Enforcer

Ivan sat motionless, his head buried in his hands. The coach’s latest tirade still echoed in his ears, leaving him adrift in a sea of insecurity.

Opportunities like this—playing for the 7th Street Rangers—didn’t come often for someone like Ivan. The team was composed almost entirely of hoomans, a species that usually treated his kind with a sort of amused, distant condescension. Yet, for some reason, they had approached him while he was buying his favorite snack: lightly irradiated shellfish. One of them had witnessed Ivan defending his brood from a pack of hunting Necralites.

“We need an enforcer,” they had told him, speaking slowly as if to a child. When Ivan asked what that meant, they simply exchanged knowing glances and flashed wide, indulgent grins. “Just do what you did here, big guy,” they said, patting his shoulder dismissively while gesturing toward the pile of mangled, grayish corpses littering the street corner. Ivan had agreed.

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Now, sitting on the bench, his mind raced to solve the mystery of his failure. He idly lowered his hands and began counting on his fingers the number of opposing skaters he had crushed and maimed.

Suddenly, a realization struck him. The coach had explicitly told him to “bash the players in the red suits.” And Ivan had complied. He had worked himself into a primal fury, descending upon anything and everything red.

Was it really his fault that one of the severed limbs had sprayed the tiny referee, soaking his uniform in crimson? The game had screeched to a halt immediately after, and Ivan had been shoved back to the sidelines by the other hoomans, who sighed and shook their heads as if he’d simply spilled a drink.

He had followed the instructions to the letter. Perhaps, he mused, if the coach would stop screaming and start providing more specific directions, Ivan might actually succeed.