Games Creatures Play

by Charlaine Harris

  Then the whistle blew, releasing the swarm. Leya and I lunged onto our tiptoes, dancing and shoving through the pack. Meggie Itwasthewind—one of my best friends on our mutual team, the Slasher Chicks—managed to knock two of the opposing blockers out of the way, and I was loose, picking up speed as I began my nonscoring pass around the track. As long as I could make a full circuit before Leya broke out, I was home free.

  I love Roller Derby.

  • • •

  I skated that jam and the next two like my pleated camouflage miniskirt was on fire, shooting around curves as if they had personally offended me. We were up by thirty points by the time Elmira tagged me out, and I was feeling the pleasant burn of a bout well-skated in my thighs and lower back. Roller Derby is an awesome workout, especially if you like your cardio with a decent dose of blunt-force trauma. I collapsed into my chair, taking a swig from my water bottle, and watched the skaters circle the track.

  Sometimes it can be hard to tell who’s skating for which team. Not so when it was the Slasher Chicks vs. the Concussion Stand. The Concussion Stand uniforms were styled after the classic theater cigarette girl, pairing red and white striped shirts with red booty shorts, fishnets, and lots of eyeliner. My team wore white tank tops spattered with fake blood, knee socks, and the aforementioned camo miniskirts. We looked like we’d been attacked by a serial killer in the woods behind some summer camp, which was exactly what we’d been going for.

  The captain of the Concussion Stand, the lovely Pushy Galore, performed a flawless block on Elmira Street. While my captain struggled to break free, Princess Leya launched herself into a power jam, circling the track multiple times before Elmira could get back into the action. I shook my head and leaned forward to check my laces. Roller Derby is not a forgiving sport. A few bad jams can change everything.

  “Final Girl! You’re in!”

  I raised my hand just in time to catch the piece of fabric that marked me as the official jammer. Elmira Street skated past to a chair, looking disgruntled. “I got this,” I said, pulling the star-blazoned cloth over my helmet as I rolled toward the track. The opposing jammer, Holly, offered me a polite nod. I nodded back and hunkered down, waiting for the whistle to blow.

  The whistle blew. We launched ourselves forward.

  The first challenge any jammer faces is the pack: four blockers from each team, all dedicated to keeping the opposing team’s jammer from breaking free. Once we shove, scramble, and squirm through that human barrier, the jammer faces a new, more serious challenge—the other jammer. In order to control the jam, you have to be the first one to lap the track, becoming lead jammer and top bitch until the whistle blows again. (No, I don’t know why the word jam has so many meanings in Roller Derby. It’s like fuck. It’s a noun, it’s a verb, it’s a sentence! It’s the honey badger of conversation! Just assume that whatever part of speech the word is playing right now, it’s accurate.)

  I shouldered my way through the blockers and took off, building speed with practiced precision. I didn’t know whether Holly had managed to break out of the pack yet: I just knew she wasn’t in front of me, and for the moment, that was good enough.

  The track curved and the blockers came back into view, Holly still stuck in their midst like a bug in amber. Swell. On the one hand, this meant I was about to become lead jammer. On the other hand, it meant another pass through the bodies of my peers, which was always annoying.

  Meggie saw me coming and shifted over, creating a narrow channel down the inside of the track. I could take it, if I was brave enough, and confident enough in my ability not to get knocked out of bounds.

  Roller Derby is not a sport for cowards. I sucked in my breath, making myself as thin as possible—not the easiest thing in the world, since the Boob Fairy started visiting when I was twelve, and only stopped last year—and turned sideways, hitting the gap at full speed. The blockers from the Concussion Stand barely had time to register my presence before I was past them, with clear track ahead of me and points beginning to pile up for my team. I allowed myself a split-second grin, put my head down, and kept skating.

  Holly eventually broke out of the pack, but I’d circled the track four times by then, aided by luck, timing, and a fantastic group of blockers who saw victory in their grasp if they could keep me moving. The whistle blew on a final score of Slasher Chicks 174, Concussion Stand 171. The rest of my team sprang to their feet, swarming the track as we became a swirling vortex of laughing, hugging, bleeding girls.

  “Let’s drink some beer!” we shouted.

  Our fans in the stands roared, shouting back, “Let’s smoke some pot!”

  We turned to face the stands, some of us with our arms around each other’s shoulders, some of us standing alone. I had Meggie with her arms wrapped around my waist and Elmira with her shoulder pressed against mine, and it was moments like this that I lived for: moments where I got to feel like I was really a part of this world, and not just an eternal tourist, always passing through.

  As a team, we shouted the last part of the Slasher Chicks credo to the room: “Let’s have premarital sex! I love premarital sex!”

  The match was over. We took our victory lap, and applauded the Concussion Stand as they took their final lap around the track. Then the whistle blew for intermission, and we scattered.

  • • •

  My name is Antimony Price, and I’m a social worker for monsters.

  Full introductions take longer than I like, so here’s the Price family history, Wikipedia version: Once upon a time, we were bad people who killed monsters because we thought God wanted us to. Apparently, we also thought God was an asshole. A whole lot of other people helped us kill monsters, because we belonged to the Covenant of St. George, which is basically a big bucket of assholes. One day, we realized we were in danger of becoming assholes on a permanent basis, and that some monsters were actually pretty cool. So we quit and started helping the monsters—who prefer to be called “cryptids”—instead of going all I Am Legend on them in dark alleyways.

  The Covenant didn’t like us quitting, we didn’t like the Covenant telling us what to do, and things got bloody for a while, culminating in the Covenant of St. George “wiping out” my family line. They didn’t, obviously, but as long as they think they did, everybody gets to be happy. We help North America’s cryptid population avoid assholes who want to kill them, the Covenant of St. George gets to be smug about slaughtering us in our beds, and nobody gets hurt. Most people don’t know we exist. Most people don’t know that cryptids exist, either.

  We do have to fly under the radar, to avoid someone from the Covenant figuring out that we’re still alive and kicking. That means code names and aliases and finding creative new ways of learning essential skills like kicking ass, maintaining cover, and eating track at thirty miles per hour without losing any teeth. You can probably see where Roller Derby was the perfect solution. Derby girls go by false names anyway, so I didn’t feel as bad about telling them my name was Annie Thompson, not Antimony Price. Skating with a derby team will sure as shit teach you teamwork, and skating with broken toes or bruised-up shins will teach you pain tolerance.

  It’s a good life, if you can handle it, and if you don’t mind women on roller skates slamming into you at high speeds while you circle a flat track in pursuit of transitory glory. I enjoy it. But then again, I’m a little weird.

  • • •

  The match was being held in the warehouse where we normally staged our practices and had been broken into two bouts: the Slasher Chicks vs. the Concussion Stand, which was over, thanks to my spectacular jamming skills (and okay, maybe the rest of the team helped too), followed by the Rose Petals vs. the Stunt Troubles. Intermission came between the bouts, to allow the second group of skaters time to warm up, and to give the spectators time to drink more beer.

  Half the skaters from the Slasher Chicks and Concussion Stand were still on the track,
circling as one big, happy family. I looked at them longingly. It would have been nice to join the free skate, but my cousin Elsie was waiting for me in the stands, and if there’s one thing Elsie hates, it’s waiting. I grabbed my water bottle and made my way to the old storage closet that we were using as a temporary dressing room.

  Carlotta—better known as “Pushy Galore” when she was skating—was there when we arrived. She was Elsie’s on-again, off-again girlfriend. At the moment, I was pretty sure they were on, which gave us reason to be friendly. “Good skating out there today, Thompson,” she said.

  “Thanks,” I said, moving to retrieve my duffel bag from the pile in the corner. I unzipped it, pulling out a clean black tank top with the league logo on the front. “You guys were pretty awesome, too.”

  Carlotta snorted. “We need to work on our blocking. Next time, we won’t go so easy on you.”

  “Looking forward to it.” I had time to pull my shirt over my head before a hand touched my elbow. Years of combat training told me to grab the hand and break the associated wrist before it introduced a knife to my ribs. I may be the only person on the planet whose reflexes have been calmed by Roller Derby. I finished removing my shirt and turned to meet the wide blue eyes of my teammate, Meggie. No, I corrected myself; she was out of uniform. Her name was Fern. “What’s up?”

  “Are you going to sit with Elsie?” she asked, in her piping baby-doll voice. It matched the rest of her. Fern was a spun-sugar confection of a girl, with pale blonde hair and the kind of quirkily pretty features that would have gotten her scouted for America’s Next Top Model if she hadn’t preferred roller skates to high heels. She also wasn’t human. Fern was a sylph, a type of cryptid therianthrope whose shapeshifting was limited to increasing and decreasing her personal density. Breaking the laws of physics was all in a day’s work for her.

  “For a little bit,” I said. “Do you want to come?”

  “Are you sure she won’t mind?”

  “She’ll have Carlotta to distract her, so even if she minds, she won’t notice,” I said, pulling on a pair of jeans over my bloodstained knee socks. “Isn’t that right, Carlotta?”

  “Fuck you,” said Carlotta genially.

  “There’s that classic Concussion Stand charm.” I slung my skates and duffel bag over my shoulder, leaving my hair in its messy braids. “Come on, Fern. Let’s go get good seats for the heavy petting.”

  Fern giggled and followed me to the door, pausing only to wave to Elmira Street—now just Elmira, since she was out of uniform and on her phone, furiously texting her legion of boyfriends. They never came for the matches, but if tonight was like every other night, one of them would be showing up with Indian takeout by the end of halftime. Elmira did not look up to acknowledge our departure.

  We emerged from the storage closet and into the cavernous warehouse, where the rattle of skates against polished wood seemed much louder now that I wasn’t wearing my helmet. Bleachers formed a shallow shell around the track, adding an air of class to the event; many Roller Derby bouts are skated without anything resembling seats for the audience. It’s easier to drink when you don’t have to do it standing up, though, and one of the concessions was run by a local brewpub, which had helped to hook us up with a set of barely used bleachers from a defunct local dodgeball league.

  (Yes, that’s weird, and no, none of us pushed the issue. Portland is a city that thrives on being a little bit to the left of normal. I had no trouble with the idea that we once possessed a competitive dodgeball team. I had a slightly larger problem with the idea that it had somehow failed.)

  Elsie had, as usual, claimed a prime spot in the front row of the bleachers, spreading herself and her possessions out until she had space reserved for four. She waved when she saw us, and smirked until we were close enough for her to say, “I figured you’d bring Fern with you. Hi, Fern.”

  “Hi, Elsie,” said Fern shyly. She liked my half-succubus, nonskating cousin, probably because when the three of us hung out together—or even with Carlotta—there was no such thing as “abnormal.” We were all different in our own ways. Carlotta and I were human, but I was a skinny, busty Caucasian girl who still lived at home with her parents, while Carlotta was a solid, curvy Latina who had her own adult life, complete with mortgage and finance-related day job. Elsie was half-human, on her mother’s side, and had been happily unemployed since finishing her five-year journey through community college.

  At the moment, Elsie was rocking a Concussion Stand logo shirt, denim cutoffs just this side of street legal, and wedge-heeled shoes that would have led to serious injury five minutes after I strapped them onto my feet if I’d tried to wear them. The bottom inch of her sleek blonde hair was dyed electric purple, matching the capped sleeves on her black T-shirt. She looked perfect, as always.

  I plopped down next to her. “Gimme,” I said.

  To Elsie’s credit, she didn’t toy with me or try to pretend she didn’t know what I was talking about. She just pulled a foil-wrapped packet out of her purse, handing it over. I unwrapped it and beamed.

  “Snickerdoodles. You are my favorite cousin.”

  “Only because I brought you cookies,” said Elsie mildly.

  “I’m cheap,” I said, and handed Fern a cookie.

  Elsie looked like she was going to say something, but stopped, sitting up a little straighter. I followed her gaze to find Carlotta emerging from the storage closet. I grinned.

  “You have got it bad for that skater girl,” I said.

  “I wouldn’t say I’ve got it bad . . .” protested Elsie. “I just enjoy her company.”

  “Uh-huh. And pigs can fly.”

  “If your slingshot is big enough, sure,” said Fern.

  We turned to look at her, but were saved from the need to reply by the sound of screams coming from behind the bleachers. Elsie and I exchanged a glance, and she stayed where she was while I jumped to my feet and ran toward the sound of danger like a character in a bad science fiction story.

  What can I say? My parents didn’t do a very good job of instilling me with a sense of self-preservation.

  • • •

  Most populations are split when it comes to the sound of screams: half the people will run toward them, hoping they can help, while the other half runs away from them, remembering what happens to first responders in horror movies. The ratios get a little skewed when you’re talking about a warehouse full of derby girls and drunk Roller Derby fans. I was fast, but I wasn’t close enough to be the first person on the scene. I wasn’t even the fifteenth. A crowd had gathered behind the bleachers by the time I finally tracked the screaming to its source.

  What was interesting was that the screamer kept changing. Someone would scream and run out of the crowd, only to be replaced by someone else doing the exact same thing. I elbowed my way into the mob, not being all that careful about the people around me, until I broke through the interior edge and stumbled into the open space at the center.

  In retrospect, I should have realized it would take something like a severed, fishnet-clad human leg—still wearing a roller skate—to cause that much of a ruckus at the Roller Derby. At the time, I just froze, taking in the leg and everything that it implied.

  Something in the warehouse had killed a derby girl. A member of the Concussion Stand, if the laces on her roller skate were anything to go by. And since the Concussion Stand had been on the track up until a few minutes ago, whatever it was, it was probably still in the warehouse.

  “Well, shit,” I muttered, and turned to push my way back through the crowd.

  If anyone noticed that I didn’t seem particularly upset, they didn’t say anything. Most of them were too busy jockeying for a closer look they would regret the next time they tried to go to sleep. The modern world doesn’t exactly go around preparing people for the sight of severed human limbs. Call it a failing in the basic survival curricu
lum of the universe. More people were running in from all directions, and I could hear little screams and exclamations of surprise coming from the other side of the bleachers as the news began to spread.

  Fern was standing a few feet away from the mob. I met her eyes as I said, “We’ve got a girl down. I need you to get the NSOs and tell them there’s been an accident. I’m going to go notify Carlotta.”

  “Why Carlotta?” asked Fern.

  “Because the girl who’s down was a member of the Concussion Stand.”

  Fern paled as she caught the past tense in my statement. “Okay, Annie,” she said, and ran back the way we’d come. Sylphs can move faster than almost anything else on two legs, as long as they’re not running against the wind. She’d find the NSOs—nonskating officials—before I would have figured out where to start looking. Better yet, she looked inherently innocent in a way I stopped being able to manage before I hit puberty. The NSOs would have asked me a lot more questions than they would ask her.

  I didn’t run back to Elsie and Carlotta, but I walked fast, trying to keep my expression blank and scan the crowd for signs of danger at the same time. It wasn’t an easy combination, and I announced my return by tripping over my own duffel bag and crashing into the bleachers, nearly landing on Carlotta.

  “Not my type, Thompson,” said Carlotta, shoving me off. Then she paused, seeing how pale I was. “Annie? Did you find out what all the commotion is about?”

  “Carlotta, there’s . . . there’s been an accident.” I swallowed. Somehow, this was harder than I’d expected. I’ve been a cryptozoologist for my entire life, but most of the time, my job doesn’t include looking humans in the eye and telling them their friends are dead. “One of the members of the Concussion Stand . . .”