The Murderena was the only place in all nine purgatories where someone could crawl out back to Earth. Sure, Earth was basically a purgatory already, what with the rat races on highways, but at least up there you didn't have zombie rats literally race to gnaw your ears off when you're asleep. And they're zombie rats, so they don't quit unless you burn them. But afterlife has its ups and downs, y'know? Just because your soul wanders the void between Heaven and Hell, doesn't mean it should get you...down? Again, the souls wander the void, but it's hard because directions barely exist there. It's non-Euclidean darkness, impossible to leave. Plus, wanderers are scared that if they leave, they'd go to Hell. Not all do, but the prospect of demons trained by Genghis Khan to shove red-hot maces up your butt until your GI-tract melted is pretty friggin' scary. So, people all across history made the most of their purgatorial predicaments: building ziggurats, onsens, and speakeasies. Those lost their charm after a while, so the only new thing every night was fights in the Murderena. Nobody knew what kind of match would happen: anything from banshee-style scream-offs, even small naval battles. Only the fighters did, three months ahead to prep, hoping for the only championship prize: reincarnation. The one chance to escape the void and live a beforelife again.

Zeke "Zombie" Jones knew this all too well. He'd been a fighter there, mostly to stitch his torn-off limbs to trick himself out, but he'd been good at it. He'd won jousts, capoeira dance-offs, even human chess crusades, but tonight he'd learn of his final match. He stepped into the mausoloffice of his handler, Wagyu Wayne, the human face cow ghost, who said, "Ready to mooooove onta ya next scrap, Scraps?". 

"Urragh," Zombie moaned, "don't call me that, Wayne, I got enough on my plate." 

Wagyu responded, "Must be tuff as a top fighta wit awl da fame, ay?".

"Fame doesn't stop my braaaains," Zombie covered his mouth, then cleared his throat, "araagh, from rotting on the inside."

"Eh, we're alw dead, at least ya won't think about it anymore. Anyway, ya got a cock fight coming up. Ya guess what that's about?" Wayne asked.

"I have to dress up like a chicken and peck a guy to death?"

"You some kinda psychic? No wonda ya care bout'cha brain meats." Wagyu whipped out a playing card with a slight of hoof, "Know what's behind the card?"

"I dunno, hearts?" Zombie guessed.

Wagyu Wayne chomped it down like a wad of cud, "Maybe, but it'll be brown in three days."

Zombie groaned, " Uhhnnn, just tell me who I'm up against."

Three months later, Zombie met him in the locker room. Count Hossferatu stood, glowering at Zombie. 

"Hiya Hoss," Zombie tried to break the ice, "good to..."

"Cut pleasantries," the Count frigided, "I not lose chicken fight. I see daughter again, no sympathies given toward Zombie."

"...Fair, we're in to win. So I won't go easy on you. Sorry to your kid."

The Count's ice cracked, "Good you understand. I not vant betray anyone, so I no friend combatants. Da?"

"Look, it don't matter. I thought'd be nice before we tear each other apart like animals."

"True. We drink. Is my nice before animal tearing." the Count said before pulling a bottle of ectoplasm vodka out of his locker.

The bell rang through the Murerena, Count Hossferatu and Zombie Jones scrambled to put the chicken pieces on their fingers as fast as they could. Head: middle finger; right-wing: pointer; left: ring; feet: pinky and thumb. 

Zombie slid on his pieces easily; all his finger meat had been chewed off after an afterlife of fighting. He'd been a fighter down to the bone, literally, so there was no muscle or skin to struggle against chicken esophagus. 

The Count had no such luxury, but hand muscles meant his chicken would always be bigger. His vampiric agility also meant he could dislocate his finger joints into the ideal fighting cock shape: an actual chicken. He put his pale, porphyric fighter into the ring. 

Both hand chickens roosted on the fighter's arms, as they slammed their elbows into the little ring like eggs plopping from cloaca into nest. 

Zombie was already pecking the ground, the closest you could flip the bird with bird parts on your hands. 

Peck peck, neiner neiner. Hossferatu could not stand for this; Vampire Agility: Shadow Sneak! Poof! In a puff of smoke, his beak was woodpecker-ing Zombie's nerves, yanking them out like strings off a violin. 

While Zombie couldn't feel the pain, each nerve plucked meant he got more stiff, and nothing was worse than a stiff cock.  It was time, Zombie Virus: Necro! The chicken pieces clucked to life and flew away, dragging Zombie by the wrist to the other side of the ring. "Bu-gaw!" the chicken perched on the rope. Zombie rag-dolled down with a thud. Zombie's chicken dove into the ring, talons drawn. 

It scratched and scratched, the Count's sun-shy skin torn into red chicken scratch. Wait, that's a tic-tac-toe board! And what's he doing? Zombie's going for the diagonal, punching O's with his beak! It did a taunting chicken dance, which is impressive for severed chicken parts on a rotting, mossy hand. 

If only that thing could stop moving, how could Hoss...he had his next move ready. Vampiric Agility: Bat Wings! Hoss' hand flattened and stretched out, bones growing thin, muscles draining out, the skin growing tighter. The wing was three, no, five pancakes wide; its shadow blocked the spotlights. Count raised the wing high, so high he cauterized his tic-toe wound on the light. 

Zombie's chicken looked up like a turkey in rain. SLAM! A bat blanket kept that cock flaccid. Zombie's fingers writhed before his hand-chicken fell asleep. 

The Count had him down for the count, but he couldn't count on it. The bat skin was reverting back into its original hand and arm. 

Zombie was thrashing his arm, but it couldn't match the force of vampiric flesh reassembling. Hands became intertwined, one enveloped in the other so tightly it couldn't move. In short, Hoss was choking the chicken! 

But it wasn't all wrapped up as it looked. Zombie Virus: Bone Blade! Jones' bones burst through the bloodsucker's flesh prison. Strips of flesh peeled back like a gory banana while a calcified caltrop crawled out of the wreckage. Yet Zombie eked out a pyrrhic victory; his chicken was barely a chicken; all the flesh was covered in bone. No more nerves or veins. At this point, Jones had more bone than cock. 

Hoss was in worse shape, with a red octopus at the end of his wrist. 

Ding, ding, ding! The crowd booed, but that's the only sound ghosts make, so it was actually cheering. They'd witnessed not just the bloodiest finger-cock fight of their afterlives but in Underworld history. It was a two-way technical knockout tie, the first of its kind in the Murderena. The fighters pulled out. Zombie pulled out a chisel and carved out a vaguely hand shape from his new giant bone spur. The Count pulled the tendrils together and let his healing factor do the rest, flexing his revived fingers. They flicked off their chicken part caps into the ring for them to clean up later; they'd probably go to a Museoleum. The two walked into the middle, staring each other down with their dead eyes. Zombie put out his bone carving, "Rrargh," he cleared a tooth out his throat, "Good game, you got the brains for it." Hossferatu shook it, "Oh bleh! You are true creature of the fight." The two looked at each other like the two future-earthlings they were. Both took a bow, and the crowd booed wildly.