Chapter 1
The end was coming.
As every eye refused to blink, they stared on knowing a winner would soon be called. A small room, only large enough to appear to fit twenty people, packed its walls with fifty men and women. It was a hell of a fight. Blood covered the floor as the two combatants stared down one final time. Their lips curled up as they prepared for the final lunge. What should have been well loved, man’s best friend, had been reduced to nothing more than mire blood sport entertainment. The voices of the people continued to scream aloud and demand a victor. They dogs were sick and tired of the constant battle they were forced to step in, yet it was the only freedom they got when finally released from their cages. One man however was glued to the final battle. After all, his dog Mutt was in it.
Mutt had seen better days, as well, put down bigger dogs than the one he faced. Yet the battle wounds were catching up to him. A large portion of his side was torn, he missed an whole ear and a tail now. “Don’t give up you son of a bitch, I got everything riding on you!”
Neither dog had to go into a final charge. Mutt’s legs shook as he collapsed in the middle of the blood pit. He wasn’t getting up. The other dog went in for the kill, a mere yelp came from Mutt, as the room cheered aloud.
They had a new champion.
The owner gladly came into the middle of the pit, giving the dog its first taste of affection. Yet it was short lived as he dragged it over to the vet to have his wounds stitched up and a shot for good measure. As the crowd began to leave, those who knew RJ well approached and paid their respects to him. “He was a good fight dog”
“There’s plenty more, that’s what pounds and puppy mills are for!” said another.
There was no amount of encouraging words that would snap RJ from his depressed rut. Mutt was his last fight dog. But not all was lost, RJ still had money, after all, the dogfights were held in a secret sub basement in his house. No sound could escape nor could anyone see what went on in the hidden chamber. He trained many dogs this way, however, his tactics proved to be his downfall.
RJ was a filthy obese man, he refused to work for anyone but himself. He was introduced to dog fighting from a friend, all he had to do was make a dog mad enough that it would rip into the first thing it sees. It was his specialty to torment animals, he had years of practice as a boy.
He couldn’t think of that now. After the final bout of the night, when all was said and done, Mutt was dead and the crowd had gone, RJ didn’t bother to stick around to watch his clean-up crew remove the evidence of the dogfight from his basement arena. RJ didn’t know where Mutt’s carcass would end up: all he knew was that the guys would get the job done. They always made certain that no evidence of illegal dogfighting could ever be traced back to him. His house was old and yet it kept many secrets. The basement room was the selling point for him. Hidden out of sight and mind, it became the safest venue to run a fight
He sat alone for a while until he could no longer wait. He grabbed the hose and began to wash away the blood on the floors and walls. All the while, he thought over his next move. Mutt was dead and he had no other dog waiting in the wings to replace him. By tomorrow he would have to have another ready to fight, after all, everyone will be back in two week, with deeper pockets.
However, for RJ, the loss of a prize fight dog would be nothing compared to wait awaited him.
The next day, down to his last few hundred dollars, RJ began to scour around town for a dog to replace Mutt. He immediately visited all of the animal sanctuaries, yet though he knew he could probably not adopt from the same shelter twice. He had gone to one before, yet when the dog didn’t make it through its first fight and went a second time, people began to suspect something. One young girl questioned him about the dog he adopted, wondering how it was doing. “We were lucky Rofus found a home, or he would have been put down. How is he doing? Does he still chase his tail?” she asked.
RJ would try and bullshit his way through the questioning, making up parts that the dog would run after his own shadow if given the chance. Yet there was one thing that he said that made the girl slip up. “He hates cats though” the comment only came out after he thought of the first time ‘Rofus’ was placed into the pit. He tore into a bunch of cats as a show starter.
The girl however stared at him. “That doesn’t sound like him, he loved the cats when he was here,” She showed the photo of the dog curled up with a bunch of kittens around him. Since then, she began to smell a rat named RJ.
Without taking a chance, he never returned. Worst yet, she made calls around the city to warn them of him. Suspecting he had done something with the dog, only to learn that he had gone to the other shelters in the past and always walked out with a large dog.
He even went so far as checking local pet stores, even though most of the offerings there were the currently fashionable tiny dogs that would only be useful to him as bait. There were simply no appropriate dogs to be found. Worst of all, his usual sources for finding good fighters had gone silent. His best friend since high school, Vinnie, wasn’t answering his cell phone.
In the days that followed, RJ was scheduled to host another fight. His house had a hidden sub-basement, perfect for holding his illegal sporting events. But when he opened his doors for the occasion, only four other people showed up, and none of them brought dogs with them. Odd thing was, his cleaning crew didn’t show up, either. They usually made a killing from the fights, and it wasn’t like any of them not to appear or even to be late for an event. Either way, the fight had to be called off due to lack of entertainment.
In a week’s time, there was still no sign of his usual clients, his cleaning crew or even any other fight breeders. Nonetheless, RJ always knew where to go to find some competition, his only problem was getting a dog that could fight for him.
