by Mark Tufo
Once again I was wounded to the point of unconsciousness. I awoke to the careful ministrations of Deb. Oh, how my head ached; didn’t the aliens have pain medication? While Deb was tending to my mending arm a stunningly beautiful brunette was placing a new bandage on my neck. At first, I looked at her in bewilderment and then it dawned on me she was my newest ‘gift’. Unfortunately, number 212 must have killed his first ‘gift’ so I would not able to liberate another, at least for the time being. But was all this false hope? How many times could I dance with death and not have to take a bow?
“I think he’s waking up,” the brunette said.
“Mike, Mike, can you hear me?” Deb said, her voice laced with concern.
“Yeah, I’m here. Any chance of some water? My throat tastes like dirt,” I managed to croak out.
“I was so scared, you fought so bravely, but I still thought you were going to be ki—” She cried, tears welling up in her eyes before she could finish.
“Me too, but the fact remains I’m still alive and I’ve got the thirst to prove it.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I’ll get it right now.”
“And what’s your name?” I managed to say to the brunette.
“I’m Stephanie,” she said somewhat nervously.
“You talked to Deb?”
“Yes.”
“So you know you have nothing to fear here?”
“After talking to Deb, it’s not you I fear. It’s what happens if you…”
“Yeah, die. I know.”
“That’s not what I meant!”
“Sure it is. Don’t get me wrong, I understand your concern. Your fate is directly tied into mine and you have no control over it, whatsoever.”
“Before this,” she stammered, “I was just a groupie who toured with Widespread Panic. I’ve never hurt anybody, all I wanted to do was have a good time.”
“Listen, Steph,” I said. “We’re all in the same boat. A few weeks ago I was attending college, not going to classes, partying my brains out and in the process, falling in love. But now we have to do all we can to help each other out through this mess. I have no desire to die for those croc-aliens.”
“Me neither.” She sniffed.
“Good, now if you could please hurry Deb up with that water, otherwise I’m going to die of thirst.”
When Deb returned with the water, I grabbed her with my good arm and touched her face.
“Oh, Mike, I think I love you!” And then she began to cry in earnest. “I think the stress of this place has intensified my feelings. I mean, I just lost my fiancé and here I am talking about loving you. What is wrong with me?”
I don’t know if I would have wanted to reply or not, but either way the point was moot, I succumbed to my exhaustion and fell fast asleep. I awoke hours, possibly days later, disoriented. Deb was spooning my body; Stephanie had taken a blanket and was fast asleep on my couch. My couch? I really was moving up in the world. I got up as carefully as possible so as to not disturb either of my guests. I wanted to know how my last outing had placed me. I needed to know my ranking. I knew at most there could only be in the vicinity of six hundred men left and any ranking over three hundred in my present condition would in all likelihood be the end of me. But I was in no way prepared for what the screen showed me, I was ranked number 33. I had to pull a chair out from the table to keep from toppling over. The scrappy kid from downtown Boston was now considered a contender. I was lost in my own world when I felt the hand on my shoulder. Surely, it couldn’t be time for another fight. But it wasn’t time for fighting. It was Deb’s hand. She had come to sit with me.
Steph joined us a few moments later.
“Do you have anybody special on this ship?” Deb asked Steph. Her words had hit a sour note with Stephanie, she recoiled as if she had been slapped. Not wanting to push any further, Deb let it go.
After a few moments of awkwardness, Stephanie went to the kitchenette area and made some lunch. Dinner? Breakfast? I didn’t know. We sat and ate and idly chatted for a while when out of nowhere Stephanie blurted out that she had gone to the concert with Durgan. Deb dropped her cup, juice sprayed everywhere. I could have caught bugs in my mouth, my jaw had dropped that far.
“We’ve been going out for three years and he’s always been somewhat of a bully,” and she added hastily “but he’s never acted anything like this, not even anything close. He’s always been extra protective of me and treated me like royalty. I don’t know who that person out there is. I can’t even imagine we were once close, he disgusts me beyond words. I feel as if everything we had was a lie.” The anger mounted in her voice, she was nearly shouting. Deb went to comfort Stephanie as the shouting suddenly turned into sobbing.
“You know, Stephanie, if by some small miracle I ever reach him. I will have to do everything in my power to kill him. It’ll be the only chance any of us has.”
“I know,” she said with a clear tremor in her voice “The man I loved is no longer here. He is already dead to me. What happened to him?” she implored.
That was a question none of us knew the answer to, nor in all actuality wanted to find out. With the field of competitors getting smaller, I guess the aliens felt the need to draw things out so as to add to the suspense and tension. We were given more time off each subsequent round. I was not complaining, because even with the advanced medical attention I was getting I still ached from head to toe. I was lucky I hadn’t broken my neck when I fell out of that tree. It was going to take all the careful ministrations of Deb and Steph to get me back to full health, and who was I to complain.
Most of my waking time, which was beginning to increase, was spent either on the weight bench which the aliens had supplied or watching “reruns” of the past gladiator battles. I wanted to learn all I could about my opponents. The tendency of more violence among the victors was an alarmingly increasing occurrence. A woman’s chance at survival stood at a mere forty percent. Six out of every ten women were killed right there on the arena floor and who knew what happened to the ones who lived when they got back to their champion’s room? I’d be surprised if more than half of those lived to see the next day. The disease of violence had hit hard. It was unimaginable that these hippy wannabe concert goers could turn into such violent creatures. I guess given the circumstances and the stresses we were under that it wasn’t that far-fetched of a notion. We were all turning back to our baser instincts, but if our predecessors on Earth had killed off the fairer sex in the fashion and rate that was going on now, we would all be extinct. That I had the tenacity or will to kill another human being still left me weak-kneed if I thought about it too much.
My next battle was against number 579, Andrew Jenkins. By watching his tapes it seemed to me this man won more by luck than by skill. He sort of reminded me of myself. He was smaller than me, but definitely more agile. It seemed lightning quick hand speed was another of his virtues. This man had an uncanny ability to detect where his competitor was coming from and would thus lie in wait. One thing I noted with interest was his preferred weapon was a knife. And every victim he faced, well, faced wasn’t a good word. Stabbed in the back would be a better description. He never saw any of his competitors’ faces as he killed them. And for some reason or other the killing blow was always delivered in the small of the back. He looked well practiced at this routine; I could picture him in a dark alley at night lying in wait for some unsuspecting victim. Widespread Panic apparently drew out all sorts. The little Rat Man, as I affectionately began to call him, seemed to like the shrieks and throes of pain that ensued from this type of blow. It was not quick, but it was a mortal blow, nonetheless. The camera zoomed in toward Rat Man’s face and caught a smile of sheer delight; he looked like a kid about to get an ice cream cone. He took great pleasure in watching his victims flail about and try futilely to reach behind their backs and take out his weapon, which was slowly draining their life away. As his foe dropped to the ground to conserve what little life he still had, the Rat Man would
finally make his frontal assault. That was, of course, if they had dropped their weapons first. He would step in front of the person and just start mad kicking them in the face. Truly a little ass if I ever did see one.
I prepared for my fight against Rat Man mentally, physically, and spiritually. I was ready and it was time. When we finally made it to the arena, Rat Man did little to convince me he wasn’t part rat. He was always looking around and twitching; he made my skin crawl. His shifting eyes were disquieting, they were always darting around, looking for a place to run and hide. He constantly raised his head and sniffed at the air. I wondered, maybe he was a rat and could smell his victims coming? And his five-foot, four-inch frame made me look like a giant. The terrain this time looked like something from an Isaac Asimov book. It appeared to be a city after a nuclear holocaust. Rubble was everywhere. Pieces of buildings stood but much more of them lay in pieces on the ground. This looked to be Rat Man’s home territory. I was wondering if he had put in this request. From what I could tell on the big screen there appeared to be many hiding spots and only one or two possible pathways through the litter-covered streets. Was he licking his lips? No, it had to be a trick of the light. It looked like he was rubbing his hands together. We had to get this over with before I lost it completely.
The battle was going pretty much to plan, I wasn’t dead and that was a great plan thus far. I had prepared for one form of attack. If Rat Man changed his routine in any way I could be in for a serious run. I started down the narrow litter strewn path that at one time could have been Main Street in any city. These aliens were really good at reproductions. From the looks of it they must have been watching us for a good long time. My heart was pounding in my chest, even more than normal in these situations. Fear gripped me like a vise; I had a premonition of a lamb being led to the slaughter. Then it happened, I felt a thud in the small of my back. I fell to my knees more out of relief than anything else. It was finally over.
* * *
Debbie screamed in horror. “Oh, dear God, no. Please don’t let him die!” She stared at the screen in utter disbelief, unable to comprehend her new found love was about to die and so was she. Tears flowed heavily from her eyes. Her vision was so blurred it was all she could do to tell in which direction the screen was, focusing on anything was beyond reason. But she wiped as hard as she could with her shirt sleeve when Stephanie yelled in a jubilant tone.
“He’s still alive, he’s still moving! Get up!” she shouted.
Could it be? Deb thought to herself. Could he actually take a stab to the back and still be alive? If Rat Man would just get closer so Mike could kill him, the aliens would actually come in and fix him up. It was too much to hope for and now she was hoping for the aliens to intercede.
Rat Man finally felt good. He felt as if he had come into his true calling. He had always been the brunt of his so-called friends’ jokes, but these aliens, well, they were ugly but they loved him and all he had to do was keep killing people. He got the jubilation from the throngs and all the free women to do with as he pleased. Life was actually good. He didn’t even care that he had not been ranked so high, it made killing his opponent all that more satisfying. His five-foot, four inch skin-and-bones frame made it incredibly easy for him to hide in some of the most unusual places. And he felt as if he could move more silently than should have been normal. These ugly alligator things had given him more in the last month than all of society in the last twenty-four years. He loved this place. Maybe the adrenaline surging through his veins or the self-induced high he was on made him unaware that the knife had not struck home, because he took his time reveling in his glory. True to form Jenkins aka Rat Man came in front of Mike to finish off this battle with his signature move. The crowd became silent, holding their collective breath to let out their roar upon the conclusion. Debbie and Stephanie watched in horror, embracing each other in their perceived final moments. Beth, higher up in the stands, shed a tear.
* * *
Time stood still. My heart beat once, Rat Man reared back and let loose a bone crunching kick. My second heartbeat brought my left arm to block the brunt of the kick, although I felt he possibly might have shattered my damaged arm again. On my next heartbeat my right hand came up and thrust the sword which had been trailing on the ground in and through the frail frame that once belonged to Jenkins, turned into a soulless shell. His eyes grew wide in disbelief.
“You’re dead,” he whispered. “I killed you, you’re supposed to be dead now. They love me, can’t you hear it?”
He must have been listening to the voices in his head; the crowd was as silent as a hockey stadium after a playoff game in which the home team loses in overtime. I pulled my sword out of him and mustered my strength to stand. I didn’t think my heart would ever calm down. Even in death, his eyes had a gaze of disbelief forever frozen in them. I pulled my shirt up and to everyone’s amazement unstrapped the cushion from my weight bench. The aliens did nothing. Rat Man’s corpse still stared in disbelief.
I yelled up to the stands. “Isn’t this what you wanted? You ugly bastards! Isn’t this what you wanted?”
More than likely there were only one or two in the stands who knew what I was saying; the rest probably thought I was doing some sort of war chant. And that they did love, they went crazy. Hissing and cheering and clapping, it was sickening. I walked to the center of the arena and claimed my ‘gift’. She was another blonde; my favorite flavor, I thought. Don’t let this place take you down with it. Keep it together.
“Please,” she said. “Don’t hurt me.” Her voice was pathetically weak, to me it seemed she had already resigned herself to a gruesome fate, no matter what the outcome on the battlefield today.
“Don’t worry,” I said, trying to be as reassuring as possible. But a picture was worth a thousand words and here I was approaching her with a sword, my chest heaving from the surge of victory and the blood and gore of Rat Man all over me. What a sight I must have been. “I’m here to save you, my dear,” I said in my best Clark Gable impersonation. It wasn’t that good. I’m not sure she was going to believe anything I said up to that point, but the tone I used and the true smile did more to calm her down than any of my actual words.
“Come on, let’s go home.” I cut her bonds. “You can meet the other women.”
“There’s more women at your place?” she said in disbelief.
“No matter what you’ve witnessed out there, I leave it on the arena floor. The women who are at my cell are free to do as they wish, at least within the confines of the cell.”
That actually seemed to cheer her up a little bit.
“Now if you could do a little something for me.” She eyed me warily. “I could use your shoulder to lean on, my back and my arm are throbbing. I’m afraid I might fall over and I don’t want those things getting anywhere near me.” She leaned in close and supported enough of my weight to get me back to my cell, with my dignity intact. I’m pretty sure I slept for twenty-four hours straight and no matter how long it truly was it was definitely a deep sleep because when I awoke I found myself in a totally new room. It was almost as big as my old house. There were three bedrooms and two bathrooms, a full kitchen and a den. I was wondering what real estate went for out in space these days. You’d probably have to pay a pretty penny for a place like this. I could almost get to like this, especially since I found myself wrapped up in Debbie’s arms.
“I didn’t think you were going to get up at all today," she said playfully. “You know you scared the crap out of me out there. See, you got me so upset I actually cussed. I never cuss.”
For two days we stayed in that bedroom, never venturing far except to grab the occasional drink or a sandwich.
To look at my ‘prison’ one would have thought I was a multimillionaire caught embezzling funds. Donald Trump in his heyday would have been envious of this place. But the most prized possession in the entire room was the window. It was no larger than a foot across and a foot tall, but it let us
see there truly was an outside to this ship. Even if it was cold, vast, distant space, it was still infinitely better than the confines of this alien vessel. It allowed us to see our planet, our real home, even though it seemed light years away. How far was Venus from Earth anyway?
“Do you think anyone down there can see us?” I said to no one in particular, but wanting everyone to hear. It was then that the newest addition to my entourage spoke.
“I’ve been thinking that same question over and over. Why don’t they send help? And then I realize where we are and that more than likely this ship has some unbelievable defensive capabilities.”
