The breath shoots out in sharp whizzes in step with crazed run.

The mind is turned off, no need for it, the receptors-muscles-body react faster than the speed of thought in this mad dash through the thickets of the jungle – dodging a branch popped athwart the way here, jumping over the trunk of a rotten windbreak there, hopping up past a treacherous bump.

He’s darting for life.

Who’s he? Forget! Only his instincts matter right now – to flee, get away, escape.

Well-trained they are, the instincts, the relay baton gift from his forerunners in the endless rotating generations of ancestors for millions upon millions years.

Those too clumsy for the race did not add to the heirloom, blocked off from incrementing the gene pool…

So, run, Nobody, run!

Shshihk!. And the trees around went rolling tops-turvy. BUT?. What?.

Thundering pulse-throbs, harsh wheeze-groans, the sinews strained to hop up for running on...

But what's this thick net? Unbreakable wrap all around? What the...?

A scolding hot surge of panic and the sound of one more run, not his, galloping ever closer, clapping moistly against the jungle soil of the rainy season...

A pair of legs pop up in his vision field. Barefoot. Brown. He’s arching his neck to see what’s above those knees…

With a thundering discharge, the blindingly black lightning crackles across the crown of his skull...

Run over…

Slow rumble at the distant invisible horizon, clusters of sounds rotate rolling nearer, some croaking of a pterodactyl... no... human speech, reaching over-slowly, the syllables drag on for years through the darkness in the closed eyes and this pain in the crown but, strangely, not in its usual spot—the back of the head...

"Wwrreerr… aamm… I-i?"

"Coming to senses, Kenty? Attaboy! Come on! Wake up! We don't have no time."

Thru the gap in the squint of the too heavy eyelids, a blur of a face cranes over, vaguely. Incipient heat in the cheeks from the restrained regular slaps in the face…

"An’... you... who… are?"

"Much closer to the matter in hand. Well done." The naked torso turns sideways to present the forearm, where, without any lacy vignettes but with self-confident simplicity, stands: “UF-1”.

"Athos? But you’re swallowed by the greenshit… UF-2 told me."

"Firstly, no shit but slime and, secondly, that has not happened yet, so my friendly advice – keep off flashforwards. And mind you firmly, since I'm still alive and you haven't met Chris yet, don't count on no virtuality, bro. Any try to buck a wall and you adorn it like a sloppily clapped sticker until they scrape you off."

"Ouch… My head's a-crack already."

"Because the habit is not there yet. It’ll develop. Just no fucking up with the back of your head again, it's against the rules. When caught, you’ll get it from Them in full. Inexorably."

"They again? And where is our Parthos?"

"But where else could he be? On the Champs-Élysées, our Parthos-boy... Have a look!" The UltraFucker Number One nodded over his shoulder at the full naked, if not for the loincloth, body stretched out in serene prostration on the sand of the floor under the blank wall in a spacious cell or, maybe, a cave.

"He also fucked up the back of his head?"

"Nopes. The guy’s got high with lilies. Now, he's in the middle of his interview with Bolon Yokte or, if lucky enough, with Awilix herself."

"What FUCKING… (ouch, my head!.)... LILIES?!."

"Stop yelling, I can hear… Water lilies, when applied properly, take you on high cooler than peyote, you know.

Welcome to Mesoamerica, dude! Okay, we’re cutting out the official inauguration... Right now they’ll bring us equipment and stuff. When it is full moon these here Mayas have an olamalistli match, never called off nor postponed. The main thing about the event is to avoid losing."

"Why us?"

"We are prisoners of war, haven’t you guessed yet? A kinda guest team.

The locals are all pros, hefty bulls and well trained for the game. The rules are simple – never let the ball touch the ground, same as at volleyball, however, no net. Besides, no touching the ball with your hand, neither is kicking allowed..."

"What the fu… what then to play with?"

"Use anything that remains there – a hip, a shoulder, may be your head, which is strongly inadvisable though because the balls are up to 7 kilos.

It’s only I can’t figure out who we are to represent – the gods or the underworld?.

With these here Maya, everything is so ritualized and anything—whether you sneeze or fart—is on the fly invested with a deep religious meaning."

"Aha! I remembered! The Maya were the guys whose calendar ended in 2012 and the worldwide crowd started to globally prepare for the end of world. But how do you know all this?"

"Slime swallowing... in lots… Damn! But who can we be for: the gods or for the underworld?"

"Much of difference?"

"Not exactly. Just to know beforehand… If the lost game was played for gods they simply cut your head and for the underworld all team’s hearts are torn out including that of the couch."

"Let me guess: are you the coach?"

"Bingo!"

There was heard a noise of approaching the entrance to this spacious cell or, maybe, cave.

Four brown-skinned Maya Indians entered, the puckered lips bulging like in mum contempt because of gemstone piercings drilled into their upper incisors.

Two of them schlepped sports equipment, the rest in their company (4 – 2 = 2) kept their personal weaponry (shapely yet massive clubs) on their shoulders.

Three headgear were flung onto the sand, three kinda aprons woven of twigs, and three what-d'you-call-them resembling the arc in Russian one-horse wagon harness (yet no shafts), however, not of wood but of stone covered with intricate carvings and emanating the poignant smell of cinnamon.

Three lengths of manila hemp rope flopped atop of everything.

"What the hell!" said Inokenty. "This garbage with feathers is passing for a helmet here? What am I to them – a feathered friend? Or is it a gay parade in kind?"

"Moron," with fatherly instructive softness explained the coach, "in first three minutes, these feathers will cushion the hits."

"And then?"

"Then you grew wiser and your head starts to jerk-dodge on its own, reflectively."

"And why the wagon arc?"

"OK. Get up. I show it just once. The apron shields your front to save your balls and stuff," explained he donning Kenty. Then he pushed the arc from behind, over the kidneys, horns thrust forward to stick out by belly sides, and fastened it with a rope fixing the twigs too. "It should sit tight over the hips, and the rope keeps the apron to protect your reproduction capability. While the feathers, you guessed it, go on top."

Outside sounded a spurring bell-ring like at a trotting race or in the Bolshoi Academic Theater.

"The last call, it's time to raise the midfield."

"UF-2? What will you set him up with? He's out and beyond."

"What with, huh?. It’s not a problem. The spike from the tail of a sea stingray, that's with what. The only question is where to prick?"

From the front tatters in his loincloth Athos drew up what looked like a dipping pen, half a finger thick, with a sharp point slightly flattened and serrated on both sides.

"Wait! Wait! It's toxic!"

"Okay, fine. I'll wipe it off with the sand."

Hurriedly poking the sea cat's spike into the sandy floor of the cell or, maybe, cavern, UF-1 went into detail:

"Now you can raise him only by bleeding… Traditionally, there are just three points to use – tongue, lips, and groin. What would you suggest?"

Not waiting for an answer, he strummed the unsuspecting lips of UF-2 prostrated in his blissful blackout. Then, making of his thumb and index finger a pincer-like tool, Athos pulled the buddy’s tongue between his inert teeth, gave it an askew doubtful glance and let it spin back.

"Yep. I agree, the groin suits best. It’s like in acupuncture – the main thing is to pin through the meridian point."

He raked aside the scraps of the loincloth from over the crotch of the limply spread-eagle body, took aim with his ray spike and, hollering “company, reveille!”, pricked in.

"MothFucShiDickAssBitcher!" screamed the up-rocketing body, the bugged eyes ready to leap from their sockets, unable to grasp what’s what.

(“Oho! How fucking fluent," thought Inokenty enviously, “Parthos did have command of this here Mesoamerican.”)

"Shut up, all! Keep at the ready!" the coach yelled, flicking a stone arc (that kinda fatty hoop cut in two) over the wobbly sacrum of Parthos and tying a rope across his front.

Then, in the blink of an eye, he also donned the standard player outfit to give the team the final exhortation:

"Let’s do it, bros! Make or mar!"

Out of step, the magnificent 3 slogged to the exit from the cave or, easily maybe, a cell...

The playing field resembled a wide corridor of sheer masonry walls roofed with the sky above.

At both ends of its 50-meter span there were additional stretches even wider, but shorter a great deal, of the same, virtually trampled out of existence, grass.

On the whole, the sports arena looked like a lying Roman One or a Ukrainian capital «i», similarly supine.

A crowd of fans raged along the edges of the six-meter-tall corridor walls, their shrieks were cut through by a discordant orchestra of pipes, fifes and flutes performing asynchronously the immortal hit:

I’d rather be a sparrow than a snake, yes I would if I only cou-ou-ould…

"And why are they all naked except for their turbans?" asked Inokenty gaping up.

"Rags and expensive jewelry were pawned at the bookmakers in betting on the outcome of this here match, but don’t gaze too much at the ladies, the usual sham of body color tights from Secretly Screwed Victoria.

And that clown in the feathers of a kquetzal-bird, in the center, the local king Kalomte, however, very soon his widow, Kaviila, will replace him becoming the queen of Chichen Itza. Still as of yet, he is the ruler and the referee."

"Burping the swallowed slime up?"

"Yep, yet just in general terms, no details. We have to learn the game tricks from the opponents, catch on along the way."

"And what’s that wheel for? Stuck out from the wall, over there, just below the fans, also of stone and with a hole. O! And over there too! In the opposite wall, another!"

"Forget it, they are not used, an architectural embellishment in memory of the Twin Heroes. Check their maps, carved in the stumps of your arc. The guy on the left once scored a ball thru the like hole and – Game Over, immediate You Win!, however, mere mortals are not up to that."

They had to shout to be heard in the hubbub of the flipping out crowd and the out of time trills of the winds on the walls.

Two Indians with a brush and bucket ran up over the clay bare ground and, offering no explanation, slap-painted the bodies of the UltraFuckers’ team into white parallel stripes, wherever wicker aprons and stone arcs allowed it.

"Fuck! Off on the wrong foot!" the coach shouted. "We are for the gods today!"

From the opposite end of the corridor, the team of local bulls, already painted in yellow and black stripes, were approaching in an imposing jog.

Without tossing, the home team began to play the ball. The referee in the expensive green-scarlet plume was clearly pulling for them from the wall...

For a starter, they showed off their dribbling, and mincing, and passing the ball (half a meter in diameter) from the thigh of a player to the thigh of another, and other, and back, and again…

Inokenty opened his mouth in fascinated admiration – it’ll take at least a score of years to train yourself for the like hip-work!

Then the center received a pass from the left, for convenience he threw it slightly above himself (with just a hip clap!) And, sharply spinning thru all 360, hit the ball with the right prong in the arc-belt whose ends stood out forward on his sides.

The cannonball of hard black rubber in a split sec grew to a planetary size, screening the entire field of view, substituting blackness for his sight… already so too familiar, so fucking painfully familiar bl-a-c-k-n-e-s-s…

Then the hands of his comrades raised Inokenty up and put him on his feet for him to stand on his shaky, weak at the knees, pins.

He saw their mouths screaming mutely, like in a silent movie.

The stands were also silent and only kept swinging... hither-th...-thither... along with the strips of a couple of muslin-transparent clouds ... there in ... in the... the sky ...

The imprints of what followed, Inokenty’s memory retains in fairly smudgy form. A kinda blurred rubber spanking, sort of.

Each hit whipped to the bone. The protective weaver work did not save, he felt the bruises heat spilling under the twigs.

Sometimes a mistily detached self-consolation surfaced, that eventually, with his head severed, bruises would stop hurting.

However, the head, as predicted by the coach, was already jerking off, reflectively, from the ball whizzing by.

At some point, he realized – that's that, he’s done with all it. He can go on no longer, that the dead feel no shame and turned his butt to the next cannonball…

Vzhzhzzz!... And the rubber ball banged the stone arcs tied to Kenty’s waist above his ass. He fell on one knee and over his shoulder followed the ball’s ricochet into the wall and then, unhurriedly rotating as if in slow motion camera, it swam up to be swallowed by the memorial hole in the stuck-out wheel. Boy, o boy! Some glorious swish shot!.

"Will you ever stop kicking?" Maya muttered with displeasure, turned her round (not rubber) bottom to him and fell asleep again.

Holding the painful groan back within his body, crushed like on the cursed coronation day in the Khodynka field, Inokenty gave off a muffled sigh:

"Hooeyhhh..."

* * *