The Brawl (New Fiction)

Ron Koppelberger

The Brawl

The whimsy of a good brawl, the Zodiac Bar and Grill sported a glossy burnished dance floor and rainbow strobe lights, flashy, loud and in a desolate abandon. Mirabel Zither provided the impetuous for the brawl. Tall, auburn haired and in skin tight spandex she provoked sensual thoughts of Eden and sustenance the requited romancer found to be utterly enthralling. Rapture incarnate, a kiss in the shallow pond of lukewarm spit, she was the essence of ethereal allure.
The brawl began with an ambiguous thump. Gene Perkins fell to the floor in a paralytic heap; his neck was broken and he was bleeding from the ears. The brawl continued unabated. The slavering Sledge Rankin sailed through the air and across the bar, smashing head first into the giant glass plate mosaic of beer logos. A liver of glass fell with a sickening crunch, merging with Sledges flesh; he was immediately impaled to the wooden floorboards. The bar emptied in hallmark jumbles of leather and flesh. Mirabel looked on in silent appreciation as the patrons filed out the door. Sipping a whiskey sour and cinnamon stick stir, she followed the discourse of the final battle. Two men, enthralled by Mirabel to the point of murder, to the point of deranged desire and the sweet sugar of the auburn haired goddess, slashed and stabbed, kicked and punched until a bloody exhaustion told the conclusion.
They collapsed simultaneously and in perfect symmetry. A dance in pathos she thought, a grand ball, a mandate in hungry glimpses of heaven. The temptress in scarlet and spandex grinned in dusty moted malevolence as the ethereal vapors of the dead fulfilled her thirst. Willful in wiles of secret desolation she left the bar leaving a tiny bouquet of rosebuds in her wake.