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elbow. A clinical part of
his mind recognized the arm lock as something familiar from his
occasional aikido classes, but those practices were with people
working very, very hard not to damage each other. Brian found that
when your sparring partner didn’t really care about the pain they
caused, it was a very different feeling. All the pretty movements
blew out of his mind in a haze of pain and the very real fear that
his tendons and cartilage were creaking towards oblivion as the
missionary adjusted his grip slightly. Brian’s other arm could only
flop helplessly, as every time he tried to move it the missionary
would increase the torque on his joint and flexed wrist, lifting
Brian further on his toes as he tried to relieve the pressure.
Caught between the grip on his shoulder and the agonizing burn of
his elbow tendons, Brian was feeling very helpless.
But not scared. Not yet. Instead, he was
getting pissed. Pain did that to him, sent him into rages that made
him want to do something, anything, the adrenaline driving the need
to strike out to the forefront of his mind. It became a little
cycle; Brian would struggle, the missionary would adjust his grip
slightly, and Brian would again be forced to stop as his elbow
creaked in protest, spears of pain shooting up his ligaments. He
knew just how it would sound, like a chicken leg being popped out
of its socket. He looked around the coffeeshop, but the other
patrons seemed frozen—even the barista was simply watching, making
no move towards the phone. “Call the—“ Brian tried to urge her, his
voice breaking off in a hiss as the pressure again shifted.
Both men were still calmly smiling with
their small eyes looking intently at Brian as he struggled. The
first released his grip on Brian’s trapezius, the relief unnoticed
as Armlock Man twisted some more, just to keep his attention. His
partner calmly drew a small black case out of the breastpocket of
his black suit, unzipping it and laying it on the table next to
Brian. He looked down and saw it contained, wrapped in neat little
black bands of elastic, a small black vial and hypodermic needle.
Brian watched the missionary—now dubbed Needle Man in the back of
his mind—reach for it, a soft click made him turn his head, and he
saw Armlock man matter-of-factly using a knife with a boxy handle
to slice through his jacket and shirt all the way from his wrist to
his shoulder. The leather and fabric put up no more resistance to
the blade’s edge than water, and Brian wondered at exactly how
sharp that meant the knife had to be. As he saw a line of red
appear up his now-bare arm, he realized that it was even sharper
than that, having sliced into his skin without his feeling it.
Now he began to be a bit scared. He could
hear Needle Man tapping the side of the hypo, and realized that he
was about to be injected with something that would, he suspected,
remove even the quickly diminishing choices now available.
He groped for some memory of some counter,
some pretty move from his aikido classes to get out of the arm
lock. Nothing came to mind; his joint was bent further up than he’d
ever believed it could be, and his vein in the hollow of his elbow
was a plump target for Needle Man’s two finger tap-tap, preparing
to inject.
There was nothing. So he just moved. In the
only direction available to him: up.
Brian’s knee came up sharply to his chest,
and he got the toe of his shoe up onto the edge of the table with
just enough grip to let him push up fast enough and high enough to
relieve the tension in his arm. Suddenly Armlock Man’s grip became
another anchor point, and Brian used it to continue his motion up
and forward, piking his body in a forward somersault, his legs
folding over on either side of the missionary’s head, using the
hand as a brace to keep him from falling to the floor as he
desperately tucked his head and plunged forward.. It was a simple
move that Brian had done many times in contact improv dance,