smacks Boz

I tapped Boz on the shoulder and said, “Hey, gorgeous.”
His face twisted in complete surprise, turning to stare in blank incomprehension at mine.
I winked at him, and whispered, “Boo.”
And then I slugged him with my quarterstaff.
It hurt. I mean, more than the shock of impact that lanced up through my wrists. I was solid again, at least for a moment. I was myself again, and with my remembered body came a fountain of remembered pain. My legs and knees creaked and ached, something that was a natural progression for a big guy, a kind of background pain that I never noticed until it was gone and then back again. I hadn’t exactly stretched out, and I’d socked Boz with everything I had. I’d torn a muscle in my back doing it. My head wasn’t clear, suddenly riddled with a catalog of muscle twitches, physically painful hunger, and old injuries I’d just learned to ignore, now suddenly screaming in fresh agony.
I’ve said before that only the dead feel no pain, but I’d never spoken from experience before. Pain used as a weapon is one thing. Personal pain, the kind that comes from just living our lives, is something else.
Pain isn’t a lot of fun, at least not for most folks, but it is utterly unique to life. Pain—physical, emotional, and otherwise—is the shadow cast by everything you want out of life, the alternative to the result you were hoping for, and the inevitable creator of strength. From the pain of our failures we learn to be better, stronger, greater than what we were before. Pain is there to tell us when we’ve done something badly—it’s a teacher, a guide, one that is always there to both warn us of our limitations and challenge us to overcome them.
For something no one likes, pain does us a whole hell of a lot of good.
Stepping back into my old self and moving instantly into violent motion hurt like hell.
It.
Was.
Amazing.
I let out a whoop of sheer adrenaline and mad joy as Boz tumbled back over Mort’s recumbent form.
“Oof!” Mort shouted. “Dresden!”
A howl of excitement came rolling out of Sir Stuart’s throat and he clenched his fist in vicious satisfaction, flashing briefly into full color. “Aye, set boot to arse, boy!”
Boz came up into a crouch pretty smoothly for someone of his bulk and stayed there, low and on all fours, an animal that saw no advantage in learning to stand erect. Absolutely no sign of discomfort showed on his face, even though I’d split open his cheek with the blow from my staff and blood joined the other substances encrusting his face.
Hell’s bells. My staff wasn’t exactly a toothpick. It was as heavy as three baseball bats. I wasn’t a toothpick, either. I wasn’t sure of my weight in baseball bats, but I could look down at a lot of guys in the NBA, and I wasn’t a scrawny kid anymore. The point being that the blow, delivered with all the power of my shoulders, hips, and legs as well as my arms, should have knocked Boz out—or killed him outright. I’d been aiming for his temple. He’d jerked his head back so that the end of my staff hit his left cheekbone instead. Hell, I might have broken it.


Ghost Story Chapter 47, Page 499-500