The only thing worse than the punch was the pity.
It rippled through the small crowd in the community gym, a collective wince that felt sharper than the leather glove against his cheekbone. He saw it in the averted eyes of his instructor, in the disappointed shake of his father's head from the stands.
Ravi Arundh tasted blood, metallic and warm. He'd bitten his tongue. Again.
His opponent, Mark, a doughy nineteen-year-old with more enthusiasm than technique, pulled back his fist with an almost apologetic look. "You good, man? You're not blocking."
Ravi spit a fleck of red onto the worn canvas mat. He was anything but good. His body felt like a foreign country, one he'd been exiled to without a map. His limbs refused commands, his instincts screamed to curl into a ball, and the only thing he was a master of was the art of a convincing flinch.
"I'm fine," Ravi lied, raising his gloves in a facsimile of a guard that protected nothing.
His father had insisted. "It'll build character, Rav. You've got the looks, the height. You just need the spine."
He didn't have a spine. He had a collection of anxieties held together by thin ligaments, all wrapped in a handsome package that promised something the contents could never deliver. That was the core of the problem. People looked at his face—the dark hair that fell just right, the sharp line of his jaw, the eyes that women in his classes called "soulful"—and they expected a hero. Or at least a man who could take a hit without crumbling.
Mark shuffled forward. The punch was a lazy, looping right hook. A child could have seen it coming. Ravi saw it coming. He watched its entire journey from Mark's shoulder to his own face. His brain sent the signal: duck. His body considered the request, found it lacking in merit, and chose instead to stand perfectly still.
The impact snapped his head to the side. A firework of white light popped behind his eyes. He didn't fall so much as fold, his knees giving way like wet paper. The canvas met his shoulder with a dull thud.
The smell of disinfectant and old sweat filled his nose. Above him, the fluorescent lights of the gymnasium hummed a steady, indifferent note. The referee was counting, his voice a distant drone.
Ravi didn't try to get up. What was the point? To be knocked down again? To give the crowd a little more of the sad spectacle they'd paid five dollars to see?
He lay there and let the count reach ten. It felt less like a defeat and more like a relief. The fight was over. The failure was complete.
The walk home was worse than the fight. Rain began to fall, a cold, persistent drizzle that plastered his hair to his forehead and seeped through his thin jacket. The city lights blurred into neon smears on the wet pavement. Each reflection showed him a ghost—the handsome loser, the beautiful coward.
He'd always hated his looks. They were a lie, a false advertisement for a product that was defective from the factory floor. People expected strength, confidence, resolve. He had none. He had a deep-seated instinct for submission, a visceral understanding that any confrontation, physical or otherwise, was a battle he was already destined to lose.
His phone buzzed in his pocket. He didn't need to look. It would be his father, calling to deliver another lecture on grit and fortitude, thinly veiled disappointment sharpening every word. Or it would be a text from one of the few people who still called themselves his friend, offering a pathetic platitude. You'll get 'em next time.
There would be no next time.
He ducked into a narrow alleyway, needing to get out of the main flow of traffic, away from the phantom stares he felt from every passing car. The brick walls closed in, smelling of damp concrete and refuse. The rain drummed against a metal dumpster, a hollow, lonely rhythm.
He leaned against the cold, gritty brick, letting his head fall back. Water dripped from the fire escape above, tracing cold paths down his face, mixing with the sweat and the single tear of pure, uncut frustration he allowed himself.
This was his life. A series of accumulating humiliations, large and small. An endless cycle of disappointing everyone who put an ounce of faith in him, starting with himself. He didn't want power. He didn't dream of being strong or brave. He just wanted it all to stop. He wanted to be left alone, in a place so quiet he could no longer hear the sound of his own pathetic heartbeat.
He closed his eyes. "Just… stop," he whispered to the empty alley, to the indifferent rain, to whatever cosmic joke had cast him in this role.
The world obliged.
There was no sound, but the rain on his face ceased. He felt a vibration not in the ground, but in his bones, a low hum that bypassed his ears entirely. A strange pressure built against his eyelids.
He opened them. The alley was gone. The rain, the dumpster, the city glow—all of it had vanished. He was adrift in a sea of silent, swirling color, a non-place of impossible geometry. Hues of bruised purple and fractured gold churned around him. His body was being pulled, stretched, and compressed all at once. There was no air to breathe, but he felt no need to gasp. There was no ground, but he was not falling.
A high-pitched whine began to escalate, a dentist's drill boring directly into his brain. The churning colors warped, twisting into screaming, fractal faces. He felt a terror so profound, so alien, it burned away all his mundane earthly fears. The humiliation of the gym, the disappointment of his father—they were nothing, trivialities from a life that felt a million years away.
This was not a transition. It was an annihilation. He was coming apart, molecule by molecule. His consciousness frayed at the edges, dissolving into the chaotic torrent. His last coherent thought wasn't a prayer or a plea.
It was a quiet, stark acceptance. The world had finally stopped.
And then, with the gut-wrenching finality of a body hitting pavement after a long fall, everything slammed back into focus. He wasn't in the void anymore.
He was on his knees, surrounded by ruin. And the first thing he saw when he lifted his head was the glint of a descending axe.