T.K. squeezes the trigger, slowly applying pressure to it.

Then, abruptly, he drops the barrel to the floor. The gun goes off, blowing a massive hole six inches in front of Matision. “Matision,” says T.K., “I don’t have to kill you. Know why?” Matision is crying with loud, wailing sobs. “Because you’re already dead. There’s nothing inside you with any life left in it.”

T.K. ejects his empty shell, throws the gun to the floor, turns and walks out into the brisk chilliness of the night, pushing his way through the hundreds of spectators huddled around the trailer door.

Even as T.K. disappears around a corner, a brawl breaks out in the control room as twelve fans fight for possession of the six ounce brass casing that was the last bullet fired in Killerbowl XXI.

Saturday, January 1, 2011

At the flick of a switch in an IBC office in New York City, an abandoned farmhouse in California erupts out of the ground like blood spurting from a mortal wound.

The house collapses in around itself.

A second and a third explosion reduce the structure to dust.

16

You Are the Game of Football

If you paid attention all the way through, you now know as much as I do about street football. There’s nothing else I can tell you except for making one last point.

You voted for football, you back it, you make it everything it is today. More so than with any other game ever before, you are the game of football. It’s exactly the game you want it to be, hard, fast and lusty.

Do me a favor. Keep it that way.

You do, and I guarantee you’ll never die of boredom. At least not during football season on any Sunday between 12 A.M. and midnight.

(Herb Carrerra, Run to Midnight [Miami: Gridiron Press, 2004], p. 256)

Saturday, January 1, 2011, 9:48 P.M.

“What the hell was that all about?” Eustis Conrad points his beer can in the general direction of the television set. The screen has gone blank. “Where the fuck is the rest of the God damned football game?”