"Get out of my seat, and stay the fuck away from my girl!" he practically spat in my face.
Get out of his seat? What, like I hadn't been sitting there all night? I knew for a fact his name wasn't written on the stool I sat on.
His girl? The babe of a bartender with a guy like him? Yeah...that made sense...
I knew better than to get up and try to stare them down. I wasn't a midget by any means, but I wasn't exactly going to impress any of these guys with my height--thanks in part to the intense high-impact training I'd started practicing at such a young age. I could do a standing back flip while I was sober, but making a slam dunk on a regulation sized basketball hoop would always be a stretch for me.
So I sat there, looking cool and disinterested. I was drunk, so it wasn't really that hard.
"You deaf, Faggot? I told you to get out of my seat!"
Heard him the first time. Didn't move. Was waiting to see what he planned to do about it...
He laughed, turning to his posse for support. "You guys see this sucker over here? Thinks he's tough." He turned back to me, a taunting grin fully in place. "Ain't that right, Faggot? You're a real man, aren't ya. Got a set of tags, gel in yer hair, and a tattoo on your face. You go around pretending to pick up girls that belong to other men. And maybe it's worked for you before, because they didn't want to get into it with a punk off the street. But I can see right through ya. You're too damn pretty to be straight. I think you're just waiting for someone to come along and really pound your ass. If you don't get out of my chair before I count to three..."
"I'll pin your ear to your skull, dislocate your buddy's knee, and break your other buddy's jaw before you get to three, Tod," I said real low, more as if stating simple facts than threatening him. "So, why don't you pack up your crew, and go pick a fight somewhere else? I'm here to get drunk, and that's what I plan on doin'."
I don't think he liked it that I didn't act scared out of my wits for his benefit. The fact that I told him off in front of all his pals probably downright irritated him. Not that I cared, really. I mean, seriously, they didn't call me crazy at Garden for nothin'. I was a fuckin' lunatic when the mood struck me.
"Get up," he ordered, his face turning hard.
"You ain't gonna like it if I do," I warned real low, dangerously close to taunting him.
"I said get..."
The first punch I landed was a left jab to his gut as I got to my feet quicker than he could follow. I knocked the air right out of him, and by no means did I stop there. For calling me 'Pretty Boy,' I made him even uglier than he already was. I rammed my toothpick through his left ear, and as promised, pinned it against his skull. Blood spurted from the wound, and I just barely spun out of the way before getting splattered. Then I helped a screaming Tod go flying over the chair I'd just been sitting in before I ducked a roundhouse one of his friends threw at my head.
I spun my whole body around low, close to the floor, taking my weight on one hand as I kicked out one guy's knee, and then hopped back onto my feet. Slugged another guy in the face before I jumped up onto the bar, briefly putting myself out of reach of the rest of them.
I took a short moment to do a mental rundown. I had incapacitated two of them for the time being--but Tod was getting up, and with his two remaining buddies, he was starting to close in on me, blood running down the side of his face.
Right then, no one else was joining in on the fray. The close-in spectators merely watched with mild interest, finding no qualm with three of them against one of me. The bouncers still weren't coming. Hell, for all I knew they weren't coming at all. Maybe they didn't figure they got paid enough to try to put themselves between me and those fuck heads.
I didn't have more than a few seconds to take my bearings before I had to get right back into it. They were coming on fast, and I didn't have much choice but to launch myself at the closest one, and knock him down before he could get to me. On the floor, I kept my weight on his chest and kept punching him in the face until my fists were slippery with blood. Normally, I don't think I'm quite so stupid. But then again, when I see red, sometimes I just bite down until I hurt myself. That was what I did then. Sat there and waited for someone to take a massive swing at me.
I expect that sort of thing from the cowboy, Irvine. He seemed like the type who'd get himself caught with his pants down like that. Then again, Irvine was always more of a lover than a fighter. Girls go for that, I guess. All the ones I ever wanted did, anyway.
I was still slugging him over and over again in an even rhythm when I heard the gun-shot like crack of something wooden breaking hard across an equally rigid surface, right before I felt the explosion of pain at the base of my skull.
I wasn't hit at the right angle to get knocked unconscious, but all of a sudden there was a whole galaxy of stars flashing across my vision, and for what seemed like half an eternity, I thought the shadows were going to close in on me, and I'd collapse right there. I wasn't sure, but I thought they might just kill me if that happened, so I fought hard to hang on.
From there, things slid downhill. I managed to get my ass off the floor, at last. But they'd already made a circle around me, and took pot shots at will while I stumbled around. My reflexes had slowed down, I could hardly get my head on straight before I'd get belted by one of them. Not that I didn't get mine. I did. Sure as hell, I did.
One of them grabbed me by the back of my jacket with both hands, and forced me over to the bar. He and Tod held me down by the arms and by the hair, forcing my right cheek flush against the slate colored surface while I struggled.
From the corner of my left eye, I saw the first guy who'd grabbed me pull out a blade almost as long as my forearm, and I briefly wondered if he was trying to compensate for a serious disfunction carrying around a hunk of steel like that. Took a minute to sink in that he intended to use the thing to remove my tattoo manually, and no matter how drunk I was, it was going to hurt like a real bitch. Never mind the fact that my face would be disfigured for the rest of my life. That part I didn't realize until some time later.
Somehow I don't think I really realized how it would feel to have the edge of a blade under my skin. It was painful, that was obvious enough. I never could've dreamed it would be that painful. It was cold, for one thing. That was what I noticed first. Then it felt sort of like getting a gigantic paper cut across my cheekbone, only bigger, the cut penetrating nearly to the bone. As I started to feel around with my right foot, looking for anything, and finding only a stool, I started to think absently that I was experiencing what it was like to get cut open like a holiday ham or turkey. Then, finally, I felt the soothing tickle of warm blood flowing back into my hair, my ear, over my nose, and even down my forehead. I started to wonder who I heard gasping in agony so close by, never thinking it might be me.
Guess I was just lucky I found that stool and kicked it hard into Tod, making him so briefly lose his grip the wrist he'd been twisting behind my back.
That was pretty lucky for me...
Not so lucky for the guy who'd been performing surgery on me, though.
So yeah, I definitely got mine that night. Took at least one more down for keeps, left more than a mark or two on the others before the cops finally came in and broke things up.
Was probably a good thing they showed. Too much longer, and I might've actually sobered up enough to kill somebody.
