I would smile and go back to playing my video games as paramedics rushed to stitch my wounds. As soon as I became an adult, Vlad wanted me to add sex to my act, so I began torturing my genitals onstage. I would stab my testicles with spikes and then cauterize the wounds with a Bunsen burner as the crowd cringed and gasped in horror. I grew to hate Bill Vlad. Each time I injured myself I imagined that it was his penis being twisted with vice grips and pierced with spikes and needles, his testes being sliced open and zapped with a taser gun.
The one thing Vlad was good for was anticipating my needs and accommodating them and usually before I was even aware of them. Right after I hit puberty he began supplying me with whores after every show. I didn’t know where he was getting them from but he seemed to know my taste in women without even having to ask. He knew me. He knew all my secret desires.
Every prostitute he sent to my trailer in the middle of the night was of the same type, plain, average, no excessive amounts of make-up, no gaudy, overtly-sexual outfits, a shy demure personality. They looked like anything but prostitutes. They could have been the girl next door who babysat your kid brother on the weekends. They never screamed or winced when they saw my scars, always showing the appropriate amount of sympathy and concern but without the outrage or revulsion that normal women displayed when faced with the multifarious wounds and injuries that decorated my flesh. These girls were pros.
They would take my scarred penis down their throats sucking and licking it like it was the world’s richest source of nourishment and then ride it like they were on a merry-go-round pony. Always with a smile, as if taking my gnarled and tortured flesh between their legs was the most joy they could imagine. But then, once my hour was up, they would leave and I would be alone again. No matter how good they were at maintaining the illusion that they really wanted to be there with me, the illusion always had a time limit. Even if they stayed all night there was no fooling myself that they would stick around in the morning without being paid extra for it. My heart broke every time I watched one of them walk out my door. By the time I was twenty-one I had had enough. I left the circus to become a fighter.
I thought it would be one hell of an asset to be a no-holds-barred fighter who felt no pain, and often it was. I would fight until the last drop of my blood splashed onto the awe-struck faces of the ringside observers. I would fight with broken bones and lacerations, with a concussion, or even when my lungs could not take in enough oxygen to maintain my aggression. I was relentless. Other times it just led to really gruesome defeats. My survival instincts were extremely dull due to the lack of pain response. I discovered that you need pain to be a successful fighter. It tells you when to increase your defense, or fight harder, or when to give up. I was carried out on a stretcher as often as my arm was raised in victory and sometimes was both victor and victim simultaneously. On more than one occasion, fights that I was winning were stopped because I had so grievously injured myself in order to defeat my opponent that the judges and audience alike were repulsed. Many an audience was treated to the sight of me trying to choke out an opponent using my own shattered arm as a garrote. Eventually I was banned from legal competition. That’s when I went underground. It wasn’t long before I ran into Vlad again.
Vlad was heavily tapped into the black market. Most of his bizarre attractions were looted from crypts and shrines, kidnapped from jungles, and smuggled from medical research facilities. Nothing happened underground that Bill Vlad didn’t catch wind of. So when news of a guy who felt no pain and defeated opponents while taking injuries that would have crippled most men began to spread among the criminal underground, Bill Vlad immediately rushed in to capitalize. He offered me twice as much money as I had been making, if only he could pick all of my opponents. I knew there would be a catch but, after years of exploitation and abuse, my sense of self-worth was small enough to be purchased…even by the devil himself…even by Bill Vlad.
So that’s how I wound up back in the employment of the evil showman with the handlebar moustache, flaming red hair, bloodless white skin, and shark-toothed grin like a demented Dumbo the clown, fighting creatures literally plucked from the darkest bowels of the earth. That’s how I wound up facing this guy with the choirboy face and a punch like George Foreman.
He swung at me again and this time I rolled with the punch. Even so, the force behind it was tremendous. I wouldn’t be able to take many more of those. I kicked him in the leg, landing my shin on his thigh with the force of an axe chopping wood. His leg buckled and he had to struggle to stay on his feet. His face contorted in agony but he continued to fight.
I kicked him in the same spot again and again until a ghastly black and purple bruise swelled on his thigh and he began to limp. Then I brought my shin up into his side and was satisfied to feel it meet the resistance of his rib cage and then break on through, causing all the air to expel from the choirboy’s lungs in an anguished bark. He wilted and doubled over and I slipped around him to get him in a chokehold, wanting to end it quickly. He fought hard to keep me from securing my forearm under his chin and around his throat, so I wrapped up his arm instead. I grabbed his wrist and tossed both my legs over his shoulder with his arm locked between them. It took only a thrust of my pelvis to snap his elbow.
Choirboy howled in pain and continued to howl as his flesh began to melt and reform. I could hear his bones snapping and popping as they reorganized themselves under his skin. I didn’t know what the hell was going on until the fur began to sprout all over him. He stopped howling and began to growl. I watched his ears grow and the tail sprout from his ass as his wrestling trunks tore.
“Fucking Vlad! He put me in here with a goddamned werewolf!”
I felt the pressure as his slavering fangs clamped down on my forearm and crushed my ulna and radius bones. Blood spurted from my fractured and lacerated arm, and I knew that I’d been badly wounded. I felt the tug as my forearm separated from my humerus and disappeared down Choirboy’s throat. I didn’t cry out. What would have been the point? I didn’t feel a thing. But now the clock was ticking again. If I didn’t kill this thing soon I would bleed to death.
The silver and gray werewolf stood to his full seven-foot height, with bits of flesh from my amputated arm clinging to the fur around its snout, which was dark and shiny with my blood. He still had those big puppy-dog eyes, but his snarling predatorial grimace didn’t look quite so dopey with the two-inch canines and rows of jagged teeth lining his mouth. I had no idea how to kill a werewolf; I’d never really believed they existed. If I had, I would have been expecting Bill Vlad to eventually put me in with one. I was happy to see that the thing’s arm was still broken. At least it could be hurt.
He came at me fast and low. Before I could defend myself, Choirboy had already ripped open my belly exposing my bloated intestines. Bleeding badly and mortally wounded. I launched myself at it and trapped and snapped its limbs while it tore at me rending my flesh from my bones. All I had to do was kill the thing, and Vlad would get me to a doctor and stitch me up. Then I would take the money, and Babygirl and I would move away from this place, go somewhere, and get married. This was definitely going to be my last fight.
Choirboy broke free and we backed away from each other. He dragged his shattered hind leg and cradled his broken arm with his eyes still blazing with fury. I held my intestines in with one hand and planned my next attack. Even injured, the choirboy was still dangerous- perhaps even more so. His fighting spirit mirrored my own. He would not quit. But he could definitely feel pain.