The Legend of Smokey Joe

No one trains overnight at Hercules Boxing Gym. At night, the gym belongs to Smokey Joe. You’re all too young to remember, but this place wasn’t always a gym. Almost two decades ago, it was a biker bar called Smokey Joe’s. Beer and whiskey behind the bar. Bikers, in their leather vests and chains and sweat, filled the room. And not just any bikers, but the biggest and burliest of bikers. The trouble started when the landlord decided not to renew the lease to make room for new tenants who were willing to pay more. Well, the bar owner was not happy about that and vowed that Smokey Joe would have its revenge as he was dragged out of the building.

After that, the Hercules Boxing Gym moved into the building. The new owners decided it would keep some part of the old bar alive using what was left behind by the bikers. No one knows if it was out of nostalgia or if they were just trying to save money of supplies. They used the chains to hang the punching bags from the ceiling. They emptied the bar and restocked it with protein shakes and energy drinks. They even kept the “Smokey Joe’s” neon sign in the window, though unlit and unplugged.

For the next couple of months, everything was going fine for Hercules Boxing Gym. The gym was popular with amateurs, new professional fighters, and even those who just wanted to exercise. That all changed one night when a group of boxers decided to train overnight for a big fight coming up later in the month. Well, that night after training, they set up some cots and went to sleep. In the night, a presence filled the gym, crowding it as if an entire mob of people had just appeared inside. Looking around though, there was no one else in the gym except the men who had come to train. Then, the chains holding the bags began to rattle, though no wind blew into the gym. Everything behind the bar was tossed across the room as if an angry horde had gotten to the bottles and glasses. The neon sign lit up bright in the window, though no one was sure who had plugged it in or if anyone had plugged it in.

Finally, the sound of fists hitting meat filled the gym. Flesh striking flesh, pounding, pounding, and pounding. A sound each of the boxers was all too familiar with. They awoke the next morning to find one of their own had been beaten and battered and in need of a doctor.

Knowing the story of Smokey Joe, one of the boxers decided they should throw out everything that the owners had salvaged from the biker bar and hope that would also drive away the ghost. So, the boxers unhooked all the chains from the roof and put the punching bags on the floor. They dismantled the bar, countertop and all, piece by piece, tossing every board and nail they pulled. As they were moving the neon sign, however, it slipped and shattered on the floor.

They tried to sweep it up as best as they could, all those little bits scattered all over the floor. They must have missed a shard, perhaps just the smallest particle of glass, because, that night, the ghost of Smokey Joe returned. This time, it didn’t just beat down one boxer, but all of them that were staying in the gym after the sun had set. The gym manager found all seven men bloody and bruised the next morning and declared there would be no more overnight training until that missing piece of the neon sign was found. They say boxers still spend time everyday searching for that one piece so they can finally put Smokey Joe to rest. To this day, no one has ever found that small fragment of glass and the ghost of Smokey Joe still haunts the gym.

I wrote this story for another contest, a contest which, oddly enough, the theme was Ghost Stories. Thinking more about this story, I'm pretty sure I wrote this backwards. I distinctly remember wanting the story to end on one of those "And to this day, the place is still haunted by blah, blah blah." I think another requirement to the story was that it needed to include a neon sign, which I wanted to make an important part of the story. So I got the sign to break, but then I needed a reason for the place to have a neon sign, and a reason it would break. Then I needed to come up with a backstory for the original place to have this neon sign. I think the main issue I had with writing this story was that it feels... too far away, if that makes sense. The immediacy of the story isn't there, like it's distanced from the reader. I think that's actually why I like writing in first-person a lot more, it puts the reader closer to the story. I think that I could've changed it by making the narrator one of the boxers or something. Well, this ends Day 2 of my Halloween stories.