The Blog

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 the 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 but for the underworld all team’s hearts are torn out including that of the couch's."

"Let me guess: you’re the coach."

"Bingo!"

Some noise of movement outside was nearing the entrance to this spacious cell or, maybe, a cavern.

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-you'd-call-them resembling the arc in Russian one-horse wagon harness (yet no shafts), 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 grow 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, the bend over the kidneys, the horns thrust ahead stuck out by the sides at the navel’s level. Athos connected them with with a tightly tied rope, which girdle also fixed the twigs. "It should sit tight over the hips, and the rope keeps the apron to protect your reproductive capability. While the feathers, you guessed it, go on top."

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

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

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

"What with, huh?. It’s not a problem. The spike from a sea stingray tail, 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 nib pen, half a finger thick, with its 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, a 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 a doubtful askew glance and let spin back.

"Yep. I agree, the groin suits best. It’s like frigging 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 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 cavern or, which easily may be, a cell with the skylight opening positioned too high above, irrationally so…

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 a great deal shorter, of the same, trampled, actually, 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 today’s match, but don’t gaze too much at the ladies, they're in the usual sham of body color tights from Secretly Screwed Victoria on.

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 up the swallowed slime, you?"

"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, just 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 hear each other and be heard in the hubbub of the flipping out crowd and the out of time trills of the winds on the walls.