by Will Madden
Mandi stood, feeling nothing.
Voices spoke. They chimed like a bell, or ground like a stone. Through the sliver of her eyelids, she saw a fog in which an ocean of dark crashed against a shore of light.
Animal stink mingled with machine exhaust as petty gods disputed around her. Staves, darts, and bolos answered axes, spears, and swords. So many weapons for only a handful of actors! As if pulled from invisible pockets, or the arsenal of their enormous personas.
Imperiled bystanders scurried for their lives but showed no sign of departing. The air thickened with scraps of evening wear or pieces of nose from intoxicated fools who stumbled when they should have staggered.
One party-goer’s skull exploded in front of her. She didn’t even see how.
Mandi felt the urge to step into the fracas and fight for Sven. For his safety, his future happiness, for the great gifts he still had to offer the world. But what eye might she blacken, what spleen rupture or kneecap pulverize, that could add anything to his joy or worth? He had vanished forever to that unknown country, which was probably Death and not Peru. Yet every moment that passed, she felt the opportunity escaping, and she cursed herself for her cowardice.
For a year now, she had cast no shadow because the light shone through her. In photographs, her face looked like an unfinished drawing. Far too often, she found it impossible to tell if costumers in her shop where speaking to her or themselves. Like a ghost, she was prone to slamming doors and breaking things to prove she existed at all.
Mandi had no idea what this battle was over, what would change if one side succumbed to the other. But in Dodoville, fights seldom required a meaning or object. Hers was a city of furies, demonic remnants from past ages who remembered nothing of life except they had been wronged in it. The Pestilence for instance: how did people who burned down houses for a living believe they had been mistreated? But here they were now to settle a score. Also, the Purple Onion: surely his actions, too, were held in fief to some egregious suffering.
(Her best guess, an aggravated case of survivor guilt. Where else could he have picked up the idiot notion that he could not die?)
Had . . . someone just hurled a trident past her?
But if furies could arise to avenge long-dead plunderers or . . . whatever vegetal trauma the Purple Onion had endured, where was the bright-colored revenant of how she had suffered? Why wasn’t it handing out drubbings upon this rooftop?
Mandi watched the Onion clobber the shit out of the red knight with the sassy mouth. So fast did the quarterstaff spin and prod, jab and pound, sometimes Abhoc fell from a blow she hadn’t even seen. By tomorrow, his whole body ought to be a mottle of colors.
In last year, she had built her whole life around grief, but standing now like a child amid this storm of violence, she felt it coming apart in a landslide. It’s time, she thought, wringing her hands. Time to bring it down.
The broken battleaxe clattered on the ground as Abhoc crashed to his knees. Ghoulish in defeat, his eyes showed mostly white, his hair aflame with tongues of electricity.
Early on, the knight had fought admirably, but since his damaged jaw required protection at all costs, the Onion was able to pick open holes in Abhoc’s defenses. Quick, restrained strikes rained down over his body, exhausting the muscles with shocks and bruising the flesh with blows. A death of a thousand cuts.
(Except, of course, with beatings.)
The spectators cringed as Abhoc fell forward onto his face. He twitched but did not stir.
Was it over now? asked Stevie Nicks, a tinge of taunt in her voice.
The Onion’s yellow glove ran over Abhoc’s scalp and hoisted him up by the hair to squat on his hams. The jaw hung open. Blood gushed from a newly-broken nose. The Onion lay the end of his quarterstaff at Abhoc’s throat as if it were a blade.
“Why do you make riot against these people?” the Onion asked soothingly. “Tell me how pride in your sins has led you to error.”
“He must be dead,” someone observed. “No one takes a beating like that and keeps breathing.”
The Onion shook his head. “The soul may not depart before it offers me a complete confession.”
“Look, bro,” came the reply, “You look like a guy who’s used to getting people to do what you say. But not this time.”
Pinpricks of light flashed in the vigilante’s eyes. “While mortals sleep, others broker deals with the Dread Lord Death himself,” he said, “who has decreed this the hour for wailing and gnashing of teeth.”
“I’m not salty, dude,” said the critic. “That asshole’s just hacked off my nostril with his freakin’ flail. I’m just saying. That good knight’s gone none too gentle.”
With his thumb, the Onion caressed Abhoc’s cheek below the orbits of the eyes and tears began to flow. Bubbles of air burbled up in the blood upon the mouth.
“The weight of your crimes lies heavy upon you,” said the Onion, “but I have freed your heart to relieve that burden. Speak. Simply speak and your sins will give voice of their own accord. Allow the words to pour forth and absolve you of iniquity.”
Near the far wall, seated high in his saddle, Brum snarled. So far in this battle, the knight commander had gotten no worse than he’d given, but now he was seizing the opportunity for a breather. “Sir Abhoc has withstood tortures even a sadist like you cannot imagine. My Lord Rutabaga, he cannot be broken. Expect no satisfaction from him.”
“Nonsense.” The purple mask moved close enough to brush the hair by Abhoc’s ear. “Let go. I have given you the power to end your suffering.”
Abhoc’s lungs forced out a tender wail.
“Use your words, Sir Abhoc,” said the Onion.
“I wanted them to like me!” he whimpered.
The crowd inhaled with audible wonder.
Abhoc’s voice had resounded clearly over the rooftop: the quarterstaff under his chin contained an amplifier.
“When I was growing up in New Guernsey,” he said, “everyone was always beating up anybody different: the smart kid, the one who played the tuba, the one whose family worshiped spiders. Hell, once I got my head kicked off ‘cause my socks almost matched. Deserved it too, acting like I was pleet enough to buy ‘em in pairs.”
In Abhoc’s lap, fingernails picked at bruised knuckles as he continued shamefully.
“Till then I’d felt the world always pressuring me to make a big crumb of myself, be my own best sod. Whereas all I’d wanted was to be a reg’lar piece a shit like my pops. ‘Cause really, ain’t that enough? Instead of acting like I’ms a shelf up from wheres I’m at.”
With tears pouring down his cheeks, hair maybe a tiny bit on fire, Abhoc cut a pathetic figure. Onlookers smiled sadly.
“And maybe it was just the fat nog o’ me hurting so bad, but that’s when the light shone through. And thought here’s my calling. I’d like to be like a bodhisattva, goading ‘em good folks down the way to ordinary shit-sackery. Let learn ‘em want to want not. Not to strabe and err. I’d vowed to pound that wisdom in like was pounded in mine, with the blunt end. Till all’s too small and frightened for the err of pride.”
Abhoc’s right hand gathered up fistfuls of air from the ground and collected them in the crook of his elbow.
“What I come for today, it’s for those reg’lar shit sacks like me, to bust some room open for that one day when they too can get ahead, where they too can stand up and treat others like garbage, like all else treat them. ‘Cause now, some people will never be beautiful, never be talented, never be smart or creative. But is that reason they can’t be better than someone else? I wanted to show all the reg’lar sacks of shit, yes you can get to treat people worse than shit, that’s a right God-given. But you gotta be willin’ a-stand up and don’t let no laws tell what you’re right to do!”
The crowd nodded approvingly to each other. Where did laws get off, really, telling you what’s the worst you can be to someone?
“I’m tired of a world where heroes are always mutants
and rejects and the accident-prone. Some half man, half ninja spud. Are you saying we gotta work on our weird to matter? Those of born a quality of nothing wrong shouldn’t have to always prove it, every year, every month, every damn day—not like some of ‘em Quasimodos do. Amn’t I a given? Shouldn’t I get to be? Listen, I’m not even Horsefolk, just a reg’lar don’t-know-where-the-fuck-I’m-from. But the fact I’m here, showing I got a right for a horse to bear me—”
Bravo. You are definitely here, sir knight, that’s a fact!
“Where was I? Listen, here’s truth for one and all. It’s ordinary folks the real ones being ostrapated, who ain’t even got their own rights to burn and pillage anymore. Tchotchke merchants and botanists and drama nerds, in this town they can shit wherever they want, but never real people like who make sandwiches. Who have to say, no, of course, I’ll make it again with less mustard, when that customer can’t even handle a mace or flail.”
That’s true. Why do we even have weapons if not to say who gets treated politely?
“All I want, all I really ask, is when some grouchy ol’ cigarillo screams at me, And where’s my pickle! I can clock her nog off, just for the manners. No apologies! Instead of, Oh saws, you getta cookie, an’ an’ an’ . . .”
Abhoc’s broken body, till now replete with verbiage, seemed able to go no further.
“And what, Sir Abhoc?” said the Purple Onion. “Unburden yourself this holdback and be free at last. What of the cookie?”
The red knight squealed. “An’ it comes outta my pay!”
The crowd gasped.
Brum, too, let his head fall to his chest and squeezed shut his eyes in shame.
The Onion let go of Abhoc’s hair. He collapsed in a heap, sobbing. “It comes outta my pay!” he repeated.
All around them, the gentle applause of emotional support.
“There there, Sir Abhoc,” said the Onion. “Nicely done.”
“I don’t even cry when I cut onions!” he sniffed. A bashful laugh escaped him as his vanquisher clasped him warmly on the shoulder.
Victor Cumin stood triumphant as party-goers whistled and cheered.
It comes outta my pay.
From a psychological standpoint, he saw how the lifelong degradation of menial employment had left this man little recourse but to acquire state-beyond-the-art equestrian warfare technology and terrorize ravers at an ‘80s party. It all made sense now.
As acting president of the Cumin Media news conglomerate, the result of tonight’s lacrimation ritual pleased him. Usually, when the Violet Storm beat a criminal within an inch of death, the story that person spat up never made much sense. In order for the video go viral on social media, it usually had to rely on the victim’s physical abasement, the pathetic facial expression, and, above all, the mucus. Nothing predicted advertisers’ cash flow like nose flow. (His clue had been when he found a website offering analyses of the snot bubbles: estimated booger size, viscosity, all that.)
“Thank you, Purple Onion” whimpered Abhoc. “Thank you.”
The defeated knight held out a hand from where he lay on the ground. Victor grasped it to thunderous applause. Even the marauder’s steed put forward a hoof and bowed in homage. That’ll play great on Instagram! he thought.
On that roof, dozens of videos were being live-streamed to Facebook. Naturally, the feed from his own body camera would provide Cumin Media’s official HD version of Abhoc’s bloody face.
“I don’t really understand why I’m crying,” the knight said. “I felt worse from the hangover I had this morning.”
Everybody laughed. After a night of being held hostage by rodeo clowns in medieval makeup, the joke bled some of the tension out of the air.
“When I look at you,” Abhoc began.
Victor was holding Abhoc’s head by the badly bruised jaw so it was impossible for him to look away from his camera.
“When I look into your face, such as it is, I feel as if I’m gazing into the focal point of the universe, from which everything issues and everything returns. Not that it’s impossible to lie, per se. Only there wouldn’t be any point.”
“Will you make war on Dodoville again?” Victor asked.
“Never,” said Abhoc, “not for all my days.”
“Do you swear?”
“By my lance and Christ’s spurs,” Abhoc intoned, “I do swear.”
What choice does he have? thought Victor with satisfaction. Before the hundred or so present tonight and the thousands more who would see it online, Abhoc had wept like a ninny over the cookie he was forced to buy for a customer in a sandwich shop. Abhoc’s strength was broken. If he went around bashing brains out now, no Dodovillean worth their salt wouldn’t die laughing at him.
“All for nothing,” thundered Brum suddenly.
As the quarterstaff lay across Victor’s knee, Brum’s enormous destrier, practically a horse and a half, stomped on the extruding length and snapped it in half, leaving Victor with the short end, divorced from its electric power generator.
“Well, that’s rude,” he said.
Brum drew his sword. “This has been all too cute, Parsnip! But now it ends.” The knight commander raised the weapon above his head and made ready to bring down the death blow.
Victor felt Abhoc’s hands tighten around his right thumb, holding him in place. A small giggle escaped from the bloodied mouth.
Huh, Victor thought. I wonder how I’m going to get out of this one.
The broken quarterstaff skittered across the ground to Mandi’s feet. The shaft’s light had died but electricity still crackled from the jagged end. She picked it up without thinking, like a delivery left at her doorstep. It felt significant in her hand, like a stick for her to write messages on the shore. Here I Am, Here I Have Tread. For a few hours, the groove of the letters would declare her significance to the cosmos before the sea washed them away.
She looked up. Lord Brum and the Purple Onion seemed seconds from settling their dispute. Whoever won, not much would change. Violent and perverse actions not unlike this would still govern Dodoville’s future. Might as well root for whoever had the better costume! Because for people like her, nothing really mattered more than the aesthetics.
Only. Maybe this time it was different. Perhaps, for once, it had fallen to her to be an author instead of a reader of the madness in tomorrow’s headlines?
Like a thunderbolt, the quarterstaff fragment pulsed in her hand.
What would that mean to her, to make some sort of difference? This was as much as she could ever hope for.
Closing her eyes, she lunged with the broken staff, her whole body behind the blow.
When Mandi thought back on it later, she did not remember deciding whom to strike. She watched the jagged end of the staff slide between flap where the horse’s hood overhung its body armor. She felt the apparatus pierce the flesh, she winced as it scraped past bone and penetrated what she assumed was the heart. As the staff injected raw energy into living flesh, she swore her fingers could feel that muscle start and stop a thousand times as the jolt arrested the towering animal.
Finally, the power source overloaded, and Brum’s terrifying steed collapsed, toasted like a campfire marshmallow. It was all Brum could do not to be crushed under his behemoth mount as it fell.
For Mandi, the world stopped and rewound. It played out a bit, paused for a snack, checked its email real quick. By the time life started up again, she’d sorta forgot what was happening. But she smelled roasted horse hair. She saw Brum stagger over to Abhoc’s only slightly traumatized mare and pull himself up on her back. He slapped the reins and headed for the ramp that spiraled down the tower.
Gradually, she noticed the Purple Onion was staring at her instead of his escaping adversary, that the broken quarterstaff was no longer in her hands but his. Once again, she paused and rewound time. On this pass, she saw him twist away from the prod she’d aimed at the small of this back, she watched indifferently as he redirected her stolen momentum at Brum�
��s destrier and saved himself from an otherwise inevitable beheading.
This strange man in the purple jumpsuit and—was he wearing fuzzy slippers?—she had tried to kill him. Why?
Behind the mask, he studied her face. She felt herself giving everything away inside her as if it were written there.
At first, she’d tried to turn away, but now she wished she could see and read it too.
Would-be Onion slayer. Was that her? Was that the real Mandi-in-her-bones, in her reptile brain?
“My child,” the man in the mask said, his voice eerily calm.
Mandi fell to her knees. The camera on his chest was just above the insignia on his chest. (Was it supposed to be hidden? Who was he fooling?) She looked directly into it now. The tears began to well up in her eyes.
“It was a year ago,” she began. “We were out of garlic for the pesto.”
The Onion crushed her head gently against his body.
“Hush, my child. This is not for you.”
Is he trying to comfort me? she thought.
In any case, his embrace darkened out the video feed.
“But I tried to kill you,” she muttered. “I was about to jam that rod right up your purple asshole!”
“Shh, shh. The danger is passed.”
Mandi’s voice shook. “I deserve this. I earned this.”
“Psh, psh. Don’t you see? The storm is over. You deserve nothing. Nothing at all.”
Mandi tried to shove him back, to get eyes on his fucking camera. His grip remained iron.
“It was a year ago,” she stammered again. It took all her courage to speak. “I went out to get garlic for the pesto!”
Letting go, the Onion pressed his cheek to the top of her head and wandered off to salvage his Chopper.
Mandi remained on her knees. She was shaking with rage. “It was a year ago!” she screamed at his back. “We were out. Of fucking. Garlic!”
Who needed him? She had witnesses right here.
Mandi lifted her head, but no one paid her any attention. The dead horse had mesmerized them.