Here is a short new one that I been working on hope you enjoy it.
Friday Night at the Broken Bottle
The pulsating bass vibrated through Amy’s worn-out sneakers, up her calves, and into her chest like an insistent heartbeat. Around her, the bar pulsed with a Friday night energy she hadn't felt in months. It wasn't the giddy lightness of new love or carefree weekends that had once been her default setting; this was something different - a raw, electric buzz fueled by cheap beer, sweat, and the promise of something reckless.
She shouldered past a couple grinding to an aggressively forgettable pop song, catching Alice’s eye above the swirling mass of bodies in neon tank tops and frayed denim. Alice was practically vibrating with anticipation, her perpetually windblown blonde hair and laugh lines crinkling around her sapphire eyes. Jody, sporting an oversized floral sundress that seemed permanently surprised at its existence, clutched a chipped beer stein like a scepter, nodding vigorously at Amy.
“Come on, come on!” Jody shrieked, momentarily drowning out the DJ’s booming voice as he called for “the next brave soul to step up and brawl for brewskis.”
Amy grimaced. The pungent aroma of stale hops and sweat clung like a tenacious barnacle in this converted warehouse space. It reeked of testosterone and cheap beer, with just a hint of desperation clinging to it like cobwebs in a forgotten attic. But she had been nursing a lukewarm gin and tonic for almost an hour now, watching other pairs grapple in that ridiculous hay-bale ring, and the sight was starting to grow on her.
It wasn't so much the drunken brawls themselves, though those were entertaining enough - more like watching a pack of rabid puppies try to make sense of their limbs. It was the sheer audacity of it all. This space, crammed full of people who’d likely never touched each other in any capacity outside of spilled drinks and accidental brushes on crowded dance floors, suddenly erupted into a chaotic ballet of flailing elbows and tangled limbs. The roar of approval that greeted every cheap shot and improbable takedown was surprisingly infectious.
And Amy… well, she wasn't exactly immune to the feeling of primal satisfaction that thrummed beneath her ribs like a half-remembered drum solo. Six months ago, the thought of this would have sent her fleeing for the sanctuary of her tiny apartment with its dusty bookshelves and endless supply of chamomile tea. But six months of gym sessions where she felt muscles screaming in protest and blooming into something more defined than just soft curves under a too-tight scrubs top… well, it changed things. The way the sweat stung her eyes as she learned to throw a proper jab, the satisfying thwack of leather against padded gloves during sparring drills... even the way her instructor’s gruff voice had begun to feel less like a reprimand and more like an unexpected compliment when he'd muttered something about her “having a knack for it.”
“Come on, Amy,” Alice said again, this time grabbing her arm with enough enthusiasm that the chipped ceramic ring of Jody’s stein clinked against Amy’s elbow. “You gotta see those hay bales in action!” She squeezed playfully. "Besides, I know you're itching for a real spar. Remember how you took Mr. Henderson from accounting like it was nothing?"
A faint blush warmed Amy’s cheeks even as she rolled her eyes. “He tripped over his shoelaces.” It had been at the office holiday party, fueled by spiked eggnog and the desperate need to feel alive that had become her default setting since Mark had turned their apartment into a battlefield. The man practically screamed ‘security guard’ – broad-shouldered, with enough muscle definition in his neck alone to make her think twice about hugging him – and she'd just shoved him over like a bowling pin at the top of the ramp. He hadn’t even been mad, mostly just bewildered.
But Jody wasn’t letting up. She was already nudging Amy toward the ringside, muttering something about “putting that fancy gym money to good use” and “showin’ off her moves.”
"Fine," Amy sighed, accepting the inevitable with a shrug that had become as familiar as breathing. "But I'm not letting anyone touch my hair."
The DJ boomed again, his voice competing with the growing din of the crowd. “Alright, who’s got what it takes to rumble for free drinks all night? You think you’re tough enough?” He paused theatrically, gesturing vaguely towards the hay-bale ring. “Step into the octagon of opportunity! Show us your fighting spirit!”
The DJ's voice lifted a mental switch in Amy. She shoved past two guys debating the merits of different kinds of whiskey while simultaneously trying to braid a girl’s hair with a single strand from a nearby rope swing hanging like forgotten children's play equipment from the exposed beams above them. They didn't even seem to notice she existed until one muttered something about “her getting in their way” and Amy snapped back a "try breathing, fellas," which earned her a startled chuckle from the girl whose hair was now sporting an uneven braid that resembled a drunken centipede more than anything else.
Amy reached the hay bale ring just as a short guy with dreadlocks to his waist was trying to pry open a beer can with his teeth while simultaneously shoving it into the hand of a woman wearing a leopard-print jumpsuit who looked like she hadn’t slept since the disco era. She didn't even try to make her way through them; instead, Amy just clambered up onto the rough wood planks that formed the edge of the ring, grabbed the worn microphone the DJ was holding out towards the crowd, and leaned into it with enough force for everyone to see she wasn’t backing down.
"I'm in."
The roar that erupted from the bar was immediate and primal. It wasn’t just cheers; it was a cacophony of startled yelps, whistles punctuated by whoops like those of a pack of drunken coyotes, and the clatter of half-finished drinks sloshing over rims as hands clapped together with too much enthusiasm.
Amy swallowed hard, her throat suddenly dry despite the three gin and tonics already sloshing around somewhere. She’d expected maybe a few raised eyebrows from the nurses practically vibrating next to her, but this… This was like stepping into some amped-up pressure cooker where the lid was held on by sheer willpower and sticky bar napkins.
The DJ, whose name tag read “Sparky,” looked at her with something that might have been awe mixed with a healthy dose of relief at having someone other than himself to shout about. He cranked up the bassline so it rattled Amy’s teeth even through the flimsy mic she gripped like it was an emergency lever for escape.
“We got ourselves a contender, folks!” he bellowed over the sudden wave of drunken applause that threatened to rip the corrugated tin roof off their makeshift haven. “Step right up and give it up for our newest warrior princess… Amy!” He punctuated the last name with a flourish of his hand that nearly knocked over a tray balanced precariously on top of a nearby stack of vintage vinyl records, probably worth more than her entire apartment if she’d ever bothered to sell any of them.
Amy blinked at him. “Princess?”
Sparky grinned like he was holding back the tide of sheer exuberance with his teeth alone. "You heard me right! Our very own homegrown gladiator! She's gonna be throwing down tonight, people!” He leaned into the mic again, then cupped a hand to it as if confiding in a friend. “Don’t worry, she looks like she can handle herself… she probably could take on all of us at once!”
A wave of giggles rippled through the bar, followed by scattered shouts of agreement from a cluster of guys who looked suspiciously like they hadn't even left their high school football locker rooms since graduation. Amy took a shaky breath. This was precisely what she’d been trying to avoid: turning into some spectacle. She’d come here for drinks and the familiar buzz of camaraderie with her nursing crew, not to be… well, whatever this was.
The DJ gave her a thumbs-up from his perch behind a battered drum kit that looked like it had survived several apocalyptic events and then decided to stay put. He cupped his hands around his mouth again, bellowing over the bar's sudden eruption of chaotic noise: "Alright! Who’s gonna step up to face Amy?!”
A silence fell over the room as thick and oppressive as a bad hangover. The air hung pregnant with possibility - the kind that crackled like static electricity just before someone finally dared to touch the live wire.
Then, from near the bar, a figure emerged with the same casual grace of a drunken sloth emerging from a hammock after several hours of particularly potent naptime. A pair of red-framed glasses perched precariously on his nose slid down his face as he walked towards the ring. Amy felt her jaw tighten instinctively.
He was built more like an oversized teddy bear than a prizefighter: all soft edges and too-wide shoulders that seemed to struggle with his mass perpetually. A mop of dark, greasy hair hung around his face in clumps that looked suspiciously like they’d been attacked by a particularly enthusiastic pair of scissors wielded by someone who’d just discovered the concept of “less is more.”
He stopped at the edge of the ring, blinking slowly as though trying to adjust his focus between the fuzzy shapes of people and the hazy landscape behind them. Then, he tilted his head slightly as if listening for something specific amidst the cacophony.
"Hey," he said finally, lifting a hand in what might have been meant as a wave but came across more like a desperate attempt to keep himself upright. “I think I heard someone say they wanted to brawl.” The word 'brawl' seemed to hang between them like an overripe melon that hadn’t entirely decided about falling yet. He looked directly at Amy, blinking again, then smiled. It was a vast, unfocused grin that showed off two teeth missing from what might have been a front row of perfectly healthy incisors – had he not lost them in a series of unfortunate events involving a questionable choice of post-college housing and an overabundance of cheap beer.
“You,” he said, pointing with a stubby finger at her chest that seemed to vibrate slightly with each passing second like a startled hummingbird trapped beneath the skin. “You look tough.”
Amy blinked back at him, fighting the urge to laugh – or maybe groan and slump down onto one of the hay bales like it was some overstuffed armchair made for weary souls who’d come seeking solace in this particular brand of organized chaos.
"Tough enough," she said finally. "To deal with whatever you've got."
She took a deep breath, trying to ignore how the floor seemed to tilt ever so slightly beneath her feet.
Maybe this wasn't going to be so bad after all.
The grin plastered across “Teddy Bear’s” face – if that’s what they were calling him now, fine – widened until it threatened to split his face in half like a cheap Halloween mask. He scratched at the stubble clinging to his chin with a calloused thumb, sending a shower of loose flakes onto the sawdust floor like startled snowflakes. He blinked again, slower this time, as if Amy’s quiet confirmation was somehow a revelation requiring careful processing and analysis by some overworked intern in the back corner of his brain.
Amy didn’t waste any more time on pre-fight pleasantries. Her mind had already narrowed to its usual post-Mark, pre-punching bag focus: sharp intake, quick assessment, efficient execution. This wasn’t about proving anything to anyone – not the barflies with their half-empty pints and too much hair gel, nor even Sparky, who was now practically levitating on his drum stool like he'd just inhaled a double shot of pure adrenaline. It was about clearing out space inside herself that had gotten cluttered again after six months of pretending to be “fine.”
She peeled her faded band tee over her head in one fluid motion, dropping it into Jody’s outstretched hand with the grace of someone who’d done this sort of thing enough times to no longer need to think about it. Jody caught it with a squeal, mainly choked off by a mouthful of lukewarm beer. She somehow managed to swallow it without spraying it across Amy's chest.
Her bra was bright pink, practically screaming “look at me!” from under her arms as if trying to compensate for the fact that six months ago, that thought would have made her want to crawl into a hole and die from sheer mortification. But now? Now, she’d learned how to let a little bit of “look at me” slide in where it had once been all clenched fists and swallowed sighs.
It was the kind of bra she used to wear for those early morning jogs when the world still felt like a blank page waiting to be written on, not a bad Yelp review you couldn’t get off the internet no matter how many times you scrubbed at it with a damp sponge.
The green lycra shorts hugged her thighs and ass just tight enough that they didn't have to pretend to be anything else but what they were – toned from too much time spent lifting weights heavier than most of these barflies had ever seen, let alone handled in anger. She’d learned that if she was hitting someone with a decent amount of force, the last thing she wanted was her legs deciding to join the party halfway through and acting like they were trying to do yoga in a windstorm.
When she stepped into the ring, the hay bales seemed to sigh around her edges, as though surprised by the unexpected weight settling on their dry stalks. The air inside that little enclosed space felt different—thicker, somehow—charged with anticipation, like the moments right before a summer thunderstorm breaks open its guts over a field of ripe corn.
Teddy Bear hadn't moved. He was still staring at her, mouth hanging open just slightly, as if he’d taken a bite out of something particularly chewy and couldn’t quite decide whether to swallow or spit it back out again.
“What are you waiting for?” Amy asked, finding that she didn’t need the mic this time. Her voice seemed to carry on its own steam – thick with something akin to heat lightning crackling in her chest and the calm focus that settled down over your face after too many years of holding back tears behind a forced smile.
She started circling him, slow and deliberate like she was measuring out distance not just in feet but in breaths he'd taken before realizing that maybe this wasn't a bad dream after all. The woman in the pink sports bra hadn’t just materialized from a particularly vibrant hallucination caused by cheap beer and regret.
“You gonna come at me or what?”
The DJ was on his second wind now, hammering away at the drums like he was trying to chase down some runaway toddler with a pair of maracas strapped to his ankles. He glanced over his shoulder and saw Alice and Jody thrusting a wad of bills across the bar towards him. Sparky snatched it up without taking his eyes off Amy for more than a second, counting out the crisp greenbacks like he’d found a winning lottery ticket: “One hundred bucks on Amy! They ain't messing around tonight!”
He grinned at them, returned to the ring, and yelled something into the mic that sounded suspiciously like "Let’s go!"
Amy didn't know if Teddy Bear had even registered those last words. His gaze was fixed between her shoulders and the left side of her hip, making it feel like he was trying to decide whether she was a particularly well-stuffed armchair or something that could be used as a makeshift step stool. The image popped into her head – Mark, sprawled out on the sofa after one too many beers, muttering about how nice it would be to have someone who "didn't mind just being there" for him while he shifted and groaned around like a cat trying to get comfortable in a hammock made of barbed wire.
She took another step closer, letting her left fist curl up instinctively under the weight of that thought – a familiar pressure point just above the base of her thumb. It was Mark she saw now, not Teddy Bear, and the scent of stale beer mixed with cheap cologne started to waft around him like a personal halo. Her entire body tensed in anticipation - all those hours spent practicing moves until her knuckles were bruised black and blue, her arms shook like wet noodles from sheer effort, and she swore she could feel the tiny bones in her fingers grinding against each other whenever she threw a jab.
She remembered what her self-defense instructor had said – “He’ll be looking for an easy target. He wants to grab, he wants to control you, he wants to make it about him. Don't let him.”
No more Mr. Nice Nurse Amy. No more letting someone else decide when she got to breathe again.
Let Teddy Bear come at her – if he dared.
Amy didn’t wait for Teddy Bear to decide what he would do next. She went at him like a hummingbird pissed off about its feeder being empty - fast, furious, and with a sharp edge to every movement that whispered “don’t underestimate the tiny things trying to kill you.”
He took maybe half a step back before realizing she wasn’t giving him much time for his usual brand of confused-bull-in-a-china-shop aggression. His attempt at blocking a jab – which probably looked impressive in slow motion if you’d seen it coming – came out like trying to swat a mainly determined gnat with an oversized hand mitten.
Her right fist connected squarely on the side of his jaw, just above where his ears seemed permanently set into the fleshy landscape of his skull. He wasn't entirely knocked off balance, but he was startled enough that he shifted weight in a way that looked like someone trying to decide whether they were going to sit down or spontaneously combust.
That’s when she got serious.
Self-defense class had drilled into her the difference between being hit by someone who was genuinely angry and someone whose anger was primarily fueled by cheap beer and their inability to open a jar of pickles without making it look like they were wrestling an alligator in there with the lid screwed on tight. It wasn't necessarily about the *force* – though Mark had mastered that particular art form with impressive, if entirely unwanted, consistency – but the *intent* behind it. This was different.
She pivoted away from his clumsy swing at her ribs (which would’ve been fine if he hadn't aimed for a spot that looked vaguely like an actual ribcage and ended up hitting more along the lines of the general region where she kept her spleen), ducked under a flailing arm that smelled faintly of stale cigarettes and sweat, and came in with a knee to his midsection.
He sucked in air like a balloon losing its helium faster than you could say "double-fisting," doubled over, and let out a sound somewhere between a strangled woof and a rusty trombone. Amy didn’t give him time to process that or figure out what creature he was supposed to be imitating – she moved again like the wind had suddenly decided it wanted to make a point about how much stronger it was than anything else in this particular patch of reality.
Another right hook aimed at his left cheekbone and glanced off with the satisfying thud that could only come from hitting bone hard enough to rattle around inside its casing. Then she switched tactics – spinning him away from her like a prizefighter who’d just discovered that throwing punches was less efficient than using someone else as a living battering ram. A quick, low roundhouse kick aimed at his knee while he was still trying to regain his equilibrium and find out if his digestive system could be used to make small-caliber cannonballs in the event of an emergency. He stumbled again, this time managing to bring one hand up to grab her arm as she passed - a desperate attempt at leverage that felt less like wrestling and more like trying to hang onto something made entirely out of slippery soap bubbles and hummingbird wings.
Her grip on his bicep didn't loosen – it tightened like a vise until he almost let out an involuntary cry.
"You got something better than that?" she asked, voice low over the crowd’s roar, who were now starting to get their money’s worth. Even Sparky had stopped pounding away at the drums and was leaning on his stand with one hand. At the same time, he held a fistful of napkins in the other, dabbing furiously at the sweat that seemed determined to escape down his forehead like it was trying to reach for freedom and a vacation in the Bahamas.
The look Teddy Bear was giving her was between confused, embarrassed, and slightly nauseous – which was probably pretty accurate given the state of his digestive system after that last roundhouse kick. He opened and closed his mouth like someone who’d just been introduced to breathing underwater. He looked at Amy again, then down at his hands, which looked suspiciously like pale pink shrimp against the backdrop of her forearm.
She waited a moment longer – long enough for him to choose between giving up on this "brawler" business and accepting he’d just become a human version of a costly piece of furniture slightly over-watered in the wrong spot. Then she saw it - a flicker of defiance somewhere behind the dazed, bewildered stare.
He tried to shake her off and got one hand free enough to grab at her hip with a desperate intensity that suggested he’d been taught “touching everything” was the only way to ensure you were in control of something. She wasn't going anywhere – not yet, anyway.
It wasn't quite the graceful maneuver she’d envisioned. Still, grace hadn't been part of Mark’s vocabulary either, unless he talked about how gracefully his beer glass would slide off the table when he’d had too many and suddenly decided to start practicing synchronized swimming with a half-empty ketchup bottle.
But Teddy Bear at least seemed to be figuring out that there were different levels of aggression, and this wasn't one of those confrontations that involved “let me show you how much I hate Mondays.”
“Alright,” Amy said, letting her voice carry over the cheers from the bar crowd now - a lot more enthusiastic than when Sparky had announced he was about to put on a whole new set of drumsticks for them. He looked up at her with that same wide-eyed confusion as if she’d suddenly started speaking in Klingon and then switched back to English mid-sentence because apparently, the barflies were really into getting their heads scratched by someone who knew how to make their brains feel like they'd been dipped in warm honey.
“You want a show? Fine,” Amy said, tilting her head back to look at Jody and Alice with an almost bored kind of satisfaction – as if she hadn’t just spent the last minute and a half doing what most people would have called “athletic manslaughter” on a guy whose name was apparently "Teddy Bear" which frankly, given how this was all going down, seemed like a very accurate assessment.
“I'll give you a show.” She looked back at Teddy Bear - who was still trying to figure out if he could get his hand untangled from her hip and then possibly use that same hand to start somehow picking lint off the ceiling before it got too close to him - “Just try not to piss your pants on my leg while I do it, okay?”
And then she dropped down into a fighting stance.
The kind of stance that screamed "I’m about to make you wish you'd just stayed home and eaten dinner with the dog" rather than tried out for amateur night at this particular bar-and-hay bale wrestling ring.
The cheers for "Teddy Bear" were like nails on a chalkboard – amplified by Mark’s sneering echo in her memory: “Oh, she got beat up *again*? What did you expect wearing those little skirts and showing your legs? That’s how it is with girls, Amy; they should know better.”
His voice wasn't even loud enough to cut through the din of the bar, yet it still managed to wedge itself into a tight space behind her ribs where it festered like a bruised lung. *Foolish girl* – she could practically hear him saying it now, perched somewhere on one of those wobbly stools at the corner table with his usual "friends," watching with smirking superiority as she took another roundhouse swing at some hapless guy twice her size who was probably just trying to make himself look good in front of the ladies by accepting the dare. *Foolish girl*.
Except Amy wasn't foolish. Not anymore.
Teddy Bear lumbered forward, hands flailing like a newborn giraffe trying to figure out what its legs were for. The bar crowd roared encouragement – a sound that would have been charming if it wasn’t so bloody familiar. Jody and Alice kept grinning at her from the edge of the ring, their faces alight with something akin to pride mixed with pure, unadulterated “you-told-us-so” joy. That was enough for Amy.
She launched herself into him like a goddamn Valkyrie sent down to settle an old score. It wasn’t pretty or graceful; it wasn't the kind of ballet you saw in the movies where women sparred with men who looked like they were sculpted from marble and moonlight. It was primal, visceral fury given human form, fueled by six months of bottled-up rage and a desperate need to prove something – not just to Teddy Bear, but to every skeptical eyebrow raised when she told them about Mark’s little “fun” ways of expressing his emotions.
He took the first three punches like a sack of overripe potatoes pounded with an old sledgehammer. Her fist connected with his jawbone so hard it sounded like cracking walnuts in her bare hands, then her other side caught him square on the sternum with a force that sent air whistling out through his nose in a wheezing honk. One final, vicious uppercut slammed into his gut – a move learned in self-defense class for when someone was trying to be all "I'm big and scary" but forgot about the little things like internal organs and what happened when you punched them hard enough that they decided to relocate themselves temporarily.
He crumpled instantly, and Amy didn’t even hesitate. A swift kick to his groin – a move Mark hadn’t figured out how to master, mostly because he’d spent most of their relationship convinced it was an insult if a woman used anything other than her hands on him – sent him sprawling face-first onto the hay bales with a startled squeal that could have been mistaken for a dying walrus.
Then, she went to town.
The knee slammed into his nose, and Teddy Bear’s head bounced off the floorboards like a cheap rubber ball. She rolled him over, grabbed fistfuls of greasy hair – the kind that clung to fingers like damp dishrags – and started driving his face down into the wood with short, brutal slams. Each time his head hit, it was punctuated by a sickening crunch followed by a soft *thud* of bone on wood.
“Come on, you FUCKING PIG! FIGHT ME YOU PATHETIC PIECE OF SHIT!” Her voice rose over the stunned silence of the bar, raw and ragged like sandpaper tearing across a canvas. The words were choked out between slams, each syllable soaked in fury distilled from six months of quiet resentment simmering under the surface.
The nosebleed bloomed suddenly above her right eye – probably from one of his flailing fists that finally connected somewhere near her cheekbone during her brief rampage – but she didn't even register it. It felt more like a warm trickle of annoyance than anything else. Her blood wasn’t the issue here; Teddy Bear needed to learn that punching someone was just the *beginning* of a fight, not some kind of weird, pathetic display of dominance.
Two burly guys – one with a handlebar mustache that looked like it had been drawn on with a Sharpie and another whose biceps were the size of cantaloupes – finally wrestled her off him before she could start trying to use his head as a makeshift hammer. She landed hard on her knees, still panting, fists balled tight enough to crack walnuts. Teddy Bear lay sprawled beneath them like a discarded rag doll, eyes squeezed shut and chest heaving in ragged gasps.
The bar was silent for a heartbeat, then Jody and Alice were erupting into cheers that sounded less like cheers and more like primal battle cries – the kind of sound you hear when someone's just single-handedly saved a village from an attack by rabid weasels. They clambered onto the hay bales to get closer, slapping her on the back and yelling things like "Go, Amy!" and "He deserved that!" with a fervor that was catching.
Then, somehow, it spread. The bar’s applause turned into hesitant clapping, then into full-on whooping and hollering as if Teddy Bear had been this week's bad guy in a particular kind of drunken brawl opera. Sparky abandoned his drums for the moment – which was either incredibly brave or incredibly stupid – and leaped onto one of the hay bales to shout something like “Bloody brilliant, Amy!” over the din.
It was infectious. Even the bartender was grinning with what looked suspiciously like a healthy dose of awe as he slid another pitcher of beer toward Jody and Alice.
The chants started low and grew in volume until the entire bar tried to roar out one word: "AMY! AMY! AMY!"
And for once, Amy didn’t need Mark's approval or anyone else’s to feel a surge of triumphant power that spread through her from the soles of her feet up to the bruised tip of her nose. The blood was still trickling down her cheek, but it felt like victory ink, and she let herself smile – not the tight, polite smiles for strangers or the brittle, nervous ones Mark had used to dissect with his usual disdainful fondness.
This was a grin from dirt under fingernails, bruised knuckles, and a wild exhilaration that tasted more like freedom than anything else. This may not be so bad after all.
The cheers for "Teddy Bear" were like nails on a chalkboard – amplified by Mark’s sneering echo in her memory: “Oh, she got beat up *again*? What did you expect wearing those little skirts and showing your legs? That’s how it is with girls, Amy; they should know better.”
His voice wasn't even loud enough to cut through the din of the bar, yet it still managed to wedge itself into a tight space behind her ribs where it festered like a bruised lung. *Foolish girl* – she could practically hear him saying it now, perched somewhere on one of those wobbly stools at the corner table with his usual "friends," watching with smirking superiority as she took another roundhouse swing at some hapless guy twice her size who was probably just trying to make himself look good in front of the ladies by accepting the dare. *Foolish girl*.
Except Amy wasn't foolish. Not anymore.
Teddy Bear lumbered forward, hands flailing like a newborn giraffe trying to figure out what its legs were for. The bar crowd roared encouragement – a sound that would have been charming if it wasn’t so bloody familiar. Jody and Alice kept grinning at her from the edge of the ring, their faces alight with something akin to pride mixed with pure, unadulterated “you-told-us-so” joy. That was enough for Amy.
She launched herself into him like a goddamn Valkyrie sent down to settle an old score. It wasn’t pretty or graceful; it wasn't the kind of ballet you saw in the movies where women sparred with men who looked like they were sculpted from marble and moonlight. It was primal, visceral fury given human form, fueled by six months of bottled-up rage and a desperate need to prove something – not just to Teddy Bear, but to every skeptical eyebrow raised when she told them about Mark’s little “fun” ways of expressing his emotions.
He took the first three punches like a sack of overripe potatoes pounded with an old sledgehammer. Her fist connected with his jawbone so hard it sounded like cracking walnuts in her bare hands, then her other side caught him square on the sternum with a force that sent air whistling out through his nose in a wheezing honk. One final, vicious uppercut slammed into his gut – a move learned in self-defense class for when someone was trying to be all "I'm big and scary" but forgot about the little things like internal organs and what happened when you punched them hard enough that they decided to relocate themselves temporarily.
He crumpled instantly, and Amy didn’t even hesitate. A swift kick to his groin – a move Mark hadn’t figured out how to master, mostly because he’d spent most of their relationship convinced it was an insult if a woman used anything other than her hands on him – sent him sprawling face-first onto the hay bales with a startled squeal that could have been mistaken for a dying walrus.
Then, she went to town.
The knee slammed into his nose, and Teddy Bear’s head bounced off the floorboards like a cheap rubber ball. She rolled him over, grabbed fistfuls of greasy hair – the kind that clung to fingers like damp dishrags – and started driving his face down into the wood with short, brutal slams. Each time his head hit, it was punctuated by a sickening crunch followed by a soft *thud* of bone on wood.
“Come on, you FUCKING PIG! FIGHT ME YOU PATHETIC PIECE OF SHIT!” Her voice rose over the stunned silence of the bar, raw and ragged like sandpaper tearing across a canvas. The words were choked out between slams, each syllable soaked in fury distilled from six months of quiet resentment simmering under the surface.
The nosebleed bloomed suddenly above her right eye – probably from one of his flailing fists that finally connected somewhere near her cheekbone during her brief rampage – but she didn't even register it. It felt more like a warm trickle of annoyance than anything else. Her blood wasn’t the issue here; Teddy Bear needed to learn that punching someone was just the *beginning* of a fight, not some kind of weird, pathetic display of dominance.
Two burly guys – one with a handlebar mustache that looked like it had been drawn on with a Sharpie and another whose biceps were the size of cantaloupes – finally wrestled her off him before she could start trying to use his head as a makeshift hammer. She landed hard on her knees, still panting, fists balled tight enough to crack walnuts. Teddy Bear lay sprawled beneath them like a discarded rag doll, eyes squeezed shut and chest heaving in ragged gasps.
The bar was silent for a heartbeat, then Jody and Alice were erupting into cheers that sounded less like cheers and more like primal battle cries – the kind of sound you hear when someone's just single-handedly saved a village from an attack by rabid weasels. They clambered onto the hay bales to get closer, slapping her on the back and yelling things like "Go, Amy!" and "He deserved that!" with a fervor that was catching.
Then, somehow, it spread. The bar’s applause turned into hesitant clapping, then into full-on whooping and hollering as if Teddy Bear had been this week's bad guy in a particular kind of drunken brawl opera. Sparky abandoned his drums for the moment – which was either incredibly brave or incredibly stupid – and leaped onto one of the hay bales to shout something like “Bloody brilliant, Amy!” over the din.
It was infectious. Even the bartender was grinning with what looked suspiciously like a healthy dose of awe as he slid another pitcher of beer toward Jody and Alice.
The chants started low and grew in volume until the entire bar tried to roar out one word: "AMY! AMY! AMY!"
And for once, Amy didn’t need Mark's approval or anyone else’s to feel a surge of triumphant power that spread through her from the soles of her feet up to the bruised tip of her nose. The blood was still trickling down her cheek, but it felt like victory ink, and she let herself smile – not the tight, polite smiles for strangers or the brittle, nervous ones Mark had used to dissect with his usual disdainful fondness.
This was a grin from dirt under fingernails, bruised knuckles, and a wild exhilaration that tasted more like freedom than anything else. This may not be so bad after all.
