I Am Alive

by Cameron Jace

  I am glad he smiles.

  “That was weird, God,” he says, still smiling. “But nice.”

  “That wasn’t God,” I repeat. “Just to let you know. That was me.”

  “I know,” he says with closed eyes. “I know.” He falls asleep, and starts snoring.

  “Leo!” I scream again, not shaking him anymore, since it’s already proven useless to do so. “Wake up. I need you. What can I do to help you?”

  “Get off me, so I can breathe?” he suggests, narrow-eyed and angry all of a sudden. At least I know two new things about him now. For one, he snores, and two, he talks in his asleep. Not the best qualities for a future boyfriend.

  “Oh—” I shake myself off him and sit next to him on the ledge. “That.”

  He breathes out and opens his eyes, tilting his head and grinning at me. “What the hell are you doing here?” he manages to say, although he looks weak. I look at his leg. It’s a mess. He has been bleeding badly.

  “Let me help,” I say, and open my backpack. I pull out a t-shirt and wrap it tightly around the wound in his leg, then knot it as tight as I can. It might help stop the bleeding for a while. When I knot it tighter, he screams, and his head falls back. I think he’s fainted this time.

  Looking desperately at him, I can’t believe this is the guy I thought to be Terminator-like. Hell. At some point in the games, I thought that if I opened him up, I’d find him all wires inside. He isn’t weakened much by the fall, since I have survived it. He is weakened by the amount of blood he has lost from the wound in his leg, and maybe something else that I can’t figure out.

  As he lies silently on his back, a bee flies over his head, then rests on his nose. Leo, lying down, helpless with a bee on his nose, looking funny. He breathes, up and down, and the bee stays put on his nose.

  Before I can try to wave it away, it flies over to the edge of the ledge and settles between two single yellow flowers sticking out of the grey mountain. It amazes me how these two flowers have made it, rising out of this dead and cold mountain.

  Still, I wonder why I am so disconnected. Where are the Zeppelins? Where is Timmy?

  I pull my iAm from my pocket, and check it. It’s turned off. I must have pushed the button accidentally, and Leo must have lost his since I can’t find it.

  When I push the on button, it doesn’t work.

  What? Am I going to spend the rest of my life in here?

  I push. Push. Push.

  The green light finally turns on.

  Even technology needs a little first-aid revival.

  “Don’t forget to watch the recap.” Timmy is talking to the audience. “DVD’s will be out soon, and ZVD’s. Decca’s exceptional outfit and backpack will be available on the market in two days and—”

  What is going on?

  The words under Timmy’s on the screen read: End of the Tenth Monster Show. No winner this year.

  What?

  “No!” I scream into the iAm. “I am alive!”

  Timmy’s face turns red. He turns around, and pushes some buttons. The camera shifts to Prophet Xitler, greeting his guests with the clinking glasses of champagne. Now, he will have a lump called Decca in his throat. Instead of the crowd leaving the Zeppelins and going back home, they’re standing still in front of the iScreens. Kids raise their heads from their video games. Mothers drying their hands in the kitchen stare back at the TV. The world is looking back at me. Why am I not on TV? No cameras nearby?

  “Come again?” says Timmy reluctantly into the microphone. The sound of his drooling saliva is audible. He is afraid that a Monster will pop out of his microphone, and eat his heart out.

  “I am alive, Timmy,” I repeat. “Can you hear me?”

  “Oh. Boy.” Timmy covers his face with disappointed hands.

  “Is she for real?” Faustina furrows her thin and fake eyebrows.

  “Holy monkey.” That’s Sam, still wearing shades, smoking a cigarette. He is not angry. He is chuckling with admiration.

  “Is this a joke?” Prophet Xitler wonders.

  The audience is back in their seats in the Zeppelin. The viewership meter peaks from one million to six million in seconds. I caused this. I am supposed to be dead, but I am alive. Clueless, heartbroken, and tired, but I am alive.

  “Put me on camera, Timmy,” I demand.

  “We can’t,” says Timmy. “Our cameras don’t cover this side of the Playa beyond the cliff. How are you even alive?”

  “So you’re only hearing my voice?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Don’t give up, Decca!” some kids scream from their iAms. They’re about ten or twelve years old.

  Timmy mutes their voices. “Kids. Kids. Kids,” he mumbles, sounding like the evil witch from Hansel and Gretel.

  I turn my iAm’s camera on, noticing that two-thirds of my battery is already empty. I’ve got about ten hours left, before I need to charge. I don’t have a charger.

  The audience can see me now.

  “Here,” I say. “You can see me. I am not dead.” I move the camera around so they see the cliff and the river.

  The audience is astonished.

  I move the camera toward Leo. Although he is unconscious, it’s easy to tell that he is breathing.

  The audience is speechless. Six million people watching, no one is saying a word.

  “I have won!” I say. “Admit it.”

  “You haven’t killed the Carnivore,” says Timmy.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I say. “The Monster Show is three days long. Whoever survives the three days is the winner. I don’t have to kill anyone. Those are the rules.” Timmy has another lump in his throat. I did it. “Let the audience vote,” I demand. “They’ll declare me a winner.”

  “You’re not a winner yet,” Faustina suddenly interrupts. “The third day isn’t over yet. It will end at midnight. You’ll still have to survive the next ten hours until midnight. I doubt your iAm’s battery will last that long.” I shrug, hearing her words, while rummaging through my backpack, looking for a charger. I find none. “And even if you find a way to survive until midnight, still capable of announcing that you’re still alive, you will still lose.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What do you think the definition of staying alive is?” Faustina wonders. “To me, staying alive is to still have a beating heart, and be capable of moving wherever you want. Look at you. You’re far from having your freedom. You’re stuck in what looks like a cave in the middle of an enormous mountain. At midnight, you will only have survived this game by mere luck, standing where you are. Can you tell me how you will survive the next days where you are, after you win? How will you get out of that cave? It’s not our job to pick you up. You’re dead. You just don’t know it yet.”

  My whole world collapses in front of my eyes. Faustina’s words are harsh and twisted.

  “Seriously,” Faustina muses. “Can you climb up? Can you jump down to the river and survive? If you can, you’re certainly the first one to win the games.”

  Timmy touches his nose proudly, admiring Faustina’s attitude.

  She is right. I can’t jump down or climb up. What good is it going to be if they declare me a winner, and leave me behind in this cave?

  “I don’t care,” I say. “The rules state that as long as I am still able to say ‘I am alive’ in the iAm, the games haven’t ended yet. And I am alive!”

  “You’re right about that,” Faustina says. “Smart girl. But how long can you keep it up? How long before your battery gives up on you, and how long before you starve, or get bitten by a snake? How long, Decca? Be smart and give up. Every girl dies, Decca. You’re not that special.”

  “I won’t,” I say firmly, feeling the pain from the cut in my arm. “I didn’t come this far to give up.”

  “You know, this is exactly the problem with Monsters. No reason at all. All talk, talk, talk. But if you feel you have to keep on going, then I guess we’ll have to wait for you to giv
e up,” says Faustina. “From now on, you’ll have to report that you’re alive every hour. There’ll be no game. No anything. Let’s see how a Monster can survive, being trapped in a cave with nowhere to go.”

  “Every hour? Why?”

  “We can’t send cameras to where you are. We can’t watch you with the Zeppelins, and we don’t trust your camera on the iAm. All that tells us that you’re alive is hearing your voice. Every hour, Decca, ‘I am alive,’ until midnight. Or until you can’t anymore.”

  40

  If the world still remembers me after the games, they’ll remember me for keeping ten million viewers awake, glued to the TV, waiting for me without any games being played. Sitting there rotting for hours with their junk food, their fizzy drinks, and recharging their iAms impatiently, like watching a silent movie where no one speaks or acts. You can’t leave before knowing what happens to the hero in the end. Will she die? Will she live?

  I am sitting in front of my cave, helpless, looking at an unconscious Leo, still hanging onto the frayed rope of life, although I have every reason not to.

  Every hour, I will report that I am alive. That’s like having to call your mom or dad every hour while you’re out with your friends, just so they can make sure you’re all right. “Hello, Daddy. I am all right. I am not doing drugs, not flirting with boys, and no one has kidnapped me yet. I just have a little problem. I am in the Monster Show, and if I don’t make it back for lunch, please tell Mom not to be angry with me, because I will be dead.”

  I blow out a laugh at this one. It echoes between the two mountains, playing ping-pong with my voice.

  Every hour, I have to say I am alive.

  The first hour is like waiting for your best friend to pick you up in her car so you can go to the school dance together. An hour passes and your friend doesn’t show up because she has met that handsome boy in class she always wanted to talk to, and totally forgot about you. You tell yourself it’s okay. An hour late isn’t that late. You can go to the dance by yourself. Not that it’s the best of choices on a day like that, but why not?

  But I have nowhere to go now. No dance, no school, and no nothing. It turns out that having nothing was an asset before. I am trapped in this semi-cave in the middle of a huge mountain, unable to go anywhere. This is my new home away from home. Even if I risk climbing up and succeed in killing Carnivore, I still have nowhere to go: no friends, no home, and no family. What’s a winner without friends or family?

  And in regards to Woo, I have to face the truth. Woo is dead. He was killed by Carnivore. He didn’t have time to escape and pretend that he was dead. And if he did, there is no way he survived this battlefield. And there’s no Rabbit Hole. There is no Wonderland. Sorry, Alice.

  I push the red button on my iAm and spread the word. “I am alive.” I say it without feeling, like that song I had to sing in the school’s assembly, knowing everyone would laugh at me because I can’t sing, but the school insists you participate.

  The audience is silent. Timmy is silent. They just write it on the screen that the latest contestant is still alive.

  What about Leo? He is still alive, but can’t confirm it. I shake him. He grunts and moans as I clamp my iAm to his mouth.

  “Say I am alive, Leo,” I whisper softly, on the verge of pleading. “Please.”

  “I am alive,” he mumbles with closed eyes. “God.”

  The audience laughs at Leo. Or maybe at God.

  I have made it through the first hour.

  The second hour is like the first. You’re lost, but hope isn’t. It’s like when you’re standing all alone on that lonely street, after your friend bailed on you, thinking how to get to the dance in that dress you’re wearing. Should you walk to the dance, and not care what happens to your dress on the way? A car splashing water from the street onto it maybe? People hissing behind your back about why you’re walking the streets alone in a soirée dress, with no Prince Charming accompanying you?

  You could call a taxi, but you don’t want a lousy driver to spoil your mood today, talking, asking questions, nah, you’d better keep on walking. Let the clockwork of your heart walk you to your destination. Your heart is like time, unstoppable, whatever happens. So are you. You are going to the dance on foot. Let them hiss behind your back. You don’t care.

  Here I am with the world watching me, praising me when I entertain them. Booing at me and crossing the threshold of my privacy when I don’t, when I am only trying to be me.

  I sit cross-legged like a Buddha and hit the red button.

  “I am alive,” I say, as if asking for one more cube of sugar in my coffee. Within the next hour it will be sunset, so it won’t be just Leo and I hung between Heaven and Hell. The sun will join us briefly, before it sinks into its bed to sleep.

  “Leo.” I shake him again. “God wants to know if you’re still alive.” I can’t think of anything better to grab his attention.

  “He knows,” says Leo with closed eyes, hiding that stubborn fighter behind them, “that I am alive.”

  The last three words are all that matters. Timmy nods that he has gotten the message. He thinks it’s only a couple of hours before I give up. I fetch my backpack, looking for something that could help Leo. I find a bottle of water, and force him to drink.

  The third hour is when you think you’ve made it. Yes. After you’ve walked alone for some time, not caring about what the older people say about that young girl walking alone in the street, avoiding whatever could harm your dress on the way, you feel braver and more confident. It doesn’t matter that you’re walking alone. You’ll get to the dance, and maybe you’ll find Prince Charming – or actually just dance.

  But the sun, your only friend now, sinks, and you walk with the burden of the weight of the darkness on your bare shoulders.

  ***

  I crouch slowly next to Leo under the cave, and wrap his heavy arm around me.

  “I know. I know,” he moans. “I am alive.”

  “You better stay that way,” I say, and hit him lightly on the chest, making sure I can feel the warmth of his body against the chill of the night. His body isn’t warm enough. He is getting colder, losing blood. The t-shirt I tied around his leg isn’t effective. I think of the fire we sat around in the forest, and try to feel it on my body. With it comes the image of my friends, Pepper, Vern, Bellona, and Woodsy. They’re all dead now. Did Carnivore kill them all, like it killed Woo?

  A tear falls onto Leo’s blood-stained chest. Somehow, it causes him to wriggle, then faint again.

  The fourth hour is like when you try to get used to the dark, when your pupils widen like a cat’s, and the dark becomes familiar. Not so bad after all. We dream in the dark, don’t we?

  All you have to do is to remind yourself of where you’re going, and just keep on going. There will be dark alleys that you can’t see through. There will be red eyes looking back from the dark. There will be strangers you have never met, and they might want to harm you. There will be familiar faces that change into something else, more sinister, in the dark. There’ll be monsters — I chuckle lightly at the thought.

  Monsters. What are they? Are they good or bad? Am I a monster, or is it that the iAms are one big, one-eyed monster, like Carnivore?

  I remember a song Woo used to love called People Are Strange by the Doors, a band from the days of the Amerikaz. I feel the same way the singer felt in that song.

  Yes. There’ll be monsters. Only real monsters. Is it a necessity that to fight the monsters, you’ll have to be a monster?

  You tell yourself no as you keep walking, breathing deeper, letting the air in your lungs drive you where you want to go. The school dance. Keep going.

  “Are you there, Decca?” Timmy’s voice in my ears.

  “Yeah—” I snap, discovering I have napped on Leo’s chest. “Is it time?”

  “I could have just let you sleep away, and I would’ve considered you dead,” Timmy notes. I wonder why he hasn’t. It’s not like him to do such
a thing. What was I thinking, falling asleep? “The audience reminded me. Some of the audience actually wants to know how you can pull it off.”

  “I am alive,” I say. “I am alive.” I shake Leo to wake up and say it again. Leo doesn’t move.

  “It’s God, Leo,” Timmy laughs. “Timmy, the God.”

  The audience laughs, but not all of them.

  “Leo.” I shake him harder, and try to give him water. Leo isn’t answering. “Don’t you die on me,” I yell at him. “Don’t you die, Leo.”

  The audience starts to feel worried like me.

  I slap Leo on the face. “Wake up!” I slap him again. “You can’t do this to me.” The cave is too narrow for me to hit him harder. I slide myself from under his arm, and try to push him out to the small landing. I don’t know how to apply first-aid, so this is all I can think of, to push him where I can sit on his chest and hit him as hard as I can to wake him up. Isn’t that what they do on TV?

  Leo is heavy. I try to push him with my feet. Finally, he moves a little, but not enough. I take a deep breath and push harder. He finally glides from inside the cave to the ledge.

  The audience shrieks. How can they even see me?

  Leo is on the edge of falling. What have I done?

  I crawl out of the cave and start to pull him back. One of his arms is dangling over the edge into the void.

  As I pull, I notice there are a couple of iSees floating in the air, televising me. So they’ve found a way to watch us again. Hungry TV watchers. They never get enough.

  I pull Leo back. My arm feels out of place. It starts bleeding like Leo. The cut has torn deeper.

  “It’s getting a bit too late for him to say it,” Timmy interferes. I totally neglect his existence, sitting on top of Leo’s chest, pounding on him. I try to breathe into his mouth.

  Nothing.

  Girls from the audience begin to send me first-aid tutorials about how to save him on my iAm. As if I can’t search for it myself. It’s not about what to do. It’s about how to do it.