by Burks, John
Darius agreed. “It’s like in prison. Most of the violence happens in the shadows at night, if you can get away with it. It doesn’t happen here. No one came to rob us or kill us in the middle of the night.”
Though insane, there was a twisted logic to what the men said. He even remembered Block telling Darius to ‘save his energy for the Game’. It didn’t change the fact that he was worried about his wife. As Darius and John prattled on about their current theory, he tried to ignore them and scan the crowd for his wife. There were so many faces, all dingy and dirt like they were wearing a layer of camouflage, and they all looked the same. The many amputees stood out. There were people like the old woman who were missing hands and feet, one he saw even missing both legs. The man was carried around in a haphazard sling on the back of another man.
He didn’t see Rebecca or the child anywhere as the Game began. The gladiators disappeared and were replaced by two identification numbers and the letter R. He looked down at his own encrusted tattoo in sudden panic, hoping against hope it wouldn’t be him that was called to the canyon floor. He sighed in relief when he found it wasn’t his, and it was several seconds before two men stepped out onto the canyon’s asphalt-covered floor.
“What do you think the R means?” John asked aloud.
“Well, K was kill, right?” Darius responded.
“Yes.”
“Then I’m guessing R might mean rape.”
“It’s two men,” John said, the horror in his voice evident. “They expect a man to rape another man?”
“Happens more than most would think.”
The two men walked up to each other slowly as the crowd quieted. They shook hands and hugged each other tightly. Steven thought for a moment that they might be homosexual and that this was simply a display of man-on-man pornography until one of the men, an associate of Block’s who was heavily muscled and tattooed, stepped back and then swung his fist forward like a bat, knocking the other man to the ground. The fallen man was nearly equal in size as the aggressor, the match much more fair looking than the previous battle.
The surprised man stood, his opponent giving him the opportunity, and the two laid into each other. Their reach and strength was mostly equal, each landing blows in drum beat with the roar of the crowd. They traded punches and kicks back and forth, like prizefighters, but Steven could discern no clear advantage for either man. They kept at it, one blow after another, tit for tat, for what seemed to Steven like hours, though it was only minutes. Finally, both men staggered back, faces bloodied and broken, exhausted. They looked as if they might not continue the battle and the crowd hushed, glancing up at the digital billboard.
“Fight,” Block ordered angrily from the sidelines, his arms flailing and his face puffed up and boiling red like a hot water bottle. “Fight or we don’t eat. Fight, god damn you.”
His man in the fight looked at him and nodded, stepping forward and slamming a fist home while the other man was distracted with Block’s ravings from the side. He fell in a crumpled pile with the other man coming down quickly onto his chest, pinning his shoulder’s down with his knees. Steven could see the man whisper sorry before pummeling his opponent. He lashed out, fist after fist, until the blood pouring from his knuckles was indistinguishable from the blood on the other man’s face. The crowd cheered frantically, almost orgasmically, as one. Even Steven’s heart raced, a combination of the crowd’s energy and the adrenaline from watching the fight.
When the pinned man moved no more Block’s man stood, blood dripping from his hands, and stepped back. He looked at his leader hesitantly.
“Do it, goddamn it!” Block screamed. “Do it for the Cave.”
The man nodded in agreement and bent, untying the hemp rope that served as a belt through his opponent’s dirty and torn trousers. He rolled the man over on his stomach and pulled the trousers down past his knees. Standing, he let his own ragged pants fall to the ground and then grasped his flaccid penis, stroking it to make it erect.
“Fuck,” Darius whispered, barely audible over the din of the crowd, “it is rape.”
The crowd cheered the man on like he was a runner heading home, but it didn’t seem to have any affect. He looked at his boss desperately for help. Block nodded to a couple nearby women who rushed out to the man, kneeling in front of him and working his penis and testicles in a mad effort to help him with an erection. The man leaned his head backwards, deep in concentration.
Minutes passed and the crowd hushed in anticipation of the grand finale. It became so quiet that Steven could actually hear the birds circling high above the canyon walls.
“This is insane,” he whispered. “How could a man perform like this?”
“You might have to, one day,” John whispered back. “You should steel yourself for that. We all should.”
Several more moments passed and the women, in frustration, pulled away from the still flaccid fighter in disgust. Block shook his head sadly and then signaled for his remaining men to enter the fray.
“No, god damn it,” the man with his penis in his hand pleaded. “I can get it up. I know I can.”
“I’m sorry,” Block told him simply as the dozen others tackled him. Steven couldn’t see the stricken man at the bottom of the pile, only the hands and fists of his attackers. He heard him scream, for a few seconds, and then there was silence. Once the man was dead, his attackers stood and lined up behind the other combatant who was still knocked out.
One by one, they took turns raping the man—none of them apparently having a problem with an erection. Halfway through he awoke, and his screams were audible over the roar of the crowd. Those not in the act held him down while the last few men finished. The audience went to orgasm with the final man, a collective climax, and then turned their attention to the screen.
The dozen men helped their bloodied and beaten comrade up, slapping him on the back and telling him what a fine job he’d done. He tried a smile but his face was so swollen and bloody from his fight that it looked more like a twisted jack-o-lantern carved by a three year old. They turned to the screen as well and the residents of the Cave waited in silence.
The red screen turned to the live camera feed and, once again, it showed the torso of a man sitting in a stone chair, his head cut off by the top of the camera. His hand was outstretched, his thumb level. The image wavered for a moment, cut by grain and static, and then the thumb flashed down. There was a collective gasp as the screen went blank.
The crowd milled for a few moments, looking up hopefully at the steel doors and the garbage shoot.
“I guess that wasn’t good enough,” Darius said.
“And so they, we, won’t eat,” John agreed.
“They’ll eat something,” Steven told them, pointing to where they were dragging away the corpse of the fighter who’d failed.
“I’m not ready for that,” John said, following the crowd back in. “Not yet.”
Steven waited until the crowd had left the Canyon, leaving him alone. He sat on the ground and cried.
Chapter Four
Rebecca waited in the semi-cleared spot they’d all slept in the night before, Mia sitting quietly at her side. She was braiding Mia’s long dark hair, smiling and whistling while she worked. The girl, who still didn’t speak, hummed along. It took Steven several moments to realize they were both doing “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”. Her behavior around the girl was different than it had been with the boys, more girlie, more feminine. She’d been a great mother to his son’s, after their mother’s death, but this was something altogether different. The two acted as if they’d known each other for years despite it being only the span of a few days.
“Rebecca,” he said softly, sitting at her side, opposite of Mia. “I’ve been looking all over for you.”
“Mia and I went to rinse off,” she said. “And then we went to watch the Game.”
“I don’t know that it’s appropriate for a child her age to watch the Game. I don’t know if it’s
appropriate for any of us to watch it,” he said, instantly feeling silly. The girl had been born in the Cave, he was sure of it. She was used to no other life besides this one.
“She has to learn, Steven.”
“Why?”
“For the day she gets her number and becomes a woman,” Rebecca replied, never making eye contact. Her tone was distant and half crazed, Steven thought, like a mad woman in a sanatorium.
“Rebecca, are you all right?” It was a stupid question. None of them were all right, not after what they’d been through, but he had to ask. He wondered if the loss of the boys was catching up with her to the point that it was driving her insane.
She looked up at him and smiled. “Of course I’m all right. Why wouldn’t I be all right? I have Mia, and that means I have everything.”
“But the boys…”
“What about them?” she asked coldly. “They’re dead.”
“Rebecca, how can you say that?” he asked, flabbergasted.
“Well you heard the gun shots the same as I did, Steven. There isn’t anything we can do about your boys being dead,” she said, and all he noticed from the tirade was her saying ‘your boys’. “But I can protect Mia here and now. If anything, Steven, the people responsible for your boy’s death are here somewhere.”
“Rebecca, they were our boys,” he said, lacking conviction.
“No, they were always your boys. Always, always, always. They didn’t love me like Mia does. You don’t love me like Mia does.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, trying to grasp his wife’s shoulder but she pulled away.
“I don’t care what you are, Steven.”
He didn’t know what to think about his wife’s behavior and wanted to attribute it to shock. His Rebecca wouldn’t say such horrible things. She was the strong one, the one that was always there when you needed her. He stood, looking at her sadly. She’d already gone back to braiding the girl’s hair like nothing had been said, humming “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”.
Steven wandered aimlessly, unsure of what to do, what to think. He was hungry, and his stomach screaming bloody murder pushed every other thought to the backburner. He was starving, and the smell of the cooking meat coming from Block’s camp, despite him knowing what it was, tantalized his nose. He wandered closer, where the leader was speaking.
Two of his men held the gang-raped man between them, and Block held his broken face up by a tuft of hair. “You are a failure. You failed the Game, and so you failed your people. Our people will be hungry tonight.”
“Not because of me…” the beaten man said confidently. “Because of Charlie.”
“Yes, you are correct, because of Charlie.” Block turned to the crowd. “Because our brother Charlie could not see fit to abide by the rules of the Game, we have only his body to consume this evening. We have only his flesh because he was weak.”
Block turned back to the raped man. “I wish that I were putting a mark on your head tonight, Jason. I would have liked nothing better. But instead, with your failure, I’m forced to punish you.”
“Please, Block,” the man pleaded. “I tried.”
“And failed. Put him in the Cage for one week. Let’s see if he can live on the charity of others for that long.”
Three of Block’s men dragged him back towards the rear of the cavern, where the entrance to the Cage they’d found themselves in when they arrive was. The man didn’t resist, but cried all the way.
“It’s a death sentence,” Darius said, coming up behind him. “Unless someone feeds him. And these people, right now, don’t have anything besides that.”
“Now, brothers and sisters,” Block began, “either our stew has just meat, or we dig deep, as a family, and bring what we have put back for hard times forward for the good of the Cave. I know it’s hard, and I, too, have been hungry just as you are.”
Steven watched as people began passing forward bits of fruit and vegetable, some whole, but most rotted, to the cooks who cut them up into as tiny pieces as possible and added them to the pot. Soon the boiling soup took on an appetizing aroma, sending his stomach into fits. He chided himself for allowing the cannibalistic concoction to move him so but he was as hungry as he’d ever been.
He pointed to the caldron of boiling water with the flesh of the failed opponent thrown in. There was already an orderly line forming, people with their bowls, cups, and tin cans in hand ready for the watery soup with a few chunks of meat in it. Steven wondered how far one full grown man would go in feeding the hundreds of people in the cavern. The pile of fruits and vegetables behind Block’s throne, though, went untouched, and Steven wondered why their leader didn’t contribute as he’d asked his people to do.
“His friends will take care of him,” Steven said of the Game loser, half hoping he was right. “They seem to care about each other.” He wondered who would take care of him if he were in that situation, who would look out for his wife?
“Maybe,” Darius replied. “But maybe he ends up in a pot in a couple nights. I give him three days out there, max, without help.”
His stomach was doing somersaults as he stared at the bubbling concoction, his hunger overwhelming his knowledge of the main ingredient. It took everything he could muster to step away from the line and melt back into the crowd.
* * *
Amanda walked around the shantytown, still hysterical, starving and crying.
“Ma’am,” she said to an older woman sitting next to a stalagmite with two small children. She was missing an arm and an eye and tried hard to ignore Amanda. “Please, ma’am. Can you tell me where we are? Can you tell me how to get out of here?
That produced a chuckle, not just from the old woman, but from the children as well. “Get you some marks, girl,” she said, pointing to the two on her forehead. “You need five of them. I traded one for this eye and one for this arm. God willing, I’ll get my other three before I die.”
“Granny,” the little boy said, “we aren’t supposed to talk to her yet.”
“It’s okay, Jimmy,” she said as she patted him on the head. “What are they going to do to an old woman like me?”
“They could put you in the pot,” the little girl said.
“And you could eat another day, then, couldn’t you?”
“I guess so.”
“Ma’am,” Amanda said desperately, “please help me. I’m starving.”
“Go see Block. He’s at the cauldron,” she replied, pointing in the leader’s general direction.
“I don’t want…”
“You don’t want to eat people?”
She shook her head quickly and sadly.
“You will,” the one-eyed woman laughed. “Oh trust me, child, you will.” She laughed again. “Hell, child, it ain’t bad once you get used to it.”
She held up a wooden bowl of the watery soup, a finger bobbing near the surface. “Now, I’m not so partial to fingers, but you take what you can get, you know?”
Amanda ran away from the woman, who laughed hysterically. She bumped into people who, without acknowledging her, pushed her away. She asked for help, begged for someone to give her something to eat, but no one would listen to her. She finally found herself at Block’s camp where the last of the line of Cave dwellers were being fed the remaining few scraps from the cauldrons. Amanda gawked at the liquid remains, her stomach screaming.
Block looked at her and said, “There is no more. You should have been quicker.”
She noticed that behind the cauldrons, near where his wood and bamboo throne was, there were piles of semi-rotted fruit and vegetables. “Please may I have some of that?” she asked, pointing.
“No,” he said simply without anger or malice.
“But why not? I’m starving.”
“Because the food is for three- and four-timers, me being the only four-timer, of course.”
“I don’t understand,” she said, though she wasn’t looking directly at him. Her eyes darted about like a nervous jun
kie.
“Of course you don’t,” he replied. “But you will.”
“Please,” she said, sliding her arms out of her sleeves and letting her blue jumpsuit fall to her waist. “I’ll do anything.”
“I’m sure you would,” Block said. “But so would most of the people in here. No, honey, I’m not going to take you for an apple. If I took you for an apple and sapped my strength, what would I do if I had to fuck someone in the show?”
She tried to look exotic, alluring, but wasn’t feeling it. “Please, Block. I’d fuck you better than anyone.”
He stepped up and took one of her pert breasts in his calloused hand, squeezing it gently like it was a tomato at the market. “And you might well do that, but not here, not now. Save it for the Game, girl.”
