a deplorable saturday.
- vfelice4
- Dec 3
- 21 min read
Vincent Bertolini-Felice / 12.3.25
Three men exited a bar in San Luis Obispo and entered the same car. They drove more than six miles out of town to an outdoor venue near El Chorro. Twice a month, on Saturdays, lesser known professionals fought boxing bouts, mostly exhibitions, throughout Central and Southern California.
The men had nothing better to do than to follow the fighters. They enjoyed it to different degrees. The least of which was the youngest; he started following to gain the respect of the man two years his elder and neither comprehended it, nor felt respected.
The middle enjoyed it somewhat. In his youth, he attempted boxing and found it was easier to regale strangers with story of what could have been than to be. In the recent months, the flame he once had for it as a viewer was ever extinguishing. He valued the routine more so than the occasion.
The eldest watched his cigarette skip into the distance through his side view mirror. He was wearing the gloves he reserved for the fights. The middle always wore the same collared shirt with a button, and the youngest, usually did not have time to change out of his work attire.
It was something Antonio took offense at. Every Thursday, he would dry clean the suit he wore to funerals, grey with pinstripes, pressed by a Vietnamese lady he detested, to pair with his linen collared shirt and matching kerchief.
He wrang his fingers around the wheel, tapping his pointer finger offbeat to the song. The gloves were the most integral part of the façade, gifted gloves that were issued to his father in a Venezuelan work camp. They were not the same exact pair. Rather, upon his father’s death, he had a similar pair remade in homage to the color scheme and aesthetic design.
“¿Dónde está este lugar?
“Es una carpa acerca de la prisión.”
There was a roughshod plot of land covered by no more than a few spotty patches of grass, and rocky sand from the foothills of the Grande. It usually housed traveling fairs and local markets, adequate distance enough from town to excuse the noise, especially on a fight night.
Attendances usually varied. Bouts in Southern California had more recognizable names and nicer venues, a good night would see four or five thousand in attendance. The farther north you traveled, the less likely a suitable venue was to be, and it would be no surprise if the bout in Chorro did not exceed two hundred.
At that point, most of those in the crowd would be recognizable to the men, or at least Antonio. A large group attended most of the fights, making longer distance treks than the men. Most of them knew each other at this point. The three kept to themselves and could only name a few off hand that had gone out of their way to make introductions.
Javi, the youngest, found the social aspect of it to be more rewarding than the actual fights. Often, it was easier for him to palate the evening with a stranger rambling about why his bet was perfect, and why his perfect bet lost. The most unique one he had heard was the climate.
“It’s too cold for the Chinaman. His people don’t know this cold.”
The man who made that excuse was the only one Antonio could pick out of a lineup. He was a stocky, Italian man missing his front tooth. The story of why was lost to Antonio but he had an arsenal of misguided conceptions that sufficed in his head.
He had thought about killing that man during the fight. He would recall that bout as the worst one he had attended. It was a fine show, great by the standards of the circuit, however, his fatigue rendered him incapable of remembering the evening as anything but a nightmare.
It was easy to blame driving fatigue, or the pains of life as a divorcee, to not identify this anger as acceptable. It was all too common for Javi or Juan to identify Antonio’s anger and attempt to address it, only to be treated as insane or reactive for identifying anything the average passerby could diagnose as problems with anger.
In all fairness, anyone familiar with Antonio would have a difficult time recognizing these issues outside the exhibitions. He was a man of rigid routine, and little more reflected this than his commute to work. Most at Farmer & Price would have accused the Junior Partner of wearing the same suit daily, unaware of the distinctions Antonio drew between crow, obsidian, and sable black.
The first suit he was gifted was obsidian. A gift courtesy of the man who sponsored his law school education at U.C. Hastings. Eric Tillee was an Equity Partner at a firm not worth naming in Merin. A stocky, undersized man, despite his upbringing in a wealthy household, had considered himself an underdog, and spent an unfortunate amount of time investing in those he saw as “underdogs”.
When he met Antonio Salazar Moreno, he first fell victim to a visage that signified hope, and second to a smooth voice that could convince Lucifer his position was deserved. The law student bore a tight, slicked back haircut, and a thin, well-groomed mustache that commanded the attention of the room.
Seeing the man entranced in what could be called more than a daydream, Eric initiated conversation, unaware if he intended to find the man vexed or concerned; nevertheless, hoping to solidify his status as an alumnus over the student.
However, he found himself enamored with the manner in which the student spoke of concepts beyond his grasping.
“Sartre’s hate with this people would have angered.”
At this time, Antonio’s grasp on the English language was tenuous at best. He had managed through a semester barely stringing along.
“Who would it have angered.”
“Sartre.”
“You know Sartre?”
“Suficiente.”
It was at this moment, a sort of dual flattery occurred. One man considered himself good enough at playing the idiot to lead to a goal he did not fully envision. The other considered himself in a position of power, capable of maintaining conversation to trap the man.
“Have you read No Exit”
”No. Pero, que necesito saber, yo se.”
It was at this point Eric Tillee considered himself above Antonio Salazar Moreno. Something both had wanted, to differing levels of appeasement. It was in this position that the tangibility of one’s goals became clearer and the ideological dreams of the other were prepared.
The two carried on in conversation for over an hour. Making crude comments in jest of guests; Antionio, ever aware of his position, would sneak in some Spanish to make the man feel proud that he understood.
Before the Alumni Meet and Greet had thinned to more than half, Eric Tillee, still nothing more than a name and an associate partner, had pledged his assistance to Antonio in funding his education.
Eric noticed a scuff on the collar of his shirt. Antonio lied, explaining that his shirt was the most formal apparel he could afford. When Eric informed him of all the occasions soon to approach that would necessitate a proper, three-piece suit, Antonio acted dumbfounded.
He would later tell his mother that the obsidian blazer was the byproduct of additional hours he put in at the restaurant. Most would be quick to fault Antonio for such blatant a lie but those simply would fail to account for his tastes.
It was a clever bout of manipulation. Antonio had purchased a tie the same shade of black weeks prior knowing he had nothing to pair with such extravagant a purchase. All it took was a series of perplexed looks to convince a man like Eric Tillee that he had exquisite taste, and his bold ideas of what Antonio ought to wear were perfect.
In the latter half of his second semester at Hastings, he purchased the crow suit. His favorite of the bunch, it had come from the same suit store in Merin he had gone to with Eric. Antonio drummed up the same fictional inflection in order to appease the suspicions of the floor room employee who he was concerned recognized him.
It was the same crow suit that deemed him worthy of criticism by one of his colleagues at Thomas & Michaels. An executive assistant made a comment in jest about his suit, mistaking one stain for one on the sable black suit.
“Rough Tuesday?”
“What do you mean?”
“Did you not come to work in that suit yesterday?”
“You ask dumb questions.”
His response had been pre-fired. Anticipating some level of criticism from her first comment, he had a smug look and snarky response in his mind. He failed to shake the accent he was born into and emphasized the final syllable of the word “questions” as “quest-ons”. Not realizing his mistake until later, he snapped his lips and walked hurriedly to his cubicle.
The men arrived late to the fight. Something that deeply angered Antonio.
“Estaramos adentro.”
Antonio nodded, pushing his tongue in front of his upper level of teeth. He was not happy with the men but felt there was leverage to be won in mimicking greater disappointment.
His driving gloves had been long gone from his hands at this point but he could not help but flick the skin of his fingers as if they were still there. He pulled at the silk of the green gloves as if his Formula Car was waiting for him. It took two tugs of the webbing between his middle and ring finger for him to recognize he was pulling at skin. The unforgiving tug of bare flesh signaled to him that his cigarettes had been depleted and he ought to enter the tent.
He heard the bell for round two waver in the distance. Something that he deeply wished to be in attendance for and yet, a round he would not attend. He glared intently at Javi and Jaun, comfortably sat towards the end, pulling each other close and pointing at the fighters, telling each other secrets he would never be privy to.
It was something that enraged Antonio, the idea of missing out. He saw one of the fighters, a significantly taller man of African American descent, wearing his hair tight in locks tucked behind his head. In his head, he envisioned this man as the winner of the first round. Trickled applause would pour out, and he would offer his ovation from the background. Taking adequate praise as being the visionary behind his success, profiling him not only as the superior fighter but as the winner.
He pushed himself against the car, staring at an overly polluted night sky before returning his glance to the fight. The white man threw an unfortunately timed hook. His right pectoral was clenched tight, and he immediately assumed the defensive, despite his opponent being on the ground. It was a perfect stance; from the ground, Antonio’s favorite threw a desperate jab, only to be met with a shot that Antonio imagined hit his jaw.
The white man waved his hands above his head in victory, circling around the ring to solidify his success to an audience of unenthused onlookers. Neither man would truly win. The black man would spend months trying to re-establish himself as a legitimate name in the sport only to be drowned in the mediocracy of first-ticket fights that he would continually lose. The white man would suffer no better a fate, forced to continually move up the ticket, his fights would increasingly damage what was a weakened mind and lead to an early retirement from the sport.
In the present, incapable of fathoming his expert analysis would have been wrong, Antonio cursed the loser. He hurled a series of under-the-breath slurs at the African American, kicking a thick shroud of dirt beneath his feet as he swore. He walked into the tent wiping the coarse sand and gravel beneath his eyes, preparing an excuse to Javi and Juan for why his prediction was wrong.
It was not needed. The men who he had expected to plead him for his thoughts on the bout were oddly quiet. Their clever insights and whispers had ceased when Antonio appeared on the fringes of their peripherals.
“Como fue los luchadores?”
The men simultaneously shrugged. In reality, the fight was worth nothing more than this. Two amateurs who thought too high of themselves were equally humbled before an audience of degenerates who were now enlightened to the limits of their fighting abilities.
An occasion like this should have made Antonio happy. Upon his entrance to the tent, he made eye contact with the African American. He was suffering. His mouthguard had long left his mouth and he was still spitting up blood, unaware that he was missing the reinforced mats of the ring entirely.
Seeing people bleed deeply pleased Antonio. Yet, seeing someone he had wagered his self-image on lose in such a manner enraged him. He was unsure how much bloodshed or technical ability it would take to please him, however, he knew he had to see more at this exhibition.
The second event was a stalemate. Two inexperienced and physically gifted fighters fought an unsatisfactory battle that would necessitate a panel to determine the fighter blessed more by God had won on little more account than his stature and perceived promise.
The third bout especially intrigued Antonio. Juan had been gone since the first punch was thrown and Javi had conveniently initiated conversation with a commuter who thought the occasion seemed interesting.
An Irishman with a toned body fought in the manner Antonio imagined he would. His punches were erratic and counter-intuitive to his form, yet they landed with tremendous devastation. He was fighting a black man four years his elder who had broadly superior technical ability. Despite his familiarity with young fighters, the black man incidentally walked into the most powerful blows, ending up knocked out in the fifth round.
Most fighters would reinforce the idea that their ordeals played out much slower compared to the audience. However, the final blows from the Irishman rang off in quick succession to the fighters. A counterjab planted between the jaw and lip cracked the lower canine. Taken aback by the force of the punch, the man moved his right glove to shield his mouth, unaware of the impending hook that connected with the side of the temple just below the hairline. He was unconscious before he hit the ground.
Javi pressed his open hand against Antonio and rocked back, shocked by the gravity of the blows. Antonio had been nodding his head for the final thirty seconds of the fight, granting his approval to the fighters. Javi had a look of disgust on his face. Those looks were frequent during fights but there was something about this look that specifically frustrated Antonio.
“No tienes que estar aqui.”
“Quiero quedarse.”
“Por qué?”
“Es interesante.”
Javi looked away. He was aware he was being interrogated and did not wish to participate.
“Mentiroso.”
“Borracho.”
“Hable a mis ojos”
“No importa.”
“Hable sin pelos en la lengua.”
Both were drunker than expected. A different kind of drunk. One that filled one man with insecurity and the other with a need to correct perceived disrespect.
“Yo conducia, pagaba para ti, permitía que tu asistias a esto. Agradecer.”
“Jamas.”
He laughed. Javi had not fixed his gaze during the conversation. A janitor was sanitizing the mat, wiping blood off the side of the ring. His eyebrows were tightly furrowed, only looking at the man now completely facing him out of his peripherals.
Antonio swatted a fly off his suit leg. He spat on the ground in front of Javi, not entirely sure what he was hoping for. To trigger a man in such a manner usually carried implications of a physical altercation. Sanity was temporarily restored, he realized he could not fight Javi. To swing on the boy would mean he had to answer to his sister and niece.
It was not until they started attending fights that he grew odious of Javi. He was first introduced to him when him and Maria were engaged. He was three years removed from military service, something that Antonio took immense pride in. It was necessary for Antonio to surround himself with men of machismo and nothing else. Despite exiting his thirties, most of his comrades were in their early to mid-twenties. The type you see at a bar drinking the same beer they first had at sixteen, confidently deciding on which woman from an arsenal they possessed who hold the pleasure of pleasing them that night.
He imagined Javi amongst this crowd. He considered his arms too frail and his smile too genuine. During their first introduction, he asked him about the women he experienced while stationed near Mexicali, his preferred weapon, and if he was Catholic. None of his answers sufficed, and he deduced the man must be weak-willed or raised by his mother. At this time, Javi’s accent was thick, and when he spoke in English, it was almost unintelligible. Despite being in a crowded room, Antonio spoke exclusively in English, knowing those in the room that would understand would not have the constitution to call him out for the vulgarity of his speech.
He invited him to a local fight, not one of the circuit events, and Javi, worried about upsetting his soon-to-be uncle, obliged. Following the fight, Antonio’s sister would relay to him that Maria described him as deplorable.
It was something he knew. Something from which he did not hide. He carried a keen enough awareness of empathy and morality as concepts to recognize he was a deviation from it. However, he considered the merits of morality as concepts dictated exclusively by those who consider themselves to be of high morals. The meek dictated what is right and were too blinded by childish notions of community to recognize they were wrong. Authority by submission as he called it.
From a young age, he recognized those who cared for issues of morality were often so surprised by someone acting out of line that they failed to properly adjudicate. It was not solely a self-serving philosophy, he considered action of any sort to be better than inaction. There existed a time in which action could be detrimental but that was reserved for rapists, murderers, and politicians. For the everyman, the daily life consisted of benign moments of action and inaction, and those who chose inaction achieved little.
A neatly kept gravestone in Middle America was the end result of a life of inaction. By giving into banal practices of empathy and concerning oneself with moral judgment, paralysis ensues, and death becomes a blessing.
Antonio carried death with a sort of reverence reserved for archrivals or fierce competitors. Death faced him miles away on a football field, moving in a straight line. Yet, in his eyes, he had constructed obstacles it would take death time to conquer before it finally received the glory of facing him. Those who lived “honestly” kept death close to them, walking side by side with the forces of the world instead of living in revolt.
He walked away from Javi. He scanned what was an increasingly growing crowd for Juan and found him in conversation with a young woman who appeared disinterested. Collecting him required an explanation of what had occurred, something he could neither fully articulate nor wished to. There was something to be done.
There was a large club just over a mile from his apartment that would work for the evening. An opportunity to meet those of a similar status to him. Status was not something that mattered to Antonio but he found it hard to communicate with those who did not share his expensive habits.
The alcohol did not wear off on the drive home. It began to rain violently, and he was forced to sporadically spray his high beams across several lanes of traffic to make out the terrain of the road. He was the subject of many angry honks, and one from a red pickup truck caught his attention and forced him to drift closer to the median.
In attempting to correct the alignment of his vehicle that naturally drifted to the right, he incidentally pulled himself off the graze of the median. He was enraged at his folly. Despite believing himself apt at controlling others, he chastised himself frequently for what he perceived as avoidable mistakes.
He cursed at himself in Spanish for minutes, veering between lanes and allowing his speed to ebb and flow in accordance to imagined rules of the road. By the time he rolled into his apartment, it was nearing ten, and the rain was bordering on a monsoon.
Soft music from his record player greeted him, an outro from Juan Gabriel. Next to his record player sat his decanter. It was a gift from his grandfather upon the passing of his father, a bottle from their hacienda in Juarez with Kentucky Whiskey from a distillery partially owned by him.
He disliked the decanter. It featured the Mexican coat of arms, an unwanted projection of an upbringing he felt no tie to. The household he grew up in was affluent, his skin was pale, his accent the only sign he was different to those he surrounded himself with. The most connection he felt to his ethnicity was for self-serving purposes. Those who offered charity, forgiveness, and understanding to someone of Hispanic descent were tools that pumped an imagined nationalism through Antonio’s veins.
Broad assumptions would be made, sentences would be annunciated slowly, and soft pats on the arm would please both parties. It was fitting that it was never brought up what neighborhood Antonio grew up in, what schools he attended, or what car he drove.
He felt his mother leaned too much into her upbringing. He partially detested her for this. In Juarez, she was adequately wealthy. If it were not for his father, she would have married poor, never left Mexico, and died in obscurity. She did not despise obscurity and would have agreed with Antonio’s assessment and never let the idea that poverty was an indelible part of her life, although she never lived through it.
She impressed this spirit on her only son and failed to understand that it never registered. Any interest he had in youth was her obsession; his mathematical prowess necessitated extended schooling, a habit of singing around the house warranted a decade of music lessons, and so on.
It was because of this that his first job was something unspoiled by his mother and something heavily dependent on the ability to maintain a façade. His two years working in local journalism were forgettable at best, and negligent to the public at worst.
He covered local politics, and during the one election spell he was employed for, he managed to publish all his stories hours before their deadline, often with made up or falsely reported information.
A city councilor who had served for close to a decade walked into the paper demanding answers as to why it was reported he had called a local Indigenous group, “deplorable”. The quote was inaccurate, and Antonio was unsure if it was a mishearing or an intentional choice.
“I believe whoever wrote this article is deplorable.”
It stuck with Antonio. He would not deny he was deplorable. Deplorable barely scratched the surface to him. Yet, he knew he was appreciated in his work and could classify it as a misunderstanding and the result of sleepless nights.
His wife defended him. His fiancé at the time, she was his fiercest defender, and this occasion marked the first in many in which she would feel the need to stand up for him. She was responsible for advertising at the paper and carried significant sway with her superiors, something that Antonio unconsciously took advantage of.
She cursed the politician out of the office and gave him a tremendously unprofessional embrace at his chair. She was deeply in love with him. It was something he understood, and seldom took advantage of, yet he refused to not be negligent.
She knew he was distant and hoped to remedy this problem with marriage. He liked the idea of an attractive breadwinner being his. He truthfully had no intention of hurting the woman but considered some things as taking precedent over her.
One such thing was the fights. All too frequently he would wake up Sunday in her apartment with a hazy memory of anything beyond leaving the fights. After a while, she stopped vocalizing her frustrations with how he spent his Saturdays, acknowledging that it would eventually lead to drunk sex and a chance for entrapment the day later.
Sometimes it worked, she would feign a sadness not wholly untrue and greet him with breakfast. In his recognition that there was only so much he could get away with, he would sit in bed with the papers until she grew weary and demanded he join her downstairs.
Her apartment was a short walk away from a small Greek café he thoroughly enjoyed. They would waste hours trying to ignite fragmented conversation while Antonio delved into a book that he neither cared for nor understood.
They rarely fought, and when she finally left, it was a bloodless battle. In her head, she could identify five problems with Antonio that prevented him from being the perfect man, and when two years of marriage brought about no changes, she found an easy out.
She knew well into their relationship, he had been sleeping with a woman from his home in Irvine. When their correspondence resumed, she found a claim to latch herself onto. They had not engaged in anything following at all since the first month of dating, and the letter was nothing more than inquiring about a payment on her car that Antonio had promised.
Still, in the end, Antonio was bitter and condemned to a studio in San Francisco. Lost time was a source of major agitation. Although his success with women was lukewarm at best, and material at worst, he had convinced himself that he missed opportunities for plunder by subjecting himself to extended monotony.
The song skipped. The record needed to be flipped over. He had gotten rather comfortable in his chair on the other side of the room and had nearly polished off his whiskey. He turned the record player off and paced around his kitchen in contemplation. It was rare he spent time introspecting, he would speak out loud, to the chagrin of his neighbors, when he needed to reflect.
He was scatterbrained by nature and more so when drunk. His thoughts cascading and spiraling was something he took concerted attention to avoid. In moments of quiet and malaise, anything became the subject of his attention, anything he could observe, quantify, and assume, without giving too much care to thinking.
Feeling the perfect amount of buzz, he chose to attend to his inebriation and decided Carrera was where he ought to be at that moment. In the recent months, he began to believe himself too sophisticated to go to the same bars he had spent his post-marital years frequenting. The dim lights and pleasant aromas of upscale restaurants were fitting for a man of his stature.
These nights were solo excursions. Dragging along the filthy lot of degenerates he simultaneously idolized and detested would be unwelcome at most, and especially Carrera. Carrera was exclusive enough to eyeball those who would upset the gentle fabric of dining, and its speculative gaze failed to recognize that the half-belligerent Antonio fit that description perfectly.
He sat at the bar, directly in the middle, in between two older, married couples. The kitchen was minutes away from closing when he walked in, and the bar reflected as such. Most plates around the patrons were bare, and the bartenders had begun the process of closing.
“Gin and tonic, double, no ice.”
He had said that line so many times the words had lost meaning to him. On his honeymoon, he threw a fit at a bar in Paris when the waiter allowed ice chips to float to the top of his drink.
“Strainer, please.”
“For why?”
He pointed to his drink. The waiter looked at him perplexedly. In defiance, Antonio scooped his hands through the drink and dumped the ice chips at the bartender’s post, shaking his wet hands on his apron.
It was one in a series of many outbursts on the trip. He meticulously planned the trip for months, speaking to everyone who would listen of how he planned to avoid tourist destinations, and find a genuine experience in Europe. Once the reality of a genuine experience became clear, he was frustrated and the inaccessibility of his comforts he had grown accustomed to. The only instances in which he was able to reflect on his trip with a semblance of happiness were in thinking of the sex that was had or the times relaxing in a car in between commutes.
The bartender took exceptionally long to make his drink. It was no bother, a fight was on. Two fighters he had never heard of engaged in a sloppy fight. At first, he thought the men were drunk; wild hooks followed by laughable jabs, and plenty bloodshed. It was a riot. His laughs soon began to bother the patrons.
Before his drink arrived, he ordered a shot of whiskey. Something the bartender glanced at but did not care to interfere with.
The fight became increasingly violent. As his drinks arrived, the camera perfectly panned to cover the fighter wearing red’s tooth being knocked out. Antonio visibly responded, swinging his shoulder and cheering.
The red fighter spit blood out of his mouth. Antonio carried a hearty smile, taking meaningful sips as the other fighter landed increasingly painful blows. Blood trickled out of the man’s eye, so did the shot trickle down his throat.
Minutes passed before the end of the round. The fixation of the restaurant became Antonio, he had become audibly unignorable, and as the swings became more brutal, so too did the vigor with which Antonio cheered.
They called the fight. The fighter in red appeared lifeless, his mouthguard pressing out of his mouth, forcing his lips into an unfelt smile. As the camera zoomed in on the unconscious man, Antonio’s response became miserable. The shot he forgot he ordered faced him. He scanned the restaurant quickly, realizing he had become the focal point of an otherwise uneventful evening.
He downed the shot before the onlooking audience. A woman specifically had a grotesque look, covering her mouth with her cupped hands, her eyes still expressing disgust.
She was beautiful. Her hair was parted in the middle, curving to cover the edges of her forehead and lying just below her neck. Her eyes were a familiar shade of amber and her hair the expected dirty blonde, with a maize glow covering a vibrant brown when seen under light.
Sara. It was not Sara. Still, the vague physical features were enough to invoke anger in the incredibly inebriated man.
He stood and addressed the restaurant.
“Quien es este hombre?”
There was no response. If it was not for the intense, seconds long stare that prefaced it, who he was addressing would be entirely lost.
The man sitting across from her stood up. Buttoning his coat, in preparation for what he expected was a violent spiral.
“QUIENES?!?”
Still no response. It was because he was speaking Spanish.
“Who is that motherfocker.”
His accent slipped.
“Bitch! Stupid bitch!”
A more sober Antonio would question his response. He did not believe to harbor any resentment for Sara. Anytime he thought of what was, he spoke to himself, affirming that she was a limiting factor on a vague greatness that he possessed.
A different man grabbed Antonio by the arm. The man sitting across from Sara followed. He was unaware Carrera had security, and was too drunk to realize that was who was pulling his arm.
He was carried through the kitchen. His eyes never leaving the red-haired man accompanying Sara, not Sara. His head hit the concrete. A kick landed between his ribs.
Blow after blow landed with increasing cruelty. First, to the chest, then to the face. It carried on for several minutes, his nose increasingly shrinking, his cheeks, increasingly inflaming.
The men stepped away. An ambiguous noise pierced their ears during the entirety of their beating of Antonio. He had never stopped laughing. Even as they step away, the ringing of a hideous cackle reverberated and disgusted the men.
They walked inside. Stars traveled, the moon cycled, and yet remains, a man, covered in his own blood. Through ripped shirt, inconceivable bruises, and a night most would forcibly forget, he remained laughing.
He looked at the blood on his hands and wiped it across his face. His laughter unbroken, his smile, not forced. It was felt. All was felt. And yet, he remain laughing.
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