Page 92 of Mud

Everything came to a halt.

My mind emptied completely though my heart continued to beat like it was on a mission of its own.

I turned around to face a guy, a big guy with chubby cheeks, a bald head, and a very round belly beneath this red and golden vest that did nothing to hide the small curlsgoing down his belly button. He was a head and a half taller than me, and his small eyes were bloodshot, almost completely closed like he’d been drinking. Maybe he’d even gotten high before coming in here.

And the circle that had appeared in the air about thirty feet over his head, connected to him with a thick dotted line, was a bright red you couldn’t miss even in the darkness.

Other players had their own circles revealed as well—and they must have all been high or something because I could have sworn all their eyes were just as bloodshot. And all their circles were red.

Except mine.

Slowly, I looked up at the dotted line that connected me with a muddy brown circle so far up in the air that all the spectators would be able to see it over those tall buildings at our sides, even if they couldn’t see us.

Everybodycould see that I was Mud, and suddenly, I was glad for it. So fucking glad I was smiling by the time I met Baldie’s eyes again.

“That’s none of your business,” I told him, and I prayed—oh, how I prayed to all the gods—that he said something.Anything.That anybody around me bothered, but…

That was the thing. Everybody around medidbother, but with other people.

Is your shirtgreen?

Did you just look at me wrong?

Weren’t you the guy who pushed me on the stairs?

You look a lot like my fucking ex, boy…

Yes, everybody was pissed. But none more than I was at this bald-headed bastard who leaned closer and closer, grinning as if to show me how proud he was of his crooked yellowed teeth.

“You don’t belong here, Mud,” he told me, and it was like he bathed the last of my calm in a fiery river, reducing it to ashes within the second.

Not only that, but the big fella reached out and wrapped his hands around my neck. Tightly.

Hell broke loose around us within the same second. People began to attack each other almost at the same time, and it was like all my dreams come true. The way it felt when my fist connected with Baldie’s jaw was heaven. Real, true heaven. His head flew to the side, blood spilling out, and then I grabbed his arm, twisted it and broke his bone before three seconds were over.My, oh my.Something about the sound of broken bones that was therapeutic.

The guy screamed like a little bitch as he went down on his knees, holding his broken arm, giving me plenty of time to kick him in the face and knock him on his back.

I wasn’t going to kill him, though. I really wasn’t. But then a woman who was shorter than me, with narrow shoulders and a face that promised she wouldn’t even be mad at you if you cut her hair in her sleep was suddenly right over his head with a piece of sharp wood in both her hands. She raised those hands and screamed, then brought that sharp piece of wood down on his neck over and overand overagain while I watched, stunned. While Baldie died—probably just as stunned as I was.

I mean, shereallydidn’t look capable of committing murder in such a brutal way.

If I were a liar, I’d say I felt bad or disgusted or any kind of way about Baldie’s death exceptangry.Angry that she’d taken him from me, technically speaking. Angry that I hadn’t thought to kill him first, that I’d wanted to spare his life like a fool, when nobody around me was sparing anything they could get their hands on.

The woman stopped stabbing Baldie’s torn neck with her wood piece, her face splattered with so much blood.

Then she looked at me and smiled.

I flinched. “You have blood on your teeth.” She must have held her mouth open when Baldie’s blood sprayed her. Rookie mistake. You could just tell she wasn’t used to killing people violently like this.

Then she screamed and started to run for me.

It both felt great—the ease with which I stepped aside and fisted her on the nose, breaking it in the process while she howled in pain—and it made me a lot angrier.Shewas comingfor mewhen I was the one to knock down Baldie so she could have a nice and easy time killing him?Ungratefulwas the word that came to mind, but I doubted she cared when she charged for me again, though her eyes were teared up and her nose hurt like hell and she couldn’t see shit. Again, easy to slam my fist on her face and knock her to the ground. She was featherlight.

I was going to finish her off, too. This time, I wasn’t going to make the same mistake and let someone else take my kill, except I never got the chance.

A hand wrapped around my hair and pulled back hard.

I never even thought my body had the capacity to be as angry as I was right now, but I was thankful for it. I was thankful for the mayhem going on around me because all this anger I was feeling needed to be let out somehow.

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