"Shadow Boxer"

 

“Shadow Boxer”

            Tony Hiller hadn’t stepped into the ring yet, and he already worked up quite a sweat. Before every match, he always practiced by boxing with his shadow. It was an unorthodox method of training, but it was more than his actual trainer – Mike – ever made him do. While Tony shadow-boxed, Mike just sat plumped on a chair (two sizes too small for his wide, gelatinous frame), eating the fattest sub sandwich.

            “Do you have to eat that right here, right now?” Tony belittled him, not missing a step.

            “Hey,” Mike said with a mouthful of sub. “You just focus on the fight.”

            Tony shook his head in disgust. Not once in the last eight years had he won a single match. His was currently at 20 losses and 0 wins, an embarrassing streak that he blamed on poor training and poor management.

            And speaking of management, with only a few minutes before the next (and presumably last) match of his disastrous career, his manager Sal Guido waltzed into the locker room, wearing yet another of his flashy, colorful suits. The one he wore for the evening’s event was bright orange with a lime green shirt and a cherry-red necktie. To Tony, he looked like a walking bottle of Sunny Delight.

            “Do you have to eat that in here?” Sal belittled Mike on his sandwich in the same vein as Tony, only seconds prior.

            “Why’s everybody on my butt tonight?!” Mike griped, bits of meat and lettuce decorated around his shirt collar.

            “Because it’s big enough for us all to be on,” Sal quipped. Turning his attention to Tony, he said with an air of exuberance, “How’s my prizefighter doin’ tonight? You’re lookin’ hot, kid.” He noticed how drenched Tony was. “A little too hot, if ya ask me. Are you feelin’ alright, kid?”

            Truthfully, Tony did feel sluggish. He felt like Mike should’ve, after consuming that disgusting sub sandwich. But he couldn’t allow a little flu bug stand in the way of his reputation or whatever’s left of it. “I’m fine,” he lied to his flashy manager. “Since when have you cared about my health?”

            “Ouch,” Sal clutched his chest, feigning sadness. “That hurts, kid.”

            “Stop callin’ me ‘kid’!” Tony retorted, finally breaking from his shadowboxing. “I’m thirty -six! I’m an old man compared to the youngblood I’m fightin’ out there tonight!”

            “Who? Striker?” Sal scoffed. “He’s a snot-nosed pushover. Rumor has it that tonight is his first-ever match, which makes him easy pickings. You’ll mop the floor with him.”

            Now it was Tony’s turn to scoff. “Yeah, that’s what you said about Eddie the Mangler, Butch Tyson, and that twig with the glass jaw that ended up breakin’ mine!”

            “Pushovers!” Sal underlined.

            “The only pushover here is me, Sal,” Tony huffed. “After this, I’m done.”

            “What?!” Both Sal and Mike negatively reacted to this breaking news.

            “Ya heard me. I’m done with boxing after this. I might as well take up ownin’ my own bakery in Queens like my Ma wanted me to, before I got roped into this ridiculous career choice.”

            “A bakery, huh?” Mike smirked, taking another bite. “Sounds good to me.”

            “Well, it doesn’t to me!” Sal flared. “Kid…Tony…like ya said, yer only thirty-six. Ya still a young guy. Heck, look at me. I just turned forty last week.”

            “Not helpin’, Sal,” Tony criticized.

            Whatever pitch Sal was trying to sell Tony with was cut short once they were notified that Tony’s match was about to start. Tony did his best to get himself psyched, but he was still fighting whatever this bug was – it certainly didn’t feel like the flu. He slugged down the corridor leading into the arena. Not that Mike or Sal would’ve cared; the former moved on to his second sandwich.

            It was a miracle Tony made it to the ring. By that time, the world around had turned into a spiraling blur. He felt like he was on a carousel in Coney Island on the hottest day of the city. He could barely see Striker at his corner on the other side. A twentysomething Irish with a scrawny physique, Sal wasn’t kidding about Striker looking like a pushover. But Tony knew better. In his current condition, Striker could wipe the floor with him easily.

            During the first two rounds, Striker did just that.

            Too weak to put up his hands, Tony absorbed every blow to his face worse than Robert De Niro had as Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull. The headache he had earlier worsened, and the world spun much faster. He dropped to the mat after Striker delivered the killing blow. As he laid there, his deafened ears barely able to hear the ref counting to ten, Tony felt as relieved as he was riddled in agony. After eight years, he could finally retire and become a baker.

            NO! FORGET THAT! I AIN’T DONE YET!

            Shot with a sudden burst of adrenaline, Tony bounced back on his feet as if he were seventeen years younger. He bounced up and down, ready to go another round with Striker – probably six more. Where was all this energy coming from?

            He expected the ref to come up and ask him the usual questions about where and who he was, to determine whether or not the match should continue. But all he was doing was just staring at Tony in wide-eyed astonishment, all the color on his face drained. Striker and his trainers and manager were the same, as were everyone else in the packed arena, which had suddenly fell deathly silent. Even Sal and Mike were stunned – the latter dropping his sandwich out of sheer fright.

            “What’s everybody lookin’ at?” Tony asked, his voice sounding very different, very hollowed.

            As he looked around the stunted crowd, his eyes fell on a body lying in the middle of the ring, right where he was lying a mere second ago. To his shock, he saw that body to have been his own, lying in a pool of blood and sweat that gathered on the mat. Tony Hiller had died and yet, somehow, he felt more alive than he ever did his entire life.

            He looked at himself and discovered what everyone else had before him: Tony had become a ghost of himself – a shadowy figure with glowing blue eyes, which were the only discernable feature. Everything else was just a shimmering, translucent shape of his former self.

            Needless to say, the match was canceled, following the sudden phenomenon.

            While Tony’s physical body was carted away in a body bag, his shadow form remained hidden in the locker room with Sal and Mike. As Mike did his best to barricade the door, Sal bounced off the walls with greed-induced euphoria. “This is the most incredible thing that’s ever happened! We’re gonna be rich! I can make a fortune out of the first-ever ‘Ghost Boxer’!”

            “That’s great – that’s just great, Sal,” Tony groaned. “Ya gonna turn me into some sideshow freak?!”

            “I hate to break it to ya, kid,” Sal said, “but yer a freak no matter where ya go now. In fact, ya can forget about that baker’s dream. I mean, who’s gonna wanna buy pastries from a ghost?”

            “Rub it in, why dontcha!” Tony barked.

            The loud banging from the barricaded door got more relentless. Mike could feel the reporters fighting to get inside. “I don’t know how much longer my big butt can hold ‘em off, Sal! Youse guys might wanna get outta here through the back!”

            “That’s the best idea you’ve had yer whole life, Mike!” Tony was already on his way out.

            That was until Sal said, “No! Let ‘em in, Mike. We’re ready.”

            “What?!” Tony glared at him with his new glowing eyes. “Ready for what?”

            Sal straightened his cherry-red necktie. “To introduce the world’s first-ever ‘Shadow Boxer’!”

            “I thought you were goin’ with ‘Ghost Boxer’?” Mike recalled.

            “Meh, Shadow Boxer’s got a better ring to it,” Sal settled with excitement.

            For the years that followed, Tony was the center of the entire world’s attention, advertised exactly as Sal described, “The World’s First-Ever Shadow Boxer.” His entire life – or afterlife – had become a sideshow attraction. The funeral for his broken old body was a sham to his friends and family, who distanced themselves from his ghost out of fear of exploitation. Regardless of their decision, Tony made sure most of the profits from his matches went to them.

            As a Shadow Boxer, Tony was unbeatable.

            No longer was he restrained by physical ailments or injuries.

            He could go a whole ten rounds with his opponents and not once feel as tired or beaten as they did.

            ESPN cited him as “the undisputed undead,” with every win approved by the boxing commission, much to the surprise of Tony himself. Surely, there were rules against boxing with a ghost. Of course, there was always the possibility that Sal had paid off the commission to allow his prizefighting specter in the ring.

            Several years, Tony fought and fought.

            As the years passed, so did his family and friends.

            Mike, big of an eater he was, managed to outlive even Tony’s own mother before he himself departed.

            Everyone Tony ever cared about was leaving, yet he somehow remained on Earth.

            By 2074, he was on top of the boxing world as the all-time reigning champ. There wasn’t a single fighter willing enough to challenge him in the last eight years. Tony saw no point in keeping this sideshow going any longer, but his 90-year-old manager wanted to go the distance. For that reason, he booked Tony in a match with an up-and-coming heavyweight whose name he never bothered to learn.

            Riding into the locker room on a sleek, chrome hydro-powered wheelchair, Sal continued wearing those flashy, colorful suits of his well into old age. For the evening’s event, he wore a bright purple one with a bright orange shirt and hot pink necktie. “Ya ready, champ?” he talked with spittle spraying out of his mouth, his teeth long since gone.

            Normally, Tony would commit to his usual prefight ritual of shadowboxing; but, since becoming the boxing shadow himself, all he did was stare at the blank wall. He had become alienated to the entire sport…to the entire circumstance of his being, or lack thereof. “When does it all end?” he wondered aloud.

            “It’ll never end, kid!” Sal bellowed with a cough. “Heck, you’ll be here long after I’m gone.”

            “Ya just don’t get it, Sal. I’m an immortal. There ain’t a living soul that could beat me in that ring.”

            Sal put on a big, toothless grin. “Ain’t it grand!”

            Seeing no point in convincing the senile old fool, Tony waited in the locker room until he was called to the ring. His nameless opponent bounced with the same level of energy that he had over the years, his face and body enveloped by the baggy silk robe that he entered with. Whoever this guy was, Tony pitied him – another poor schmuck that wouldn’t last three rounds with him.

            But then the great-grandson of Michael Buffer introduced him, “Standing in the other corner, making his debut as the newest competitor in the shadow-boxing sport, Terry ‘Translucent’ Lucien!”

            Removing his robe to collective gasps, Terry revealed his own shadowy form to the world. With a set of glowing brown eyes, he was a lot huskier than Tony, being the ghost of a heavyweight.

            The furious Sal, failing to do his homework on Terry, protested.

            “NO FAIR! YOUSE SAID NOTHIN’ ‘BOUT HIM BEIN’ ANOTHER GHOST! END THE MATCH! CALL IT OFF! REF! END THE MATCH!”

            Sal protested so vigorously that he ended up giving himself a stroke.

            On the contrary, this match bolstered some hope in Tony that he hadn’t felt in a very long time. No longer was he the only Shadow Boxer to ever exist in a boxing ring – neither was he the only ethereal athlete to compete in a sport or carry on “living.”

            Over the course of 50 years, other random occurrences of people’s “shadows” taking form in the wake of their deaths had been on the rise. And, much like Tony, many of them pursued careers in their immortal existence, whether it was driving a bus or teaching at a school or university. They were committing to goals that they were unable to in their mortal lives.

            Of course, Tony knew exactly what he’d do after his final boxing match.