“It was nice playing with you, man,” Tomas Satoransky said to Otto Porter, clasping hands and hugging his teammate who had just gotten traded.
“Same,” Otto said. “I’m not gonna miss the locker room drama, though,” he continued with a laugh. “The constant fighting between Brad and John was getting to me.”
Right at that moment, John Wall, dressed in a suit, hobbled slowly up to them. “I can’t believe they traded you, dude,” he told Otto. “I thought for sure that the would have traded KNOWN LOCKER ROOM CANCER BRADLEY BEAL.” He raised his voice for the last part of the sentence to ensure that Bradley, who was on the other side of the locker room, would hear.
Bradley did hear. “AT LEAST TEAMS WANT ME. NOBODY WANTS BROKEN-DOWN JOHN WALL WITH NO LEG FUNCTION!” he yelled in response as he ran over to John to try to tackle him. John tried to move out of the way, but his ruptured Achilles tendon meant that he had lost any ability to make quick movements, and he was tackled easily.
“Not again,” Otto whined as both he and Tomas ducked out of the way. Bradley started beating John in the face with his fists as John struggled feebly. This was normal fighting procedure for them, but things got severely more intense when Bradley withdrew a chef’s knife from his shorts pocket.
Remembering coach Brook’s directive to him to try to keep the locker room under control, Tomas tried to defuse the situation. “Put the knife away, Brad,” he said from a far enough distance away where he was in no danger of getting stabbed. “I could call the police.”
“You ain’t calling any police,” Bradley snarled, brandishing the knife dangerously at Tomas. “There’s no law that says a little bit of impromptu surgery between friends isn’t legal.”
“Impromptu what?” Tomas asked before realization dawned on him. “Wait. No. No way.”
Bradley was undeterred by Tomas’ impotent protestations. With John underneath him, beaten into submission, he grabbed the pants leg on his uninjured foot and pulled it up. “If you’re going to rupture one Achilles tendon, might as well rupture the other!”
“They’re gonna trade you next…” John moaned, trying and failing to wrench his leg away from Bradley’s grasp.
“Yeah, and you’re gonna be what they call an injury exception,” Bradley replied, positioning his knife against the tendon. When he began to saw violently on it with the sharp blade, John screamed in pain. This only served to encourage Bradley, who chopped at John’s Achilles with redoubled intensity.
Otto had ran off somewhere, likely never to be seen again. Tomas was just preparing to dial 911 on his phone when Markieff Morris came up to him. “Man, you tired of these fights?” Markieff asked, speaking louder than normal to be heard over John’s anguished shrieks.
“Kinda, yeah,” Tomas answered, looking up from his phone.
“Well, they ain’t my problem anymore, ’cause I just got traded, but I’m gonna do all y’all a favor.”
Thinking that Markieff was planning to join in the fight, which was very one-sided at this point, Tomas replied, “Watch out, Brad has a knife and he’s, uh, he’s not afraid to use it.” He tried to avert his eyes from the sizable (and growing) pool of blood on the locker room floor that had resulted from Bradley’s “surgery”.
Markieff laughed. “His little toy is no match for this,” he said, pulling out a hand grenade from his pocket.
Tomas stepped back. “Is that thing live?” he asked in disbelief.
Pulling the pin on the grenade, Markieff answered dramatically, “It is now.” Standing safely back from the two players on the floor, one of which had passed out from blood loss and the other of which was gloating about “permanently maiming the overpaid bum”, Markieff tossed the grenade at them.
Despairing that locker-room chemistry had reached an all-time low, Tomas turned and ran away from the scene. However, he was knocked off his feet by a large explosion from behind him. Now it was Bradley’s screams that were echoing in the locker room, accompanied by Markieff’s crazed laughter. Taking a quick glance at the scene, he saw a huge hole in the floor with singed ceiling tiles falling into it. Not caring to see any more carnage, he looked forward again and resumed running, wondering if he could be the one to be traded next.