Micah Goff

Last Man Standing

Delbert W. Dunghauser sat silently straining upon a carefully cleaned commode. Curiously faint, he noticed the odd coloration of the grout before his face crashed down upon the tile it held together.  The swelling over his right eye masked the hairline fractures that lay beneath the rapidly forming red and purple knots that marked his banged up brow.  His chin slid loosely upon the reddening tile, as his body jerked and bobbed in complete synchronicity with the rise and fall of the bare brown heel that violently beat down upon him.  The floor, a bloody testament of the past thirteen minutes and forty-two seconds, provided clear evidence of the beating laid upon Delbert by the three hundred and twenty three pound Samoan named Frank.

At the seventeen-minute mark, Delbert laboriously raised himself to his hands and knees, as the pudgy Samoan bluntly drove his fat brown knee into the small of his back.  Too weak to fight back, Delbert concentrated only on pushing the blood from his mouth to keep from choking.  For a moment, he looked at himself in the dark red pool of blood that lay beneath him on the gritty, urine-covered floor.  His eyes quickly shot to the reflection cast in the dim light of the restroom.  The light bounced off the misshapen line of his brow to the concave profile of his face, as the menacing figure of the barefoot Samoan stood laughing in the doorway of the plywood bathroom stall.  Delbert’s heavy gaze furtively fell to Frank’s fat feet, while he wondered if the blood soaked denim that clung tightly to Frank’s fat shins were any indication of the shape he was in.  He looked once more to the dark red pool, but his eyes failed him. 

Momentarily, Delbert heard the fat brown feet slide upon the gritty floor.  He heard the fat Samoan’s ankle pop as his weight shifted, and Delbert braced himself for the ephemeral pain that was sure to follow as the dirty brown heel came to rest between his head and neck, driving his face back down to the floor.  Delbert’s swollen purple lips shielded the bloody gums that lay behind them from the piss-marked and bloody floor.

At twelve fifty seven, Delbert felt like the captain of a sinking ship.  He found himself face to face with the frailty of human life, as he lay in a pool of his own blood on the floor of the men’s room. Delbert lay completely still, floating between life and death, not quite here and not quite gone.  Then, for the first time in his life, Delbert made a conscious decision to continue breathing.  With every breath he grew stronger and more determined to rise from the bloody floor.

Suddenly, Delbert lunged forward, grabbing fat Frank’s leg and clinging to it with all his might.  He heard thunderous explosions as the Samoan’s heel peppered the numb area around his spine.  Undeterred, Delbert reached for Frank’s belt and began to pull himself up.  With his face buried in the sweat-laden inseam that floated above the fat Samoan’s crotch, Delbert tried desperately to hold the smelly Samoans wide waist with the hope of shielding himself from absorbing the fiercely directed knees that robbed him of the air within his lungs.  When he began to feel the Samoan’s knee hitting him in the groin, he knew that he was standing.  In an instant, Delbert found himself staring deeply into the dark, cold eyes of the fat Samoan.

  Delbert threw his forehead forward with all his might, disregarding the sound of snapping bone and cartilage as it gave way beneath the crushing blow.  He took a step back and watched as blood spewed from the freshly marred face of his aggressor.  Delbert drove his knee into the fat Samoan’s groin with holy rage, severing a testicle and mocking the vas deferens that lay broken between him and Frank. 

 The orange lights lit up the parking lot as Delbert stumbled to his car. Their beams illuminated the dark spots of blood that marked his every step and accentuated the angular deformities that plagued his new face.  He thought of the fat Samoan as he had left him—perfectly still.  He nervously checked the rearview mirror as the flashing lights screamed past him like rockets in the night. 

Delbert stumbled through the doorway of his tattered apartment only to stagger down the hallway and find himself again in the bathroom.  As he pulled back the clear curtain and stepped into the steamy shower, hot water swept across his numb body, reddening the skin that showed beyond the wounds he carefully washed. Unsure if he could handle one more fall, Delbert W. Dunghauser leaned heavily upon the shower wall and watched as the red tide slowly dissipated in the drain beneath him.