TECHNICOLOR MIDGETS

Do you remember those ball pits, like they had in places like Chuck E. Cheese’s?  You know, it was an open pit filled about 3 to 4 feet deep with hollow plastic colored balls.  You’d jump in through some orifice suspended above the pit and sift around amongst the balls, pretending to drown in the balls (not meant to be a joke but still funny), swimming in the pit, hiding from your friends, and just generally carrying on.  Well, as fun as it was…..there’s a dark side to the ball pit.  About 2 years ago I was part of a South American country to country tour promoting my Exotic Cheese Company (it’s a side project I’m doing just for fun).  My partner, Carlos, and I had just wrapped up a long day of meet and greets with the local businesses in the area and decided we wanted to go out and blow off some steam. 

Of course, this isn’t the first time I’d been to Ecuador so I wasn’t looking for the usual tourist spots…I wanted the seedy underbelly; the good stuff.  So, Carlos and I go to this spot he knows about.  He says to me “El Rusto, have chu ever been to a cock fight?”  [ME] “I would ask which version of the noun COCK you are referring to, but in either case the answer would be YES.”  [Carlos] “Well, El Rusto, chu have no seen nussing yet den, I haf for chu something muy especial!”  [ME]”Oh really, well Carlos, you have me intrigued; lead the way.”  After a short period of walking through corrugated steel walled corridors that flowed through the various shanties we came upon a rusty steel door. It had been painted a brilliant red once, long ago, but was now faded and corroded, and you could hear faint howling and garbled sounds just beyond it.  [Carlos] “This chit makes eh cock fight seem like a tea time partee wit chur leetle niece.”  Carlos thrusts the door open to reveal a large room with a pit in the middle that is completely surrounded by tiered benches.  On-lookers are placing bets and screaming from upon the benches into the activity in the pit below.  The pit was filled to the brim with colored plastic balls.  “Is this a shitty Ecuadorian Chuck E. Cheese’s knock off?” I said to myself.  There are two ropes leading into the balls, which were secured to cleats just outside of the pit.  I was trying to figure out what all the screaming and shit talking from the bleachers was about, as I couldn’t see anything amongst the balls.  At that moment I heard a loud shriek come from within the ball pit and a tiny fist, cut off cleanly, still clenching the dagger it was apparently holding, came flying out up into the crowd.  The crowd suddenly went silent.  One of the ropes then snapped taught against the cleat.  A man came running up, untied the rope and hauled up what was attached to it.  It was a dwarf, sweating profusely, with blood, which was not his own, covering him. 

It seemed obvious that he must have been the victor in whatever was going on down there in the depths of the balls.  The other rope was hauled up and what was left of a midget came up, limbs dangling by just the tendons and pieces falling off, and quite clearly dead.  [ME] “Carlos, what the fuck is going on here?”  [Carlos] “Eese fucking meedgit fighting El Rusto! Keep watching; my favorite fighter is coming up, El Gaupo eez heez name.”  

 El Gaupo is a primordial Dwarf which, if you don’t know, aren’t exactly very imposing looking as they are considerably smaller than even a dwarf.  Don’t let the looks deceive you though, El Guapo is a beast. They pitted him up against a full grown Laron Syndrome dwarf.  I thought for sure El Gaupo was gonna get fucked up as Laron’s don’t usually have the disadvantage of disproportionatly short arms and legs, as many typical dwarfs do.  They both jumped into the pit, disappearing into the balls; you can imagine the terror running through each of them as they sift through the balls unable to see anything.  They were completely covered by the balls.  It’s like hunting a panther through a dense Technicolor jungle hoping your reflexes are faster than its when it pounces on you.  Suddenly, a loud howl erupts from the pit!  A thick constant spray of blood comes shooting out of the balls and just like the sprayers at the Bellagio in Vegas, swayed back and forth and all around.  The howling continued to get louder and louder until a loud crack of what could only be the femur of one of the contender’s legs is heard.  Then another bone crack, followed by sheer terror screaming.  Then, when we could barely handle the blood curdling howls a moment longer, came a loud hacking sound and gargling.  Then complete silence.  Once again, the rope went taught.  They pulled on the rope and out came El Guapo!!  He was completely soaked in blood, intestines, brain bits; you name it, he was covered in it.  He had the Laron dwarf’s full head by the hair in his left hand, followed by nothing but the full spinal cord attached to it, which he had, apparently, ripped out with his bare hands.  They tried to pull the Laron dwarf’s body up, but the body must had been in such bad shape that the rope had nothing to attach to anymore.  So, Carlos was right, Technicolor ball pit midget fighting blows cock fighting, of either kind, out of the fucking water.  Next time you're in Ecuador ask around, you just might get to experience a Technicolor Midget fight of your own, I highly recommend it.