EXITS ARE

$^@))))) The Boxer (((((@^$

By Mike Meginnis and John Sonnen

m: You come to in the ring. The last thing you remember is Mean Max Mendoza winding up for a right hook. It was clearly meant as an insult: everyone knows Mendoza's a lefty. The stands are empty, your manager is gone, Mendoza is gone, the ref is gone, the announcers, the medics, everybody. All gone. Just you in a dimly lit stadium with several abandoned television cameras and a big tray of popcorn in the closest row of seats.

j: Try to stand up.

m: The world seems to spin lazily as you struggle to your feet. You stand and sway at the center of the ring. You realize your mouth guard is still in, and feel an uncontrollable urge to vomit -- fortunately, you manage to spit the thing out before that can happen. It lands in your open glove, soaked with mingled drool and blood.

j: Remove gloves and hang them over the edge of the ring. Climb out of the ring and hear the gloves fall when I release the top rope. Get a feeling like paper in my stomach at the sight of the popcorn. Limp past it down the aisle between the sets of seats.

m: You wander between the empty seats and back, through the hallway that leads you to your fights, and into the locker room. There is no one here except the janitor, who is quietly mopping the floor. It smells like disinfectant. Your things are in your locker to the north, but you'd have to walk over the wet, clean tiles to get to it. Walking east and around the corner will take you to more lockers, where the janitor hasn't cleaned yet. Head west, and you can hit the showers -- but again, you'll have to cross the just-cleaned tiles, and your shoes are probably filthy.

j: Try to find a pattern in the janitor's motion so I can sneak to my locker unnoticed. Start across the newly cleaned tile. Try to resent the janitor for not waking me up sooner because resenting him will help me feel less guilty about the footprints of blood and dropped popcorn I'm leaving.

m: The janitor doesn't notice you for now. You get to your locker. But something's wrong: your padlock is missing.

j: Open it!

m: Everything's gone. Your clothes, your phone, the pictures of your wife (some tasteful, some not), and even your pills. You need those pills bad.

j: Maybe the janitor saw the perpetrator. Look for the janitor to ask him/her if he/she saw anyone. Forget about the footprints.

m: The janitor was just on his or her way to see you about those footprints. He or she has tracked you by following the mess you left in your wake. You can't, on closer examination, tell which gender it is. The janitor's hands are big and white and gnarled; the janitor's hair is thin and touches its shoulders; the janitor's body is amorphous, burly, misshapen. "YOU," says the janitor, in a scratchy voice. "LOOK WHAT YOU DID TO MY FLOOR."

j: Cringe at the sudden revelation of the janitor. Feel ashamed for cringing. Bite lower lip, raise eyebrows, and raise hands up next to face and shrug like, "I didn't know!"

m: The janitor slugs you right in the face. Normally you'd barely feel a punch like that, but you just got up. The janitor slugs you again. "MY FLOOR," it says. "MY CLEAN FLOOR."

j: Getting hit again makes me remember parts of that fight. Makes me feel like vomiting, and I do, I vomit hard.

m: The janitor winds up for a right hook. You wake up some time later, mopped clean, on mopped-clean floor. Your empty locker stands open. You smell like lemons.

j: Am I still wearing what I wore in the ring?

m: Yes. But it's much cleaner now. Someone's put the gloves back on you, too.

j: Look around for a robe or for the exit.

m: Several of the lockers nearby are unlocked. You open them until you find a robe, golden, with someone else's initials on the back: A.J. There's an exit that will take you out to the parking garage if you head east, around the corner, and east again. But of course you know better than to drive without your pills. You won't make that mistake twice.

j: There has to be someone I could call who would bring me some pills. Look around for a phone.

m: You find a pay phone, but you don't have any change. There are offices upstairs, however, with phones that you could use for free -- if you're willing to break in. You wonder who would have taken your pills. You try to remember everyone you ever gave the combination.

j: There was my wife, of course, but she is pregnant with triplets and doesn't watch my fights these days. There have been others who have brought my things to the ring when I couldn't. My manager usually gives these ones the combination. My manager knows it.

m: But why would your manager want to hurt you? Why would anybody want to hurt you? You are universally beloved. Even other boxers love you: they say that punching your head feels great.

j: Wonder if love is letting people do things to you that make them feel good. Scratch my head over this while I walk upstairs to the offices

m: Here is where the suits work. It is a long corridor with a dozen offices, six on each side of the hallway, each with a mostly-opaque glass window and someone's name painted on the glass. You've always wondered what the suits do exactly. They're never on the floor for a fight. You see them mainly in the parking lot, or going up the stairs to their offices, always speaking into cell phones, or muttering darkly to themselves. They all have the exact same belt, you have noticed. Not a similar belt, but the same.

j: Start to feel the feeling I feel when I don't take my pills. Read the names on the windows.

m: The feeling begins in your stomach and climbs. It is a feeling like water filling you up, and at first it isn't unpleasant. The names: Gus Anderson. Mike Halloway. Dodge T. Carter. Vince Malone. Walter Weber. Ed Grieves. Danny Fong. Todd Daley. Emeril Calderone. Matt Tobin. Quentin Poultry. Greg Heart.

j: Emeril Calderone is my father's name. Try this door.

m: The door is locked. Does your father work here? You can't remember anymore.

j: The feeling is getting stronger and I know it won't be pleasant forever. How thick is this glass?

m: Not that thick. And it might actually be plastic.

j: Step into stance and give the window a short, straight punch with my right hand.

m: Your hand goes right through, in spite of the glove someone put on it while you were sleeping. You fumble for the knob on the other side, careful of the jagged glass that lines the window. You manage to get the door open. Inside the room there is indeed a phone. There is a humming desktop computer. Its monitor is off. There are trophies on the wall for many sports. Probably your father or this man with his name did not earn the trophies himself -- there is, for instance, a gymnastic trophy featuring a young woman on a balance beam. Various papers are piled on the desk. There is a photo of a man (Emeril? Your father?) and your mother smiling, holding hands. The feeling's reached your ears.

j: That's my father in the picture. I haven't seen him in years, and my mother told me she hasn't either, but in the photo on this desk her hair is permed. She just started perming her hair last month. Examine the trophies on the wall.

m: There is a hockey trophy for first place. Which isn't how hockey works. There is a skiing trophy for Greatest Leap. Which is how skiing works sometimes. There is a dog show trophy for dog dancing. ("Best Waltz.") There is a bowling trophy for playing the perfect game. There is a Nascar trophy: "Most On-Fire Car."

j: Remember why I'm here. Sit in my father's chair and dial my wife with his phone. Bring the hockey trophy with me to the desk.

m: It rings for a long time. "Hello?" says your wife, exhausted. "It's three in the morning. Who is this?" Her voice sounds distant, as if you're hearing it through all the water it feels as if your head is full of. You don't have much time.

j: Tell her about waking up in the ring. Tell her about the empty locker. Skip the part about the janitor. Skip the part about my father, at least for now.

m: "You really need those pills!" she says. Maybe she thinks you didn't realize.

j: Stress this point. Ask if she could maybe find a way to get them here. She sounds like she's been ... drinking?

m: "I only had a little," she says. "I'll get the kids in the car -- you know I can't leave them alone -- and see you real soon." She hiccups.

j: Realize I would be sensing disaster if I had taken my pills. Try to tell her no, get the neighbors, but I think I hear her breathing change like she's already bent down to put on shoes.

m: She hangs up the phone. She's gone. And you do really need those pills. Your face feels numb and your vision is narrowing. What's next? Is there something you can punch?

j: Punch the hockey trophy. Get frustrated with how out-of-control everything seems. Punch my secret father's computer with my left hand, which is still gloved.

m: The hockey trophy flies through the wall, leaving a hockey-trophy-shaped hole. The computer explodes in a shower of sparks. The pills have two benefits: they keep you alive, and they suppress your superhuman strength, which would immediately put you out of work if you ever brought it into the ring.

j: I'm pretty sure the physical sensation should be called "tantric," like I'm on the verge of so much pleasure it hurts. Mentally I'm just frustrated. Punch the phone. Stand up fast, knocking the chair into the wall behind me and denting it. Kick the door from it's hinges. Walk into the hall.

m: The phone explodes. The door shatters as it falls from the hinges -- some of its fibers land in your hair, and stay there. The janitor stands at the end of the hallway. It glowers at you as it empties someone's trash bin into its big, rolling garbage can, which is too wide to fit through any of the office doors.

j: I hate it. I hate the janitor. The hate feels good, so good it scares me. But the scared part of me is smaller than the part that hates and so I let out a yell that sounds like the point of my yelling is to tear apart my throat instead of to make a loud noise.

m: Your voice is ruined. You will not speak with your old voice ever again. A fine mist of blood rises up from your mouth. The janitor is startled. But you couldn't call its expression one of proper fear.

j: Walk toward the janitor. Bend my head down and don't walk fast but swing my arms with just a little too much purpose.

m: The janitor begins to run. Somewhere your wife is driving drunk with your triplets in their matching car seats.

j: Kick the garbage can at the janitor like it's a soda can. Hope my wife can make me take the pills when she finds me. Worry about what I might do to her if she can't.

m: The last thing you see is the garbage can exploding against the wall. Then you have one of your Episodes. When you come to, you find yourself pulling the passenger-side door off a flaming, overturned car. Who is that woman inside? Who are those little girls?

j: Recognize that I'm feeling how I felt when I woke up defeated in the ring. Imagine I hear sirens. Pull the passengers from the car, one by one. Line them up -- all four of them -- limp and unconscious on the berm.

m: You see the woman has a bottle of your pills in her pocket. You can't feel your hands. They're still inside the gloves. Someone has to help you with the bottle. Who will help you with the bottle? (It does not occur to you to take them off.)

j: Push the bottle out of her pocket. I can smell gin on this woman's shallow breath. Pinch the bottle between each gloved hand and stand up. Walk down the road toward headlights. Hold the bottle away from my body, twisting when cars drive by as if to make an offering.

Bio: John Sonnen lives in Idaho, where he studies professional writing and does not take care of his housemate's chickens.

Updates Mondays and Wednesdays.

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