Night fights.
The competitors had been given injections before the show that would make their blood fluoresce under the black lights when it came into contact with the air. Each one had been injected with a different colour. The tips of their knives have been dyed to glow as well.
I was a visiting dignitary to this planet. It was just past the frontier stage but possessing medical patents that my company was interested in purchasing the rights to. It was my job to visit them and buy the patents at a good price. The local presidential minister was buttering me up.
“This fight promises to be a good one. It’s the end of the season. At this level, the fights are to the death but bonuses are given for bloodletting so that they don’t end too quickly. It’s too bad you won’t be here for the Final next week but this semi-final should be sufficiently entertaining. Two on two. Four fighters in the ring at once. Shifting alliances permitted.” Said the P.M. Darlist Mafey, leering with what he probably thought was a conspiratorial leer. I wasn’t looking forward to this.
We took our seats around the ring. Over six thousand people were here. Nearly the entire population of the town. The ring in the middle was encased in a transparent cube to keep the competitors from leaping into the audience. The murmur of the audience was excited but hushed. Reverant.
A countdown from ten sounded through the speakers and the audience chanted along, patrons rushing to get to their seats before zero, conversations stopping abruptly to focus on the arena.
At zero, all the lights went out.
I stopped breathing for a moment. To be plunged into darkness that absolute so suddenly reminded me of the only unexpected decompression I’d ever experienced. I was briefly terrified before I regained my composure, thankful for the cover of darkness. I heard the P.M. laugh beside me. Regardless of my distaste for the man, I was willing to concede that my heart was racing and I was interested in what was about to happen. I turned my head to where I remembered the ring to be.
There were microphones aimed at the ring that broadcasted from speakers in the rafters. The competitors were led up from underneath the stage and positioned into the four corners of the arena. We could hear their breathing and the shuffling of their footsteps as they took their corners, all of them trying to be as quiet as possible so as not to betray their position.
A strobe light went off, illuminating all of the contestants for a second. My full-dilated pupils contracted at once and I jerked in my seat. Again, the P.M. chuckled. This time, I chuckled with him. I’d seen the fighters in that flash. All seasoned professionals, they had their eyes closed, knowing that the blindness that the flash would cause would be fatal. It was the start of the match. They had the bodies of dancers. I had expected heavyweight boxers. With a shock, I realized that one of them was a woman. The knives in their hands were long and serrated up one side. As long as a forearm. Not exactly swords but longer than daggers.
The tips were glowing, each one a different colour. Red, Green, Violet, and Orange.
Immediately Red’s knife tip charged across the mat to Violet’s corner. Violet’s knife fell to the ground and lay flat. The crowd surged and cheered. Violet’s knife continued straight into the corner and whirled around, having not found it’s target. Red’s knife came up and around in a short arc below Violet’s knife tip, around where Violet’s legs ought to be.
And blood flowed. Red wasn’t playing and he wasn’t going for bonuses. Both of Violet’s femoral arteries were opened. Twin hoses of violet blood spewed forth from Violet’s legs. Violet screamed as his battle was lost and his life gushed out from him.
It gushed all over Red. The glowing violet blood now fully covered Red’s torso and legs. Red was the woman I remember seeing. Bathed in the glowing blood of her kill, Red now stood out as the best target in ring. She looked left and right in panic. A huge tactical error on her part.
The knife tips of Green and Orange waved at each other in a triangular pattern. They’d stayed in their corners during this exchange.
“That the asking of and acceptance of a union.” Said the P.M. next to me. “They’re teaming up to take down the one’s that covered in blood.”
Red bent down to the mat and picked up Violet’s knife. Her arms to the elbows and all of her front from her chin down to her thighs were spattered with Violet’s glowing blood. It was a macabre but arrestingly beautiful sight. She screamed and Green and Orange came for her.
Red did not go down easy. Over the next six minutes, the mat turned into a Pollock painting of glowing blood. It splashed luridly up against the glass as bodies smeared against it and more flesh was parted by metal. Human sprinklers gasping and bubbling as they danced around each other probing for weakness.
The pool of blood in Violet’s corner had footprints leading to and from it as the fight commenced.
Red threw one her knives across the ring and it thunked home into the neck of Orange. Orange let out a strangled yelp and pulled the knife free. Arterial spray fountained forth as he charged Red with both knives. Red and Orange rammed into each other and went down scissoring as Green watched from the corner.
Out of all of them, Green had the least points but was also the least splashed with blood. Still nearly invisible.
Red stood up from Orange’s twitching corpse, a wound on her side painting her left leg with fluorescent crimson. She was covered in the blood of all three of her opponents and now her own blood joined the mix.
Green kept his knife behind his back and faced away from Red, making himself invisible to her.
The tension in the crowd hit unbearable heights. I leaned forward, wanting to shout out a warning to Red but knowing that she wouldn’t be able to hear me.
Green brought out his knife and threw it straight up in the air.
Red looked up at it instinctively. Bad move. Green, invisible without his weapon and unspattered by blood, leapt across and into Red for hand to hand combat. Green’s knife came down in the center of the mat and stayed there as Green and Red tussled.
Violet’s and Oranges bodies stayed where they were, quivering occasionally with the impacts of the Red and Green as they slammed each other into the mat.
Red still had two knives but she was getting weak with blood loss. Her swings went wide as Green punched her in the ribs. She went down on one knee and Green moved in.
One thing he didn’t count on was how slippery Red would be, covered as she was in the blood of the fallen. She wriggled out of his grasp, he slipped on the blood on the floor, and she slid between his legs. Before he had time to regain his balance, she stood up behind him.
Both of her knifes point disappeared as they slid into Green’s back. Green blood trickled down from his wounds as he went down gasping.
Red stood holding her side in triumph in the middle of the ring, breath rasping through the speakers.
Another strobe light went off. I was blinded but in that moment, I saw Red and this time her eyes were open. In the harshness of plain light, the blood no longer glowed in different colours and I was looking at the floor of a slaughterhouse.
The audience cheered. I joined them.
Parts of the canvas were auctioned off after the fight. I bought a square meter of it.
I gave the P.M. a fair price but I threw in a bonus from my personal account.
Now, here, back in my office on Earth Prime, I look at that square meter of canvas. It’s only red to my clients but when I’m alone, I turn on the special lights and see it glow in four colours and I remember that fight.
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