Life

Wednesday, 15 December 2010
23:13

His pupils dilated and his heart pumping,
all he could see and hear was his opponent just across the piste.

All he could feel was his sweat trickling down his nose, as well as his right hand firmly gripping his blade.

The rest of the world was shut off, they didn't matter, not temporarily at least.

Score was 14-4. He was down by 10 points. It sucked, he knew, that all his training had come to naught. Perhaps, he wondered, after his victory the previous time he started not to take training seriously. Perhaps, he thought, that he was getting too old for this combat of blades. Perhaps, he thought, it just wasn't his day. But it didn't matter no shit, because amidst all the perhaps he realised that his opponent had started advancing towards him and was accelerating real quickly.

He reacted just as the opponent was halfway through his first step, with the tip of the blade pointing threateningly at his left shoulder. It was easy, he simply moved backwards with all his might and within a second the distance was opened wide again. His opponent stopped in his track, bouncing with a rhythm, already taking a step backwards in his forward-forward-back fencing tempo.

The feeling was back again, that sweat trickling down his face and his arm gripped tightly onto his blade. He was sure, though, that if he kept this up, and the timer ran out on him he'd lose. But if he made a fatal mistake, and let his opponent score even a point, he'd still lose. Either way, he was in a difficult position. He, deep down, thought he'd lose, but there was no choice. He has to go down with a fight.

With that, he came back to reality and saw that his opponent was on the first step of his 3 part tempo. He made a quick step forward, and feint towards the opponent's right shoulder. From within his mask, years of tough training allowed him to see that his opponent wasn't moving back, and very quickly the blade was twirling in an anti-clockwise manner attempting to push his blade outwards so his point could come in.

Hah! He thought. He saw that coming, and twirled his blade in an anti-clockwise V to disengage his opponent's parry. His succeeded and his point headed in in in and it touched the opponent's body.

Yet the light did not come on.

The opponent had deftly took a small step backwards- fortunately large enough just that a hit did not register. Then his point swiftly came in from outside, towards his left shoulder.

The light came on.

***

FUCK IT. WAKE UP SEBASTIAN. YOU'RE SLEEPING. SLEEPING.

I've been having these weird thoughts lately;
like,
Is any of this for real, or not?