Snowblood

Chapter 7: Returning To Life

Fourteen months ago:

Better to feel something than nothing, even if it is pain.

Matthew Darrow had been on this road since Drew's death, but the night Kari had called him from the hospital to say, "Dad, it's Mom—look, you have to come here right now. I mean it!",  things escalated.  

It was Drew's birthday.  If he were still alive, he would have been nineteen.   Lisa  had chosen that day to  take the lipid oil  camping stove into the bathroom with her,  then blocked every crack in the door frame with wet towels or sealing tape, lit the stove and some candles, put on her favorite music, poured herself a hot bath and a glass of wine, and got into the tub to look at a family photo album. She had planned to drift off into death like that.

Kari was supposed to be over at a friend's studying until nine that night, but she came home early after they quarreled about something, and when her mother didn't answer, she went looking for her. He could forgive Lisa for a lot of things, but not for arranging it so Kari would have to find her. Kari didn't need that in her head for the rest of her life. Not that.

But in the moment of crisis, Kari got the bathroom door open, called an ambulance, did everything she could do and did it right. He knew plenty of adults who couldn't keep it together under those kind of circumstances, let alone a kid who was only thirteen. For a little while it seemed like everything was going to be okay, but in fact nothing would be okay ever again.

Not that it had been okay since Drew's death. 

He broke up with—what had her name been? The woman he'd been seeing at the time, anyway. There were a lot of women he'd seen in a short period of time right after the divorce. That same night, he went to Bogged Down, a place which had to have been named by someone who thought they had sense of humor.   He had a few drinks, wound up entering the scheduled melee, where  three men got killed,  and went home minus a tooth, with three cracked ribs, thirty thousand in cash, grinning like a wolf and knowing he was going to do it all again. He'd been frequenting the fights before that, but not with that intensity.  That insanity.

For a while he kept it to an occasional thing, while Kari was still living with him.

Then his daughter couldn't stand him any longer, and he couldn't blame her. He couldn't stand himself. He went to more and more fights, whatever was going. Muay Thai, good old bare knuckled boxing, armed melees, unarmed melees, Krav Maga, Mixed Martial Arts—he learned all the clinics that would set bones, apply healing accelerants, replace teeth and send him home, no questions asked, as long as he paid cash.

Better to feel something than nothing, even if it is pain.

Tonight, a few weeks shy of the first anniversary of Drew's death,  it seemed as though he was shit out of luck. The only real competition, Fan Ah Lam, was sitting on the judges' bench this year. He looked around at the other eleven finalists, unimpressed.

That one had cheap, poorly made blades, that one over there had dedicated too much training to his torso and not enough to his legs, that one was greener than grass—when had everyone under the age of thirty started looking like a child? Only two women had made it to the seventh level. One was dressed in what looked like lingerie, a tiny green and gold qipao which struggled to confine her. Ridiculous!

The other...The other looked as though someone had tried to drown her and nearly succeeded. As he assessed her, she gathered up her bedraggled hair, wrung half a pint of water out of it, and bound it back from her face. It was a graceful gesture, even if she did look like a drowned rat. Then he looked again. She was more naked than the other woman, in the way that a woman in her underwear is more naked than one in a bathing suit, even though the bathing suit covers less.