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Tiaz’ eyelids fluttered open. His vision was blurry, but it came back into focus after a while. He sat up in bed and looked around. The room he was inside was dimly lit. There were hospital beds lined up on both sides of him. Some of them were occupied by inmates. A nurse was checking one of the inmates’ vitals. He also saw a doctor standing in an open door jotting something down on a clipboard. That’s when it dawned on him that he was in the infirmary. He looked down at his torso and saw that it was wrapped in a bandage.
Tiaz brought both his hands down his face and blew hard. He realized that he passed out from loss of blood, but he didn’t know how long he had been out. The nurse walked inside of the room that the doctor was in. As soon as she went through the door, two inmates arose from their beds, slammed the door closed behind her and pushed a file cabinet down in front of it. A C.O. came running towards the two inmates. He radioed for help through his walkie-talkie and suddenly an inmate pulled a pillowcase over his head tightly and rammed his head into the wall until blood smeared the inside of it and he passed out. As soon as the C.O. hit the floor, the inmate along with a few others, barricaded the rest of the entrances into the infirmary.
They then moved in on Tiaz. The dim light in the room bounced off the metal of their shanks and caused them to glint.
Danger! Danger! Danger! The alarm inside of Tiaz’ head blared like the dismissal bell for after school detention.
“Arrrr!” He grabbed his side, his moving too fast caused pain to shoot through his ribcage like bolts of lightning. He shuddered, feeling groggy and weakened from his wounds, but forced his eyelids back open. These niggaz wanted blood, his blood. And he wasn’t giving up a drop of it without a fight.
Swiftly, he pulled the IV from his arm and hopped out of bed. He wrapped his left hand up in a sheet and unscrewed the top half of the IV pole beside his bed. He held tightly to the lower half of the IV pole, planning to use it as a spear. He then backed himself up against the wall. His head was on a swivel as he surveyed his surroundings, searching for the first man looking to claim his life.
The shank wielding inmates formed a circle around him. He looked around at all of their ice grills wondering why they hadn’t attacked. That’s when the circle parted and a man came waltzing through. His face was partially hidden by the darkness of the room, so he had to peer closely to I.D. him. When recognition ripped through his brain, he had to blink a few times to make sure who he was seeing was actually standing before him.
“Sa...Sa...” Tiaz stammered.
“Savon, alive and in the mothafucking flesh,” the man spoke.
Tiaz was speechless, he couldn’t believe it. Chevy’s brother was standing right before his eyes.
“You done my niggaz up real nasty, but they were throwaways. I got plenty more hittas where they came from.” He swept a hand around to all of the men surrounding them. “Are you ready to die, nigga?” He pulled a sharp metal shank from the small of his back. It was about seven inches in length and had fabric wrapped around its lower half for grip. Tiaz readied himself for the fight for his life once he saw the weapon come into play. “You set me up, pussy. Left me to rot in this shithole, put cho mothafucking hands on my sister, got my nephew out here pushing poison in the streets! Ah, nigga, you gots ta go off of GP! What chu did was a violation punishable by death! And yo’ sentencing has come, bitch-nigga!”
“You ain’t saying shit, let’s dance!” Tiaz shot back with a hard face. His heart was beating fast, but it didn’t pump Kool-Aid, it pumped Gangsta Juice.
A flicker of movement at his left brought his eyes around. One of the inmates was tossing him a metal shank identical to Savon’s. He threw the IV pole down and pulled the blade down from the air. As the alarm blared in their ears and the inmates cheered them on, the two men circled one another, looking for flaws in the other’s defense. The thug’s eyes were trained on his opposition’s left side. He knew vital organs were on this side and attacking the right spot could kill a man.
With movements that looked like blurs, Savon thrust his hand forth trying to stab him in the heart. Tiaz knocked his hand aside with the hand that was wrapped in the sheet and stabbed him in the cheek, drawing a howl of pain out of him. Savon backed up and touched his cheek, fingertips coming away with blood. He avoided his rival’s next few attempts at assaulting him, moving with the agility and grace of a ballroom dancer. He was good on his feet until a slip-up cost him a bleeding shoulder.
The fight went on to the point where both men were bleeding something awful. Their faces were coated in sweat and their hearts were slamming up against the interior of their chests. Their uniforms looked like they had been hit with splashes of red wine. Droplets of blood and sweat covered the floor of the infirmary. The doors of the entrances to the infirmary rattled as the riot squad of the County jail facility tried to force their way in.
One of the men moved in for the kill, thrusting his shank forward. The other man smacked his hand away with such a force that it sent his shank flying across the room. He then delivered an upper cut that lifted him off his feet and dropped him on his back. The man bumped his head and was nearly knocked unconscious. He lay on his back looking through narrowed slits and groaning in pain. The other man straddled him and gripped his throat, squeezing it and lessening the oxygen flowing into his lungs. The man beneath him squirmed and punched at his torso, but his opponent clenched his jaws and took the blows without complaint. He then slammed his seven inch metal blade into the man’s armpit down to its handle. The blade pierced the man’s heart, killing him instantly.
His eyes bugged and his mouth dropped open. He took his last breath and his arms dropped limply beside him. At that moment the infirmary went deathly quiet as the inmates stared at the man that was victorious. All that could be heard was the blaring alarm and the rattling of the entrance doors. The victorious man lay over his dead opponent, breathing heavily and bleeding from everywhere. He felt relieved having been the one that came out on top. No one could tell him that he wasn’t completely justified. He did what he had to do to survive, so whatever punishment came for his actions, he was willing to face. It was survival of the fittest.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
The doors came flying open and the riot squad came pouring inside of the infirmary.