"Three Minutes" (Life Sketch)

Three minutes. One-hundred and eighty seconds. One-twentieth of an hour.

            Three minutes. That’s all you have—to deliver a decisive blow, to bring your opponent to their knees, to make them beg for mercy, to declare ultimate victory. Three minutes.

            He glares into my eyes, searching my soul for one thing, and one thing only. He is searching for the demons to clench at my heart, shadow my eyes, and shake my body into tremors. He is searching for fear. From the darkness in his eyes, and the smirk upon his face, I know what he wants. He wants to prove that I am weaker, that I am afraid, that I am inadequate to him. Beyond it all, he wants blood to be splattered upon the floor of the arena. My blood.

            In this arena, there are no amicable feelings between us; those feelings died long ago the moment he placed a knife in my back. He is a wolf in sheep’s skin. Those eyes tell me so.

            The time is set on the clock, and we begin. Three minutes. That is how long we will fight. We will fight one another until the time is up, unless one of us is rendered unable to move first. Today, he plans for that to be me. How do I know? It is because his girlfriend told him so. She told him to make me cry, to make me hurt, because maybe then, her insecurities would go away.

            She is on the sidelines, shouting at him to destroy the fat, ugly girl. Then, she laughs. I can hear that laugh echo in my mind, as my eyes never break concentration on him. I feel heat creeping up my neck, burning away at my cheeks. They call me names at school, and I ignore them. Now should be no different, I tell myself. Now is the time to do what I cannot do at school.

            He lunges towards me, aiming at my face. My hands quickly go up to block, and then in a split-second, I feel his foot plummeting into my ribs. Instinct takes over, and my knee makes contact with his chest, my fist soon to follow. His breath escapes upon the back of my neck as I withdraw to fire a kick at his head. He quickly dodges, the side of his head missing my foot by a near inch. The monster then emerges. Throttling himself at me, he begins thrashing away at my face and body with his firsts and merciless kicks. In the midst of his attack, one clear kick nails me in my temple, clouding the vision in my right eye. The smirk returns to his face; he believes he is about to win because I have always been submissive, weak, unaggressive.

            However, he has severely misjudged me.

Today, I have something to fight for, something I am not willing to lose.

            As he attempts to fire another kick deep into my jaw, I block and catch his foot, causing him to stumble. The smirk instantly disappears as my foot meets his cheekbone, no longer holding back. We begin to throw blows at one another simultaneously. The room has grown utterly silent, but I barely notice for all I hear is his panting, his gasps for breath, my heartbeat.

            We are lost in motion, in chaos. My fists collide with flesh and bone, my feet dance upon the ground, readily flying at his head. He attempts to do the same, but I feel his knees going weak. The glare from his eyes has returned, as he squints from the sweat pouring down the sides of his face. Staring straight back at him, I am only reminded of what he has done to me, the offenses and crimes he has committed against me, how he has looked down upon me. Today he had hoped to destroy me, to prove to all who were watching that I am nothing.

            Time is up. Our instructors are pulling us apart, offering support to our battered bodies. The instructors stare at me silently for a long moment, and then nod. That was enough for me.

            As I walk past my fellow peers, they are quiet, but nod at me as well. Someone gives my shoulder a firm squeeze, another pats my back. From this day forward, things would change.

Bruises and cuts will eventually fade, but memories of this fight will not. They are scarred upon his memory, as they are engraved in mine. For him, he wanted blood, but the blood on the arena floor that day was not mine; he will always know that. For me, I just wanted respect. 

Three minutes. One-hundred and eighty seconds. One-twentieth of an hour. Three minutes.