by Jude Hardin
I knelt down and held his left hand and stretched his arm out and pressed the knife blade against the underside of his wrist. I figured the bones in his hand would be best for fashioning fishhooks. Or maybe I needed something bigger. Maybe I should take the whole arm, or maybe even a leg. More meat on a leg for bait and bigger bones to work with. I thought about opening his gut and excising the liver. Liver was good bait for catfish. Catfish love liver.
I lifted the blade from his wrist and pressed it against his upper thigh. He was very muscular, so it was going to take some work to get the leg off. I took a deep breath. Before I started sawing, I looked at his face and his open eyes staring grayly out at nothing.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry I had to kill you, and I’m sorry I have to chop you up now.”
I said the words and then I dropped the knife and just stood there. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t butcher this kid. He hadn’t done anything wrong. His only sin was being in the wrong place at the wrong time, like me and all the other players. He had parents and grandparents and siblings and friends and coworkers who all loved him, and I couldn’t cut him up no matter how much I needed to. It was only the first day, and I’d already been reduced to some sort of subhuman. I wasn’t going to do it. I would starve to death before I gave Freeze the satisfaction.
I put the knife back in its sheath, grabbed my pole, and walked back toward my house.
I picked up some rocks on the way, a round one about the size of my fist and a flat one the size of a dinner plate. I had an idea. I pried up one of the floorboards at the edge of the porch with my survival knife and worked it up and down until the two sixteen-penny framing nails securing it were halfway exposed. I was glad they had used nails instead of screws. If they had used screws, I wouldn’t have been able to pry them out with the knife. I would have been screwed.
Once the nails were halfway exposed, I banged on them with the round rock until they curled over the lip of the porch. Now the nails were J-shaped. Now the nails were hooks. I got underneath the heads and pounded them with the rock until they popped free. I picked one up and started grinding the sharp end against the edge of the flat stone. I ground the rust and oxidation off until it was shinier than new. I kept at it until the hooked end of the nail was flat and sharp, and I even filed a little barb into the tip. I did one nail and then the other. It took me over an hour, but when I finished I had two shiny silver nails that looked like oversized fishhooks with heads on the ends instead of eyelets.
Now that I had hooks, I needed some line. I needed string. There was a drawstring on the sleeping bag, but it wasn’t going to be long enough. I thought about tying the drawstring and both my boot laces together, but then I got a better idea. I opened the cabinet under the sink, reached in, and grabbed the spool of dental floss. It was a generic grocery store brand, mint-flavored and waxed. I hadn’t been using it, so it was still a full spool. Fifty-five yards. I reeled off twenty feet or so.
I didn’t know if it was strong enough to use for fishing line or not. I needed to test it. I put the big flat rock and the fist-sized round rock in my backpack. I figured the pack weighed about ten pounds with the rocks in it. I tied the floss to one of the straps and tried to lift the backpack with it, but the floss broke. I wanted something that would withstand at least ten pounds in case I caught a decent-sized catfish. I knew I would be fishing for catfish, because nothing else in the freshwater pond would be big enough to gobble one of my makeshift hooks. I doubled the floss and tried lifting the backpack with it again, and this time it held. Now I was in business. I reeled out the entire spool and doubled it. I wrapped it around the end of my sycamore pole a bunch of times and tied it tightly, and then wrapped it around one of the hooks and tied that end off. Now I had a six-foot fishing pole with about thirty feet of line and a hook. I looked at the contraption and laughed. I was proud of it.
I was ready to walk to the pond and try it out, but I needed some bait. Catfish are bottom feeders. They’ll eat almost anything. My stepfather used to use chicken livers. The bloodier and stinkier the better. I didn’t have any chicken livers. If I’d had some, I probably would have eaten them myself. I didn’t have anything. I decided to walk on down there and see what I could find.
I wrapped the line around the pole so it wouldn’t get tangled. Walked outside and looked at my compass, headed into the woods in the direction of the pond. I was hoping I might run across a dead squirrel or a bird or something on my way down there, but no such luck.
It was almost three o’clock in the afternoon when I made it to the pond. It had taken me forty minutes to walk there, so I knew it would take that long to get back to the house. I needed to watch the time because I didn’t want to get stuck in the woods after dark.
The bank around the pond was muddy and difficult to walk through. My boots were going to need a good cleaning when I got back to the house. There was a bullfrog sitting on a cypress stump and I tried to sneak up on it, thinking I would catch it and use it for fish bait. But it heard me and jumped away before I even got close. I was thinking about going farther up on the bank and digging for worms when I saw a dead bream floating near the stump the frog had jumped from. I waded into the water a couple of feet, reached over the stump, and grabbed the dead fish. It hadn’t been dead long. Nothing had been nibbling on it, and it didn’t smell much worse than a live fish. If it had been a little bigger, I might have taken it home for dinner. But it was small. Too small to eat, but fine for catfish bait. I carried it up to firmer ground, cut its head off, and gutted it and threaded it onto my hook.
I cast into an area clear of brush and fallen logs, knowing that if my hook got snagged and my line broke that would be it for fishing. I’d used all the dental floss, and I didn’t have anything else that would work for line. I stood on the bank in the mud and waited, jiggling the pole now and then to stir my lure from the bottom of the pond. I stood there for an hour and didn’t get any bites. The sun was getting low in the sky. I was about to pack it in and head back to the house when the line went taut. I wrapped the floss around my right arm and started backing away from the bank. Whatever had swallowed the hook was putting up a good fight. The floss was digging into my skin and I thought it was going to break. I kept wrapping it around my arm and backing up, and finally I landed the fish and it flopped around furiously in the mud until I walked back down and stabbed it in the brain with my knife. It was a fairly large catfish, about eighteen inches long and maybe three or four pounds. It was all I needed. I wrapped the line around the pole and picked the fish up with the knife still through its skull. When I turned to head back to the house there were two red jerseys standing in my way.
It was Number One and Number Three. The insurance salesman from Waterloo, Iowa, and the radiologist from Quincy, Illinois. They stood on the slight elevation above the pond’s muddy bank, looking down on me with their arms folded over their chests.
I remembered from their bios that Number One held a second-degree black belt in tae kwon do and that Number Three played soccer in a corporate league. They were both slim and trim and in excellent physical condition. Neither of them appeared to have taken a beating the way I had. Neither of them appeared to be injured.
“That’s a big fish,” Number One said. “More than enough to share. Wouldn’t you say so, Number Three?”
“Yeah. It’s a nice one. Mind if we join you for dinner?”
Number One held a billy club in his left hand, and there was a coiled bullwhip hanging from his right shoulder. Those looked formidable enough, but Number Three had hit the weaponry jackpot. Number Three had the stun baton. Eight hundred thousand volts of hot electrical current bottled up in a wand the size of an eggbeater. Just waiting to be unleashed on some unlucky player. I couldn’t see Number Three’s second weapon, but the sight of the stun baton was enough to make my pulse quicken. One stroke with that and you’d be down for the count.
Ray had told me over the G-29 that we were done for the day, that two
deaths were the limit, but I didn’t trust him. I didn’t trust anyone involved in any of this lunacy. I half expected the alarm to sound any second and for play to resume. It wouldn’t have surprised me at all. If the alarm did sound, my only chance was to run. My boots were heavily caked with mud and there were two of them and they were faster than me. If the alarm sounded to resume play, I was going to die.
“Sorry, but I already have plans for dinner,” I said. “Maybe some other time.”
Number Three took a step toward me. “Give me the fucking fish,” he said.
“Yeah,” Number One said. “Give him the fucking fish.”
I had no intentions of giving them the fucking fish.
“I see how it is,” I said. “Two against one. You guys are a team now, huh? Fuck you. You can’t have this fish. The only place this fish is going is home with me to my house. Then it’s going in my belly. If you guys are hungry, maybe you could just run on down to KFC and get yourselves a bucket of the colonel’s original recipe. Eleven herbs and spices. And don’t forget the Pepsi.”
“Quite the smart-ass, aren’t you?” Number One said. “That’s right. We’re a team now. And you’re going to be our first kill.”
“Maybe you boys didn’t get the memo, but play has been suspended for the day. So run along now. It’s getting dark, and the streetlights will be coming on soon. Your mommies will be worried.”
Number One stuffed the nightstick into the waistband of his pants, pulled the bullwhip from his shoulder, and lashed it toward me. It cracked a few inches from my hand. He was good with it. He must have had some experience. Or maybe he’d been practicing with it all day. On his second try, the braided leather end wrapped around my catfish, and Number One gave the whip a quick jerk and the fish flew off the knife blade and up the bank toward him. Number Three bent over and picked it up.
“Give it back,” I said. “I caught it fair and square. It’s mine.”
“And we stole it fair and square,” Number One said. “Later, loser.”
They walked away. There was nothing I could do. They walked away with my dinner and I couldn’t do a damn thing about it. Even if the game had been on, it would have been stupid for me to fight them. Just like the bullies at school who used to beat me up in the bathroom and steal my milk money every day. They were bigger and stronger and faster than me, and there were two of them. And Number Three had the stun baton. It would have been useless to initiate a confrontation, even if the game had been on.
I thought about trying to catch another fish, but I didn’t have anything for bait and it was getting dark. If I didn’t get a move on soon, I was going to be spending the night in the woods. Spending the night in the cold, damp, gator-infested swamp wasn’t much of an option. Something to avoid if at all possible.
“Hey,” Number Three shouted from a hundred feet away. “If you’re hungry, maybe you could just run on down to KFC and get yourself a bucket of the colonel’s original recipe. Eleven herbs and spices. And don’t forget the Pepsi.”
They had a good laugh as they disappeared into the dusk. At that moment, I was as angry as I’d ever been about anything. I was boiling. I could have ripped someone’s face off with my bare hands. It reminded me of the time in sixth grade when the bullies went too far. My stepfather never bought me enough clothes, and he never kept up with laundering the things I did have. I wore the same wrinkled shirt for a week sometimes and I never had a cool haircut or cool sneakers, and I became a regular source of amusement for a pair of degenerates in my sixth-grade class named Kenny and Calvin. I was on the free lunch program, but the free lunch didn’t include milk for some reason. You had to bring a nickel in every day if you wanted milk. My stepfather didn’t give a shit if I had milk or not. He never gave me the money, but there was a very kind bus driver named Mr. Burkhart who knew I was poor and who discreetly handed me five cents every morning when I climbed into the bus. Then, at eleven o’clock every morning, after recess, Kenny and Calvin would beat me up in the bathroom and take the nickel Mr. Burkhart had so kindly given me. Beating me up and stealing my milk money was one thing, but the Monday we returned to school after Christmas break, Kenny and Calvin went too far. They took my money and then they forced me into one of the stalls and shoved my head into the toilet bowl. And the bowl wasn’t clean. Calvin had taken a piss before they forced me in there, and he hadn’t flushed. The bowl was full of Calvin’s smelly urine, and they shoved my face right down into it. I thought those ignorant motherfuckers were going to drown me, and then a voice from outside the stall said, “Let him go.”
Kenny and Calvin turned around. Through the water dripping from my forehead I saw Joe Crawford standing there outside the stall with his fists clenched. I knew Joe, but we ran with different crowds. Joe was from a good family. He always had clean clothes and he made good grades and he wasn’t on the free lunch program. He had a cool haircut and cool sneakers and he never wore a dirty, wrinkled shirt to school. Frankly, I was surprised to see him there in the shitter after recess, taking up for the likes of me.
“Get out of here, Crawford,” Kenny said. “This ain’t none of your business.”
“I’m making it my business. Now let him go before I kick your ass.”
Calvin bolted out of the stall, cocked his fist, and swung at Joe’s head, but Joe ducked and punched Calvin in the stomach and pushed him into the urine trough.
“You’re dead, Crawford,” Kenny said. He went for Joe, but I grabbed his foot and tripped him, and he fell face-first into the stall’s metal doorframe. Bright red blood started gushing from his nose, and suddenly something happened to me. Suddenly I wasn’t afraid of him anymore. I pushed him to the floor and straddled him and drove my fist into his face. I hit him with a right and then a left. Right, left, right, left. I thrashed him violently again and again until the bell rang for class to resume. The cacophonous clanging snapped me out of my superfocused rage and probably kept me from killing him. Joe and I walked out of the boys’ room together and left the thugs there, one in a puddle of piss and the other in a puddle of blood.
Calvin and Kenny never went too far again.
From that day on, Joe Crawford and I were best friends. And from that day on, I didn’t take any shit from anybody.
Now, because of me, Joe Crawford was going to be forced into the insanity of this game called Snuff Tag 9. There was little doubt in my mind Joe was going to be the ninth player. It sickened me. Joe was going to be forced into the game and more than likely lose his life, and I felt like it was all my fault. He never should have come to my rescue in sixth grade, the Monday we returned to school after Christmas break.
I wondered how Number One had gotten away with using his weapon during a time-out period. According to the rules, it was strictly prohibited. According to the rules, it was cause for immediate termination. Maybe it was because he hadn’t actually touched me with it. He’d cracked the whip toward me, but it had only touched the fish. If Number One had been a few inches off with his aim and the whip had wrapped around my hand instead of the fish, he would probably be dead now. His defibrillator probably would have discharged and fried his heart. I wished that’s what had happened. That’s how furious I was. I wished a man had been executed for stealing my fish.
I started back toward my house. I tried to stomp some of the mud off my boots, and when that didn’t work I scraped some off with my knife. It was a long walk and my feet were heavy and my legs were tired and I was hungry as hell. I hadn’t eaten anything for nearly twenty-four hours.
I stopped for five minutes and picked some blackberries. I ate them as fast as I could pick them. The berries were bitter and the bushes were thorny and by the time I started walking again my hands were bleeding from all the scratches and my stomach hurt. I thought I was going to throw up, but I didn’t. I stopped again and stuffed my pockets with acorns in the dying daylight, and when I finally made it to my house it was completely dark. I felt my way onto the porch and through the door and to the lamp
on the little folding table by the cot. I switched on the lamp. A palmetto bug scurried across the floor, and I stomped it before it made it to safety. I wiped up the mess with a wad of toilet paper and threw the paper outside.
I remembered a scene from a prison movie where this guy was in solitary for a long time and resorted to eating cockroaches to stay alive. I wondered if I would ever get that hungry. Not in five days, I told myself. I sat on the floor and cracked a few of the acorns with the butt of my knife and ate them.
A voice came over the G-29. It wasn’t Ray this time. It was Freeze.
“You let them take your fish,” he said.
“I didn’t exactly let them. They took it, and there wasn’t much I could do to stop them. Play had already been suspended for the day, so I couldn’t fight them. Anyway, I would have lost.”
“Maybe. But I have to say, you surprised me today, Number Eight. I figured you were going to be one of the casualties, but you surprised me. Congratulations. Well done.”
I didn’t feel like congratulations were in order. I didn’t feel like much of a winner. Two men had died for no reason. Tomorrow maybe two more would die. For no reason. For the amusement of a billionaire psychopath. It made me sick.
“Thanks a lot,” I said. “How about sending me some sort of prize? A hamburger or something. Hell, I’d be happy to get my catfish back.”
“How were you planning to cook the fish, if you had made it home with it?”
“Oh, you know. A little salt and pepper, butter and lemon, maybe some scallions and a light wine sauce.”
