Tom dropped the chair. He gripped his throat, a strangled squeak escaping. His eyes rolled as his body demanded oxygen that wouldn’t come. I transitioned, driving my heel into the hollow behind his knee — the structural weak point of human anatomy.

The leg buckled. He crashed down.

I wound my fingers into the hair at the nape of his neck and put his face into the floorboards, pinning him amidst the shattered remnants of my mother’s porcelain.

“Memorize this feeling,” I said, my knee settling into his lower spine. “This is where the lesson ends, Tom. Not where it starts.”

He thrashed like a netted shark, cursing, spitting gravy, clawing at the wood. I drew his right arm up behind his shoulder blades into a Kimura and held it there — locked, immobile, going nowhere.

He wasn’t getting up until I let him.