Enervate

Weaken (v)

Jomby stepped forward and flew his fist into the kid's face and felt the faint and familiar throb of flesh against his taped knuckles. The boy he was fighting was nobody. Just another set of young shoulders stalking around the neighborhood streets who someone told in a low whisper, like it was a secret, that he could make it as a fighter, that he could stay upright in a basement of some dilapidated factory with a circle of drunk men screaming and spitting for flesh and legal tender. Jomby recognized the boy's shoulders, the hope in the eyes of the attempter... they always sent these young kids to him so he could show them how things really were in the dank corners of the world. The gamblers sent the boys to Jomby because they knew Jomby would win. They knew Jomby would win because Jomby never saw his opponent's face. He didn't know their names, he didn't think of them as things with feelings or rights or souls. He just ripped them apart.
Jomby ripped them apart because in the face of every man he mangled he saw the face of a man he'd never see again. He saw the pronounced chin and small inset eyes of his former manager, the man he trusted, the man who coached him, the man who found Jomby prize fights-- the man that stole Jomby's only son from him. This manager, a closet pederast with a long record, coached him for three weeks and then ran off with Jomby's little boy one night while he waited for his father to finish training. To Jomby this man had no soul or rights or feelings. He was a sack of flesh to be found somehow and beaten.

A cheer went up from the crowd. Greasy fists filled with folded dollar bills shot up in the air. One of the fists knocked into the only light bulb in the room, causing the bulb to swing back and forth across the din, casting terrifying shadows among the screaming gamblers.
The boy was writhing on the floor, holding his face and screaming. Blood poured from the spaces between his bruised fingers. He lay there beaten, completely reduced. Jomby looked down just long enough to see the boy's legs stop kicking, to see his bloody hands fall limply from his face to the floor. Then Jomby gazed over the faces in the cirlce of men to the makeshift scoreboard written in chalk on a graffit'd wall by the entrance. The name of his opponent was illuminated for a second, revealed by chance in the path of the swinging lightbulb. In the flicker of light Jomby caught a glimpse of the name of his opponent, which was written in chalk below his. In the flicker he saw his name twice. The shouting faded from his ears as he squinted at the name, his chest imploding with every passing moment. He saw the name again. 'Jomby' beneath 'Jomby'. He shook his head.
No.
It could not be.
A thin, sick-looking man that was standing by the scoreboard raised his hand and wiped the second name from the wall, smearing the second 'Jomby' with the sweat of his fist.
Jomby screamed and ran to the boy, splayed on the floor. Too weak to stand, he fell to his knees. He gathered the body of the boy into his arms and cradled him, rocking the corpse back and forth as the circle of drunkards cursed absurdly all around him.