Man Hunt

by K. Edwin Fritz

  Even as the screams pulled at Obe's rationality, the physical invasion commenced and immediately overtook him. His litany now became verbal, filling in the spaces in his mind that fought to stay sane, and he summoned his courage to endure the groping claws of the man in black, closing his eyes and letting the silken phrase flow through him.

  "Lining lining… silver lining… cloudy silver... silver lining." He paused then breathed deeply even as the man in black withdrew his hands and continued to scream. Obe repeated the litany, quicker and smoother. "Lining lining silver lining cloudy silver silver lining." The man in black stopped his yells now, and tilted his head like so many ignorant dogs. Again Obe said the words. Again. Faster and faster the string came until soon it was a long, fervent whisper that slipped off the tip of his tongue.

  When Obe opened his eyes he saw this desperate man anew. He was not dangerous. He was just old and weak. Tired. Pathetic. Obe tried not to think of what this man must have gone through to become what he had, tried not to calculate how far along this same path he was himself.

  "Staaaaaa," the man said.

  "I… I'm sorry?" Obe said. His mind was clear now. The litany had done its job.

  The man clenched his stomach with both hands then pulled away at the air in front of him. "Staaaaaaa!" the man said again, and this time Obe heard a distinctive whine in the voice.

  "I'm sorry, I don't have any food," Obe said.

  "STAAAAAAhaahaa!" the old man screamed again. And Obe saw now that he was also crying. Again his hands clutched at his stomach and pulled away, empty. Then he repeated the movement over and over, staring into Obe's eyes with a weak look of hope and need. Obe only shook his head, shocked into sudden misery that he had nothing to give.

  "STAAAAAAAAA! STAAAAAAAAA!" Obe's heart wrenched at the sound. The man was starving and had been hunted too long to be guessed. He reached out one hand slowly, not sure how to help. But the man in the black jumpsuit only screamed again. They stared at each other that way, and just as suddenly as he'd appeared the wild man turned his back and began walking away. He continued screaming as he went, though the ferocity of it was now gone. It sounded more like a lament, Obe decided, and each torrent of emotions diminished in volume as the men's proximity slowly spread. Obe could only watch him go, wishing there was something he could do. Soon the wild man turned down a side street and disappeared. Obe's reaction was immediate and caught him by surprise.

  With what seemed like no other choice, Obe collapsed to the curb's edge, closed his eyes, and tried not to hear the final, distant screams. He tried picturing the dark gray cloud that sometimes accompanied his dreams, but the screams prevented any concentration. Finally, when the horrible sound was entirely gone, he could clearly picture it in his mind's eye.

  It was enormous, that cloud. As wide as the entire sky. It put a gloom over everything, which was as it was meant to be. Then he imagined it penetrating the air around him, turning the leaves on the trees first yellow, then brown, then gray. Finally, it reached into his heart and it, too, turned slowly gray. The image comforted him, somehow. He liked the giant gray cloud. It was part of his identity now, like the litany had become. Like the constant questions about his name had become. The cloud was another element to his own personal purgatory, and he couldn't imagine a world without it.

  But then, as it often did, his imagination produced a sharp white glinting from the thinnest folds of the giant cloud. It was the sun shining meekly through, and it spread slowly both in size and strength. Quickly the glint became a long sliver, then a handful of threads, and finally a mass of silver-white ribbons worming spectacularly throughout the entire gray sky. It was utterly beautiful, and it soothed Obe deeply, for this image was one of the few true memories he still had. The giant, dark gray cloud had been real. The angelic silver lining had been real too. And standing right beside him that day and witnessing the same phenomenon had been Obe's brother.

  He knew this with conviction, with honesty. Though neither his brother's face nor even his simple silhouette was visible in the memory, Obe had no doubt they had seen the magnificent cloud together that day. In this, his favorite memory, he could feel a presence coming from his right. They had looked at the cloud together and said something serene together too. Something about beauty or nature or perhaps even God. But the forgotten conversation didn't matter. What did was that feeling of presence, of love, coming from his side. He had conjured it often in the fortress, and despite the grueling attempt of the women to eviscerate every memory of value from his mind, this was one he had retained. As such, the cloud wasn't just a soothing memory, it was Obe's lone victory against the women that imprisoned and hunted him, and it was the seed of hope that kept him running.

  CHAPTER 3

  CONTROL

  1

  When the women of Monroe's Island emerged from their rooms on any given morning, each consciously took the cleansing breaths of freedom that reminded them this day was the first of the rest of their lives. Such was the island's power; it was a rebirth of feminine souls.

  On this day one woman among them– the twentieth and last of their collective– did not wake because she had not slept. It had been her turn for the loneliest job on the island: midnight guard duty.

  She had served her time in the same manner as she had for the past six years: alternating between strolling long laps around the third floor foyer's circular balcony which loomed above the grand foyer below, staring for long minutes out the north or south-facing windows, or lounging on the wood-framed, cushioned chairs.

  She sat now in her favorite green chair positioned by the north windows, just as she had for the past hour. From the tips of her twitching fingers hung a delicate length of chain. At its end swung a simple pendant made of the purest silver money could buy. No matter the illumination in the room, it always seemed to gleam.

  She was thinking about the day she'd agreed to join forces with Monroe's Island and temporarily give up her former life.

  It had happened fast, of course. One moment she'd been a normal girl of sixteen, her eyes and her future full of life and hope. The next she'd been a broken wreck. The loss of one's identity, she had learned, could be as blistering and destructive as a winter storm. Now, all these years later, she was still working to restore what had been taken from her in less than a single day.

  The pendant twinkled in the strong orange-yellow rays now streaming through the window. She thought quite naturally of the day this new life of hers had truly started. Not the day she'd gotten the pendant, but the day two weeks before then when she'd been date-raped. She thought about the boy she had then thought was quite possibly 'The One' and how he'd surprised her with his forcefulness, his bravado, and his anger.

  Unaware how to handle what she'd been through, she had feigned illness the day after it had happened and again the day after that. Neither her parents nor her friends had paid more than a modicum of concern for her unnatural silence. She had deceived them that easily.

  On the third day, while her parents were gone and assuming she was still fighting the urge to vomit up the chicken soup they'd left on her bedside table, she had called the number she'd found in the rear dregs of a newspaper.

  "Crisis hotline," a surprisingly stern, ugly voice had answered. It was almost a command, not the soothing coo she had been expecting. "How can I help you?"

  The girl had stammered in silence for a few moments, and the voice on the other end changed tone instantly. "Are you alright, dear? Talk to me. There's no recording and you don't have to leave your name if you don't want to."

  Somehow the acknowledged anonymity had been an enormous relief even though she hadn't realized it was something she had wanted. "I…," she had tried, and had found that for the first time in her short life she couldn't think of a thing to say. It had felt as if a block of dry, salted marble had been caught in her throat. She couldn't swallow, couldn't so much as groan.

  She looked at her favorite poster on her bedroom wall. On it, a s
oft pink background framed a detailed drawing of a resplendent unicorn. Sparkles swept from the unicorn's golden hooves. Its tail and mane danced in an unseen wind. Moonlight reflected ever-so-delicately in its shockingly blue eyes. As a little girl, she had always loved unicorns, but suddenly, she hadn't understood them. Suddenly, she had never felt so lost.

  "Did someone hurt you, dear?" the voice had asked.

  "Yyyyy……yes," she had managed, and then the tears began to flow. They had been the first she'd shed since the incident. It had been an enormous relief to admit she'd been damaged, somehow akin to opening her veins and letting poisoned blood flow out and to the floor. Painful and terrifying, it had nevertheless been a release of tension that had been building for three days.

  "We can help you, dear," the voice had said. "You're not alone. Many of the women here have been hurt, too, and we are all healing together. Do you want to tell me what happened?"

  "Yes," the girl had repeated, though she hadn't known if she could. "My boyfriend…" she had begun, then found it was as impossible to say what the voice on the phone already knew as it was to stop her tears. "My boy…" and another bolt of pain had hit her. This had been like nothing she had ever felt. She hadn't known she could hurt so much. She had wanted to die, to kill herself. To kill him first and then kill herself so as to blot out the world's evil and its damaged goods in one fell swoop.

  "It's alright, dear," the voice had said. "There's no rush. I'll be here all day. You just take a few deep breaths and try again."

  The girl had felt her tears begin to slow. She had wondered why she hadn't called the number the first day like she'd wanted to. She had wondered why she hadn't told her mother the night it had happened. "I've lost control," she had suddenly blurted.

  A moment of silence had followed while the girl had time to renew her tears and worry that the line had gone dead. "We'll help you get it back," the voice had said into the silence. And though the girl hadn't believed such a thing was possible, she'd wanted it enough to stay on the line and listen to the silence a few more seconds, a few more minutes. Eventually, she had begun to talk.

  2

  "Josie?"

  The woman looked up quickly, startled from her little trance. The pendant– a fist of power embedded inside the universal symbol for 'woman'– jerked in her hands and swung violently. She gathered it up as she checked her watch. It was 6:33 a.m. As reliable as ever, Josie thought.

  The speaker was Josie's roommate and best friend, Steph. They had been both trained and recruited together. "What are you doing?"

  "Oh, just…" Josie remembered again the unicorn poster on her old bedroom wall in those days before her encounter with an abusive man, "…just thinking." That bedroom, that whole life, was as far away from her now as any place or memory could be. She suddenly realized she was not only older now but entirely different in so many ways. The worst of it was that back then she had at least known who she was and what she was supposed to be. Now, she could barely define herself beyond the roles she played for The Cause.

  A tiny flame of fear popped into life then. It flickered for a few moments– What will the headwomen do if they knew what I've been thinking?– before going out.

  "Well, save your philosophical outpouring for later," Steph said. She stepped forward and wrapped a long, lean arm around Josie's shoulder. "Dirty Gertie is waiting." She added a feigned evil smile, but Josie didn't respond to the intended humor.

  "Seriously?" Josie asked. "Before breakfast?"

  "Well, she wasn't that insistent," Steph said. But I think you and Rachael better go before lunch. "Said she wants an update on your numbers or some shit."

  "She's such a control freak," Josie said. Steph nodded and suddenly plopped down on the tan chair next to Josie and flung her legs onto Josie's lap.

  "I was wondering," she said, "do you think Gertie is a virgin?"

  Josie was finally jerked fully awake. "What!?"

  Steph laughed. "Well, she never talks about sex. It's like she's a female eunuch or something. I dunno." She kicked her legs playfully in scissors fashion, placed her hands deferentially upon one knee, and threw a flurry of blinks at her friend. "Maybe she's just a lesbian."

  "She's a headwoman," Josie said, trying not to laugh.

  "She's a bitch," Steph countered. "Probably the queen bull dike back home in the commune where she was hatched and raised." There was a single moment of pure silence, and then they were both laughing boisterously. They did, however, hush themselves after just a few seconds of the raucous joy.

  Steph flipped her legs quickly back to the floor and was on her feet a second later. "Come on," she said. "We'll steal some scrambled eggs before checking in with Rhonda."

  Josie put the pendant back around her neck and stood to join her friend. "Another pre-breakfast breakfast, huh?"

  "Every chance I get."

  "All that cholesterol is going to kill you one day."

  "I'll take my chances. Now come on. You don't want two headwomen on your ass in the same day."

  She turned to go but Josie paused a moment before following. "Thanks Steph," she said simply.

  "Huh? What for?"

  Josie couldn't be absolutely sure about Steph sometimes. Often her friend truly didn't understand the various subtleties of life. Other times she only feigned ignorance. So she erred on the side of caution and explained, "For cheering me up. You know I hate this gig."

  Steph gave her that big-toothed grin Josie had learned was her most honest expression of joy, and laughed again. "Whatevs, bee-atch. I was just delivering Dirty Gertie's message. Don't go flattering yourself so much."

  Josie chuckled and followed her friend down the hall, her stomach already grumbling.

  3

  On the ground floor of the fortress, in the exact center of an entirely white room sat a desk. It was enormous, and it was beautiful. A giant rectangle of polished cherrywood, it literally gleamed in the nearly sterile room. It was cleaned and buffed regularly. It was occasionally inspected and repaired of inevitable scratches and dings. And except when actively in use, it was always barren.

  Above the desk hovered a woman. She, too, was beautiful, though perhaps only in the eyes of a physiologist, for she was also enormous. Yet it was muscle, not fat, which adorned her so impressively. Veins stood out on the backs of her hands, pulsing rhythmically as her hot blood moved through them, tight under the pressure of such malicious stock. They walked a crooked course past her wrists and up her forearms, dwindling slowly as they went. The largest survived all the way across her curving right bicep before disappearing under the mountain of muscle that screamed of power and control.

  Yet her arms were but one example of her impressive form. There was the chiseled stomach, the wide back, the trunk-like thighs and, as inevitable as revenge itself, the breasts as flat as road kill. It had taken years to achieve her envisioned embodiment of perfection. Decades. However there was something about the woman that made her somehow bigger still. This was a thing deep inside which most who encountered her detected at once. It was an extreme sense of confidence in part, but also a sense of greed, of entitlement, and of rage. It was most often perceived in the eyes. And for this woman, her eyes lacked the ability to deceive. To look directly into them meant to feel her full wrath.

  Between the desk and the woman lay a large, intricate map. Though the paper didn't curl, the woman's paw-like hands held down its crisp edges, pinning it into position like a dead insect.

  The woman's eyes stared at a drawn wedge that covered the northwestern trisector of the map, piercing its tiny black center as if the spot there was her prey. Perhaps it was.

  She glared at the spot for a very long and perfectly still moment, thinking. Perceiving. The map did not so much as flutter in the light breeze coming through the open window behind her. The only air that flowed was from her nostrils in a steady stream that seemed to never end. But eventually the current did thin and die. Immediately she inhaled a deep, healthy breath of the
fresh oxygen that wafted in from the outside, and she held it a long moment before beginning another slow demise of wind.

  "Pigs," the woman finally mumbled, though the sound was so quiet even her own ears did not quite detect it. This word was the closest she would allow herself to curse. All the women on the island used it, of course. But, as with the idea and design for The Cause itself, its use had originated with her. As the air in her lungs ran out, she slowly inhaled, held the new breath for a moment, and said the word again.

  "Pigs are hiding," she said. "Where do piggies hide?"

  The map, a large square, had been hand-drawn by the woman over a painstaking eight-day fervor that she had very recently completed. It had not yet earned its first crease. It had never once been rolled. Like the desk and the woman, it claimed its own distinct account of beauty.

  There were two other such tiny squares on the map like the black one the woman watched so closely. One was blue; the other, green. Each of these three squares was precisely centered within its own wedge-shaped domain. The blue square's wedge was to the north and east, and green's was the entire south. And in the center, where they all met at perfect 60-degree angles, a large white rectangle loomed. The entire image, when viewed from above, held a certain resemblance to a face.

  A thin blue scar cut the face in twain. A stream in reality, it ran straight down from the center of the forehead and along the nose, curve under the face's left eye– the blue one– and finally ended far down on the left cheek. Another scar, shorter but deeper and wider, was a long, thin gulf leading to the ocean. It cut a painful divot into the opposite side of the face. Black square's wedge had suffered but survived this nearly fatal wound just south of the eye, high on the nonexistent cheekbone.

  The face had terrible acne. Tiny white-brown dots and little black lines surrounded the nose, cheeks, forehead, and chin. These blemishes were rundown buildings, streets, and alleys– the remnants of a former world filled with laughter, camaraderie, and the contentment that comes with well-executed tourism. Now these manmade structures were slowly crumbling and giving way to the diligence of nature below. This thought made the woman smile. Perhaps one day she'd live to see the men on her island run through true jungles and chased on foot, the way a hunt was meant to be.