Power Games

by Victoria Fox

  Mouth open, eyes wide, he watched as an army of red ants swarmed out of the hole in the tree, antennae twitching as they spread across it like seeping paint.

  I fucked an ants’ nest!

  Kevin was unable to contain his scream. Rearing violently, he thrashed against the gluey prison but his fingers and toes weren’t budging.

  He had to think straight.

  I fucked an ants’ nest!

  The insects were in their thousands now, and still spilling out, the lip of the hole thick as an earthenware pot. Kevin focused on doing it one millimetre at a time. Gently he could prise one wrist off, then the other, then use his grip to help with the feet …

  It took an eternity. Hell was refreshed when he discovered the ants could jump, driving up his arms with itchy speed, nipping his flesh with their miniature teeth and leaping to his face, where they wrapped a crawling scarf around his neck and shoulders and he hadn’t the capability to swipe them off. I fucked an ants’ nest!

  It was prolonged torture, and when finally the glue released him and he broke free, nursing his bruised, pecked balls in the palms of his hands, he fell back on the ground and could have burst out laughing. Swatting his body, he managed to dust off the majority of the insistent, wriggling army, digging about in his ears, under his arms and between his legs. He examined his dick, which was a livid, angry pink.

  I fucked an ants’ nest!

  Kevin collapsed onto his back, drained, his chest rising and falling and scattered with bites. His palms and the soles of his feet were sticky. Sitting up, he prised off some of the gunk, which came away in a clinging white web.

  The presence at his back didn’t alarm him, because it carried such weight and bulk that at first he thought it was a rock or a giant stone or something. Only when it grunted and moved, a thick, padded sound, a thump-thump-drag, did he pause in what he was doing and wonder what the fuck had just witnessed him nailing a tree.

  The presence grunted, and expelled a rubbery wheeze not dissimilar to a horse. There was a smell of shit, and zoos. As Kevin turned, a shock of orange hair filled his vision. Long strands draped over the creature’s arms and legs, tousled and swathed like the shawl of a hippy aunt, and its face was a wide grey plate, the rim tough and circular, in the middle of which lay an arrangement of very human-looking features, and an expression that reminded Kevin of his dead grandpa.

  A peculiar knot of red curls capped the animal’s head, and surrounding its nose and chin was a paprika moustache and beard. It was shovelling crunchy leaves into its mouth with lazy, languid appetite, its teeth churning like a cement mixer.

  Its hands were enormous and grey, the colour and texture of elephant skin.

  Kevin and the orangutan stared at each other. Once one mouthful was done, it reached out and snatched another, stripping the plant in a single swipe. It appeared weary, and faintly amused. Appetite sated, it began scratching its armpit. Still, it did not take its eyes from Kevin. Kevin found this disconcerting a) because he was naked, b) because he had just fucked a tree, c) because he had just fucked an ants’ nest, and d) because the orangutan’s eyes were not the eyes of a stupid pig, or an angry croc, or even the Great White he had slayed—these were the eyes of, well, it had to be said, a person. They were wise and knowing, maybe slightly depressed. They seemed to say: You think I’ve got an easy ride here? Munching leaves, sleeping and shitting, what kind of a life is that? Kevin had the wild notion of returning to LA with the orangutan, taking it to the Hollywood Bowl, throwing shapes at Supperclub, for lunch at the mall, and then whale-watching at Newport Beach. Maybe he could even slap on one of his stage outfits and have it perform on his behalf. That was all he had been reduced to in the latter days, anyhow—a strutting, idiot monkey.

  Except, this monkey was no idiot. Its scrutiny drenched Kevin in shame. He pictured his bare ass rutting the tree, the shrieks he had released and then the indignity of his struggle to get away. Had there been a whole audience of them here? Was this the one that had been left behind, finishing his popcorn while the credits rolled?

  It regarded him with an edge of pity, and Kevin did not like to be pitied.

  Who should pity him? He was king!

  Kevin stood and dusted himself off.

  ‘What you looking at?’ he challenged. ‘Huh? What’s the big fucking show?’

  The orangutan continued to stare.

  ‘Ah, screw you.’

  Kevin went to go. Just as he did, the world exploded with an almighty, ear-splitting roar. There was a deafening thumpthump-drag as the orangutan’s fists pounded the ground and dragged its body up. When Kevin turned, all he saw was the inside of a gigantic and terrifying mouth: the orangutan’s entire head seemed to have opened up, like a game Kevin used to have where these plastic hippos’ jaws sprang back on hinges to receive winning pellets. Its teeth were tombstonebig and dirty yellow, and on the top were two brutally sharp canines, protruding from a stippled, grey gum. Its tongue brought to mind slabs of unsavoury meat in the butcher’s window.

  The orangutan’s face was shrivelled to a walnut. Its eyes had vanished.

  Kevin started to run.

  Thump-thump-drag … Thump-thump drag …

  It was chasing him, and with surprising speed for an animal that size.

  Naked, Kevin broke through brambles and stalks, tearing in his stung, mud-caked, post-coitus state through an impenetrable jungle and, in doing so, flattening the way for his psycho persecutor. He tripped on knotted clumps and fell and staggered, but he could not stop. He considered mounting a tree and clambering to the top, but a faint image swam to mind of an orangutan hanging out in the branches and he decided against it. The weight of the animal seemed to shake the forest floor.

  Thump-thump-drag …

  Thump-thump-drag …

  The creature was gaining on him, beats between rhythms narrowing to a slice.

  Kevin kept going. He would keep going until he reached the sea. He didn’t know what direction he was headed, but eventually he had to hit it—this was an island! Orangutans didn’t go in the sea, did they? Water was its Kryptonite.

  Through dense thickets and the heat of his pursuit, Kevin was aware that this was a part of the jungle he had never accessed before. He noticed it not because the sounds and smells were different, or that the ground had changed, or even that the forest was tougher than usual—in fact, it was the contrary. He noticed it because suddenly he was bombing down an already trampled route, not a route travelled by Angela or the others, not a month-old route but what appeared to be an ancient one, compacted like a proper path, smoothed by the passage of countless feet.

  Thump-thump-drag …

  Thump-thump-drag …

  The hunt was growing fainter, but Kevin didn’t slow. He didn’t slow until he lost the sound completely. When he halted, he bent double, hands on his knees, his blood pumping. He absorbed the unfamiliar surroundings.

  And the unfamiliar voices …

  Kevin gasped.

  He stepped closer.

  Through a screen of leaves, two dark faces spoke. They were crouched, a pair of upright spears at their sides, over the carcass of a fresh kill. They wore jewellery made from bones, and grass belts that covered their groins. They delved into the animal hide to retrieve its organs, before hauling it on to their shoulders.

  They started walking.

  Kevin followed.

  92

  Day 61

  In a matter of weeks there would be another life to take care of. What was inside would be out. Eve could protect her child while it was hers to keep, but once it was born she could not guarantee its safety. Beyond its arrival was a whistling blank. Raising an infant, here in this wilderness, for how long, and when would it end?

  Orlando came to signify everything she yearned for, and everything her baby would be without: security, a home, a father who wore suits and aftershave, who had an education and read The New York Times.

  Here, Eve had nothing to give except herself
. She had visions of it turning into a wolf child, savage and unruly, a being she did not and would never recognise: socially and culturally alienated.

  All this time she had feared having a child for the ghost of her father’s crimes. Now, her reality was a different challenge entirely. Some days she wanted to despair at her fate. Others, the promise of new life was the only thing that kept her going.

  The undergrowth panted and shivered. Emerging into the speckled glade, Eve spotted a sow, metres away, hidden in the trees and obscured by the hot shade. It stilled, hoofs stamping the ground. Eve saw that it was pregnant. Its stomach was bulbous, and its nipples long and drooping.

  She stood, unclothed, looking back.

  Water dripped from her long hair.

  She and the sow locked glances. It didn’t acknowledge her as human, just an animal, just the same, and all they were doing was living because they must.

  93

  Day 62

  Jacob dragged the raft down to the water. His gold watch flashed in the sun and his hair was wild. Celeste, on the shore, watched the waves splash around the structure, knowing that come nightfall he would be gone.

  ‘This is it,’ he said. ‘It’s this or giving up.’

  ‘I can’t.’ It broke her heart to say it. ‘I’m too afraid.’

  ‘More afraid than you are of what’s here?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Jacob took her hand. He dipped his head in defeat.

  ‘I never met anyone like you,’ he said. ‘We can’t let this go.’

  ‘Then stay,’ she whispered. ‘Stay and pray for home.’

  Jacob kissed her. ‘Do you think it would be the same?’ he murmured. ‘Back in our ordinary lives, you and me …?’

  ‘I’ve forgotten what ordinary life feels like.’

  ‘So have I. Since you.’

  She put her head on his warm shoulder. He wrapped her in his arms.

  ‘I do think it would be the same,’ she said. ‘We’re not so different.’

  ‘You wouldn’t say that if you knew me before.’

  Celeste pulled back. ‘Nor would you.’

  She ran her fingers across his cracked knuckles, chalky with salt and razored by wood. ‘I stole from Tawny,’ she confessed. ‘I feel so guilty about it. I feel guilty about all the stuff I stole, and the reasons why I did it. I’m a thief, Jacob. I’ve been stealing my whole life and I don’t know how to stop.’

  She expected judgement, but the face he gave her was one of concern.

  ‘The first thing I took, I still can’t forget it. I wonder what would have happened if I’d resisted. If I’d said no then, maybe I’d never have taken anything else. My shrink’s given me a thousand reasons why I did it, but none of them makes it right. Just a frail old man; I can picture his face like it was yesterday …’

  She half frowned and half smiled when the name fell into place.

  ‘Cane,’ she said. ‘Do you know, I’ve been trying to think of that for so long? There it is. Cane. His son. A castle in Europe; it was a bracelet, silver and ruby—’

  ‘Wait,’ said Jacob. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘It was a bracelet—’

  ‘His name.’

  ‘Cane,’ Celeste repeated, and when she said it this time it sounded altered, a new shape on her tongue.

  Cane.

  ‘Jesus, Celeste, if this is what I think it is …’

  Jacob grabbed her. ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘we have to find the others.’

  The motivation for punishing Celeste was clear. The group accepted the theft of the jewellery as the reason for their fate—if not a certainty then a possibility.

  But Angela wasn’t convinced. The punishment did not fit the crime. What Celeste had done was wrong, but it wasn’t wrong enough. Nowhere near.

  There was more to Cane’s story.

  As Celeste broke down, bewildered and apologising—’But why put me on a plane with all of you? I’m not famous like you, why you, why choose you?’—Angela wondered if, just if, they all had a corruption to confess. On its own nothing to warrant an ordeal on this scale, but together, a one-size-fits-all penalty …

  Supposing every one of them had crossed Cane’s path?

  ‘Hold on,’ said Angela.

  The disorder on the beach ceased. The sun was falling. Evening crawled in.

  ‘This isn’t it. Celeste’s right. Why would Cane choose six of the biggest names in the world if he just wanted to take down one woman? It makes no sense.’

  ‘He’s a fucking maniac,’ said Jacob. ‘None of it makes sense because it’s crazy and he’s crazy. You can’t apply sense to a psychopath like that.’

  ‘Think,’ she urged, ‘just think for a minute. Celeste’s offence was years ago; this could be something way in the past. The name. Does it mean anything?’

  Eve had a creeping feeling in the pit of her stomach. She was first to speak.

  ‘He had a son,’ she said. ‘Do you remember? The boy died. Suicide. He was only nineteen. It was horrible. The paper covered it—it got a column, just a short one.’

  ‘And you wrote it?’ swiped Mitch. ‘Something nasty?’ It wouldn’t be the first occasion a victim had wished Ms Harley wiped off the face of the earth.

  But Eve shook her head. No, this time she hadn’t written it. She had done something much, much worse. She, in her way, had been responsible.

  Grigori Cane.

  She said the name out loud. It was an ugly name, like a mouthful of grit. He had been no ordinary boy. Eve recalled an allergy to sunlight, a debilitating stammer. As an only child and sole heir, his wealthy father doted on his every move and would have tried anything to see him succeed. That promise stood in death as well as life.

  She hadn’t thought of the matter in so long. Stumbling through corridors, each scene slotting with horrid clarity into their twisted puzzle, Eve recounted her tale, her companions’ expressions falling as they listened, as they, too, applied the prospect to themselves. Grigori was the shadow behind the sun, the shape in the corner, the murmur in the trees … He had been here, in some small way, for all of them.

  After the suicide, Eve had read his obituary. According to the article, the Cane boy’s depression had been triggered after his young heart was crushed. She had been the one to make that happen.

  Rewind. For once, nobody else’s story but her own.

  Hitting adolescence, Grigori Cane had fallen for a girl, his fourteen-year-old sweetheart Lotte. Lotte was the daughter of a high-profile German family, and Grigori believed her love might save him. He had opened his heart, possibly the first and only time, and his father had trusted it to be the start of a new phase. But Eve had sniffed a story and she had gone for it, gone for the jugular, as only she knew how.

  Lotte had a criminal uncle. Even now Eve couldn’t summon with absolute certainty the felony, a minor hit-and-run that might or might not have made the uncle a bad man, it might even have been better kept buried, but Eve had been unable to leave anything buried. The exposure forced young Lotte and her family into hiding. As a result Grigori was cast aside, heartbroken and damned. He never saw Lotte again. For the rest of his days, he would blame this outcome on Eve.

  She laid it all bare, telling the tale as carefully as she could, handling it this way and that so she could feel its weight and shape; unwrapping layer by layer the heinous gift they all recognised now as the truth.

  The boy who hadn’t dared speak was screaming now.

  ‘Voldan Cane.’ Angela was next. ‘He knew my father. They came to our house. It was my tenth birthday party. I remember Grigori—he was a creepy kid. No one wanted to play with him. He wanted to join in and we didn’t let him.’

  Voldan would justify it in the same way he justified Eve, who had committed an unfortunate act but it was hardly a means to this end. Angela was the young girl at whose party Grigori had undergone his first scarring humiliation, by none less than a spoiled, dirty-rich princess. Voldan had been a consort of Donald Silvers—he wo
uld expect his child, like Angela, to have all the world. But Grigori had been different. Even aged five, he had been different. Angela had shunned him, cutting loose the rope to her tree house to stop him climbing up. He had been jeered at. Mocked.

  How deep had the rejection run?

  Had it set the tone for the rest of his unhappy life?

  What did it say about her, that she hadn’t thought of it since? What did it say about any of them?

  Selfish, Voldan would claim. In their lives of power and privilege, these people knew no suffering on a scale with his son’s: nothing mattered except themselves.

  ‘It was so long ago,’ she said. ‘They must have exiled to Europe soon after.’

  ‘And …?’ said Eve.

  ‘And nothing—that was it. We were mean, but we were kids, just messing. It didn’t mean anything. We didn’t want to cause harm. For God’s sake, we were ten.’

  ‘This is bullshit,’ said Jacob. ‘I’m not buying this.’

  But Jacob couldn’t think of anything else, no other enlightenment that linked them in this senseless circumstance. Mitch stepped up to the stage.

  ‘Grigori came to a workshop of mine,’ he admitted, ‘years ago, in Dallas. Intense-looking. Dark hair, dark eyes, didn’t talk much. He had this stammer, it took him minutes to force out a sentence, the other kids didn’t know what to make of it and, for the most part, he got left alone. Crazy that he wanted to break into the movie industry but I’m guessing that’s where his father came in. Anything Grigori wanted, I’d hazard it got paid for. Connections got exploited. Favours pulled.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  Mitch fumbled for his wrongdoing, so minor to be barely there, and thought how strange it was that no one scene in a person’s life is viewed the same from two angles.

  ‘After the session we ran through some break-up tasks,’ he said. ‘There was a weight-lifting competition, something informal to wrap up the day, a few kettle bells and some improvised trophies. Grigori struggled. He dropped the bells. Jesus, I don’t recall much about him but I do recall this: he was so thin he could hardly have lifted a cup of damn coffee. Anyway it was no big deal, the fact he lost. We teased him, but it was in good nature. I told him to get over it, stop being a baby, and he reacted, well, badly. Left in tears, shrieking he was a failure …’ Mitch tried to draw up more details, something truly awful he had done to the boy, something to warrant this penance.