Two summers ago, I bunked in the home of one of the leaders of the Chicago chapter of Pillow Fight Club. It was described to me as a shadowy, sinister, secret cabal that - instead of staging battles in basements of bars and Chinese restaurants - held large outdoor donnybrooks in broad daylight, using pillows instead of fists.

Last week, I caught whiff of the Ann Arbor chapter of Pillow Fight Club. They planned to stage a battle on Easter Sunday on the University of Michigan Diag - the day after International Pillow Fight Day (yes, such a thing exists). Participants were told to bring their own pillows and, at the appointed time, unleash hell. Well, unleash heck, at least.

Pillow Fight Club isn’t Ed Norton fighting Meatloaf. It isn’t hyper-ripped Brad Pitt duking it out with Jared Leto. It’s more like the opening round of a Toughman tournament held in a VFW in Rochester. There are lots of heavy swings, some heavy hits, a lot of misses but mostly fatigue. Quick-setting fatigue. Sweaty, wheezing, stumbling fatigue. Sixty seconds after the Burton Bell Tower struck the first chord of noon, signaling the start of pillow fight club, the 25 or so participants had their hands on their knees sucking air.

“This is what happened last time,” someone said, hands on hips and a pillow case wound tightly around one fist. After a few idle moments, someone at the edge of the pack reared back and hit a girl in the back, sparking a second melee, this one even shorter than the first. Families dressed in their Sunday best stared from the sidewalk. A few pointed cell phones at the bed-lam on the Diag. The fighting petered out again.

“Now everyone throw up!” someone croaked.

Ypsilanti resident and Washtenaw Community College student Kevin Ostrander caught his breath between bouts next to a few friends. He chose to spend his Easter Sunday taking part in pillow fight club after seeing a post on Craigslist.

“My roommates use it all the time to try and meet girls,” says Ostrander. This is Ostrander’s second pillow fight club gathering. He made it to a fight in Ann Arbor last spring.

“This will go on for about an hour,” he predicted. Ostrander, like most of the participants, found that the most challenging aspect of pillow fight club is endurance.

“Everyone at our house smokes,” says Ostrander. “We smoke and we’re out of shape.” Ostrander rubs the side of his head. “I got hit in the face pretty good. It was a really old couch cushion. It was probably on some porch all winter.”

One of Ostrander’s friends cradles a pillow under his arm covered in a Hannah Montana pillowcase. They take their time edging closer to the battlefield.

The Tyler Durden and Marla Singer of Ann Arbor Pillow Fight Club are Mary and Matt Hartman. Mary learned about pillow fight club the same way I did - in Chicago. They’ve been in charge of the Ann Arbor chapter for two years. Between battles, they outline the finer points of pillow fight club for me (rules against Posturepedic pillows, don’t hit unarmed people, death to credit card companies).

Check out more of Melissa Meiller's work

They publicized the event with a friendly Facebook group and a few flyers, but pillow fight clubs are serious business. The Hartmans told me that last year, the Detroit Pillow Fight Club staged an event during the NCAA Men’s Basketball Final Four, and “the man” (my quotes) stopped the fight and confiscated everyone’s pillows. In Chicago last year, a pillow fight broke out near the hotel where the International Olympic Committee and the city’s group bidding for the 2016 summer Olympics were meeting. Arrests were made. Beatdowns were hinted at. This is all rumor. Are we supposed to trust an anarchist with a pillow and a Facebook page?

Mary organizes two lines of combatants - the Braveheart charge - and on her signal, everyone rushes forward and pounds on each other for 30 seconds before getting tired again. Later, one person stands in the center of a circle of fighters and they wail on him for 20 seconds. The group spots a handful of new arrivals heading towards them, waits until they get close and charges.

After 30 minutes off intermittent skirmishes mixed with long pauses for rest and a few sips of Gatorade, the group drifts east in front of the graduate library and battles on top of the brass Block M seal. People stare, more cell phones come out and a family stops to watch. A young boy in a crisp white shirt and chinos grabs his mother’s leg. Mary charges back into the fray. She looks a little winded.

(Richard Retyi has had two real fights in his life, the last in seventh grade. He only uses pillows for sleeping. Read more of his stuff HERE or HERE or e-mail him at richretyi@gmail.com for future story ideas or just to say hello. No one ever e-mails him. Does anyone read this crap?)