The Fight

by Todd Abrams

I can't say precisely why I needed to bloody some other kid's face once and for all. I asked a friend who often engaged in violent matters how to achieve this end. Go and hit somebody, he said. My courage and drunkenness at last met outside a gas station where a smallish boy I knew from school was closing for the night. I howled and tore at the door like a mad animal and when the frightened kid finally emerged all that I could muster was the most ineffectual punch any young man with an arm ever threw. It has been happening this way all of my life.

6S

Todd Abrams writes in Ferndale, MI.