#knockout games

SEPTEMBER 2014

KNOCKOUT GAMES by G. Neri

Set in modern day St. Louis amidst a disturbing rash of seemingly random attacks on bystanders by a group of urban teenagers in a crew called the TKO club. The protagonist, Erica, is one of a few girls who is down with TKO, in part due to her natural skill with a video camera and her ability to make art out of the attacks.

Posts:

Book Club Discussion - We Heart YA

Q&A with G. Neri - Teen Lit Rocks

YA Diversity Book Club: KNOCKOUT GAMES by G. Neri @CarolrhodaLab #WeNeedDiverseBooks #yalitchat

In the YA Diversity Book Club, we chat about the latest YA books that celebrate diversity. Our book club includes Sandie @ Teen Lit Rocks, Kristina @ Gone Pecan (currently taking a break from the book club – we miss you Kristina!) and Kristan @ We Heart YA. Each month we’ll focus on one book with a book review (our discussion chat) and an author Q&A plus some fun bonus features.

Our…

There's this thing that's been going on in major US cities in the north called the Knockout Games. Basically, stupid ass, ghetto teenagers run around sucker punching random people walking down the street and run away. They have someone film the entire thing and then put it on YouTube. No one is safe from the Knockout Games. If you type it into YouTube, you'll see unsuspecting elderly women and even little kids in New Jersey, Philadelphia, and the DC area getting sucker punched in the head or face for absolutely no reason.

First off, let me start by saying that if you participate in the Knockout Games or even think it's funny, you're a deluded piece of shit who needs to go jump off a bridge like.....yesterday. If you punch someone in the back of the head or the temples especially, you will cause them severe brain damage or even death. Some victims (including little kids and elderly women) have reported losing their senses of hearing, sight, and smell as a result of being hit. Seriously, fuck you. You need to grow up before you end up with a bullet in your head.  

I'm 23 and I work for the DC area's transit system (WMATA/Metro) as a laborer. We've been getting a lot of snow this past week, and every time it snows or rains, I have to go drain the water from the subway tunnels, de-ice and salt the subway platforms, etc so that passengers don't slip and fall or anything. 

My days off are Sunday and Monday, but I had to work straight through both those days due to all of the snow and ice. On Sunday, I got sent to Deanwood Metro Station in the heart of DC to salt the platform and scrape any ice off. I was all alone and there weren't a lot of people around. I was minding my own business just spreading salt. Being an old Army veteran, it's instinct for me to always be aware of my surroundings. I heard footsteps and felt the vibrations. I knew someone was walking close by behind me, but I had no idea they were coming for me. Luckily, just in time, I ran out of salt and had to bend forward to reach for the latch to shut the salt machine off. As I bent forward, a fist hit my neck. Not my throat, thankfully, but like the back of my neck. It didn't hurt (I have a 19 inch neck and am pretty muscular), but it was definitely a shock and left a hell of a bruise (he was wearing a ring). 

I turned around and saw the skinniest, ghetto, little piece of shit give me a look that just screamed cowardice before he sprinted away for his life. He bumped hard into an elderly man in his sprint. Enraged, I ran after him screaming every curse word in the book, but I wasn't fast enough to catch him. This station, Deanwood Metro Station, is one of the unsafer stations since it's smack in the middle of a really bad neighborhood, but wasn't somewhere that I went to often, so I just shrugged it off. I told my boss what happened, but declined the offer to file a report with the Metro police. 

Today (Tuesday), it snowed again and I was right back out there on the subway platform de-icing the ledges and spreading salt. This time, I was at another station called Minnesota Ave Station, just one station down from Deanwood. Minnesota Ave Station is also in a pretty bad neighborhood. People get mugged for wallets, shoes, and North Face brand clothing, iPods and phones get snatched up, and gangs loiter occasionally. 

Again, I was alone, but this time, there were only 3 passengers on the entire platform besides myself. I noticed a teenager eyeing me by the escalator as he messed with his phone, but thought nothing of it. There are glass shelters all over the platform that the passengers can stand under if it's raining or whatever. As I was scraping ice off of the platform ledge and onto the train tracks, I saw in the glass shelter reflection another teenager creeping towards me with a fist and a giant Kool-Aid smile. 

I pretended not to notice, but I kept watching the reflection. The skinny, ghetto son of a bitch finally got close and took a swing, at which point I dodged his punch, grabbed and twisted his wrist, wrestled him to the ground, and just stomped. the. shit. out. of. him. He held his ribs in pain and I just kept going. I grabbed him by his hair and smashed his head into the glass shelter and just kept punching him as hard as I could in the nose, the throat, and the eyes before I let him drop, from where I punted him right in his teeth with a size 11 steel toe boot. The other teenager by the escalator that kept eyeing me was long gone. 

I hate fighting. I hate hurting people. I'm not a violent person by nature. You should only ever fight to defend yourself or someone who can't. Walking away does NOT make you a coward and you're an idiot if you ever pick a fight when the former is still an option. But the way I saw it, this ghetto piece of shit was just going to do this to someone else. He's not going to do anything with his life. Instead, he's just going to kill, steal, and rape until he ends up in jail living off of my tax dollars just like all the other thugs in DC. If anything, he should be mad at his mother for doing a crap job of raising him. I grew up poor and in a broken home too, but you don't see me sucker punching little kids and elderly women. But back to the story - and here's where shit hits the fan. 

The teenager got up and......his fucking eyeball was hanging out of his head. The wall between the top of his cheekbone and the bottom of his forehead was caved in. There was no suction holding his eyeball in and it just kinda "popped" out of his eye socket still held in by his retina and eye muscles. His face was covered in blood. He was howling in pain. The other three passengers started freaking out, but crowded around eventually. 

The Metro Special Police (SPOs) rushed to the scene and did their report while the ambulance came for the teenager. They got my sworn statement along with that of 2 other passengers who saw the whole thing and vouched for me. Luckily, I wasn't charged with anything at all and got away scott free, but I feel like crap. I knocked the dude's eye out and I can only pray that they can fix it. I wanted to teach the piece of shit a lesson, but I didn't want to ruin his life. He was so angry at me when he finally calmed down. "Fuck you! Fuck you, you fucking Arab terrorist ass bitch! Fuck you!!!" He kept crying as he screamed that. 

My boss was called to the station and the SPOs informed him of everything. The word got to the Superintendent, who also drove down to the station. He wanted to speak to me personally. He was infuriated. He said the teenager's mother is threatening to sue the department because of what I did to him. And his last words to me were "You don't ever fight back. You get away and you call the police. You better hope she doesn't sue us. Your job depends on it."