Indian Hill (21 page)
“What’s wrong Mike?” Deb said as she curled up tight next to me on the couch. Apparently the scowl on my face was very noticeable.
“It’s my next opponent.”
“What about him? He doesn’t look very remarkable.”
“My point exactly.”
“What do you mean?” She sounded perplexed.
“Well, he’s not huge, he’s not terribly fast, yet there he is. Still alive and kicking. He’s smart. He didn’t overpower any of his competitors. He outsmarted them. His road thus far looked twice as tough as mine.”
“Oh, I see what you mean,” as she sat up and took real notice of the man that could potentially end her very existence. “But you’re smart too,” she said, but her voice had lost some of its conviction. Not another word was spoken for quite some time. The significance of the conversation hit Deb deeply, she line for line inherited my scowl. The similarities between my mirrored opponent and myself, however, ended at the conclusion of each match. My competitor quite literally looked insane. After killing his latest victim he began to dismember him. That was about all I could handle, I had eaten a good lunch and had no desire to see it again. I shut the screen off. I had found his weakness anyway.
“Leanna,” I said, removing my hand from its resting position on Deb’s stomach. Deb seemed a little perturbed that I disturbed her, but she did her best to hide that she felt that way.
“Yes Mike,” Leanna answered warily, trying not to let her voice waver in any way.
I think s
he wished to have
my
hand on
her
stomach but she had no desire to cross swords with Deb, at least not yet.
“Do they let the women watch these reruns?”
“Yes, and we make sure to watch every one.”
“Why?” Stephanie said as she turned away from the book she was reading. “Don’t they make you sick?”
“They do, they’re horrible,” Leanna trembled. “But we have to know our fate. Don’t we? We have to silently cheer for one or the other in the ring to win; our very survival depends on it. And sometimes when the two men in the ring are both insane we can merely hope that death is swift,” she sobbed. The room fell silent. The women waiting to become spoils were living in a hell no less worse
or better
than mine,
there's was
just in a slightly different location.
Leanna finally broke the silence with a smile in her voice. “You’re one of the favorites.”
“Excuse me?” I asked in disbelief.
“Well, you are
so
cute,” she said, quickly glancing at Deb continuing on anyway. “And smart, and plus the obvious fact that none of your women suffer the fate that so many do now.”
“I understand completely,” I said “And yeah, I am kind of cute aren’t I?”
“And big-headed,” Deb said as she threw a pillow at my enlarged ego. Obviously I wasn’t too fast because the pillow caught me right on the side of my noggin. We all laughed, it was the first time in a long time that we were all finally at ease with each other.
“So you believe that any of these women will recognize me?” I asked hopefully.
“Most certainly, but if you don’t mind my asking, why are you asking?”
“I just think that I’m going to need a little help in this next round. That’s all.”
Nobody knew my plan and at the moment I wasn’t in the mood to explain any further.
Deb later admitted to me in bed that she did not at all like Leanna’s revelation.
“What do you mean Deb?” I knew the answer but egging her on was fun, what can I say. Sometimes I’m a shit.
“I don’t like the fact that you are now a desired commodity.”
“Would you rather I looked like the hunch-back?”
“You know what I mean, why are you mocking me?”
“I’m just playing, cool your jets woman.”
“I’ll tell you what. If anyone tries to make any moves on you I’ll make the tournament look like a sandlot football game.”
I laughed, but she didn’t see the humor.
“And I just bet that you would Deb, I just bet that you would.”
The next few days were tense ones. Up to this point in my life I had never felt so much accumulated tension. I was having a hard time with the women. No, they got along fine, it was the responsibility that I now shouldered for them. Back on Earth I could barely take care of myself, now I was responsible for the very lives of these three women. That weighed heavily on me. I avoided all three. I just couldn’t bear the thought of anything bad happening to them. I would have gladly given my life if I had any opportunity to spare theirs. But the only way I could keep them safe was to do the very opposite. I could not spare the lives of my opponents, I had to be ruthless and that’s just not who I was. It was a lot to wrestle with in those proceeding days. Deb tried her best to offer support and comfort but she also had to wrestle with her own demons. The potential of losing her lover and possibly losing her own life kept bleeding through into the membranes of her very existence like poison. She even had to wrestle with the alternative: what if I kept winning? I’d eventually get Beth back and then what would happen to her? She was torn. Neither scenario offered much comfort. It was two weeks until the
much
awaited match came. The tension never loosened its grip the entire time. The girls spoke to each other less and less over the following days and then it was usually only in passing that any comments were made. Deb seemed to pull back more and more every day. But nobody could be blamed for any strangeness of feelings that surfaced. When the day of the fight finally arrived it was more of a relief, at least now I could get out of th
e
cell and try once again to shape my own destiny as opposed to just obsessing about it. Deb wept openly as once more my door vanished and I made my way to the arena. Leanna’s eyes seemed to be watering a bit, but the biggest surprise was the total lack of emotion on Stephanie’s face. I’m pretty sure that the weight of the previous weeks had finally found a way to settle down on her shoulders. She appeared to have physically aged years just in the past few days. So there it was, I left my semi-castle with some mixed feelings. At this point I seriously doubted that I was ever coming back. Oh, the sweet relief to just let go, to not have to shoulder this burden anymore. I trudged onwards towards my fate.
*
*
*
As soon as the door once again materialized, Stephanie turned to Deb.
“Deb, I had a dream last night,” and with that sentence the floodgates opened. Steph’s chest rose and fell with each gasping breath as her hot tears burned tiny rivulets into her cheeks. Terror began to surmount in Debbie.
“What is it?” she cried out as if in extreme pain or possibly fear or more than likely both.
“I dreamed that Mike was killed,” Stephanie choked out. “It was so real, I kept yelling to him to turn around, but, but, he wouldn’t listen.”
“Steph, it was just a dream,” Deb said as she tried to calm Stephanie and herself down.
But Stephanie just kept crying and wailing, so Deb did the only thing she could think of, she smacked her hard, right across the face. Both women stopped crying and could only stare at each other in surprised shock. And for the first time since they met, they shared more than negative feelings about
t
heir situation. Almost as if on cue they both took a step forward and embraced each other. The crying intensified. Leanna joined in more for the comfort than any true liking for either woman. But it still felt good anyway. They finally let go of each other after what seemed hours and turned to the screen to watch their own fates unfold.
“Oh GOD NO!” Stephanie shouted out.
“What, what’s the matter!” both girls turned to look at the color rapidly draining out of Stephanie’s face.
“That’s the terrain I saw in my dream!” Stephanie shouted with pain in her voice.
The crowd, its usual reserved self, looked like something out of a Saturday afternoon baseball game in the
Bronx
. The Yankees versus the Red Sox, no less. They were going crazy. I again lost my lunch; it was the best I’d felt in the last two weeks. I was also hungry, but not in the food sense. I hungered, no I yearned for victory. These aliens liked me; true, it was mainly for the sport of it, but they still liked to watch me fight and I hoped preferably win. I wonder if they gambled on these things. Do they handicap? They must, I reasoned, why would they go through the trouble of having a ranking system in place? I reaffirmed my vow that if I survived these insane games I would do everything possible to kill all those responsible for this travesty. But it was time for NOW, not later. There would be no later if I did not get through the now. I felt very zen at that moment.
The arena floor had been laid out in a desert motif, how quaint. They even had small cactuses and Joshua trees covering small sand dunes. Actually some of the dunes weren’t quite so small, some appeared to be in the neighborhood of fifteen to twenty feet high, plenty of places to hide and lie in wait. It would be virtually impossible to hear somebody coming at you, but neither could they come upon you with any speed; the sand was soft and made all movement difficult. I could see my potential spoil from the spot where I stood; she was exactly mid-way between the two gladiator entrances but pushed back against the far wall. I knew that Beth had been watching me through all these battles. What did she think of me? Could she possibly still love me? If she ever even had. If anything, we had always been quasi-peace activists in school, not actively involved but we always supported their efforts. Thankfully, I was not given the time to pursue these debilitating thoughts any further. The battle was about to commence. My competitor was introduced first; they even had the custom of introducing the challenger first. How long had they been watching us? The door behind me closed as my introduction was being announced. I hope
d
whatever they were saying about me was flattering but I didn’t speak alien so I really had no idea why the crowd was going ape shit. I tried to block the noise out with images of tranquility and peace but the only views that kept popping up into my head were those of my own dismemberment and darkness closing in on me. I banished those thoughts as quickly as they came, and tried my best to focus on the task at hand. I grabbed the weapon that was closest to me; it was a small lightweight-throwing axe. I was actually happy; I figured it would do nicely. Axe in hand I started to run as fast as I could. The sand crust always breaking away at the last push making my progress seem frustratingly slow. The crowd began to whoop and clap or at least their own damn version of it.
Deb turned to Stephanie. “What the hell is he doing, he’s running to his death?”
“That’s what I saw,” Steph replied flatly.
My biggest fear of running flat out and paying no attention to my surroundings was finding my opponent lying in wait, just waiting for me to crest a dune and chop my legs out from under me. But I felt that the potential reward was well worth the risk that I was taking. It might be my only chance. Besides, I reasoned, he would have to be running just as fast to catch up to me and then get into an advantageous place. I figured the threat to be relatively low. Although this was my life and the lives of four women that I was gambling with, I’m not sure the stakes could get any higher. The girl looked up in sheer terror as I approached her at full tilt. She had to think that I was mad. Here’s this friggen guy coming straight at me, running as fast as he can with an axe held high. I just kept thinking to myself, please whatever your name is, don’t pass out or everything that I am trying to do will be for naught. But I figured that I would have wet myself by now if the roles had been reversed. I couldn’t spare the breath to forewarn her and I didn’t want my competition to know what I was up to. That could spell instant disaster for both of us. And then she began to scream, a full-throated scream. Oh no, I thought to myself, I chose wrong. He had to have heard that even over the mob; my time was limited. I approached her, axe high in the air. She had added uncontrollable shaking to her repertoire. I swung, the girl slumped, no, don’t pass out!! I think I heard Beth scream. The crowd was silent, for once. The girl’s hands came down as I severed the rope that bound them over her head. Luckily she didn’t pass out. She picked up her head after realizing she wasn’t quite dead yet and look
ed me straight in the eyes. Her
s were still wide with terror. The best I could do was to try to calm her down with a shushing sound and hold the axe down in a non-threatening manner. It seemed to me to take hours before it dawned on her that I wasn’t there to kill her. Her sobs wracked her body, it looked more to me like she had a killer set of hiccups than anything else. At any other time that thought might have seemed humorous. After a few tense moments of this I felt she was ready an
d motioned for her to follow me, and to grab
short sword which hung on the wall near her station. She seemed surprised that I would
allow her to be
arm
ed
but she accepted it eagerly. Hopefully she wouldn’t have to use it, but if I got myself killed today at least she would have the opportunity to defend herself against
Psycho
Man.
She was beginning to come more into her own and understand just what was going on here. She knew that I meant her no harm and that the odds of us getting out of this alive were greatly increased when it became two against one. My confidence increased. I was fairly certain she wasn’t a trained killer but her athletic body would do in a pinch even if for only diversionary tactics. For the first time during the games I was at an absolute loss as to what plan of action I should take now. I sincerely hoped my confusion wasn’t showing, I didn’t want my new ally to become unnerved by my indecision. At the moment anyway she appeared to be relatively calm, possibly because for the first time
since she got on this strange trip she now carried her own destiny in her right hand. I hoped that her strange calmness would not leave her during the heat of battle. Utterly clueless as to my next move, I warily went forward, always on the alert for an attack. The girl followed closely, she
was
also
ready
.