Entering The Ring - Part 1
#1 of Entering The Ring
Part one of seven of a story I wrote in a few days (apologies if that is obvious).
Dan sat on the bench again - it was his tenth time here and he'd become something of a prize to be won now.
Tyler had been following the matches ever since he first saw the bear on the bench all those matches ago.
Dan scanned the crowd and squinted through the bright stadium lighting to see how packed it was. It was nearly full now. They would close the gates soon - it was practically standing room only and they were sure to be turning people away on the gate.
He arched a little, cracking parts of his spine as he went and sighing in relief, the tight red singlet stretching over his bear body with his every move. Mike, who was up ahead of him, had been there only four times now, but that was considered to be a long time in the Arena. That was two months ago, practically. Dan looked him over, a tall timber wolf with grey fur, handsome and generously built. His singlet was blue with a single white stripe down one side and showed his figure superbly. Dan wished he was as tall and handsome, and his first time in what had become his costume was awkward - he felt a little bit dumpy.
The Arena had been going for decades now, a strangely popular form of entertainment for a society dominated by males. Women had become scarce and in order to prevent civil disorder and help the distribution of wealth, men had been encouraged to join.
You had two options: option one was to join as a Contender and the second was to become a Gladiator. Gladiators effectively sold themselves to the game. They would leave their families and nominate a trustee who would receive a lump of money once they had been defeated. For each match the Gladiator won, their fee would double. A good Gladiator would be a challenge too good to refuse.
Contenders would pay the fee to fight the Gladiator and if they lost, the fee would double for the next round. If they won, they got to keep the Gladiator. Yes, it was slavery, but there were strict rules about it - anyone caught mistreating their winnings would be stripped of all their assets, the gladiator would return to their family and the contender incarcerated. The system worked well.
A gladiator would be worth five hundred shillings to fight for the first time. Dan was about to enter his tenth battle - the fee to fight him tonight was now 256,000 shillings - four times the typical annual salary for most men.
Gladiators would be treated well in the Arena and once they left in the care of their victor, they would also be guaranteed a good life. Some became farm workers, others cooks or cleaners, and some became lovers.
Some of the contenders were regulars - collecting men from the Arena like a living trophy cabinet, and they would encourage them to keep their physique and help them train for more battles to collect yet more trophies. For them, the system worked very well.
Dan's family had been poor. Very poor. They struggled to feed themselves and he had debated the matter over and over in his head. On his 21st birthday, he left the family home with just the clothes on his back and walked twelve hours into the city to sign up. He left behind his mother - a widow - and his three brothers. The oldest had desperately courted a girl he worked with, the other two would help Dan in the garden, cook or repair the very dilapidated house.
His history ran through his head all the time when he was on the bench. And each fortnight, he had more time to mull it over until he was the last one each night.
He thought about the hard labour of maintaining the garden, working shirtless in the hot, sweaty summer months, with only his little brothers for company. They were 18 and 17 and not interested in work - they would often fool around and create more things for Dan to do. He would often end up carrying them back into the house and telling them to prepare the kitchen.
What little money his elder brother brought in helped supplement the garden produce. But of the four of them, the labour had helped him grow lean and strong. His long walks to the mill and back had given him strong stamina, and manually tilling their small field had made him muscular and stout.
He wasn't tall, though. Not quite having enough food when he was younger had stunted him a little and he stood a full head shorter than most of the Contenders he had faced in the past 20 weeks. And yet, each time he had surprised them with his strength, agility or his ability to squeeze free of almost any grasp.
Mike touched Dan on the shoulder, and he looked up into his eyes, smiling. Wordlessly, Mike turned away and padded to the steps up into the ring itself, tail swishing over his tightly worn singlet. As he ascended the stairs, he threw a glance to Dan and gave him a little wink. Dan knew his timber wolf roommate would be coming back to join him that evening.
As the weeks rolled past, inexperienced boys were won away by the Contenders; the repeat winners would be moved together. Mike had moved in to Dan's room the previous fortnight and they had become very close friends quickly. They had similar backgrounds and upbringings and their goals were the same. Their families needed to be fed and clothed and the best way to do that was to enter the Arena.
Impatiently he had watched the first few matches with little interest. They were young bloods, entering the competition for all the wrong reasons. They weren't prepared and they were desperate and were defeated quickly by moderately well off men that needed a housekeeper or plaything. You could always tell the ones that were there for a score; they would touch themselves frequently as they waited for their match. Their hungry grimaces were lurid and vile as they were announced the winner and the collar of ownership was attached to their necks. Those poor boys would not take long to crack under their new masters. This was a modern form of slavery and it bothered no one.
Tyler wasn't interested in any of that. Twenty weeks past, a friend of his mother had dragged him to the Arena so that he could watch him win himself a new housekeeper. He felt obliged to maintain these awkward social contacts despite his mother having passed away many years ago.
He was something of an outcast, a man he didn't know had sired him, his mother had treated him well, but she never took a husband. Many men wanted her hand in marriage, but she declined every advance.
When Tyler's mother was dying from a heart defect, it had been slow and painful to watch her wasting away. A week after her death, a man had appeared at the door from the Arena's administrative bureau. His neat suit and freshly polished shoes looked out of place in the disarray of his home. Lots of his mother's clothes and possessions were half packed away and he stood there with an envelope.
He explained that he had become the trustee of a recently defeated Guardian's winnings. It had been his father - for whatever reason, he had not come to his family at any time, except when Tyler had most needed something. The representative explained that it was quite something to behold - his father had been defeated in his fourteenth match. The cheque he held in his hand read 4,096,000 shillings.
He hadn't really known what to do with the money - he was a fairly modest cat, plain in appearance and had kept his winnings a huge secret. He didn't want to become the target of sudden friendships or a rare woman to enter his life. He was scared of it. And so he kept up the pretence of being a modest young tiger with a small inheritance. He would keep up appearances. He would claim he was going to work, but instead he would travel to the next town over and spend hours in the gym. Over the years, he built a finely sculpted body, his tall frame made a perfect base to build himself out from.
The night his late mother's friend had been resolutely trounced by the pretty young thing he'd hoped to get as a new housekeeper, he saw the new entry in the next fight.
Gladiator 22-Z-441.
Suddenly, Tyler understood why he'd allowed himself to be single. Despite the scarcity of females these days, he had never really had a problem with that - other guys had done desperate things to win the hearts of girls, often entering the Arena to prove their manliness. There were a few here tonight as Contenders, their eyes set on the pocket of females with the best seats in the house. Had he wanted one himself, he would only have to open his wallet and it would only be a matter of time before they started to make themselves known. They wouldn't be what he wanted, but they would have been a wife.
But the bear had caught his eye. Although he was nervous, he held himself confidently, almost defiant in his stature. You could see he wanted to be in it for the long haul - there was a lot at stake for him. Gladiator 22-Z-441.
Every fortnight, Tyler had secured himself a seat close to the ring, waiting to see his favourite. The stout little bear had proven himself each night, to riotous applause from the audience - they had a plucky underdog to cheer for and the crowds had become tough to fight for places. Tyler had resorted to bribes to get in each night - wanting to see the little bear in action - completely mesmerised, he knew he was smitten.
His attention started to rise up when the Gladiator before 22-Z-441 was up. The striped feline sat more upright as he watched the wolf confidently struggle with a challenger - a slow moving bison, he must have been very strong but he was predictable. The lithe, tall wolf soon had him exhausted just by dodging his charges.
Once or twice, the bison had managed to grab the strap or leg of the Gladiator's singlet, but it had been to no avail. Eventually, the wolf had lost his patience and made an elegant feint, spun around and dug his knee into the small of the larger animal's back and brought him down quickly to the matting.
Once he was down, the wolf straddled the small of the bison's back and took his arm behind it and pushed it uncomfortably upwards. The tightness of the suit really accentuated the curve of the grey wolf's behind, and the colour really helped it shine. Tyler had grown very fond of tight lycra in the past 20 weeks and he often found it somewhat hard to concentrate on the matches as he became more hooked. He had bought a few singlets for himself and had begun wearing them to the gym for his daily training, loving how supporting the tight material was on his body and how much it showed off his figure and 'assets'.
Every evening, on his return from his workout, he would sit alone in his home, mentally drifting towards the bear in the tight red singlet and fantasise about wrestling him. This wrestling wouldn't be in the Arena, but on his bed, where he and 22-Z-441 would press their bodies close and best one another, paws wandering dangerously as they grappled and pinned each other down; exploring the bodies cased in a material that left so little the imagination.
And, like every evening, Tyler would be so infatuated by his fantasies of the little bear in the red lycra, that it would not be long before he was stroking himself through his sweaty singlet, and then not long after that, he would be left panting and spent, having stained his workout gear. Each night he would return to his bed alone and naked, yearning for the bear to cuddle and spoon with.
Tyler snapped himself back into the room and crossed his legs, trying to hide the bulge in his trousers and patiently waited for the administrative issues of the previous match to be moved out of the way. He leaned forward in expectation.