Spiders in the Grove

by J. A. Redmerski

  In the midst of my thoughts, Naeva is brought out onto the stage, and everything else in my mind vanishes.

  Izabel

  Instinct compels me to shoot up from my chair, but I know I can’t; I have to sit here, watch Naeva practically dragged to the center of the stage by her elbow, and do nothing to help her. This is no ordinary bid—it’s not a bid at all—and everybody in the theatre knows it; not only because of Naeva’s refusal to cooperate, how unbroken she is, how much fight she has in her, but also because of the way she’s dressed; the blood on her white gown; the bruises and blood on her face and mouth. A hush falls over the crowd, three hundred stunned faces staring up at the spectacle as it quickly unravels right in front of my eyes—Naeva is in serious trouble.

  The man shoves her to her knees; she falls face-first onto the stage floor; her hair spilling all around her head. Tears shoot from her eyes as she raises her head and looks out into the crowd. But she’s not looking for me, I know—she’s looking for somebody else; her wide, frightened eyes darting in every direction, scanning the faces of onlookers watching her with sick fascination.

  My heart beating in my fingertips, I can barely stay in character; I glance down at Sabine, and although she’s not supposed to make eye contact with her master unless given permission, she can’t help it. She’s as confused as I am; when she saw Naeva last, Naeva was confident and calm. So, what happened?

  Joaquin steps up, and Naeva, seemingly already familiar with his punishments, recoils from him, but she knows better than to try running. On her hands and knees, she looks out at the crowd again, searching desperately for that one particular face; the one she wants to see before she dies—Leo. Upon grasping this realization, my heart falls into my stomach.

  Joaquin raises a hand in gesture to the crowd, and the few whispers lingering cease at once.

  “This, ladies and gentlemen,” Joaquin begins, “is the face of a slave who betrayed her masters. We were going to punish her the old fashioned way, but I have decided that you all”—his hand sweeps in front of him at the crowd—“our wonderful buyers, who trust us and spend a lot of money on our product, should be given the full experience, a rare, exclusive first-look inside our procedures; this way you know exactly what you’re getting when you buy from us; you know how strict our training is, how…unsympathetic our punishments”—he turns from the crowd and looks down at Naeva—“and how brutal our judgments when it comes to thieves and runaways.”

  Naeva sobs into her hands.

  “And here we thought Frances and Iosif were going to be the exciting part of the night,” Cesara says, smiling widely. Then she looks over at me, and her eyes linger. “Does it…bother you that she’s up there, Lydia?” she asks, suspiciously.

  Oh, is my apprehension showing? I snap out of it quickly, and place my hand on Cesara’s wrist upon the table. “Why would it—Oh, wait…”—I look at Naeva on the stage again—“…is that the girl I met on the way here?”

  Easily believing the act, Cesara grins. “Yeah, that’s her.”

  “What did she do?”

  “Well, I only know what Joaquin told me in a rush earlier.” Cesara explains. “He said he could’ve sworn he’d seen her before—apparently, this girl wasn’t forced here; she came on her own.”

  My eyebrows crumple. “Why in the hell would she do that?” I ask with light laughter.

  “That’s the part I don’t really know,” Cesara says. “But she was a slave years ago at another one of the compounds, and she was supposed to be given to Joaquin, but she escaped before that could happen. It was a big story then; everybody knew about it; she’s actually kind of famous—famous by association, anyway.”

  “I don’t get it,” I say. “Why escape and then come back years later to the same place—unless she’s here for revenge; maybe she never forgot about what happened to her here; maybe she’s here to kill everybody.” Oh wait—that’s me.

  Cesara chuckles. “That’s some theory,” she says, “but if that was her plan, by the looks of things it didn’t work out too well.” Then she says, “But there’s a lot more to it. Joaquin wouldn’t confirm or deny it, but there was an intruder on the grounds earlier, and I think it was Leo Moreno.”

  I stiffen, but only on the inside.

  “Who’s Leo Moreno?”

  Cesara looks lost in thought suddenly, her expression soft and…dreamy, if I can call it that.

  “He was an underground fighter,” she says, her voice laced with admiration. “Was famous all over Mexico; nobody could beat him, and anybody who tried either ended up a vegetable, or dead.”

  I remember the story Naeva told me about Leo; it’s interesting to hear about this man from an admirer, rather than the woman who loved him.

  “You look like you wanted to fuck him,” I point out with accusation.

  “I did—wanted to, anyway,” she confirms, and her honesty surprises me. “I mean, you won’t find many women around here who didn’t want to fuck him”—she twirls a hand at the wrist—“but that’s past-tense; he lost himself when he met that girl. It’s a shame, really; Leo had everything, but he fucked it all up for her.”

  You mean he gave it all up for love. Any woman would be lucky to find a man like that…

  Joaquin grabs Naeva by her hair and pulls her to her feet; the crowd watches attentively; and not one of them seem uncomfortable, further proving this is a Den of Devils. No, wait—I was wrong; there are two people in the crowd whose faces and body language indicate they’re very much uncomfortable, further confirming in my mind they might not be who they’re pretending to be.

  Dante rubs the palms of his hands nervously against the legs of his pants; he wipes sweat from his forehead with the back of his wrist; it appears he’s practicing some kind of breathing technique, his shoulders rising and falling to the rhythm of his mouth as it forms an O and breath is expelled in two-second intervals.

  And Frances Lockhart—now I know for a fact that woman is no more a buyer of slaves than I am. She stands up as Joaquin shoves a gun underneath Naeva’s chin, and she shouts, with her hands out in front of her: “Stop! I-I want to buy her; I-I’ll outbid everyone in this room!” She wants to buy her to save her, just like she did those thirteen girls sitting around her, huddled close to her, just as Sabine is to me. It all becomes so clear now—and my job here just became that much more difficult. I don’t know who those two are, Frances and Dante, but in some ways they’re just like me. Unfortunately, they’re nothing like me when it comes to knowing what the hell they’re doing, and how deep the pile of burning shit they stepped into.

  “Sit down, Miss Lockhart,” Joaquin kindly tells her. “This one is not for sale.”

  Please sit down, Frances…if you don’t, if you continue letting your real-self bleed through that brittle façade, you’re going to give yourself away, and you won’t make it out of here alive. Please. Sit. Down. I bite my lip.

  Slowly, Frances takes her seat, and relief floods my body; she sits with both hands on the table in front of her, her face devoid of that spoiled little brat she came here as, and I just hope everything else that is happening can distract everyone—especially Joaquin and Cesara—from her glaring mistakes.

  Naeva’s body trembles in Joaquin’s hands; tears rush down her cheeks—I don’t know what to do; maybe this is my moment, the most difficult test I’ll ever have to face being what I am now; maybe this is my one chance to prove—to myself, not to anyone else—that I can do this kind of work for the rest of my short life. I have to stay in character; I’m so close to unearthing Vonnegut—I feel it—and I can’t let anyone or anything get in my way. Not Dante or Frances or Sabine or any of the other innocent girls here, and not even Naeva. This is The Sacrifice, the moment when I must choose to let innocent people die, so I can kill one of the sources that feeds all this injustice—the death of a few for the lives of many.

  I take a deep breath, and I choose. I choose to do the unthinkable. I choose to become…Victor Faust.
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br />   Joaquin forces Naeva closer to the edge of the stage; he wants to display her for all to see; still, no one other than Dante and Frances Lockhart appear distressed by what everyone in this room knows is going to happen soon.

  “Let me tell you all a story,” Joaquin begins, his voice sharp through the speakers in the ceiling for all to hear, “of a girl who was to be sold years ago, to a private bidder ready to pay an inconceivable amount of money”—(everybody in the room looks right at Iosif Veselov)—“No, no,” Joaquin laughs, “it wasn’t Mr. Veselov—anyway, before the girl could be transferred, she escaped.”

  Whispers rise over the crowd, and then die-out once Joaquin continues.

  “Oh, you’re all going to love this—I should charge an extra attendance fee for tonight.” Joaquin smiles, playfully considering it. “But you won’t believe who helped her out of Mexico.”

  “Who helped her?” a woman shouts from the crowd.

  Joaquin pauses, his smile growing ever so darkly, and he sweeps his free hand in front of him and says, “El Segador, Leo Moreno himself!”

  Gasps and whispers fill the theatre; stunned faces and heads turn to one another in shock; it all makes me feel like I’m wading numbly through a sea of devastation—everyone knows who this man is, and they probably all know the story, too.

  “Leo Moreno?” the woman behind me says to the other. “Wow…so that’s the girl…just wow.”

  “I knew Moreno was alive!” the man to my left says to the other. “If that’s really the woman he loved, somebody’s going to die in this place tonight, and I doubt it’ll be her!”

  “So, that has to mean Leo is here. Right now. In this building,” another woman says to someone, her voice dripping with exhilaration; her eyes bounce all over the room in search of him.

  “You heard that right, ladies and gentlemen!” Joaquin announces—challenges. “You’re looking at the one and only, Naeva Brun! And somewhere in this mansion is the once famous, thought-to-be-dead underground fighter who ruined his life for her!”

  Now I’m the one turning my head, following the heads of the crowd, searching for this man who has yet to reveal himself.

  “Come out of your hole, Moreno!” Joaquin says into his mic. “You have ten seconds to show yourself, and to surrender, or she dies!”

  Everyone looks, in every corner, every shadow; voices rise and fall; in the midst of it all I set my sights on Iosif from across the room. He is the only one not looking; he is the only one who doesn’t care. He reaches into his suit jacket and pulls out a cell phone, sets it on the table in front of him. I can’t tell what he’s doing with it, and I wish I could get closer. He gestures at one of his guards, and says something to him. The guard then gestures at a server carrying a tray lined with drinks, and the server rushes over to the table. Iosif takes a glass of whiskey, then a drink, and sets it upon the table near his phone. He couldn’t care less about everything else going on; he is too important; he might even be irritated by the disruption of the only thing he came here for—I don’t know, because he remains unreadable.

  “Ten. Nine. Eight.”

  Joaquin’s voice, although very much a centerpiece in my mind, is softened by the man named Dante. He is sweating profusely; he’s also not looking for Leo Moreno to make an appearance, but unlike Iosif, Dante is very affected by what’s going on in the theatre. He can hardly sit still on his chair; he slides his index finger back and forth behind the collar of his shirt; he looks like he’s about to vomit, or pass out.

  “Six. Five. Four.”

  Frances Lockhart is crying; two of the girls sitting at her feet are doing their best to console her without being seen; they lay their heads on her thighs, and one is holding her hand. Frances dabs her cheeks with a cloth napkin, and tries desperately to control herself, but like Dante, she’s going to completely unravel any moment now. She looks at me from across the room; our eyes lock, and something passes between us—an understanding, perhaps; a kinship of some kind that I doubt either of us will ever truly know—before we look away from one another, toward the main entrance, and at a figure moving down the aisle.

  “Ah, so wonderful of you to join us, Señor Moreno,” Joaquin says, victoriously.

  The crowd gasps.

  Every head in the room—even Iosif this time—looks in the same direction; a dense spell of silence stretches over the crowd, and not even the sound of breathing breaks it.

  And then: “LEO!” pierces the silence like a bullet cutting through a glass window. Naeva struggles against Joaquin, but he presses the gun deeper into her throat. “Leo! Please! Don’t let them take you!” Tears barrel from her eyes.

  The legendary fighter, the love of Naeva’s life, makes his way toward the stage with awed faces at his front and guns at his back. But he sees none of it—the only thing he sees is Naeva and the man threatening to kill her. His dark eyes churn with retribution; his fists are like iron hammers down at his sides, held in place by muscled arms and shoulders that appear to have been carved from stone; his face, filled with violence and fury, somehow appears soft, and young, with finely-chiseled cheekbones and perfectly-shaped lips. For a moment, I mourn him—what a waste it will be to see such a creature killed by such a beast.

  Without a word, Leo Moreno makes it to the first set of tables next to the stage, and in a flash, before any trigger behind him can be pulled, he rounds on the guard closest to him, drives a sharp elbow into his face with a crack! and grabs the gun from his hands. Another one-second flash and Jorge Ramirez, sitting at the table nearest Leo, is now pressed against Leo’s chest, the barrel of the gun shoved against Jorge’s temple—it all happened so fast I’m still trying to grasp it.

  “Let Naeva go, or I kill this one…first,” Leo speaks in accented English, and a wave of excited whispers blankets the theatre.

  “Leo—”

  Joaquin shoves the barrel of his gun deeper into Naeva’s throat, cutting off her cries; his smile is menacing as he looks down at Leo from atop the stage.

  “You won’t kill him,” Joaquin taunts; he moves his head to indicate the crowd. “You’re outnumbered.”

  Leo cocks his head to one side, and the subtle movement is enough that Joaquin knows this man is more than capable of pulling it off. Joaquin swallows nervously, and tries to maintain his undaunted act, that he has the upper-hand. And although technically he does—because Leo is outnumbered—the line between his hand and Leo’s is very thin.

  I glance over at Cesara, witness the familiar hunger in her eyes—past-tense, my ass; she’d still bend over for Leo Moreno in a heartbeat.

  “You know what,” Joaquin begins with a dismissive shrug, “you picked the wrong buyer to threaten me with—kill him, I don’t care.”

  The buyers sitting in the crowd all turn and look at one another, shocked, and likely reconsidering their future visits to this place. Unsurprising, Iosif appears unfazed, but he is watching, nonetheless.

  Joaquin, noticing the error of his decision, remedies it quickly. “That’s the only buyer in the room who owes me,” he says.

  “Joaquin,” Jorge pleads, his voice cracking, “I thought we had an agreement. Why do you—”

  Leo shuts Jorge up the same way Joaquin had silenced Naeva moments earlier.

  “You have three seconds,” Leo warns in Spanish.

  Visibly nervous, Joaquin squeezes Naeva tightly within his arms, indicating his unwillingness to let her go, no matter what.

  Three seconds flies by in what feels like one, and a shot rings out, echoing off the tall walls; Jorge’s body falls to the carpeted floor in a bloody, slow-motion spectacle. In the same moment, Leo rushes toward the stage, gun in-hand. Another shot rings out, and another—buyers scream and duck underneath tables—but before either bullet can strike him, Leo leaps onto the stage, rolls two-feet before coming to a stop in a crouched position.

  “NOO!” Naeva screams as Joaquin’s gun moves in front of her face, and fires at Leo, striking him in the shoulder.

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sp; Leo goes down; his gun crashes against the stage, and slides out of his reach.

  The gasps from the crowd pull all of the air out of the room—even Iosif has risen into a stand, unable to tear his gaze away from the scene.

  I don’t even remember when I stood up; but here I am, my hands pressed to the table, my body a solid mass of muscle and bone; my eyes and mouth open wide, looking more like Izabel Seyfried than Izel Ruiz.

  “Grab him!” Joaquin orders the guards in Spanish, and nine rush onto the stage and barrel toward Leo like a stampede.

  Leo doesn’t care about any of them; he pulls a trembling Naeva into his arms, shielding her with his body; he knows he’s not getting out of this alive, wounded and with nine guns pointed at him.

  “I missed you so much,” he tells Naeva, his voice choking with emotion; he grabs her face in his hands, peers into her eyes, and my heart is breaking into a million goddamn pieces. “¡Escúchame!”—he wrenches her face in emphasis, and then continues in Spanish—"No matter what happens here tonight, know that I am with you; I won’t leave you again, not even in death—you hear me?”—he shakes her—“not even in death.”

  Before Naeva can say anything, before she can kiss his lips, guards are ripping Leo and Naeva apart.

  “No! Don’t hurt him! I’ll do anything! Please don’t hurt him!”

  Despite the gunshot wound to the shoulder, Leo still manages to land three bone-cracking punches to one guard; two more to another; a third guard moves around behind Leo, grabs his arms and pulls them backward; the back of Leo’s head smashes into the guard’s face, and the guard stumbles back, his hand covering his bleeding nose.

  Five more guards rush Leo, but it’s only the gun in Joaquin’s hand, pointed at Naeva that stops him.

  “Just kill me, you sonofabitch!” Naeva screams. “Give Leo back his freedom, and do what you want with me!”