Page 36 of Jaded

Like, normal everyday working schmucks who stumbled out of the office or off the job site and into this mosh pit from hell.

This is a citywide event.

“Killhim!” the gorilla-sized white guy on the other side of me screams out over the boards. He slaps his open palms against the battered glass. Dude’s gotta be at least three hundred pounds of solid muscle.

My third surprise of the night—for something called the Ice Out, this sure as hell ain’t hockey. The three-v-three madness that’s taken over the pearly white surface is less a sport and more a free-for-all of hitting, elbowing, tripping, punching, and . . . well, just about everything else that’s not allowed topside.

Yeah, there’s a net on each side. Yeah, the overarching goal seems to be putting the puck into the correct net, à la hockey. Most of the players seem like decent skaters and stick handlers, have clear hockey backgrounds—in a town with this much ice and snow, I guess it’s kind of expected—but there’s a definite air of hackery over finesse.

None of these guys are Dingoes players, if you catch my drift.

And whereas the hockey I’m used to has lines and refs and you know, general rules, this carries none of that formality or restriction.

It is, if I may again be blunt, brutal insanity.

Kinda fits the vibe of everything else in this violent, illegal betting den, eh?

A fist flies, blood splatters the ice. The curve of a blade tangles into a skate, sending the skater flying face first into the side of the net. More blood. A shoulder plows into a spine in a very illegal hit from behind. The recipient slams against the boards, then to his knees, fails to stand.

I wince. Holyow.

The crowdlovesit. Like, eats it up and begs for more.

“Get the fuck off the ice!” the wiry dude beside me roars, spittle flecking the side of my face even as his elbow narrowly misses my ribcage. It’s a good thing I’m quick. “You lose! Get off!”

“Get off!” his girlfriend echoes in a ragged, cigarette-torn voice.

“Get! Off!” the crowd agrees in a unanimous roar, like a savage beast of a thousand voices. “Get! Off! Get! Off!”

The full-strength team’s shouting now too. Pointing their gloved hands towards the door, and one of them skates forward like he’s going to try to start something.

The crowd explodes.

I wince again, because apparently I—pro hockey player and seasoned veteran of more than one fight—am soft and spineless compared to these fools. When I tell you this crowdlovesthe violence . . . Man. There’s a skinny blond frat-boy in a rumpled suit next to the glass literally screaming for blood.

More fists fly. More blood splatters. And the losing team’s practically shoved bodily from the ice and back onto the rubber matting. Which I guess leaves them at the mercy of the crowd.

More shouting. Spitting. Fist-waving. Money changing hands. I stumble backwards away from the door as several large, bruisery-type men surge forward to encircle the skaters. I don’t know if it’s to protect them or ensure they don’t try to get back on.

Are there like,workersin this madness?

The injured player’s still face down on the ice. No loyalty amongst losers, eh? Though I get the feeling the masked skaters in front of me don’t know any more about each other’s identities than I do.

“Holy . . .” The words die on my tongue. A couple of the bruisery guys climb onto the ice to drag the injured man off. At the very least, he seems awake and somewhat coherent.

Three new skaters take the stage in the wake of the losers. Just like that, three new bodies to bash each other around on the ice. No rest for the wicked, I guess.

Holy Lord, this is brutal.

The game begins again. The previous winners take on a new challenge, and these three newbies are just that. Well. One of them, number Sixty-Three, is complete garbage from the instant he sets foot on the ice.

Like, you can totally tell he was the guy who never learned how to skate ’cause he spent so much time in the penalty box. Not even an enforcer, just an absolute hack.

He goes for the jugular right away. Slashing, hacking, throwing elbows and fists. I don’t know that he even knows where the puck is. Does he realize there’s a puck?

The second guy is your average Joe, middle-rung skater—not a hack, but no superstar either. Solid second-liner, maybe a PKer.

The third?

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