Gong Sau

He somehow managed to haul his broken body to its feet. Drenched with sweltering damp, he looked less now like the man I admired and more like a sagging pink mess of battered, bleeding flesh. Vomit erupted from his mouth. He fell to his knees once more.

The tramp that had beaten him to an inch of his life whipped another kick into his solar plexus, hurling him back several metres. A fine mist of blood and spew followed him, lightly dusting the floor of the church hall with faint red and bilious yellow.

It was too much for my friend Darren, his eyes wet with tears. “JUST STOP!” he roared at the tramp. “YOU MADE YOUR POINT. LET IT GO!”

The tramp paused and looked at my friend, standing shellshocked with the rest of us at the other end of the church hall.

“But my dear fellow,” he leered. “I’ve only just begun!”

***

We were lucky to have such a good teacher. Well, I say ‘teacher’... But it was a lot more informal than that. He’d dabbled in dozens of styles in his life. He did time in the army as a boxer. Rumour had it, he even went on the cobbles as a bare-knuckle fighter.

I remember the first time I saw him fight. He was manning the doors outside a rough nightclub in town, and a gang of lowlifes tried to kick off.

Punch-punch-punch-kick-punch-smash. He tore through them all like a dog rips through a newspaper.

Then, he straightened his hi-vis and went back to guarding the entrance like nothing had happened.

Until the tramp came to visit that night, it was the most brutal fight I’d ever seen. Eyesockets cracked, faces smashed into the kerb, a big man sobbing at the pain of his broken ribs.

“You alright sunshine?” he frowned as I approached.

“D-do you have a class?” I stammered.

He smiled like a big, friendly cartoon shark.

***

Our teacher managed to get to his feet once more. He staggered, half insensible, towards the tramp, and swayed as he tried to take up a fighting stance. Blood and perspiration alike dripped off him relentlessly, splattering the mat around him.

“Don’t do it!” Darren cried out. “Give up! Please!”

But he was too smashed up to hear, to even understand. His left forearm shone blackened-blue as it bulged like bruised, rotten fruit. The fracture was going to get worse. How else would he have any chance to block those attacks?

Oozing, and writhing, and popping, and snapping, the tramp entered his own stance once more, filthy lips pulled back into a sick smile.

“Please, don’t…” Darren stammered.

I felt a rumble thundering through the floor. Half the class had seen enough. And they were all charging the tramp at once.

In a daze, our master tried to stop them by raising a palm with his one good arm. But he was swaying and flopping about, barely able to stand. For all that, he still had enough sense to realise what would happen next.

***

So we joined his classes and it hurt. We trained on padded mats, wore gloves, head guards, and even the body protection Olympic TKD fighters wear. We still came out of each lesson with more bruises and muscle strain than you could shake a bokken at.

“Be my guest and half-kill yourselves and each other,” our teacher would smirk after a good session. “But don’t kill yourselves too much. I’ll lose my deposit.”

We studied hard, harder than we maybe should have. Our teacher always knew when to break up a sparring session or when to work with a student to make sure they never got left behind. Looking back, given the rigour of it all, I'm surprised how so few people quit.

In the end, of course, we all did.

One thing I remember was that time after the session when Darren somehow managed to strain his groin while kicking the heavy bag. After we’d stopped taking the piss and him telling us to fuck off, I found myself sitting on my own.

I was deep in my own thoughts, so I didn’t realise my teacher had sat down next to me.

“You’re not too traumatised at Darren literally knackering himself, are you?” he chuckled.

“No, well—I…” I began.

There was a long pause, as he sat patiently.

I just let it all come out, about life at home, school, all the things going on. He just listened.

He nodded, and understood.

“We’re always here for you. You know that? Even if we do kick you in the head sometimes,” he said.

“Well, it’s company of a sort, isn’t it?” I managed to smile.

***

Some of us watched as other classmates charged the tramp. That disgusting, wriggling body of his leapt into their midst before issuing forth a blur of disjointed kicks and vicious punches, smashing them apart.

Jaws were broken, elbows hyper-extended, sinews snapped, faces smashed, the never-ending crack of bones, the spilling of more blood.

You’d expect the weight of numbers would stop the tramp, but he broke our classmates with contemptuous ease and a cold efficiency that was horrifying.

Soon, they all lay about his feet, broken, maimed, and bleeding.

The tramp surveyed the carnage he had wrought with a big, nasty grin on his grimy face. He looked up at us, and the smile grew broader.

One of our floored, defeated friends tried to move, only for the tramp to knock him out cold with a cruel heel smash.

But then our master shuffled towards him, held up a hand, and managed to slur: “I submit.”

For the briefest moment, the tramp’s calm rippled with rage at the violence he had just been denied. The smile returned.

“Accepted,” he leered.

***

It was a pretty standard Sunday evening training session before the tramp appeared.

I sat on the mat, feeling half dead but strangely alive as the fatigue and endorphins washed over me. Nearby, Darren lay flat on his back, exhausted.

Our teacher laughed. “I hope you two are going to make it through the night?”

Somehow, we managed to stagger to our feet and help the rest of the class put away the mats.

It was then that the stench hit us. It was a sickly mixture of armpit, dirt, and ... well, something else. I was reminded of what you reek like when you don't wash for a few days. But this was worse, sweet, yet sickening. Later, I realised this was the smell of rotting meat.

We looked over to the other end of the hall, where the reek came from. Even our teacher was shocked, and until that point, he was never surprised by anything.

Because there, standing at the entrance to the hall, was a filthy tramp. He was tall, his long face grubby and scabbed over. Masses of matted hair erupting out of his scalp, top lip, and chin, like tendrils. He wore layers of ragged, rancid clothes and what looked like grimy cowboy boots. His cold eyes stared through us.

“Can I help you with something?” our teacher managed to say, while the rest of us gawped.

The tramp looked for a moment, and then, with a deep, clear voice, said, “I hear you're quite the fighter. I'd like to challenge you.” He paused for effect:

“Gong Sau.”

***

Back in the old days, when kung fu masters would fight, it was common practice for one fighter to say to another. Gong Sau: “I challenge you.” But that was a long time ago, and might well have been a myth in the first place.

***

“Look, mate,” my teacher said, laughing. “We've had a busy evening, and I'm sure you mean well, but I think it's time we all went home, and ... what are you doing?”

The tramp had removed his boots and fetid rags that passed for socks. This revealed foul, infected-looking, and calloused feet. He peeled off his coat, fleece, and two dingy t-shirts, and dropped them into a limp, dirty pile.

He walked into the centre of the hall, tied back his filthy hair, and struck a strange stance. He was leaning forward, his arms held in front, and his fingers curled like claws. His knees were bent almost all the way down. He was poised to strike.

It wasn't the smoothness of his stance that shocked us. His physique, dirty and putrid as it was, was also taut and muscular, with scarcely any sign of body fat. His skin was criss-crossed with scar tissue, some of which hinted at terrible injuries. I realised this tramp was more than what he seemed. I looked at my teacher. What was he going to do?

I saw him grimace and purse his lips. He was weighing what to do. A minute ago, this was a dirty weirdo. Now, it was clear the tramp could fight, or at least looked like he could. My teacher smiled.

“I think this is going to be a laugh,” he said, taking off his rash guard and trainers.

“Are you actually going to take him on?” Darren murmured.

“Ah, don't worry,” our teacher replied. “Let's play along and send him on his way.” With that, he strolled into the centre of the hall to meet the tramp, still in his strange stance.

I guess our teacher must have thought he was dealing with some druggie, albeit one that did lots of push-ups and steroids.

He was wrong.

My teacher struck up his usual boxer's pose, but with hands lowered in case he needed to go for the shoot. The tramp’s own stance didn’t change; he leered, still as a statue. In a flash, our teacher threw a jab at the Tramp, who took it to the face without any sign of pain or even noticing it.

My teacher was still for a moment. The tramp stared back at him, unfazed. He was still smiling.

“Look mate, I don't want to hurt you…” My teacher said, and for the first time, I heard uncertainty in his voice.

The tramp lurched forward with a kick that struck our teacher hard in the midsection. He was hurled back a few metres and, for a brief moment, was stunned. A loud gasp came from our end of the hall.

“Do you need help?” I said, as our teacher staggered to his feet.

“Nah,” he managed to say. “I've got this.”

He moved in to attack again, now keeping his guard up and throwing well-timed, swift kicks and punches at the Tramp...

...Who batted them away like they were nothing. He counterattacked, and this time our teacher was able to defend against them, but only just. The tramp was too fast, too powerful…

…and sickening to look at.

The way he moved, dislocated his joints, twisted his limbs, and swayed was, well, unnatural. It was like watching a maggot contort. The nasty, cracking sounds as his body seemed to snap and stretch itself made me want to vomit. It was the most grotesque thing I'd ever seen, and I'd grown up with the Web.

Our teacher was sodden and moving with a desperation that struck fear into me. Here was the hardest, toughest man I'd ever known, and he could barely keep up with this stranger. The ferocity and speed of the tramp overwhelmed him. He must have felt like a child in their first fight, or like my brother did when he got jumped after school, and ended up in hospital. It was the panic and dread that come when you're fighting for your life but are completely out of control. I saw it on my teacher's face, and it terrified me.

What was worse was the tramp himself. He moved like no man had any business moving. His anatomy—how could he even do that? And then there was the causal, contemptuous look on his face as he fought. I realised he was playing around with my teacher. He was holding back only to see someone I admired slowly broken down, humiliated.

For a moment, I wanted to rush in and help. I sensed the others did too. But watching him thrash our teacher, like it was a game, made us stand still, at least for now. On a certain level, I realised that the tramp was more than capable of killing every last one of us.

***

And with that throwing in of the towel, the fight stopped there and then. For a moment, it seemed time stood still, give or take the moans, gasps, and sobs of our broken classmates. My teacher shuffled back into what passed for a defensive stance. He was gasping, barely able to breathe or even stand, soaked in sweat and blood and sick, his shoulders sloped forward. He had been utterly broken in front of his students. For a moment, I thought it was the cruellest thing I'd ever witnessed.

A nasty smile crossed the tramp's face. “Yes, I guess it is getting late. I must be going. One last thing.”

He surged forward and slapped an open palm into my teacher's chest, knocking him down on his behind. A final humiliation. Warily, we moved to help our teacher to his feet. He felt clammy and floppy, like a soggy rag doll. As we did, the Tramp put his clothes and boots back on. He watched us stand our teacher up with an amused detachment.

“It was disappointing,” he quipped as he walked out the door. “I was expecting a challenge.”

“What the hell happened?” a fellow student asked. While what remained of the class helped the rest of the tramp's victims up, Darren and I guided our teacher to a bench to see how he was.

“I'm... OK. No... No. I'm not,” he sighed. I could tell by the pulsing of the veins on his temples that his heart was still pounding furiously. “I'm sorry, everyone. I shouldn't have done that. I shouldn't have shown you all up like that. I—”

Then he cried out and fell off the bench, curled up in agony. Was it a heart attack? A stroke? Did the fight push him too far?

Somebody had already called ambulances, and we could hear sirens nearing, and soon paramedics were charging into the church hall. Wide-eyed, Darren surveyed the utter carnage that awaited them.

“It’s over,” he wept, “We’re done.”

***

After what happened, the class drifted apart, or in some cases, limped. A few, like Darren, ended up in the MMA scene or other full-contact martial arts and didn't look back, or rather, didn't dare. The only way they could get past the violence was even more violence.

Others went the full woo and ended up studying the more, shall we say, 'esoteric' martial arts, forgetting how to fight at all in the process.

Most, like me, gave up altogether. Whatever love we had for martial arts, and whatever we'd achieved, seemed dirty, worthless somehow.

***

Our teacher was thrashing and screaming in agony. The paramedics gave him priority, and he was stretchered into the ambulance, gasping and spasming as they did so. Darren and I managed to ride in the ambulance with him to Casualty. All the while, he gasped and gurgled, in what looked like the worst pain ever. He was trying to scream, but his body wasn't letting him do much more than shake. Knowing what I know now, I realise why.

***

I don't claim to be much of an expert on anything, but I've done some reading. Not just on the Web, but in university archives, even the British Library, trying to find out what happened that night. I'd heard rumours of Dim Mak, the secret technique that can kill a man minutes, hours, or days after it was used. I knew enough about acupuncture and human anatomy to know that the stories aren't all false. But this...

I'm sure that old tramp is still out there, wandering about. Be careful who you pick a fight with. They may be far more dangerous—more monstrous—than you realise.

***