by Schow, Ryan
“Oh, look,” the instructor says, his hard eyes cutting right through me, “we got a live one here.”
My eyes bore down on the girl who beat me. Blonde hair, blue eyes, aquiline nose, sporty tits, volleyball legs. I’m trying to see what Sensei Naygel would see. His voice in my memory banks says, “Soft targets.”
Eyes, nose, throat.
The girl puts her hands up in fighting stance, and the beastly thing inside me starts up again. The stranger in my bed—the voice wanting me out of the way, wanting control over me, the sick, malevolent presence rising up from the depths of my psyche—he wants the fight for himself.
No way.
The girl lunges for my front leg. Tries to secure the single leg takedown. I counter her attack, stepping out of “the circle” and slap her in the ear with a cupped hand that upsets her equilibrium. She staggers sideways, stunned. Bingo. I drive in hard and fast, and focus all my energy into one glorious punch that lands square on her beautiful, once straight nose. It flattens beneath my fist.
She staggers backwards, and now the thing inside me is clawing its way up my legs, pulling, yanking, growling, demanding to take charge of my body and I’m fighting him. Fighting the girl. Fighting against the injustice of…everything.
Gosh damn, I’m so f*cking pissed off right now!
Desperately trying to stave off this primitive thing inside me, knowing all eyes are on me—the new girl—knowing the feeling in the air isn’t comradery, I give caution and common sense and partner-safety the big middle finger.
Feeling malicious, I grab that little bitch by the throat with two hands, crossing thumbs the way my sensei taught me and I choke her out standing up, all that blood draining from her nose down onto my hands, rolling red down my forearms. Her eyes are bulging and fluttering and I’m looking right in them, the grimace on my face vengeful and victorious. I want to be the last thing she sees before she’s done.
The instructor is suddenly at my side. The beast is inside me, beside me, looking with its eyes through my eyes, feeling her soft throat in its hands/my hands, wanting her broken the way I want her broken. When she finally loses consciousness, when her body gets heavy and sags, instead of cradling her so she doesn’t fall, or easing her to the mat, the thing inside me takes control, throwing her boneless body to the ground in a vicious display.
I feel shoved back inside myself. This thing, it’s officially taken over. “Give it to me,” the thing growls, trying to push me down, down, down inside myself the way you would shove someone’s head under water if you wanted them to drown.
Blackness swallows me. I don’t want it to, but it does.
4
When I wake back up, I am in my cage and my knuckles burn with a searing heat. I look down at them and they are bloody. Raw. Like I’ve been beating things with them. I am not stripped bare, thank God; I’m in my karate clothes, and they’re painted with blood. For a second, that haziness that made me feel barely birthed into the world, it hits again. Has me wondering why I’m losing time.
Behind me, my cage opens up. A bowl is slid in. Food. I spin around, try to see who’s feeding me, but it’s useless. The small door shuts. The food, sitting next to the bowl that is my toilet, is a baked potato, a piece of chicken, green beans. My body is suddenly ravenous. I go at it like I haven’t eaten in days, weeks. There are no silverware, no napkins, no one to see if I don’t use good manners except my neighbors, who are naked, emaciated, and have glazed donuts for eyes.
When I’m done, when my bowl is empty and there’s nothing left to devour, I wipe my face then I wipe my hands on the grey sweat pants I’m wearing. My breathing sounds labored. Now I’ve got the energy enough to be pissed off again.
When I was fat Savannah, I would say my defining characteristic was sarcasm. Really it was a coping mechanism. Savannah version 2.0 was all about fear. When your body is being radiated from the inside out and literally melting, there are so many things to fear. Version 3.0 was fearless. She was confident and strong, a take charge type of woman. Version 3.0 was me coming to terms with my new life when the little bald boy assassinated me. Even now, I can’t imagine why he came after me.
Was it the Virginia Company?
Had to be.
For whatever their reasons, do they still perceive me as a threat? Rather, did they think this of me before I died? Part of me hopes they believe I’m dead so they’ll leave me alone, but the new part of me, the version with the vengeful, uncontrollable animal in tow, she wants them to know I’m alive. This version of me thirsts for bloodshed. She craves vengeance. She is yearning to fight, to dominate, to kill. The new me is a girl who is dying to set the world on fire.
An hour later, Delgado enters The Kennel. Someone tries to throw their bucket of waste at him. He sidesteps the splash, and more buckets of watery sludge are hurled. He turns to the door, and looks at the camera, as if to say, “Are you going to do something about this?”
Seconds later, there’s a crackle in the air and the lights flicker. The offenders, their cages pop and sizzle. The buckets of waste stop flying.
“You put on quite a show today,” he says to me, inspecting his person to make sure no feces has touched him.
“Wish I was there for it.”
“The girl you choked out, her nose is broken, but she’ll be okay, in case you’re wondering. And the boy you punched in the throat? He almost didn’t make it. Your instructor performed a tracheotomy with his ink pen or the boy would have died.”
“Soft targets,” my mouth says.
“I’m not disappointed with the day, if that’s what you’re wondering,” he says with a smile. The entire time, his eyes are on me. Not afraid of me. Seemingly unmoved by what he sees, or knows.
“You’re not?”
“Hell no! I’m happier than a goat with three dicks. Saw the video. Saw the way you move. It’s like nothing I imagined. And you can take a hit. My God, you can take a hit!”
“Can I see the video?”
He sobers up.
“No.”
“Who were those people? And what are they training for?”
“Child assassins,” he says. “Slaves used as instruments for the greater good.”
“And what is the greater good?” I ask.
“Sometimes, people need to die for the greater good. Sometimes they need to be blackmailed, and when that doesn’t work, threats become consequences. Death is often times an effective measure. And these kids? Let’s just say these little fuckers deliver the message. For the greater good, of course.”
“So I’m training with assassins.” A statement, not a question. “And you really don’t know what ‘the greater good’ is. Does that sound about right?”
“Exactly.”
“Is that what you want from me? I mean, you have me shooting targets all day, then you put me in a class with freaking psychos and expect…what?—that I fit in?”
“The hell with fittin’ in. You scared a few of them.”
“I did?”
“You don’t know restraint.”
“The bitch choked me out after I tapped!”
“The boy, he didn’t do anything to you, but you drove that little iron fist of yours right up into his throat. That’d kill a normal person. You tried to kill him.”
“I didn’t,” I say, suddenly realizing I can’t tell him about…whatever the hell it is inside me that took over. And I certainly won’t admit to having been driven into unconsciousness because of it. Me admitting defeat? That’s no longer in my vocabulary.
“Yes, you did. I saw the storm in your eyes. You wanted to eat his soul.”
Inside, deep down, a black blossom bloomed, spreading a sort of cold dread throughout me. The thing deep down inside me, I feel it smiling.
“What did you do to me?” I snarl.
“I sharpened your edges, made you lethal. You’re a weapon, Abby. My weapon. But you are your own weapon, too. Don’t forget that. Don’t forget what I gave you.”
; On my hands and knees, I scramble forward, fast, violently. “Get me out of here!” I hiss.
“Not yet,” he says, backing up fast, startled. “In due time, though.”
“Now!”
“No.”
“One way or another I’m leaving,” I growl. “Dead or alive, I’m leaving.”
And then I grab the electrified bars with both hands, taking the white hot lightening all the way down to my bones. Never before have I known such pain. My hands are vice gripped onto the bars. I can’t get them off. But neither do I try.
I just don’t.
Even as my eyeballs shake and smoke and my skin turns black and my teeth clench tight enough to crush my molars, I stare at Delgado. The stink of burnt hair and charred flesh waft into my nose. My arms catch fire and still the electricity powers through me. Tightening all things loose. Destroying me. The thing inside me, he’s screaming, but I can’t tell if it’s from joy or pain. I’m dying.
We’re dying.
Fine.
Then the system shorts out and I sit there, petrified and smoking. The fire on my arms goes out, but the flames start inside me. The healing. Delgado is shaken up because I won’t stop looking at him. I blink. An eyelid falls off. My mouth wants to speak, but it won’t because it’s seared in place. Even my organs feel toasted.
The fire ants, however, are already at work. Making everything dead alive again. Making back the disappeared, fallen-off parts of me. As I sit there, unmoving, healing, chaos is raining all around us. Screaming, shouting, the rattling-banging sound of cages being kicked. A boy across The Kennel, he’s throwing his body against his cage door. He’s fifteen feet up when it breaks open. He teeters, then falls through it, landing teeth-first into the pavement. He just lays there. Dead. His neck cracked in half, his head joggled sideways at a sick, unnatural angle.
His death takes the place to uncharted noise levels.
The way it rains down food and shit and piss, it’s like the whole world has gone mad. When my lips are healed enough, when I feel movement becoming possible in my mouth, I show Dr. Delgado the vilest, most psychotic grin I can manage. Flakes of blackened skin around my lips and mouth chip off.
This visibly unnerves him.
“Dead,” I tell him. My lips are cracked badly now, and breaking apart, but it’s worth it. I’ll be whole by the end of the day anyway. And then it will be cramps and the bloody show of sloughed off, ruined flesh oozing from every orifice. I’m in for a long night of hell, but gosh damn, to rattle him this badly, it’s totally worth it.
“What in the blue fuck did you do that for?” he says.
“Dead,” I snarl, even more blackened flesh raining off my twisted face.
The door opens; guards flood The Kennel. They’re shooting rubber bullets. Kids are screaming. Crying. Swearing. And across the room, the dead boy on the floor, he stays put. Bent at the head. Not moving. It occurs to me, now, that this is my fault.
His death, it’s on me.
I don’t care. He could have been the sweetest thing once upon a time, but maybe he was one of the future assassins. Either way, I can’t drag up one remorseful thought. If I could be mortified by this thing I’m becoming, I would. But I’m not.
God, what have I become?
Just a barely functioning brain housed in a body that nearly became ash. Deep down, I extend my psychic feelers, searching inside me for the one in tow. The thing who stole my body. And I feel nothing. Like he isn’t there anymore.
Thank God.
One of the guards, he turns to me and stops, as if startled.
“What the hell are you?” he says with so much disdain in his voice it makes me cringe.
He turns his 9mm Glock on me and I envision my body blown apart in a puff of ash. Something inside me, something fearing for my safety, feels like it gets in the guard’s brain and that’s when I gain control of him. With my mind, I turn his Glock on his partner and make him shoot the man in the back, the rubber bullet smashing into his spine. My vision is dizzy, wobbling. The world is tinted in varying shades of…emotion. I feel everything.
All the surfaces, depths and vibrational frequencies of The Kennel and all its occupants…I feel and see them in their entirety. All the molecules that make up everything.
Then right before my eyes, the man turns on his other partners and starts shooting them, too. My brain is linked to his brain, to the paralayers—the in between layers that are not supposed to exist—and suddenly, I have the power to make him do exactly what I want him to do. It takes a monumental effort not to black out, but within seconds, he’s put down all his friends. And then I have him turn his gun on Delgado. The guard, he’s red-faced and sweating, fighting me but losing, whimpering and mewling and suffering all the things I’m making him do. Then he’s begging for me to stop, but I don’t listen. I’m not listening.
Delgado backs up. He looks at the guard, then at me.
“Stop this, Abby,” Delgado says, eyes flashing between me and the guard.
I don’t want to. I don’t even know what’s happening to me, only that I don’t want to stop. The guard fires. The rubber bullet hits Delgado in the sternum and he crumbles, grabbing his chest once he hits the floor. I make the guard turn the gun on himself.
He puts it up under his chin, to the soft underside, and he pulls the trigger. Blood sprays in wild bursts. Rubber bullets or not, shoot a human being that close in that soft of flesh, and it’s lethal.
“Dead,” I say.
And he is.
5
The scabby, black ash falling off my body is new skin sloughing off old skin. It’s my body nourishing itself and shedding itself. My legs refuse to stand. My back won’t sway or bend. Nothing even moves. Everything is pain, but not the kind of pain I’m accustomed to knowing.
This is worse.
How it used to be, me almost dying, me healing, me shitting out my formal self through my nose, my ears, my mouth and my other unmentionables, that’s a familiar pain. A difficult pain. That’s mortal pain.
This, however, is sooo much worse than every transformation I’ve ever done. It’s unimaginable. When you’re cooked from the inside out, you don’t think of your injuries as corporeal injuries. If you survive something everyone else would die from, these injuries become supernatural injuries. And your pain? We’re talking supernova status.
Still kneeling in my cage, fried nearly to death—petrified from the electrical overload—my mind sucks me in and out of consciousness. When I’m awake, a dozen suns explode behind my eyes. When I’m dragged down into sleep, everything is nightmares. As entire colonies of fire ants march me to my renewal, my brain—that roasted slab of meat—it won’t stop thinking that this is no longer my world and these are no longer my people. I understand this, but I don’t.
I am a conundrum.
Atypical.
A freakish abnormality.
When the burnt, flypaper surfaces of my eyes flake away, leaving my ocular surface replenished, I can’t stop watching the creeping peach flesh of a new eyelid forming. It’s an all night endeavor. As I watch this drape of new skin grow, unable to blink just yet, my exposed eye drains endlessly. Tears cut clear lines through patches of crispy skin. They blaze trails down my peeled face. If I could see myself from outside myself, I imagine fried eyeballs pushing rivers of tears straight through scattered ash.
It’s the worst I’ve ever felt. No drugs to quell the pain. No light-pink goop to sedate me, to fast forward me into next week and into a fresh body. How many times I float in and out of consciousness, I honestly can’t say. All I know is hours later, I’m passing through the worst of it. For the most part, I’m a fresh embryo compared to the heaps of ash (my formal self) piling up around my petrified body.
When my body starts to work again, the first thing I feel is my new eyelid wanting to blink. My twitching pinkie finger is next. Movement and strength, it doesn’t exactly flood back into my body. It sort of fills me enough to rock side to side on my p
alms and shins until this stuck body tips over. I hit the floor of the steel cage hard. Pain radiates through me electric, leaving me aching to swallow entire jugs of Advil. Or Excedrin. Anything to dull the pain.
At this point, the undamaged parts of my old brain are thinking of Margaret and how when she was really wrecked emotionally, she’d do foot-long lines of coke and suddenly be elsewhere. On other planets. In undiscovered solar systems.
If I could be anywhere, it would be everywhere but here. Then my mind fumbles and rocks, and starts to crash. Or maybe it’s my body from the sheer exertion of energy. I don’t know. All I know is there’s a huge energy drain taking place in me, then it’s lights out…again.
6
I wake up refreshed. Seriously, I’ve got mental clarity for the first time since being shat back into this world. Sitting up, nothing hurts. No fire ants. No cramps. No muscle soreness from these anti-Ritz Carlton accommodations.
Just me.
Whole.
And, of course, big piles of ash and bloody discharge. Like, a ton of it. Embarrassed, giant blackened holes burnt into my clothes, enough to leave me exposed (again, like everyone else), I’m wondering why I didn’t feel the purge. It’s such a nightmarish necessity.
Yet I felt nothing. No leaking, no draining, no period-like squirtings-out of my former self. But it’s here, everywhere—the red evidence of it—blasted all over the cage in chunks and meaty discharge.
I look over and the boy next to me is asleep, curled in the corner around his food bowl, which is empty.
The sound of a door opening catches my attention. I turn in time to see a guard with the shotgun pointed at me. My new body braces. Adrenaline surges. God, not again. Then, a deafening report, and the blur of a bean bag whistling through the cage bars and hitting me in the forehead.
After that, nothing.
The Tearing of the Mind
1
The minute her head snapped back and she dropped face first onto the cage floor, Delgado breezed into the holding facility. The guard with the bean bag rifle, he signaled to have Abby’s cage ushered forward and lowered. It didn’t take long. When her cage stood before them, Delgado yanked open the door and dragged her body out onto the concrete floor. She was a heap of bones. Unconscious.
