Roger wanted to turn away, to stop watching this tragedy unfold, but he had no eyelids to use to shut out the violent images. He was a part of these people, and he was trapped in this inevitable action.
Roger tried to reconcile his forced passivity with the knowledge that there was nothing he could do to have stopped this event, nothing he could do to change what was going on in the world he had once called home. If he struggled against the inevitability of this, he was liable to go insane, but he knew he could never again consider man to be an evolved species.
This belief was firmly cemented into his mind as soon as her scream echoed through his head, and he was forced to watch and feel how horrible it was to be violated on such a primal level.
The fact that a part of him was enjoying and even feeding off of her pain and her torture was not helpful. He hated himself even though he knew it had nothing to do with him. He hated himself for being part of the male sex, for having the ability to hurt women in this way.
When the man was finished, he left her lying on the floor of the cold basement in a puddle of blood, piss, vomit, and sperm. The man was already thinking about a shower, a desperate attempt to cleanse the sin from his skin while the memory remained a cherished event. The woman would not be that lucky. She would never be able to rid herself of the scent of the overweight man and the stain of his off-white sperm against her pale flesh.
An emotional tidal wave overtook him, pressing individual fingerprints of love, hatred, fear, loathing, and indifference to life on him, melding with his clay-like skin, thrusting him further into the surrounding night and marking his blood. He could feel millions of emotions ravaging him as the simulcast picture faded completely.
But it was in the nothing that he could hear the onslaught of voices that ingrained his body with the mark of a thousand lost souls, each swirl melding itself with his organs.
It was the kind of thing that made gods out of men in myths, but he didn’t want to become some kind of immortal, he just wanted the torture to end. He didn’t want to be branded by each unique emotional experience. He could feel welcome relief waiting on the other side of the blackness; all he had to do was get to it….
He remembered his mother’s voice in the desert, remembered that this was not his time to bow out. Without thinking about what he was doing, Roger began to try to expel everything he had taken in with great hacking coughs. He couldn’t take on all of the pain; it had been too powerful, too overwhelming, and it would eventually crushed him.
The coughing turned into dry heaves, and he was filled with relief when the chunk of bile in his throat dislodged and began to pour out of his body in thick waves. The outpour felt as if he were vomiting out the world. The expelled waves turned into a stream and then a slow trickle, and finally, it was just an occasional drip.
When Roger could breathe again, he noticed that the black under him was now a floor and he could once again see his body. He found himself nude, bent over in a crouching position with his knees on the floor, his head pulled in towards his stomach, and his hands laced behind his head. His vision was still blurry, but Roger inspected every inch of his flesh to reassure himself that the vision of a million fingerprints pressing in on his skin hadn’t had some kind of physical effect on him. He wasn’t able to see anything, but he could still feel where they had once been, his skin tingling all over in tiny circles as if it were awakening for the first time.
He put his hands on the floor and found that it was cool and slick like marble, completely different from the warm goo he had found himself caught in only a few minutes ago. He stood up and noticed that Adenitril was standing directly in front of him, inspecting him. Roger wanted to cover himself or hide behind something, but there was nothing but his hands available. For a second, panic, the feeling of the women’s vulnerability, seized him, and he was sure would be taken back to the Obawok to be killed nude and shamed.
“Did I pass? And why am I naked?”
“Your clothes are still in the real world. You, however, are not, and there is one more thing you have to see,” Adenitril said as he turned and began to walk away. Roger wasn’t sure how this was possible since he was supposed to be in a trance, but he followed him anyway.
Despite Adenitril’s assurance that this was entirely within the realm of his own mind, Roger kept his hands splayed over his exposed genitals as they walked. When Adenitril stopped suddenly and turned around, Roger clinched his hands together so hard that he hurt himself with out meaning to.
Adenitril didn’t act like he noticed. “Whether you pass or fail is not my decision to make alone, but something has happened now. Something that has changed everything, and I’m not sure what to do.”
“What happened, what’s wrong?”
Adenitril didn’t answer Roger directly but held his hand out in front of him and waved his arm gently through the air in one continuous motion. Objects began to rise and form out of the darkness, moving in and out of Roger’s line of sight. As the shadows grew and moved, candles took form in the darkness to illuminate the tunnel like space in front of them. Roger shut his eyes in a moment of panic, afraid of what this Obawok was going to show him.
But nothing happened.
He could still see everything moving around him. As he watched, a chair with a headless body tied to it came into view. The hate twisted face of the President quickly followed this image. He was standing over Tigaffo, who was awkwardly holding a long silver sword and covered in a gruesome pattern of dark swirls and bits of green flesh. Roger knew who had been killed even before he could see the detached, lifeless head and its deep violet stare.
I’m so sorry, Firturro…so sorry.
There were also several other Obawok present in the room and even one half-dead gnome chained to the wall, but they didn’t matter. Not compared to Firturro’s death.
“This was the first thing that happened, but it has set off a great chain of events.” Adenitril paused, his hand held above the screen. “Do you want to see what happened?”
Roger was unable to answer as he stared at the once calm and friendly face of Firturro laying face up on the floor. Adenitril turned his head and waved his fingers through the air once more, setting the still picture in motion as if it had been nothing more than a DVD paused at a critical scene. And Roger once again found himself watching others’ lives unfold around him.
Del sat behind the door, her hand gripping Trulle’s arm so tightly it’d gone numb minutes ago, but she couldn’t lessen her grip. The most important thing in her life at that moment was making sure he stayed safe. It was what she was supposed to do, what Firturro and Six were counting on her to do, but she couldn’t just sit here and do nothing while the President brutalized them. They had risked everything to help her, and now they were in trouble.
“I’m going to go in there. I want you to stay here, no matter what you hear,” Del whispered as she took the candle out of his hand.
“But I can….”
“No! You’re too important. You have to stay here.”
Before he could protest anymore, she swiftly lifted the thick rug and broke into the other room on all fours just as the silver flashed through the air. The blow severed the vertebrae in Firturro’s neck and his head thumped against the floor. Del faltered for a moment. She almost turned around and ran for her shelter, comforted herself with Trulle’s presence.
Instead she pushed all of her fears aside and stood up.
“No!” Del hadn’t meant for it to be so solid, hadn’t meant for it to even be spoken aloud.
The President turned his harsh stare towards her.
For a moment, there was pure silence so crisp she could hear the steady but soft plink of dripping water somewhere in the damp tunnels.
“See what you’ve made me do, you worthless bitch? See the lives you’ve damaged and ended just so you could have your stupid little adventure?” He gestured towards the far wall, and Del noticed Six hanging there for the first time since she’d entere
d the room. She breathed a heavy sigh of relief as soon as she saw his narrow yellow chest fall.
The President ripped the sword out of Tigaffo’s white-knuckle grasp so harshly that a thin line of his own blood trickled down his arm and disappeared into his cloak. And somehow, as he advanced on her with the stained sword clutched at his side, she found her voice.
“It was well worth it. You see, I’ve learned a lot outside of the pits, including the secret to immortality.” He stopped mid-stride, the sword still clutched in his hand. “You never thought a stupid girl like me would figure it out, did you? Never thought it would be a ‘worthless bitch’ to bring you down?”
“Shut up,” he mumbled. “Besides, Firturro already told them who I really was, so why would I care that you know, too? It doesn’t matter anymore.”
“It’s still over. I’ve told others, including your son.” Then she turned towards the others in the room. “Did he promise you power?
“I said to shut up!” His full voice had returned.
“Did you promise them your immortality? Or did you even bother to—”
“Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!”
“—tell them about it? You probably never even considered sharing that with them, did you? I’ll bet you were going to get rid of them t—”
The President found his stride and closed the electric air between them in two steps, thrusting the sword up through her open mouth and into her head.
The pain was immediate and blinding, forming a fuzzy picture that covered all of her thoughts. She heard her skin stretch and rip as if she was looking down on herself. An instant later, she felt nothing.
The last thing she saw rising out of the darkness was a tall glowing figure so pale she could almost see through him. And she knew his name was Roger.
The cobwebs disintegrated in an instant.
The President, Itckrelle, whoever he was, he wasn’t planning on sharing anything with Tigaffo. He shuddered when he thought of what he’d just done in the name of loyalty. But there was no loyalty between him and the President. There never had been.
Tigaffo watched in stunned silence as the woman’s eye sockets filled up with blood that then trickled down her checks like tears. Blood also flowed out of her mouth, nose, and ears, turning her face into an empty, horribly painted mask. She fell to the ground, her body making the same sick thud as it landed that Firturro’s head had made when it finally fell off his shoulders.
When he had murdered Firturro, he had felt removed from the entire thing, like it was something out of a bizarre dream, but somehow, this unknown woman’s death had a larger impact. She’d practically shined with nobility. As he watched the thick blood run from her mouth and nose he remembered the look of serenity on Firturro’s face and the way his flesh felt against the blade of the sword. Everything meshed together and formed a sickening collage in his head that he couldn’t turn away from.
The President stepped on Del’s body as he tugged on the sword. A wet belch sounded through the air as the sword let go of her flesh and he stumbled backward, wiping the blade against his cloak.
The knowledge that everyone had been meaningless pawns in the President’s struggle for power struck Tigaffo.
An immediate rage blossomed through his blood, and before he let himself think about what he was doing, Tigaffo launched his body at the President, wrapped his stubby arms around the his neck, sank his teeth into the tough skin just below the President’s chin and clinched down.
It was a fruitless endeavor, but the deeper his teeth sank, the more control he regained. He gnashed his teeth, chewing his way to redemption.
He could feel the sword swing by him, but he knew he was too close and the sword too big for the President to cause a life threatening wound to Tigaffo without cutting himself. The blood began to ooze between his teeth and over his mouth. The smell of rot and decay threatened to gag him, but he didn’t let go.
The rage wouldn’t let him.
The President’s free arm began slapping at his back as if he was as insubstantial as a gnat. They turned in circles, moving in rhythm to their own private dance, Tigaffo hoping for salvation and the President struggling for his preservation. A hysterical and nervous giggle built up inside him at the mental picture, and had he been in a position to laugh, he feared that he might never have stopped.
Then Tigaffo felt strong hands pulling him away, cutting in on his personal moment of glory. It must’ve been one of the guards. In his anger he’d forgotten all about them, but they’d intruded on his moment of glory anyway.
He felt his thin grasp on the President weaken until Tigaffo let go. He fell on top of the guard, who in turn had landed directly on the dead woman. The guard’s arms were still locked around Tigaffo’s waist, cutting off most of his air supply.
Before either of them had time to move, the President was standing over them, the sword pointing at them. A drop of blood slid off the shaft and landed with a soft splat on Tigaffo’s face.
Communal blood….
The insanity beamed out of the President’s eyes like a beacon. Tigaffo couldn’t turn himself away from that stare, even when the guard’s scream drilled through the background.
Tigaffo let the laughter that had been building up in him earlier bubble out of his mouth. His entire body was racked with laughter until he felt the sword slide in, and even then, he wasn’t sure he ever stopped laughing.
Trulle heard the screams and the scuffle behind the curtain, but it was the echoing laughter that bothered him the most. It chilled him. For a moment, in the silence that followed, he thought of what everyone in that room was risking, what so many others had sacrificed, and how his father had been allowed to spread his hatred and evil for so many generations.
“What?” He heard a dry, vibrating voice that he was positive belonged to his father. “Did you think you would be spared just because you helped me? No one’s spared, no one.” His voice creaked and groaned like an old woman’s. There was absolute silence for a little while, and then Trulle could hear the sound of feet walking across the floor and out of his hearing range.
Trulle peeked around the corner and saw that Del and two other bodies were haphazardly stacked on the floor, a sword holding them together like a giant toothpick. His dad stood a few feet away bleeding profusely from his neck and holding a glowing purple vial in his hand. Trulle immediately recognized what was in the vial and knew that he could not let his dad drink that liquid, could not chance a complete renewal.
He crawled out from behind the curtain, stood up. In one step he was standing over the bodies. He said a silent prayer for them as he closed his eyes and pulled the sword from the pile of bodies. If it hadn’t been for the flesh that tugged on the blade as he pulled it out or the sucking sound it made as it moved, he might have believed that he was the boy pulling the sword out of the stone.
Trulle opened his eyes just as Itckrelle turned, the vial still clenched inches above his mouth as he poured the last of the fluid down his throat. Trulle could see the muscles in the hole in his neck rebuilding, regrowing on top of one another.
For a moment, he was a young child again, and his father was down on the ground lapping at the glowing liquid like a savage beast. The past melted into the present as his dad’s face was transformed into that same insane grin and he reached for the sword. In a snap, the spell broke. Trulle lifted the sword high above his head and swung it down using his whole body.
“I’m sorry, Dad,” Trulle said as the sword’s blade arced down. The blade slid into his neck and severed the newly grown muscle tissue with relative ease, stopping its growth almost immediately and halting the grin that was still stuck on his face.
For a second, his head hung in the air, suspended over his back like a hood before falling to the ground. The rest of his body trembled and took another step. Trulle backed up and raised the sword again as thoughts of the headless horseman plagued him. The other foot lifted off the ground, but instead of moving the body crumpled on
the floor.
Trulle’s harsh breathing filled the now empty chamber. The skin on his dad’s body turned a horrible shade of black and began curling around the edges, peeling itself back from his twisted muscles and gray bones.
The room was suddenly filled with a stench so potent Trulle’s vision blurred and bile rose up into his throat, pressing against the back of his mouth with urgency. But he didn’t want to leave the body. He watched as the muscles and bones twisted into a meaningless jumble of dust and grit.
Trulle moved to Six and cut his bonds with the blood tarnished sword. He carried the gnome out of the chamber and into the hall, tossing the sword onto the floor. It was his first taste of freedom.
Roger watched all of this in silence, and it wasn’t until the triumphant Obawok carried the gnome from the room did he dare to speak.
“What does it mean?”
“It means that the course of Obawok society has abruptly shifted, and as far as you’re concerned it means that everyone who knew you were taking the test in now dead.”
Roger thought about this as he turned back to the screen as the images once again began to move.
Trulle wasn’t sure where he was headed. All of the tunnels looked alike, especially in the dark. The gnome in his arms shifted his weight, and Trulle tightened his grip on the small creature.
There was no need for any more deaths because of his father. He found himself in a large open area and sat on one of the empty benches that were strewn across the room.
What now? He wondered as he looked at the small creature that was now cradled against his chest. As he looked down, he saw the scar that marked the gnome’s leg and realized that it wasn’t just any gnome, it was his friend. This gnome had brought him books at his own risk, and this was how he paid.
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