Sick Heart: A Dark MMA Fighter Romance

A topside is a factory. And right now, the topside roof sits higher than the command center of the Bull of Light. So that’s where all the important people will be watching the fight.

But the fight itself will take place on the Bull of Light’s helicopter platform, which extends slightly outward over the side of the ship’s hull. That’s where I will be too.

Bexxie leads me below deck. I don’t even know where we’re going, but she seems to, so I don’t worry about it. We end up in a compartment that must be a salon, where a team of people are waiting to turn me into something else.

“I’m gonna stay with you,” Bexxie announces. “We’ll have mani-pedis together like the old days.” Then she pouts. “I hope you don’t leave. I don’t want you to leave, Anya.”

I don’t have any say in that—and neither does she—so I don’t encourage this line of thinking. I just sit down, close my eyes, and enjoy the moment.

I’m good at that.

And so is Bexxie.

I don’t get to choose my polish. I don’t get any say in how I look tonight. But Bexxie is more than satisfied with her gold and silver nails and toes.

After the mani-pedis are finished, I am directed to a flat table where they will wax me.

“I’ll see you when it’s over, OK?” Bexxie’s bright blue-green eyes look at me with fear and I nod. “OK,” she says. Then, without another word, she turns and walks out just as the team of body painters walks in.

The stylists undress me and point to the table. I lie down on it and open my legs.

I’ve never been Pavo’s prize before, but I’ve watched two of his fights.

This thought makes me pause and wonder where his other girls are. He must have a harem of them by now as well. And children. How many children must he have? Dozens, maybe. He’s been fighting for girls since he was twelve. Even if only half of them had two babies in those dozen years, that number is in the upper twenties. But it’s not likely that they haven’t been pregnant every other year. Some of the earlier prizes might not even be around anymore. Hell, even his oldest children are probably dead by now. Used up and thrown out.

And if he had boys, those boys started training for the fight ring by the time they were two or three. Most of his sons are probably dead, or they will be soon.

Cort, too, must have dozens of slave girls somewhere. He’s been in more fights than any other man in the history of this sport. When he was younger, his father used to make him fight three or four times a year.

I hiss when they rip the strips of wax off between my legs. But that is a small pain and it’s not enough to make me forget that I’m not really a prize, am I?

God knows, neither of them needs another girl.

They are here for their continued existence. They are fighting for their lives, they are not fighting for me.

The continued waxing makes me wince and hiss over and over. But soon that part is finished and when I get up off the table, the body painters immediately begin. I don’t know how they will decorate me. I don’t actually care. Not one decision about my life is mine to make.

I don’t know exactly what Cort and Pavo will look like tonight, but I’ve seen pictures in Ring of Fire.

If a fighter has tattoos, they like to paint those in something that glows. If they don’t, they make the designs up. The rest of their body is painted black. So when they are fighting in the dark, you can only see the glowing tattoos or symbols.

They reduce us to non-humans as often as possible.

How else would they live with themselves?

My body will be painted white with dozens of unsettling symbols in red. I don’t know what the symbols mean—slave girls don’t need to know that kind of stuff. But I do know they have meaning.

I will be the opposite of the men. My symbols will be invisible in the dark—the red will not glow. But the white will.

It’s intriguing and I almost wish I could watch myself from a distance. See me the way everyone else will. Almost like an out-of-body experience.

I keep still as they airbrush my skin until it has a pearl shimmer to it. I reposition when they ask me to, lifting a leg or an arm. And then, when that paint is dry, the artists begin creating the designs.

Spirals and spinning circles. Black suns and pyramid eyes. Arrows pointing to chaos. Stars, and pentagrams, and upside-down crosses.

To honor Pavo, they paint a snake eating its own tail around my right breast.

To honor Cort, they make one side of my face into a skull. My eye is outlined in deep black. My cheek becomes a jawbone showing teeth.