Yaron staggered. And it was all over after that. I spent the last thirty seconds watching Victor coldly eviscerate him. Landing hit after hit.
Yaron didn’t last long under the assault. He fell to the ground, and with more than thirty seconds to go, Victor raised his foot to….
I don’t know what, but it was right above Yaron’s face, and I couldn’t. I couldn’t let Victor hurt him, possibly end his life.
“No!” I screamed, charging forward. I shoved Victor and sent him tumbling onto his back.
I caught Victor just enough off-balance to make him fall. But he wasn’t down for long. Like something out of horror martial arts film, he arced up with more core strength than I could have ever imagined and came right back to his feet.
“Get out of my way,” he signed. “There is still time on the clock.”
“Who cares about the clock!” I yelled back at him. “I’m not going to let you kill him!”
An old-fashioned car horn sounded somewhere in the distance. The timer going off, I dimly realized. I must have dropped the phone when I charged forward. But I didn’t dare to move from where I was standing.
Victor went over to where I dropped the phone. He’d just gotten into a knock-out fight with Yaron, but he hadn’t even broken a sweat. His movements were precise as he bent and picked up the phone, almost elegant. No shaky hands for Victor as he stopped the old-fashioned horn from blaring.
God, how many people must he have hurt or worse before to be this damn unbothered after nearly beating a man to death?
He pocketed Yaron’s phone and signed. “I’ve set the timer for three more minutes.”
He made an upward motion with his hand. And like a zombie, Yaron rose to his feet. Swaying, but weakly dragging up his fist for another three minutes of fight.
“No…” I said, my stomach rolling. “You’ll kill him.”
Victor gave me a dead-eyed blink. Then he signed, “Move. Now. If you disrupt it again, I will reset the timer for five minutes. And I will not stop until it is done.”
Oh, God! Oh, God! How did this evening escalate to murder so damn quick?
When I didn’t move, Victor pulled out his phone to make good on his threat.
“Please!” Yaron said behind me. “You’re only making it worse.”
I could see that now. But I couldn’t just let Victor kill him.
“Wait! Wait, I’m not disrupting,” I yelled out. “I’m subbing in. I’m saying I’ll take Yaron’s five minutes. I’ll do whatever it takes for you not to kill him. He has a little girl. Please, you can’t do this. You can’t take away someone’s else father.”
Victor stills. I can hear Yaron behind me, his breathing ragged and wheezing. But other than that, there’s no sound in the room.
Then Victor tilted his head to both sides like a prizefighter. But then he signed two letters: “O” and “K.”
Okay…okay, we’re going to fight.
Fear ripples through me. I don’t think those hand full of kickboxing cardio classes I took at the gym had truly prepared me for this scenario.
But you know what? Math tests, ten-year marriage sentences, physical fights with Chinese gangsters….all I could do, all I could ever do, was my best.
I swallowed and raised both fists.
But instead of raising his own fists, Victor walked over to the couch and spread his legs wide.
“This is how we will spend our five minutes,” he said, leaning back.
Then he used a series of extremely graphic signs to tell me what to do next.
I froze. My face burned, and my legs wobbled like my body was deciding whether or not to faint while my mind scrambled to catch up.
“If you don’t want to honor my request, I am happy to resume the original fight,” Victor let me know. His smile was even more malicious than last year when he presented me with the wedding ring I’d hidden away in my nightstand drawer next to my back massager.
I glanced at Yaron, who was still swaying on his feet, then back to Victor.
“He will stay where he is,” Victor answered my unspoken question. “He must learn to.”
What he was asking…what he was commanding me to do was cruel. It was humiliating. Immoral was just one of the many terrible words to describe it. What he was doing broke all the rules of right and wrong that I’d been taught during college.
Consent… Female agency… personal autonomy… all the things I’d learned in college….they vaporized as he sat there before me, chin raised like a king waiting for his servant to do his bidding. Like fairytales based on legends that may or may not be true.
And that memory invaded again. Victor standing over a man his family members had maimed beyond all recognition…and emptying a gun into his destroyed body. Without a second of hesitation.
