by C. B. Wiant
I open my palm up for more help.
Crunch. Onyx hands me half a white pill. There’s something intimate about swallowing a shared pill. Sharing is caring, and Onyx cares. He cares enough to go into a diatribe about vices and possibilities. Everyone has a vice, and with enough money, anyone can secure their vice. That’s how the Arena flourishes—through secrecy and monies.
I’m one of a handful of contestants that a member of the House bred; the concept flat-out became too incestuous. The practice of using a House member’s genes was foul play and considered unsportsmanlike.
“The Arena is a gentleman’s game after all. Your father was the last of that House.”
His words puff into gray clouds. When the smoky tendrils collide with the Northern lights they glitter and morph into the color stream. Onyx’s presence is a weight, a gravity blanket holding me down, molding me in the sand.
“There are worse things than dying,” he says, and then continues through another vein of confessions. “I thought Ruby was going to kill you in the Arena. That’s what she does. Murder.”
Gemstone bright colors swarm the sky; sugilite, ruby, turquoise, tigers-eye, amethyst…
His words slip into the sky, adding a stream of pyrite, fool’s gold. My blood is bubbling under my skin as if drunk with champagne giggles. I’m buzzing and smiling. My heart lifts. My soul is floating above me, sifting in and out of my corporal form.
“By choice. I don’t make Ruby do any of this. She does it all for herself. I do everything for her. Don’t you see—what I am risking to help you?”
Onyx turns his attention away from the sky. His gaze on my skin is soft as a feather.
All I see is color.
“Fuck, did you even know that you had a sister?”
I shake my head. I had a sister?
Onyx’s hand weaves through his hair. He leaves black sand scattered throughout his scalp. The granules sift out like crushed pepper. He seasoned his hair.
“Yeah, an older sister. She only made it to the First Watch. Poor girl ended up in the Arena at fourteen. Could you imagine being sent to fight that young? Man, I mean, I guess they used to do the same thing to kids back in the day. There’s no international standard to protect children in armed conflict. Did you know that? Eight-year-olds with dolls and guns. Fifteen and in an army. I was thinking about pussy at fifteen. That was all I was thinking about. How to get pussy.”
I momentarily turn my head to watch him speak to the sky about PTSD ridden individuals who grew up around bullet sprays—fighting rings are their safe zone. Onyx’s arms lift; his hands orchestrate his words into the color stream.
“Why red and black marbles?” I interrupt.
His arms fall to the dark sand. My words are scissors that cut his strings.
“I wanted Ruby to remember that we’re playing for keeps.” He says as if confessing his worst sin. Onyx’s hand covers his mouth, then his eyes. He’s lost his way. Childlike, he’s searching for a darker place to hide with massive hopes to be chosen, to be kept—wanted. Pick me. Keep me. See me.
“She tries so hard.” Onyx sits up and takes his glittery words with him. His hand digs in the sand. “I wasn’t in the dormitory with her, I only saw the matches. Back then I was still tracking.” He tosses a handful of sand into the water. The water bubbles and froths where the sand penetrates the glassy surface.
“She’s beautiful when she kills. Like a ballerina, the Arena is her stage, and she pours herself into her craft. The other contestants in her season fucked with her. It wasn’t until I saw…” His hand reaches back into the soft sand, but instead of sifting, he’s gripping chunks of soft granules as if it's clay.
“After…” He attempts to catch and shape sand like he’s forming a snowball out of sugar. Against his best efforts, the granulated sand slips away like time in an hourglass.
“She’s the reason there’s Ipsumroot powder circulated in the air. She’s the reason for everything still being here.”
He dumps the sand and presses his palms flat, “I killed everyone in her season. I laid them at her feet in sacrifice. No one would treat her the way they did ever again. I massacred and took over the House to prove my devotion. I built an army that kneeled at her feet.”
Onyx’s head falls between his shoulders, “Yet it doesn’t change that they hurt her. I still let her down. She’s my Queen, and she didn’t feel my loyalty.” He sighs as if reliving the conversation. “I stepped down, created and restricted the House so I could delegate more. Spend more time with Ruby.”
He lets out a breath held from the caverns of his lungs. He’s hoarded the breath for so long that it grew fungus and is foul.
“I love her and she hates me for keeping her.”
Words are at the tip of my tongue. Yet I can’t release myself from his word choice. He’s keeping her.
His words soften and become gross like ancient pho from the fridge.
“You want Hudson right? That’s your want?”
I nod.
“Do you want to know his want?” He doesn’t allow me enough time for a response before he continues, “It’s not you. He wants you far away from him.”
Onyx tosses a handful of sand in the water. I watch it froth and bubble in a chemical reaction. “It makes you question why we’re chasing people who want us at an arm’s length.” The Northern lights are fading. The sky darkens. “I want to reign with a Queen. I’m tired of being alone.”
He tosses sand in the air as if it's a ball. The sand-ball descends and disintegrates on impact with his palm and shakes out back to the dark beach. “You’ve met me before. You should know that by now.”
“I disagree,” I think I would remember. I think I would like Onyx.
Onyx spaces off, then stands as the literal shadow from my past. His heavy presence likened to marmalade pours down my back. I feel transparent, the ooey-gooey flows through me. Onyx is the tangible presence from my past. He is who paralyzed me with a fear that a shadow was about to prove all my childhood nightmares true. “I’ve been with you from the beginning.”
“You put me in this situation?” I ask after throwing out a few “What the?...The fuck?...What the actual fuck?” He’s my captor from the shed. He’s who accosted me in the woods: “I want you in the Arena. You’re already late. Be there before you both die. Kill him.”
“No, I didn’t put you in this situation.” He says sharply, offended. “Your dad did. He created you. I was your tracker. I helped you, can’t you see that?” His body deflates, and his shadow slips off him like Peter Pan’s shadow. His shoulders roll inwards. I’ve disappointed him.
“How many people have you helped?”
Mentally counting, he thinks back, his eyes roll backward, “Twenty, thirty maybe? But I’ve only helped you and Ruby passed the well. As a tracker, we’re meant to get the contestants to the well for their season. The House members pick the contestants for us to infect and incubate. Trackers are a second-tier that follow orders.”
“Thank you for helping me.” My praise charms him into a quirked smile. He doesn’t mean malice or harm. He genuinely is trying to render aid as best as he can from his level perspective.
“Ruby made a side comment to me about eating the same fruit, what is she talking about?” My words suck the glow from Onyx’s skin.
“She said it was because of Greek mythology.” I add.
Onyx pops his jaw, “To eat the fruit of your captor means you’re bound to return to the captor.”
“I still don’t understand.”
“She’s just fucking with you. I don’t want to discuss her anymore.” He rubs his chest as if physically hurt.
“Okay.”
Yet it wasn’t okay, it was so many other things. Onyx is a phenomenon that thrives on heroism. Similar to a police officer planting a fake bomb to later save the day in an elaborate hoax. Or a firefighter starting a fire to then rescue those inside the burning building. Onyx is helping me after genetically manipulating me i
nto this situation. The house is breeding humans to fight for sport until they're otherwise needed in combat or as hitmen. His hands aren’t clean. He’s not a white knight.
18
Gritty Mess
Small grains of sand scratch my skin, but not enough for me to believe I’m still on the beach.
“Man, how many times do I have to tell you?” Onyx asks.
I open my eyes.
A dark gray door fills my vision. I wonder if it is the same dark gray door—am I on the other side, in the cold room? I’m lying on a thin single mattress in the corner. I’m under a mound of quilts.
“She wants you. Tell her you don’t-.” Abruptly, Onyx stops talking. There is no other noise at first, no other disturbance until another voice speaks, “She’s awake.”
The dark gray door handle turns. The door pushes open. Everything rests on the hinges.
The door trudges.
Then all at once, he’s there. Hudson’s here.
“Av-” Hudson starts.
“Nix-” Onyx interrupts. They stand side by side within the door’s frame obstructing my view from anything outside the room. The only bit of warehouse visible is between their necks.
Hudson steps inside the room. He’s bigger, as if he sprouted from a teenager to a thirty-year-old adult. His shoulders have carried fallen soldiers.
I sit up. Black sand rains from my hair and spills into a gritty mess on the quilts.
“Nix, I told you I would let you see Hudson.” Onyx smoothly walks by Hudson and sits at the edge of the mattress. He sits in front of my view of Hudson.
“Do you still want to leave?” Onyx asks and grasps both of my hands. He transfers a small tin to my palm. It’s painful for him to see me weak.
I nod.
“Ok.” Onyx rises and exits. He leaves the dark gray door swaying. Hudson remains standing just inside the door. He hasn’t moved—like cigarette smoke, the cancer-stick doesn’t have to move to clog my pores and contaminate the air. His presence is enough to be both relieving and crippling.
I look around. Cement gray walls, ceiling, and floor. No light fixture. The only illumination is from the hallway, provided from the subtle swaying of the door. The dark gray panel moves at a rocking chair speed.
Hudson answers my querying eyes, “This is my room.” He sleeps in what appears to be a cell, alone.
The magnetic pull that I sensed before, when I opened the dark gray door to darkness, was because Hudson was inside. Hudson was the person sleeping that Onyx would rather I not wake.
I whisper as if not to startle our issues. “Did you get my letter?” I ask with trusting, watering eyes. Find me.
“Yeah—,” he says with all the seriousness of a break-up.
19
Forest
“Ok. Let’s go people.” Onyx stands in the doorway with his palms on the frame. He’s in a pushup position trying to herd us like cats.“Enough jibber-jabber we have shit to accomplish.”
I rise and shake the small tin. The tin rattles with tiny pings. Enough pills slide around that everyone can hear the rustling. Onyx smiles. I tell myself I won’t take them as I lift my black shirt to tuck the tin beneath the band of my pants. The tin slips in cold against my skin.
Hudson’s eyes track and accuse me of having something I’m not meant to. One shouldn’t give addicts pills. And he’s right. But he can’t comment to me now. He has no jurisdiction. Because where the fuck has he been? He didn’t find me.
Reckless, I ask, “Did you have a chance?” I’m a foot away from Hudson. I feel his breath leave his nostrils. His eyes bore into me.
“It’s not that simple-” Hudson begins.
Onyx cuts him off, “Answer her, yes or no.”
“Yes,” Hudson acquiesces between gritted teeth.
Hudson moves to touch me; to quench the anxiety brimming.
Onyx lunges. They fall to the ground wrestling, punching, kicking. It’s hard to tell what leg is kicking, or which cocked arm is ready to punch, or whether a foot just got knocked out from beneath one of them. They move faster than my eyes can register—a tornado of human appendages.
I leave and shut the door behind me. I wait behind the white door, in the walk-in closet-sized room full of mirrors. I pull out my small tin. Small deep red pills fill the metal container. I pick one up and squint to see the stamp. At first, I think it’s a brain. Imaginably the stamp is a well-weathered vagina. But then I remember Ruby’s side comment about eating the fruit.
I laugh and rub my thumbprint along the engraved pomegranate—the forbidden fruit that Adam and Eve ate.
Eventually Hudson and Onyx cram their bodies into the room with me. Both are sporting matching darkening black eyes and gashes.
“Do you want to take Hudson with you?” Onyx asks me.
“Where is she going?” Hudson asks Onyx as if I’m not in the room.
I give the same one-word answer Hudson provided me. One word that holds a dissertation of unspoken emotions. “Yes.”
“Fine,” Onyx remarks and punches Hudson in the jaw.
“You go through that mirror,” Onyx says pointing at a mirror on the right side of the room. “Left hand and foot first.”
Hudson massages his jaw and makes to move.
Both of us stand at the precept of walking through the mirror when Onyx says, “You both can’t walk together. Nix needs to go first.”
Hudson takes my hand. “Don’t call her that.”
“No, you aren’t listening to me.” Onyx punches Hudson’s cheekbone. Hudson’s chin whiplashes towards the mirrored wall. He doesn’t make contact.
Onyx stands firm, daring Hudson to reciprocate the violence.
“FUCK,” Hudson shouts redirecting his violence to crash and splinter the mirror next to Onyx’s head. Except his hand passes through the mirror and stays there. The mirror holds his fist like the counterpart in a Chinese finger trap.
Onyx shifts into Hudson’s personal space. “Listen to me, you stupid fuck. Nix goes first. And if she wants you to make it to the other side, she won’t turn back and check on you.”
“Say what now?” I ask, holding my left hand’s index and thumb in the L position. I didn’t want to lose comprehension on which hand was my left.
“If you want Hudson to crossover with you, he has to follow you. You can’t look backward or he’ll disappear.”
I nod. “Do I get a map, accessories… A weapon? Do I need a weapon?”
“You are your best and worst weapon.” Onyx backs away from Hudson and smacks me on the ass. “In you go, Hudson will follow.”
I hesitate. Is Onyx’s word worthy of trust, or is this Stockholm syndrome?
“Trust me.” Onyx elbows Hudson in the chest. The mirror spits Hudson’s hand out. His fist re-materializes with scales.
I lift my L shaped hand and corresponding foot.
“I’ve helped you so far, haven’t I?” He has. I step through the mirror, pass through the blurry waterfall transition, and walk into a forest.
Birds.
Songbirds ranging from the cuckoos, cockatoos, sparrows, thrushes, and canaries sing from the canopies. Brilliantly colored feathers thread and interweave musical notes through limbs and leaves. Hummingbirds buzz in the hundreds like loved ones passed. Their tiny hearts are inconsolable.
I walk with no apparent direction except forwards. My paranoia strains to hear any footsteps behind me. I stop and move in angles. I inconspicuously peer almost behind me. Perchance I can spot a snapped twig. Possibly Hudson will kick a rock. Maybe we will resurface as strangers and we can meet again without the angst.
My maybes turn into ‘what ifs’ that spiral into ‘what the fucks’.
I vary my walking style. I walk like an Egyptian. I forward moon-walk—which is near impossible, it’s more like sliding on the soles of my feet. I transition into fake ice-skating like a Stanley Cup winner. I tip-toe around trees. I try any forward progression of movement/interpretive dance to trigger a response from be
hind me. Nothing happens.
I walk and walk some more until I’m wondering if walking can produce a runner’s high. I mitigate my speeds. I push myself to a sense of euphoria that has me sprinting to a cacophony of tweets.
The forest runs out of wood. I’m out of patience at the entrance of a dark cave. I try to snap to produce a small flame but only get smoke.
“You don’t happen to have a light do you?” I ask the dark cave in front of me.
No response. I walk backward returning to the woods barred embrace and stare at the mouth of the cave. The birds don’t reply. Their syrinx is weary, their vocal gymnastics paused. My voice stripped them of theirs.
The dusty orange mouth of the cave doesn’t welcome me. Instead, I welcome myself. I pull the small tin from the elastic of my pants. The band snaps back on my skin. I pop a pill in my mouth and crunch, munch. The pomegranate pill tastes like fruit Flintstone vitamins. I pop another because that shit is good.
The cave swallows me whole.
It isn’t until I make a tight turn that I realize I’m lighting my way. I’m emitting a soft light, enough for a nightlight to guide. The pomegranate pills are not for tripping, they’re anti-anxiety with a subtle kick. My lips break into a large grin.
“He does help me, doesn’t he?” I ask my shadow silhouette. She doesn’t respond. Neither does Hudson. I’m alone and crowded between dusty walls. The tunnel walls seal in tight to me. My light dims. A paranoia that I’m alone, yet never escaping, has me changing my speeds.
I run.
I run as straight as I can through bending pathways until I see a ball of light that grows and grows. Heart pounding, feet stomping, I race through the cave’s opening. The toes of my left foot pass the boundary line of the cave’s opening.
I turn and look over my shoulder.
20
Two thousand eleven