by Cameron Jace
I turn back to the girls and laugh. Poor beautiful Nines working as servants for Xitler, washing his clothes, rubbing his feet, and who knows what else. They are all dressed in white fluffy transparent dresses, have red manicures and wear red lipstick. All giggles, no brains.
Woo told me about those girls. I thought it was a myth. None of them knows she is a Nine. The iAm manipulates them into being ranked Fives, claiming they have some deficiency, so they can be Prophet Xitler’s servants. They are called Malikas. The public shouldn’t know about them. They are Prophet Xitler’s personal faeries.
The Malikas are here with me to wash me and prepare me, maybe give me a massage, and let me drink pink juice out of dandelion cups. It’s my last night before I die, you know. I can have whatever I want.
I walk barefoot among them, guiding Honeybee to a vase full of real dandelions I have just ordered — every other flower in the Royal Tower is plastic.
When the Malikas start to bug me, I ruffle my stiff hair and pose like a monster, clawing my fingers and making faces. They shriek and step back. One of them even cries when I do that.
“How many seconds would the likes of you last in the Playa?” I say to her, rolling my eyes.
They don’t reply. Malikas are mute. Don’t ask. I don’t know why. I have a headache from thinking about how to beat Carnivore.
The barber I have asked for arrives. He pulls out his machine and buzzes my hair away. Yes. All of it. I am bald now. I’d rather have full and beautiful hair, or have none at all. Besides, it will help in the Monsterium. I have a plan.
I let the Malikas strip me naked and wash me. They are more than happy when they do that. I would have kept the blood of the other Monsters on my body — I would have been honored — but I need to clean and shave every part of my body. Like I said. I have a plan.
They cut my nails and massage me after that, while I watch and re-watch Carnivore killing the Monsters in the games on my recharged iAm. There’s nothing really to see, like Xitler said. I understand why the viewers love and hate this part. The iSees were sent into the Monsterium to cover the game, roaming around helplessly, blinded by the white of the sands. Only occasionally and rarely does an iSee capture Carnivore running, or opening his red jaws at the camera. Only its roars are audible. But it seldom does, so it can attack its prey. Carnivore doesn’t want you to know where it is, until it attacks. It’s the poor contestants who are sent, wearing a flashy color, into the field, panicking so hard they could die from a heart attack, before Carnivore gets them.
That will be me, just hours from now.
Some contestants tried to get rid of their clothes, running naked in the sand. Naked or not, your butt still shines like a diamond in all that white.
How do you beat Carnivore in such circumstances? Let alone, it’s a fast and vicious tiger. How do you hide from it in the white sands? No matter how white you are, you’re not that white. And even if you are, it can still see the color of your eyes, it can see the color of your mouth, your hair, and your palms. And even if you manage to do all that, do you have the heart to look into the white void, wondering if it is hiding two inches beyond it?
The more I re-watch the games, the more I start to understand that all white, all bright, is just the same as all dark. No wonder these are the two colors which scientists don’t actually consider colors. The black absorbs all; that’s why they say you get sucked into the darkness. The white reflects all; that’s why I say the white will reflect all of your fears out there in the Monsterium.
“Hey, you.” I summon a Malika, showing her the white-themed Carnivore game on my iAm. She looks puzzled, with almost nothing to see but an occasional thin curvy line showing the edges of a dune here and there. Then the Carnivore slashes at a contestant, and blood spatters on the iSee. That’s when the Malika giggles.
I wish I were born in the Amerikaz. I don’t think the Amerikaz went down the drain as far as Faya.
I order the Malikas to leave the room and call Timmy. Before he picks up, the iAm shows me a world that is all awake, waiting for me. Prophet Xitler wasn’t bluffing. Viewers are seventy million worldwide, and they all bought ClairVos. There are flags sold with my picture on it, and there are ClairVos sold double the price because they are signed by me. I didn’t sign anything. But I am not that mad. Leo’s signed ClairVos are triple the price. Girls hug them when they buy them. Leo couldn’t have signed them either. Last time I checked on him, an hour ago, he was unconscious after they operated on him and saved his leg.
“Yes, my princess,” says Timmy smoothly. “What can I help you with?”
“I want my ClairVo,” I demand.
“You’ll get yours. Patience, my dear. Death is knock-knocking on your door. No need to invite it in now.”
“I want mine to be all white.”
“Most of the ClairVos are all white,” says Timmy. “Nice haircut, by the way. Are you trying to show us how bold you are?”
“Did you see that?” I grin. “All clean and shiny, so blood will look bright on me in the camera. Buzz off, Rabbit.”
“I cut my ears like you cut your hair.” Timmy sips on something. “I am not a rabbit anymore.”
“I also need a brand-new bow gun and arrows.”
“But of course,” says Timmy. “We don’t expect you to kill Carnivore with a five-star frog splash, or a five-finger death punch.”
“And a pocket knife.”
“You got it.”
“And you should know, I will be taking a couple of those buzzing syringes with me.”
“Sure. Planning to tickle the tiger to death? That I would love to see. By the way, a friend wants to see you.”
My door opens, and Ariadna comes in.
I run to her in my robe, and hug her. I think I hug her so hard, she’s choking.
“They said I could see you if I bring you this,” says Ariadna, showing me the traditional red dress I am going to wear when I play the games. “I am sorry, but it was the only way to see you.”
“A red glossy spaghetti string dress,” I muse, looking at it. “Dressed to kill, baby. Dressed to kill.”
Ariadna utters a painful laugh, as if she is a little shy laughing around me in this situation.
“This is the first time it’s a dress,” says Ariadna. “The last nine times, the Monsters were boys.”
“That explains why Carnivore wants me so much,” I say. “I’ll be his first girl. How about—”
Ariadna shushes me instantly. I was going to ask her if they found out about the call she made behind the Summit’s back. How foolish of me. She nods. I guess she got away with it, or how would she be here with me?
Ariadna checks on the cut on my arm. “This is bad.”
“They medicated it as much as they could, but I think I can still shoot with it.”
“That’s why I brought you this.” Ariadna shows me a bottle of pure honey. “Trust me. It’s proven that this can heal the wounds.” She pulls my arm, and starts pouring some of the honey on the wound. “In the Amerikaz, they were on the verge of finding out that honey can heal wounds. Now we know.”
“I never heard of it.”
“The Summit doesn’t want us to know these things,” Ariadna whispers in my ear.
“Hear that, Honeybee?” I talk to my bee friend. She buzzes twice.
“All you need is to cover it with some huge medical plaster now.” Ariadna looks around for one.
“You don’t need plaster,” I say. “Bring over one of those thin towels. The honey is sticky by itself—“
Then suddenly, I stop. A thought shoots through the wires of my brain.
“Are you all right?” Ariadna wonders.
“I am. Don’t worry about me.” I keep a mental note in my brain of that thought.
“So,” Ariadna sighs. “Big hug again?”
We hug for one last time. This time, she hugs me harder. There are tears in her eyes.
“Come on,” I say. “It’s not like I am going to leave
you and go to college in another town. I am just going to kill a tiger.”
Ariadna sniffs and smiles. “You promise me that.” She points a finger. “That you’ll kill it.”
“I promise you,” I say. “It’s just a tiger.” I show her to the door. As she walks out, I slap her on the butt lightly.
“Move your butt with grace, princess,” I whisper to her.
It was the last time I saw Ariadna in my life.
45
I lay back on the bed in my room with closed eyes. I need a moment of peace before I enter the games, but I find myself looking into a memory. One that I have always remembered vaguely. Now that the receptor in my brain was removed, it’s clearer.
I see myself helping my dad with fixing the roof of our house after the heavy rain the night before. We were poor enough, we couldn’t afford hiring someone to fix the house. Dad loved fixing the house to clear his mind, and I loved to help him.
I see myself hammering a nail next to my dad, wondering if he knew about the big secret in our family. And if he knew, how could he just be so calm about it?
My mother cheated on my dad, ending up with having my brother Jack. But then again, of course he must have known.
Jack looked a lot like my mom, but not like my dad. I didn’t look like either of them, but somehow I was sure that Jack wasn’t my brother. Not just because he was a predicted Nine, while no one in my mom and dad’s family had ever been more than a Seven. And not just because Jack was always favored over me in the family – at least no one wanted to kill him. But because I didn’t feel like Jack was my brother. It’s hard to explain, but I always knew he wasn’t. I think mom must have slept with a Nine, to save the family after I arrived. It must have showed on me that I was going to be a Monster, and that the family needed rescue with another child that could not have come out of mom and dad’s Seven and Six genes.
Did dad just accept that? Was this part of a bigger deal that I didn’t know about?
I didn’t care. I never felt related to Jack, like my parents never really felt related to me. I was a black sheep. I almost didn’t mind since I had no choice, thinking that one day when I got ranked, I would leave this family for good, and create a real one for myself.
Protecting my family in the game was more of a duty than heart-felt love. It was ironic how I never even looked like them, even when it was Jack who was an imposter. In Faya, we didn’t trust our logic and instincts. You only trusted the iAm.
If my mom had cheated, it still puzzled me how another parent gave up on his child who was a Nine. But like the soldier boy, Bellona’s friend, had told me: this is Faya, and it’s nothing but a big joke. It’s like Wonderland. Alice was trying to learn the rules and the logic of it, while there was none. It’s all nonsense.
So I was a Pre-Monster when I was Seven, but with Woo’s chocolates and training, I became a Seven. Why Woo did that and how it all started still escapes my memory. I guess you don’t remember everything at once when you get your receptor removed. But I remember the suspicious way my mother looked at me the day Woo found me in the homeless neighborhood my dad had sent me to, and brought me back home. I had been eating his chocolates for months, as he took care of me in that little boat by the shore. That was before he had decided to live in a treehouse in an abandoned garden nearby. Even though Woo was eight years old, he fished and ate from the sea by himself. But he was too young to fully take care of himself – although he took care of me – so he still lived with his mysterious dad. I had never seen Woo’s dad, and Woo didn’t allow me to visit his house. Ever. He was just the mysterious rebel boy who found me in the gutter, and taught me how to fool my parents into thinking I’d been following the rules so I could get home.
I never forgot that look on my mom’s face when she checked my iAm a month later with results of a Pre-Seven. It was as if she didn’t want me to be a Pre-Seven, or as if she suspected Woo’s manipulation, although she never met him but briefly many years later. That was when her looks started easing up. The features on her face were like saying, “Don’t mess this up, Monster, or I swear this time, I really am going to kill you.” Then she would feed Jack the best food she could buy.
What I remember clearly is joining Woo in the treehouse he lived in. It was a moonless night, but the sky was clear. As usual, Woo was listening to his favorite song, “Follow the Sun,” by the Beatles. He was also fumbling through old books and papers that meant the world to him, while Carnivore’s picture was hung on the wall.
I didn’t have anyone who cared for me but Woo at this time of my short life. We lay next to each other on the treehouse’s floor, watching the sky above.
He was fifteen that year, I was fourteen. I gushed all night about how beautiful the stars looked, and he laughed. He believed that everything in this world looked ugly, and although the stars were of the rare beauties, they were far away.
My eyes were one of the rare beauties, he said, and they were never far away. That’s why he always wanted to see through them, because I was capable of seeing the good in the world, while he claimed he couldn’t.
I remember the bruise on his face that night. Was it his dad? Was it the Pre-Monsters he insisted on hanging out with? I didn’t know. Woo was always wounded and barefoot, and I doubted I could change that. He once told me he wanted to be like a boy named Peter Pan, who rebelled against the world and had his own followers, the Lost Boys. Peter Pan owned a place called Neverland. Woo owned nothing… yet.
“You’re messing things up, Woo,” I told him, staring up at the sky. “You don’t follow the rules, have bad grades in school, and insist on spending time with those Bad Kidz who are going to be Monsters. I don’t want you to become a Monster.” I didn’t know I was brainwashed by the chocolates at the time.
“Maybe it’s my destiny to become one,” he said, also staring at the stars.
“Don’t you ever say that,” I turned to face him and he turned back, looking at me as if he was crying with those grey eyes. “You promise me!”
“Promise you what?” he wondered. I could sense he was keeping tons of secrets from me.
“That you never let me go,” I sighed, and held his hand.
“That,” his eyes smiled at the thought. “I can promise you.”
“It means you will work hard this year, so you become the Seven you always dreamed of,” I assured him, and he nodded.
“I promise,” he shrugged.
“Promise me what, Woo?” I insisted that he said the words.
“To never let you go, Tender,” he nodded, and stared back at the stars.
***
By the end of this memory, I feel like my life is a pile of confusing moments and actions. I can’t really say who I am, because I haven’t had a full chance to become who I really am. If that makes any sense.
For God’s sake, I am only sixteen, and I had my first kiss in a battlefield. In order to know who I am, or who I want to be, I need time. A precious amount of quality time, so I can decide who I want to be, and what I am made of. Not because I am pressured by the idea that I am going to die sooner than I think, but because I made up my mind to be who I want to be, and no one else. I guess that I, and my friends who died today, were driven by the moment of inertia. It’s a concept I learned in school. To me now, it basically means that once someone is pushed to fight for their lives, they might end up doing wrong things like killing other innocent people, still driven by the power of that first strong nudge. And when your life is nudged into the wrong path, all that follows is just a set of random and illogical actions.
At a young age, we were driven to stay alive, no matter what. All our actions in between were only filling the void. They were not really decisions.
I am saying this because although I am a sixteen-year-old girl, there is one thing I know for sure right now – and thank God that there is at least one thing that I am sure of. I know that I am not fighting Carnivore to win this game. I am not fighting it to become a Ten, and I am not figh
ting it for Leo, as I have persuaded Xitler. I am here, fighting Carnivore, for Woo.
It’s hard to believe that after all that I went through, I can’t give up on wanting to find Woo for the silliest reason in the world, to ask him why he broke his promise. But it’s true. Deep in my mind, the longer the game runs, the longer I survive, I still have a chance to find Woo and ask him: Why did you give up on me, although you promised to never let me go?
Because if Woo had no reason to let me go, who am I here for? Or with? I am not particularly enjoying this world alone.
If I die, I won’t have a chance to ask him, and that would kill me much slower and painfully than Carnivore itself.
So what was all that about with Leo, insisting on knowing if his kiss was true, while he was dying on the cliff? I guess a girl always wants to know why she was kissed, especially if it’s the first. And again, I am not sure that everything between me and Leo was true. I mean, if we had met out of the Playa, things might have been really different. In the real world, in my school, boys like Leo don’t even look my way.
You put a girl in a death game and put a hot guy next to her, when both of them are destined to die within hours... how do expect them not to want to fall in love before they die. Whether Leo’s emotions are true or not, I can’t neglect that I wasn’t here for him. Ironically, he was here for me, sent by lunatics who think that I am special.
Another reason for wanting to find Woo might be that I need to win to go back to my life – or what’s left of it without a family. I need to live normal days and weeks, not pressured by screaming that I am alive in some machine. Maybe then I can know who I love, and who I don’t. I mean, the way I was attracted to Leo from the beginning was weird. Even though I don’t know many girls who could resist such a hot – and pretty much good guy – like him.
