He staggers upright and charges to tip the sofa, blocking her wrist and plucking the knife from her hand that he launches at the servant knocking his aim off as he fires and kills an old woman on the other side of the room that prompts everyone else to roar with laughter.
He presses the attack, vaulting the sofa to take the man down with punches that get harder and harder until she grabs him from behind, pulling him back.
‘He’s dead…oh my god, I can’t believe you didn’t figure that out…’
‘What?’ he spins to face her, the rage ebbing fast as the confusion comes back. ‘Who am I? What’s…I don’t…’ he gibbers as she pushes the servant’s gun into his hand. ‘What’s that for?’
‘You’ll need it.’
‘Tell me who I…’ his words cut off as he looks down to her hand plunging the knife into his chest.
‘Try thinking for yourself next time…’ she says as he topples backwards.
She steps over him, placing one foot either side of his body and looks down while the blood froths from his mouth and his eyes form an unspoken question. ‘Stick at it, tiger,’ she cocks her head over with a sudden frown. ‘Are you looking up my dress?’
4
He opens his eyes to what looks like an inner hallway of the mansion house and he counts seven doors in a room shaped like a hexagon. Or is it a heptagon? He frowns while still lying down and remembers he is naked and everything that led to him being here and it’s only when he rises that he realises the gun is in his right hand.
He looks at it. Feeling the weight and thinking of the woman while also trying to think if he has ever fired a gun before? You just pull the trigger, right?
His ears ring from the shot and he squirms on the floor pumping blood over the polished floor. A door opens and the woman marches in now dressed in simple black jeans and t-shirt with a pistol in a holster on her hip.
‘What did you do?’ she asks, staring down at him with dumbfounded shock.
‘Shot my willy off,’ he gasps, clutching his bleeding privates as she squats down to pick his dismembered member up. ‘You said it only had one bullet.’
She tuts, stands and pulls her gun to aim at him. ‘You are so bad at this.’
‘I didn’t look up your dress…’
She fires.
He opens his eyes to stare up at the vaulted ceiling and rises slowly, making sure to aim the gun away from his body while still wincing at his poor penis getting so much abuse. A thought pops in his head that grows roots and evolves into an idea.
She marches into the room to stare down at him clutching his bleeding leg. ‘Seriously? Again?’ she asks, shaking her head at him,
He aims the gun up, earning a sharp look that quickly morphs into that wry smile. ‘Nicely done, tiger…’
He pulls the trigger, shooting her through the leg. She drops with a grunt, pulling her own gun to shoot his already injured thigh.
‘I didn’t look up your dress…’ he grunts and shoots her in the stomach.
She shunts from the impact and shoots him in the chest. ‘Did…’
‘I didn’t.’ He sends a bullet into her arm.
‘Did.’ She gets one in his tummy and the floor of the seven-sided room becomes slick with hot blood that adds to the tang of metal and cherry blossom in the air as they shoot each other dead.
He opens his eyes to the vaulted ceiling and looks round the immaculate room.
‘I didn’t look up your dress,’ he shouts out. He’s chopped her with an axe, seen her corpse come back to life, stabbed her, strangled, punched, bit, gauged, headbutted and he just shot her repeatedly but it’s important she knows he’s not a pervert. ‘I really didn’t.’ He frowns when no response comes. ‘Hey…are you there?’ he walks towards the door she came through, his hand stretching out to grab the handle as it bursts open, slamming into his face and making him stagger back with a yelp as a man in blue coveralls rushes in and kicks him hard to the stomach with a heavy boot.
He goes down with the air smacked from his body and feels an impact on the back of his head as the man lays into him with a big stick. He fires the gun, plucking the trigger and shooting himself in the leg again and dies screaming in pain with his skull beaten in.
The gun aims at the door as he waits for the man in blue coveralls to come through but the door behind him crashes open instead. He spins and starts firing in panic, sending the rounds into door frames, the walls and doors. Through luck, he gets one into the man’s leg and he goes down as the other six doors burst open at the same time with six more men in blue coveralls carrying the same black sticks running in. He fires and empties the gun but goes down from the barrage of hits that break his arms and legs before they start on his head.
Seven men. One always comes first then the other six come at the same time. They’re fast and strong too. Fit, healthy and wearing big boots. He is naked, vulnerable and completely outnumbered and despite having a gun he cannot shoot fast enough to stop them.
It becomes as bad as falling from the sky into the ocean. That same sense of hopelessness and he gets the idea to shoot himself but that just resets faster. He tries running through the doors but they always reach him first.
He cries out for the woman, begging her to stop them and that loss of her presence brings forth a crushing loneliness that saps his will to survive.
So, he stops and simply waits on his back, staring at the vaulted ceiling, counting beams and studying the striations in the panelling while his body is broken by the men.
He starts detaching himself from reality and tries to think of nice things, except he has no memory so there are no nice things to think of. Then, he remembers her hands tickling his back on the path and the way he plucked the strand of hair from her mouth and that one time she grabbed his dick and balls but didn’t wrench and his desperate lonely mind twists those things into acts of kindness, giving him memories to hold dear, something to hold in his heart while the men break his body.
He learns that pain is a suggestion of a sensation. It is not real. He has nerve endings in his body that send signals to his brain that tell him something is happening to the body that should not be happening. He learns to switch that off until he is able to count the striations in the beams and look with disinterest upon his attackers while they beat and break him.
He dies and resets and notices neither but stares up at the beams. A door opens. He doesn’t notice. Footsteps come but he doesn’t hear them. He stares at the beams and decides he is not here, and this is not real.
She appears above him, standing once more with her feet either side of his arms with her hands on her hips to stare down like the strange devil angel women she is. ‘What’s wrong with you?’
‘I didn’t look up your dress.’
‘Fine. Whatever. Forget the dress. You need to get through this one.’
‘Why?’
‘Because you do. Get up and fight back.’
‘I don’t want to.’
‘Why?’
‘They’re not you.’
‘Stop being weird. Fight back.’
‘Will you stay?’
‘No!’
‘I’m not fighting then.’
‘You have to.’
‘I don’t want to.’
‘It’s taking ages. I’m bored…’
‘What’s your name?’
‘Sally.’
‘Sally?’
‘No, it’s not fucking Sally…get up and fight,’ she holds her hand out, stretching down and beckoning for him to take it. He stares at it for a second, watching her hand open and close. ‘Take the hand!’
He takes the hand and feels her pull as he rises to his feet to stare down into those hazel eyes flecked with green. ‘You have to fight back,’ she tells him, still holding his hand and thinking she should let it go.
‘What for?’ he asks with a wan shrug.
‘Because we can’t do the next one until you’ve finished this one…that’s why.’
/> ‘Why did you leave me?’
‘Right, listen, your mind is fucking up but you and I…’ she waves her hand holding his between them, ‘are here for this, nothing else…got it? I have to wait for you so hurry up.’
‘No.’
She goes to speak, to fire into him with more angered words but stops herself and smiles that wry grin. ‘You’ll fight.’
‘I won’t.’
‘You will.’
He shakes his head and sighs.
She finally drops his hand and marches out of the seven-sided room and slams the door closed behind her. Seconds pass and he waits for the men to come and thinks he’ll count the striations on the third beam this time. Then she comes back, striding over the tiles to stop with her arms folded in front of him with a smug grin. ‘You’ll fight.’
‘I won’t.’
The first man comes. Booting the door open to charge in with his big stick.
‘Bet you do,’ she says as the stick slams into her head. She goes down with a cry, curling up into a ball as the six other doors crash open to disgorge the men who join the first in laying about the woman.
‘HELP ME…’ she cries out as her arms break and her legs snap.
What a thing to do. What a nasty thing to do. Just because he inferred, he missed her. She doesn’t feel pain. He knows she doesn’t because he’s killed her enough times to know she doesn’t feel anything.
‘HELP ME…’ one of her teeth flies across the floor. That’s a shame. She has nice teeth. White and even with just a tiny gap between the front two. It’s nice though. It suits her. ‘Please…’ she gasps, her voice weaker but it’s still a cheap trick to play. Even if she did come back for him. Wait. She came back for him. She came to check and asked him to fight. She said she is waiting for him. ‘For me…’ she whispers across the room amidst the sound of bones breaking. ‘Fight them…for me…’
Something about it all triggers a reaction and before he can stop himself or even think about it, he is firing into them. They turn as one to launch into him and he goes down to look across the floor to see her broken and smeared with blood but that smile etched on her face as he dies.
Reset. The first one comes and dies. The rest come and he kills one more with the gun then starts moving, taking blows where he has to but firing back when he can, learning to twist and move and deciding, in the grand scheme of things, that having a pistol in such a melee is a bit shit. A stick is much better.
He learns to bend and move, flex and twist, to rotate and use his form to counter-attack. He dies many times, but each death brings with it a lesson until eventually, his entire core becomes perfectly centred and calm with his being entirely at peace with whatever this is because he is not here, and this is not real.
Reset. He waits. Calm. Controlled. Detached. They come and all seven are taken down from start to finish in less than a minute in a stunning blur of speed with the room filling with the dull cracks of bones breaking and bodies falling and as the last one drops he exhales slowly while looking up at the striations on the beams above his head.
She strides in, looking about the bodies then at him with her mouth open and a strange look on her face as he bends to picks the gun up. ‘Oh, don’t be a prick,’ she groans. He shoots her dead.
Seven doors. Seven ways out. He chooses the one she came through, takes the clothes from one of the dead attackers, the pistol from her holster and finally leaves the seven-sided room.
5
A room within a room. He walks round the outside of the seven-sided structure, it’s just a mock-up. Like a set from a movie or something. Not that he can remember any movies.
The outer room is a grand wide space with high ceilings. No internal doors. No furniture. One wall of windows with a set of French doors leading out to a veranda and a small table outside with a red apple and a plastic bottle of water on the top. A small card propped against the bottle.
HAVE A BREAK, MY BRAVE TIGER
He is thirsty and hot, and that apple does look delicious. His mouth waters just from staring at it but he knows they, or she, wants him to go outside and eat that apple and drink that water so he can be savaged by wolves or bears or ninjas on ropes dropping from the roof with big swords.
What if he doesn’t go out? What can kill him in here?
Damn though, that apple sure does look nice and the condensation clinging to the outside of the bottle makes him swallow and lick his lips that have suddenly become very dry.
He needs that water. He has to eat that apple. It’s so hot in here and he sweats freely, swallowing while refusing to go outside and the coveralls become sodden and cling to his frame while his face flushed red as the air becomes thicker and hotter.
They’re killing him with heat and thirst. What a foul thing to do. He tries to break a window for airflow, but the stick bounces off the glass.
HAVE A BREAK, MY BRAVE TIGER
He deserves a break. He should have a break. He’s died a thousand times, so he totally deserves a break now. To hell with it. He pushes the door and steps out to a sensation of relief he never thought possible and breathes deep, relishing the shiver running down his spine.
A few strides and he grabs the bottle, feeling the iciness of it and twists the top off to drink deep with a groan of pleasure at the chilled water cascading into his parched mouth and down his sore throat.
He drinks half in one go but feels his belly swell and draws the bottle away to belch and while waiting for whatever nasty thing will kill him, he decides he might as well eat the apple.
He munches the apple and looks ahead over the fountains and flower beds to the solid wall of the high box hedge enclosing him in but with one gaping opening in the middle. That’s it. The only way out of here. He has to go through that opening.
The hedge is dense, thick and filled with barbed thorns and razor wire. Both sides of the veranda are the same. He couldn’t get through with a big axe, let alone with a stick and a gun.
Never mind, the apple was nice and if he resets anywhere near here, he can hopefully eat it again.
That thought stops him dead in his tracks. He is accepting this. He is accepting what this is. That’s wrong. Whatever this place is, it is very wrong. He waits for the feeling of panic to rush back but it doesn’t come. The fear is there but it’s muted now like buried inside. He berates his complacency then readjusts his thinking that it’s not complacency but a simple acceptance that he cannot do anything else.
He’s lost within minutes. He went in, walked straight and came to a junction and went left, then right, then he forgot which way he went from there and now he is lost because this is a maze. Why wouldn’t it be a maze? Of course, it’s a maze.
The light starts to fade and the shadows on the path grow deeper and darker. Day becomes evening becomes twilight and with low clouds in the sky obscuring any light from the moon or stars, it becomes near on pitch black. He keeps walking, using the fighting stick to feel his way forward.
Then he hears them. The feet drumming. The mouths blasting air and the throats giving low growls as the dogs latch on to his scent. He starts running then realises the folly of doing such a thing in the pitch dark.
He goes down hard, sprawling out with teeth clamped and ragging on his arm. Another joins in, snarling and biting his other arm. More on his legs, sinking teeth while he loses all hope of detaching himself from reality and dies screaming once again.
Hot, sweaty and gasping. He wakes in the seven-sided room to see he is still in the blue coveralls, but the bodies are all gone.
He goes out of the French doors to sigh with relief at the cool air and offers a smile at the bottle of water and banana on the table next to the card.
THAT MAZE IS VERY CONFUSING BUT TRY TO DO IT RIGHT, MY HONEY POT
IT’S SO BORING WAITING FOR YOU
(YOU’RE A DICK FOR SHOOTING ME)
(I HOPE YOU CHOKE ON THE BANANA)
He almost does choke on the banana but from the involuntary chu
ckle as he reads the card. A split second later, he berates himself at the change in his mindset. This is not funny. None of this is funny. Well, maybe a bit funny.
It’s not funny.
He stops to look at the flowers and knows they are called roses. He bends to sniff, inhaling the perfumed fragrance and plucks the stem of a deep red rose curled in perfect form. He takes it back to the table. ‘For the fruit and water,’ he calls out, leaving it on the table figuring being nice never hurt anyone, which is a complete lie because he spoke nicely to her loads of times and she still chopped and stabbed him.
‘I’m taking my rose back,’ he calls out, feeling petty and striding off with a loss of dignity towards the maze. But then, she did come back for him in the seven-sided room. He goes back to put the rose down and takes another with him into the maze.
He’s lost within minutes again. He memorised the route coming in, counting off the lefts and rights then realised, he had no idea where he was going so what difference does it make where he came from? He thought that while walking and then realised it’s important to know where he has been so he can learn which way to go in the future, but by that time he was lost.
The day fades, the night descends with the same complete absence of light and he lowers down to sit and smell the rose while he waits. He inhales deep, drawing the scent in and finding it akin to staring at the striations in the beams and this time he doesn’t scream when the dogs come.
YOU DIDN’T EVEN TRY!!!
WHY ARE YOU GIVING ME A ROSE? I HATE YOU, MY BRAVE TIGER.
TRY AND DO IT RIGHT THIS TIME.
(I ACTUALLY DO HATE YOU)
(DO YOU LIKE ORANGES?)
He does like oranges and this one is big and juicy. He takes two yellow roses. ‘Thank you for the orange,’ he leaves one on the table and takes the other with him into the maze.
He tries hard. He really does but still gets lost and the night comes he lies down on his back to inhale the rose.
A Town Called Discovery Page 3
