand how it was possible for the kid to work out in so many heavy layers; fifteen minutes into his own workouts and Heath was in his gym shorts and nothing else.

  But despite the kid's anti-social, completely withdrawn behavior, he was a silent, skinny little beast on the bags; he moved with accuracy, precision and was lightning fast. And Heath didn't have to be on the receiving end of those punches to know they were brutal. For a skinny twig, the kid seemed to have some brute strength and skill. So much so, Heath wondered if he couldn't be profitable in some way.

  He had planned to ask the kid one night if he ever seriously contemplated real training and real competing for a real purse. But as he stood by the door, leaning against the frame languidly with his hands in his pockets, waiting for Drew to finish up, the kid breezed past him, a pair of large white headphones over his hood, approximately where his ears were.

  "Hey, kid," he called. "Carnevale!"

  The kid just kept right on walking, heading in the general direction of the train station.

  Heath shook his head and locked up his gym before heading back to the office and packing up his stuff. His gym. Heath had to chuckle a little. Who'd have thought that angry Heath Riley, discharged ex-Marine, albeit honorably, MMA star and notorious for the emotional battle against his own brother at Ultimate Warrior would be a business owner? And flourishing, to boot?

  After the tournament, Carter had realized he was up to his eyeballs in gym applicants and that his dirty little hole in the wall filled with testosterone and sweat had turned into a gold mine overnight. Moreover, guys were climbing over themselves to get managed by Carter; after seeing what he'd done for Heath, they all wanted a piece. Carter decided he wanted to pursue management fulltime, seeing the earning potential as absolutely insane. Currently, he was managing three or four up-and-coming MMA talents in the Pittsburgh tri-state area, and from the small and medium sized fights they were participating in, they were winning them all and Carter's cuts were getting bigger and bigger. He invested a lot of it back into the gym, purchasing a newer, bigger place to accommodate their rapidly growing clientele and offering late hours on the weekends and even opening on Sundays. The change in hours gave their three hundred twenty-seven clients the ability to space out when they came to work out, and Heath was even booking appointments for private lessons and training sessions.

  They were making money hand over fist and since Carter had decided to pursue management full-time, he decided to remain owner of the gym and keep the name "Carter's Gym" but had hired and elevated Heath to both partner and general manager. Heath made a good living off of it, and was still competing himself. Since his first fight after Ultimate Warrior, he remained undefeated and was earning additional, good money from that. He had endorsement deals thrown at him from every direction but he always turned them down. Connor and John, along with Carter and Rex and all the guys at the gym called him fucking nuts for doing it, but he wasn't into all that shit. Additionally, every week some reporter was calling him up for an interview. He didn't even know where half these asshole got his number, but it had gotten bad enough that he'd had to change his phone number twice. Interviews were simply out of the question.

  As he glanced down at his pho
ne, looking over his most recent endorsement deal offer in amazement, he wondered if maybe he might reconsider his position on that, though. He rubbed his chin, looking down at the offer from TapouT Clothing. Maybe he'd wait to make a decision definitively one way or another. At least until after he won his next big tournament.

  He flicked off the lights and headed home for the night.

  ***

  Heath walked into his apartment, amazed still that he had one at all, and relished in the feeling of coming and arriving at home. He tossed down his gym bag and keys and inhaled a deep, clarifying breath through his nose.

  His apartment was a study in stark minimalism. He often joked about how John's house lacked a woman's touch (originally meant to be a stinging, sarcastic jab, but it evolved into a running joke somehow) but his was even worse. Heath kept it as neat as possible, due mostly to his old habits leftover from the military that had come roaring to the forefront. He made his bed every morning, he folded his T-shirts exactly the way he had whenever he packed his rucksack, and he even scrubbed his counters and sinks with an old toothbrush. He supposed he could be worse; he could be a slob. But between his military training—Marine training, at that—and growing up with his mother, he knew that cleanliness and neatness were definitely next to Godliness and sanity.

  His apartment lacked personal touches like pictures and decorations on the wall. He wasn't particularly sentimental although he kept a picture of his mother on the wooden side table next to his front door. He also kept a framed picture of himself and his best friend, Joaquin, from when they were deployed together in Iraq, taken a few months before the incident. In front of both photographs, he had placed a small glass votive candle which he lit on occasion. The only other real bits of decoration were a few scrawled crayon drawings in bright colors, per his nieces' artistry, depicting happy, smiling people holding hands, animals, rainbows and trees, attached to his refrigerator with a couple of magnets. All had "To Uncle Heath" scrawled across the tops in big, childish handwriting and were signed either "Lucy" or "Maggie" and were punctuated with hearts and stars.

  He went to the refrigerator and grabbed a bottle of water, wrenching off the top and draining it before tossing the empty bottle into his recycling container as he studied their most recent efforts at artistic creation, smiling to himself. He shuffled down the hall to his bedroom, stripping off his shirt and yawning deeply as he went and dropped into bed, weariness settling deep into his bones as he lay back. Though his body begged for rest, his mind still whirled.

  After the success of Ultimate Warrior—and Heath considered his loss a success—and things began to change with the gym and Carter, and he started running the gym, the first thing he did was to move out of John's house. He loved his father, and even was starting to like him a little bit, but at thirty, he needed his own place. John's house was only meant to be a temporary holdover anyway until he got his shit together. He just happened to get his shit together sooner than he anticipated.

  Moreover, the fact that he had escaped serious punishment for going AWOL—meaning, indefinite imprisonment–still both amazed him and shamed him. He just couldn't live with himself as a decorated Marine after witnessing his brothers-in-arms and his best friend, Joaquin, getting gunned down in the friendly fire incident, and he'd left. Friendly fire, he mused. The term was so deceptively innocuous.

  He had been ordered to several months of counseling but had still received an honorable discharge. Then, he had retreated to John's house to lick his wounds for a little while before picking himself back up and resuming his life.

  He almost hated to admit it, but the counseling he had been forced to receive had actually helped. So did having a purpose, a mission, a job in life and finally discovering his true passion for fighting. He knew he was good; he wasn't overconfident and he stayed grounded. He knew he could get knocked out or forced to tap out in every fight; he wasn't invincible and there was always a better fighter lurking around the next corner. He just hadn't come across that fighter or that corner yet. Nonetheless, he trained with that expectation.

  His thoughts turned to his family. One of the things that had proved to be a huge surprise to Heath was the relationship that he was cultivating with his new family. It had always just been him and Mom for so long; he'd known he'd had a brother and father of course, technically speaking, but he spent so many years being so angry with them both that it almost just didn't count to him.

  Now, though...there was no more Mom. But he had a father, with whom his bond was silent and gradually growing stronger. And a big brother, with whom he was re-developing and re-establishing a friendship. He had a feisty, caring sister-in-law and two beautiful little nieces that had quickly taken possession of his heart with no signs of ever giving it back. And that was enough to make his head spin alone. He'd never known that he could actually experience good things like this given all the tragedy he had seen in his life, but here it was. He couldn't not be cautious, and he still had some walls up; Rome wasn't built in a day, after all. But yet, in the past six months he felt like he'd come further than in his entire thirty years.

  With another deep yawn and a quick prayer of deep thankfulness for the chance at a fresh start, he leaned over and flicked off the lamp on his nightstand, bathing room in relaxing blackness.

  ***

  The next morning began like it always did—he woke up at five and went for a long run before coming back to his apartment to shower and eat a quick breakfast of scrambled eggs, turkey bacon, whole grain toast and black coffee. Then, he headed to the gym.

  It wasn't a requirement that he be there from open to close, but rarely did he actually ever have anything else he needed to be doing. In those instances, he left Rex in charge but always returned. In addition to office duties—mountains and mountains of paperwork, payroll, processing new applications and the like—he inspected the equipment to make sure it was in top form, conducted private lessons, did his own training, made idle chitchat with the clientele, sparred and in general took care of whatever presented itself as an issue for the day. His days were long, but he chose his own hours and there was rarely anywhere else he wanted to be.

  The day went relatively smoothly, although the impending issue with the air conditioning system that had been showing signs of disaster for several weeks finally impacted head on and the entire unit finally went out at three o'clock. Heath instructed all of the employees to prop open doors and windows to get some air circulating and much to the benefit of the clientele, no one seemed particularly troubled by the recent turn of events. However, attempting to get someone to come out and fix a broken air conditioning unit in the late-afternoon on a Wednesday was harder than Heath personally felt it needed to be. He ended up spending two more hours on the phone with an HVAC guy trying to set up a time, and despite the specialist commenting three times he had no appointments for the day, he told Heath the soonest he could come out to take a "looksee" would be tomorrow morning around ten. Heath gritted his teeth, struggling for patience, and accepted the appointment before slamming the phone down and leaning his chair back against the wall, shutting his eyes and swiping his hands down tiredly over his face. He sighed loudly.

  "Tough day, boss?" Rex's teasing jab came as he sauntered through the office door, dropping a stack of mail on Heath's desk.

  "Sometimes this 'ownership/manager' thing is mad overrated," Heath muttered, righting his chair and reaching for the neat stack of mail, held together with a rubber band. They were mostly bills, as he had anticipated, but a large, glossy envelope caught his eye and despite the fact that it was addressed to "Carter Steele" he tore it open, pulling out a sharply designed, thick piece of glossy cardstock. It was an announcement/invitation to yet another middleweight MMA tourney, and as Heath's eyes scanned the flyer, it was shaping up to be Ultimate Warrior part two, possibly even greater than that. In fact, it was being hosted by another huge MMA corporation, owned by none other than Riley's main competitor Maddox Smith, and it was called "Sma
ckdown".

  Heath had to roll his eyes at the name. It was so obvious that Smith was simply trying to garner the same amount of attention, press and participation that Ultimate Warrior had seen by using a similar name, but he really didn't need to do that. People loved MMA, period, and would come out to see some fights without all the flash.

  His eyes dropped a little lower, taking in the details of the tournament. It was to be held in New York in two months. Fighters amateur and seasoned were encouraged to attend as it was going to be a winner-take-all scenario—if you felt you had the stuff, the mettle, then it might just be for you. At the bottom of the flyer he stopped, his eyes settling on probably the most important detail of the entire event.

  Two million dollar purse.

  Heath eyed it over and over, pursing his lips as his brows drew together in thought. From the money he'd made so far, starting over and rebuilding his life, he'd been able to send Aida, Joaquin's widow, a little bit here and there and she'd always been grateful to the point of tears whenever she'd received it, unannounced, and would always call him to thank him fervently in English and Spanish. If he could win this—and he was confident he could—he could send her enough to set her and the kids up for a good, long time. For a moment he lost himself in a fantasy of college scholarships for both the kids—Joaquin had always said he'd wanted them to go to college—and trust funds. Aida could move into a nicer home and take care of her mother like she'd always wanted to. And he…he could finally feel like he'd made good on his promise to his best friend, though he knew he'd never stop looking out for Aida and the kids. He had promised Joaquin, and he always kept his promises.

  He sighed, leaning back in his chair to slam a tack through the invite into the corkboard on the wall behind his desk.

  Always.

  He pushed away from his desk and rolled his head around on his neck. He'd done the manager thing long enough for the day. Now, he was getting back into fighter mode. He wrapped his hands quickly and headed out of the office, flicking off the lights and shutting the door behind him. He waved off his sparring partner and headed for the bags in the corner, selecting his favorite one and setting to work.