The BELLYPUNCHER

Yes, that's what I do. I'm a specialist. If you want to have your ex-boyfriend or cheating husband beat up, you hire me.

Bellypunches? They're my specialty. First, it not only beats your man, it humiliates him. Makes him moan and belly-ache and lose his breath and roll on the floor holding his stomach. Second, it leaves no marks, no bruises, breaks no bones. No physical evidence. That helps me stay out of jail.

I'm a good-sized man, and I learned how to handle my fists before I was 12. I didn't go out of my way to show it off, but if push came to shove I knew what to do. And I noticed that, when I did hammer some poor wimp who deserved it, the sight of it seemed to fascinate certain girls.

My current client had been one of them. She had seen me deliver a beat-down when I was right out of high school. The kid had been caught peeping-tom style outside the girls' bathroom at the campground where everyone hung out and I worked as a lifeguard.

A group of sophomores had spotted him, and as he ran off he knocked one of them down. She happened to be the kid sister of my best friend, and I saw the whole thing and ran after the boy and tackled him easily. We were beyond the trees, but just outside the camp clearing, and the girls had followed me after him.

I stood him up by his T-shirt and shoved him hard back against the tree. I heard him huff out his breath from the shock of the impact, but just to be sure I stepped up and mashed my fist into his belly.

I felt his gut squirm inside and he gave up his remaining wind with a softbellied OOF!!

The girls formed a semi-circle around the scene and taunted him and cheered me on while I hooked the back of his T-shirt up over a stump of broken branch, leaving him with feet just touching the dirt, and gave him a two-fisted belly-whomping that crushed his pride and his stomach.

Some of the girls were quite vocal, but I don't remember Carla saying anything. But she must have remembered. Now, six years later, she wanted revenge on a boyfriend who had texted lurid pictures of her to his friends. She was still with him -- planned to marry him, she told me -- but she wanted to see him as hurt and humiliated as she felt. So she looked me up.

"You understand, I am not going to bust up his face," I told her.

"I know," she said almost before I finished. "I want you to do it like you did it to that perv at the campground. Right in the belly. And don't stop till he's down and won't get up."

For Carla, I would have done it for free. But you don't feed yourself that way. She paid, and I told her what I needed, and she said she would arrange it.

"OK if Emily comes?" I asked her.

"Sure, the more the merrier," she said. But I knew she disliked my girlfriend, and the scorn was returned. "She never wants to miss a good beat-down," I explained.

"Well, you show her one and you'll make two women happy," Carla said as she opened the door. She turned then and paused and smiled at me. "This is going to be so hot," she said.

That weekend I'm out in the hot sun, right back at the old campground, right where Carla first saw me work my fists out on another boy's belly. It was no trick for her to lure her man out there, and I was waiting. I pretended to be an addled drunk, I put the mash on Carla, she burst out in huffy and demanded that her dishrag boyfriend defend her and teach me a lesson. I have to hand it to her, the girl can act.

I had the time to work him over nice and slow. No hurry, no need to hang him up on a branch and use his belly as my punching bag. I let him challenge me, gave him every indication to think he would beat me, and even let him knock me down a few times.

The third time, when he walked up to me on my knees with a contemptible arrogance, I shoved my fist hard into his bare stomach.

He folded right over my arm with a rotund "OUPH!!" and stayed doubled up even after I pulled my fist out of his gut. His hands were buried up under his jackknifed body, probably trying to pick his stomach out of his lungs. He turned away from me and staggered toward Carla and Emily, who both laughed at him.

I actually hadn't hit him that hard. He just couldn't take it. But I kept up the drunk act and let him think that was just a lucky shot. It took him a minute but he put himself back together and came out at me looking meaner than ever.

I ducked a few limp haymakers from him, and when I knew he was going to draw back for another, I stepped forward in pace with him and punched him right smack in the belly.

He never threw that punch. He just kept stepping back, backward, arms flailing and a loud "UUUUUUHHH!!!" trailing from his mouth.

[to be continued]