by J. N. Chaney
His friend moved to us, but I kept my eyes down. Still, I could sense his feet as he neared the exit, coming to an abrupt stop. Right then, he let out a surprised gasp as I finally pulled my eyes away from the floor.
Clem halted, forcing me to do the same.
A familiar laugh filled the room.
“Mr. Pryar!” Bart exclaimed, stepping away from the husky, middle-aged man.
Mulberry, with his heavy coat and a wry smile, appeared more amused than anything. Bart and Alonso, for their part, looked absolutely terrified.
I hadn’t even heard the man come through the door.
Mulberry shook his head. “I have to say, Alonso, I’m really disappointed in you. Absalom had such high hopes for you, putting all that time and work into your training, and here I see you treating these girls this way. What the hell is wrong with you?”
“I was just trying to be nice to them,” Alonso muttered, his eyes twitching towards where the curved cheese knife was still buried in his shoulder. “Sh-she’s just crazy. I-I was being nice to her! Wasn’t I, Bart?”
“It’s true, sir!” exclaimed Bart. “We both were just being nice.”
Mulberry narrowed his eyes at them. “If you think I’m fool enough to believe that, then you must not think much of me. Is that it, boys? You think I’m a fool?”
Alonso went red but said nothing.
Bart moved away from Mulberry as the man’s face changed to something more dangerous.
“It’s a shame,” Mulberry said, his voice an even, monotonous grumble. “I’ll need to come up with a punishment for this. What do you think, Clementine? Do you have any ideas?”
Clementine pulled her glove off and tossed it away in disgust. “Mr. Pryar, I—”
“Yes, I guess it’ll have to fit the crime, won’t it?” he asked. “I could just beat the shit out of you boys myself, but it seems Clementine’s already done that part for me. How about six months cleaning this kitchen? You can show these girls how sorry you are by doing their work for them.”
“B-but, sir, what about our other assignments?” asked Bart.
“You’ll still have to do those too,” Mulberry said. “I hope you can survive on five hours of sleep a night because you’ll be working the rest of the time.” Mulberry’s eyes drifted to Clem. ““I’ll be speaking to you later, Clementine. Why don’t you two girls go to your room while the rest of us have ourselves a talk?”
We both nodded, slipping out of the room as he continued to stare at the two boys, a vacant, passive look in his eyes.
We walked swiftly and quietly out of the kitchen and straight for our room, shutting the door and locking it behind us.
5
I threw my cleaning gloves away and sat on my bed, suddenly feeling tired. I just wanted to close my eyes and settle into my daydream, where people like Mackavoy, Alonso, and Bart didn’t exist. I wanted to fall asleep thinking of being someplace else.
My hands were still shaking. The cold feeling had subsided, but the sick remained, sticking to the back of my throat.
Clementine looked angry. She had chewed up the floor of our room, pacing back and forth in the narrow space between the two beds, stomping her anger out. It couldn’t have been more than fifteen minutes, but it felt like hours.
“Did you hear him?” Clementine tried to make an impression of Mulberry with a growl. “‘Go to your room.’ Like we did something wrong. They started it, not us. Why the hell are we the ones being punished?”
I didn’t look Clementine in the eye. “Well, I mean, we were cleaning, and now we’re not. Isn’t that better?”
Clem huffed. “Please. Mulberry needed time to check on his prize boys first. He sent us to our room so he can scold us for hurting the wittle bitty babies.” She made a crude gesture with her finger at the door. “He’s going to lay into us, I promise. We’re new here, so he’ll probably just try to get rid of us. Maybe send us away to work in one of the factories. And if that’s how they’re going to treat us, I don’t want to stay anyway. If the people here are like Alonso, I don’t want any part of them.”
I nodded slowly. “Yeah, but did you really need to stab him?”
“Are you crazy?” she asked, spinning around to face me on my bed. “Of course I had to stab him. He deserved it. Hell, he’s lucky that’s all I stabbed. Besides, it was just a little scratch. He’ll be fine.”
Her eyes drifted away from mine, towards the door, and her mouth dropped. I turned around to see both Pearl and Mulberry standing before us.
Pearl looked at her pad. “I wouldn’t call a five-centimeter-deep wound to a vital muscle in the shoulder just a little scratch. He’ll need surgery to repair the damage done to the muscle, and he may have trouble with mobility for the rest of his life.”
Clementine stiffened, her face twisting into a less hostile but still firm expression. “I-I thought the door was—”
“Locked?” asked Mulberry. He raised his hand to show a small key card. “You ought to pay attention more when you’re ranting. We were standing here for at least ten seconds before you noticed. And before that, I could hear you in the hall.”
Clementine was silent, but I could tell by her eyes that she was trying to find a way out of this. “What are you going to do with us? Are you kicking us out? That’s it, isn’t it?”
I stepped beside her, taking her hand in mine. If they were going to punish her for what had happened, I was going too.
Mulberry looked at me, and it made that cold feeling return to my stomach. I held Clem’s hand tighter.
“I was only defending myself,” Clem said firmly.
A few tense moments passed as the two of them studied us.
Finally, Mulberry turned to Pearl, his look softening. “She’s not wrong.”
“You were there,” Clem said, raising her voice. It cracked at the last word. “Why didn’t you stop them?”
Mulberry tilted his head, letting the question linger a while before he finally answered. When he did, he seemed relaxed, almost sympathetic. “I wanted to see how you would handle yourself. I could’ve stepped in before things got out of hand, but as it turns out, I didn’t need to. Only the weak rely on others to save them, and if I thought you were weak, I would have done so.”
Clem tensed, and I felt it. That wasn’t the answer she wanted, but it felt honest. “You—” She paused, her eyes darting. “You should’ve done something. They had no right to do what they—”
“I know,” Mulberry said. He stared at her with a calm expression. There was no anger in him, not like there was with Clementine. “One day, I think you’ll understand why sometimes it’s better to let people fight for themselves. You may hate me for this today, but it’s what you needed. Both of you.”
She said nothing, but I knew those eyes, and I knew her. She would not forget this. She never forgot anything. Even if she grew quiet and appeared to move on, she would always remember. Whether she chose to blame those boys or Mulberry was something I simply couldn’t know.
But I hoped she saw the good in what the old man had tried to do.
Pearl relaxed, sighing deeply as she looked at the two of us. “What to do with you now, I wonder?”
Mulberry came closer, eyeing Clementine and crossing his arms. She stared up at him boldly, not shying away from his gaze. My hand trembled in hers, and she gave it a reassuring squeeze.
After what felt like forever, Mulberry nodded. “You were sloppy with that knife, Clementine. I can teach you to be better. Stronger. Would you like that?”
Clem’s brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”
Pearl said nothing.
Mulberry continued. “You’re green, inexperienced, but we can work with that. It won’t be easy. You’ll have to train your body as well as your mind. It’ll take everything in you…and maybe a little more. Are you up for that?”
Clementine’s jaw tightened as she stood before him, her eyes narrowing to match his. “I can do it.”
Mulberry raised a
hand. “Keep in mind, kid, if you join up for this, you’ll be treated like an adult. No more coddling.”
I wanted to ask when the coddling had occurred, because so far since we arrived at this place, it had been anything but pleasant. Instead, I only watched as Clem turned the idea over in her head.
She brushed her hands across her cheek and nodded. “If you can teach me to be strong, then I want to learn. I’ll do anything you ask me to. Anything.”
Mulberry chuckled. “All right, kid. You start tomorrow morning, an hour before the usual wake-up time.”
The two adults exchanged a quick glance, then turned towards the door.
My heart was racing. I felt the urge to pull back, to retract from the situation. My body wanted me to say nothing, but I knew I couldn’t. I knew I had to do what was best for both my sister and me. “M-Mr. Pryar?” I asked, stepping forward as they crossed into the hall.
He pulled back to see me. “Yes, Abigail?”
I cleared my throat, not because I had to, but because I wanted the extra moment to breathe. “I want to join too.”
He tilted his head and stared at me, but there was less shock than I had expected from him. Less surprise. “Why?” he asked, a soft tone in his voice. It was so very different from the way he’d spoken to Clem.
Clementine squeezed my hand. If I looked back at her now, I wouldn’t be able to go through with it. I also knew that I wasn’t strong enough to survive in this world on my own. I needed her a lot more than she needed me. Hopefully, this training, whatever it was, would change that.
“Because I need it,” I whispered. It was a simple answer and an honest one. I just hoped that he wouldn’t see how true it was.
But the look in Mulberry’s eyes told me that he did.
He turned to Pearl, an unspoken question in his eyes. Her answer was a simple shrug, and she stepped out of the room.
When he turned back to me, he frowned, and I sensed a kind of sadness in him. “Are you sure you want this?”
All I could do was nod.
His eyes lingered on mine for a time, but then his expression hardened back into the man I knew. “Very well, then,” he said, giving me a nod. He looked at Clem and again at me. “I’ll see you both first thing tomorrow.”
6
“Again, godsdammit!”
My arms felt rattled and numb with each strike. Pearl said that this sensation would pass as my muscles and bones adjust to the impacts, growing denser, but after a month of this kind of training, I still didn’t feel any difference.
Then again, the rubber training dummy was taking the worst of the beating. He was shuddering and shaking with every blow.
I went through the last series again, putting my arms up the way that Pearl had shown me, bouncing lightly on the balls of my feet as I came in closer, throwing my fists at the dummy’s face. My shoulders ached with each impact, and as I ducked, I struggled to keep my balance.
Pearl was having none of it. “One foot in front of the other. Abigail, that’s not how you make a fist! Do it the way I told you. Clementine, you’re kicking too high! Balance yourself, or you’ll fall from a godsdamn breeze. Keep going!”
She had transformed into something new, a far cry from the bored woman we’d encountered before. Here, she was in her element. She was engaged, watching and studying each move, calling us on it, and forcing us to improve.
I was thankful but also exhausted. The day had stretched longer than any we’d spent cleaning. This was a new kind of work, a new kind of life, and it would take time to adjust.
“Once more, Abigail,” she said in an even voice.
“Yes, ma’am,” I gasped.
I raised my arms again, taking the stance she’d shown us only once. I started with a jab from my left side.
My punches slammed into the gelatinous face on the dummy. The life-sized toy was made to imitate the density of human skin, muscle, and bone. I felt the impact all the way through my knuckles and into my wrist.
And it hurt.
I repeated the move again, ducking under an imaginary haymaker, then gave an uppercut with my right hand. I tried for a mid-height kick to the ribs but slipped and fell to the floor.
Pearl said nothing as I regained myself.
“Sorry,” I said, taking heavy breaths. I looked at her, expecting a fierce reprisal for my failure. Instead, her eyes were steady, no hint of anger or disappointment.
“Don’t apologize, Abigail. Just learn and adapt,” she said. She reached into a nearby container and retrieved a bottle of water, then tossed it towards me. It rolled into my thigh. “Never throw a kick unless you’re absolutely sure that you have the balance to complete it. It’s better to hold off on the attack than to fall flat on your back. You lose your balance, you die. Do you think you can remember that?”
I nodded, swallowing a mouthful of water and setting the bottle down near the edge of the matt.
“Take a few minutes. We’ll try again soon,” she said.
I nodded and leaned down on my knees, feeling my sweaty hair drape across my face. It used to be long. I used to be proud of it—my pretty blonde locks. They used to turn gold in the sun.
But Pearl had cut it, saying that long hair was going to hamper my training. In the four weeks since we’d cut it, time had regrown it enough so that I had annoying bangs that got in my eyes every five seconds.
I took another gulp of water, coughing as a few drops went down the wrong pipe.
Clementine was a lot more enthusiastic and energetic about the training than I was. Mulberry had, after all, chosen her first, and now I could see why. I’d just tagged along. I was slowing the training regimen down, but hopefully not by too much.
But Clem was far ahead of me, rarely tiring, hardly messing up. She had a natural composure to her, as though she’d been waiting her entire life for this.
Whatever this was. Honestly, I still didn’t know.
She worked a series of punches—jabs and uppercuts—and then she hammered an elbow into the dummy’s jaw. With a jumping step back, she spun on her back foot and landed a beautiful high kick that knocked the dummy to the floor.
“Nice work, Clementine,” Pearl said, handing her a bottle once the dummy was on its feet. “Take a break.”
“Thanks, Miss Pearl,” she said with a bright grin, tossing her now short black hair and tilting her head to drink some water.
When Pearl walked away, Clem turned and jogged over to where I had taken a seat on one of the nearby stools. “You okay, Abby?”
I was still panting, wiping the sweat from my face with a towel. “Not really. I’m starting to wonder if I should even be here.”
Clem’s eyes narrowed as she took another sip of her water. “What do you mean?”
I shrugged. “I knew it was going to be difficult, but this is harder than I expected, and with you—” I paused.
“With me what?” she asked.
Did Clem not see how much better than me she was? I shook my head. “It’s nothing. I’m just a bit tired is all.”
Clem laughed. “Me too. But I feel better through all this, you know? Like, tired but a good kind of tired, I guess. You know what I’m talking about?”
I didn’t, but I put on a smile anyway. “Yeah, of course.”
“Break’s over, girls,” Pearl said. “Let’s get back to it. I want you two to stick closer together from now on. Abigail, I want you studying Clementine’s form.”
A furious shade of red covered my face, but I nodded. Truth was, I could stand to learn a thing or two from Clem.
We brought the dummies that we were working on closer together and started going through the different combinations that Pearl had taught us all over again.
“Abigail,” Pearl called after I finally managed a mid-height kick without falling on my ass, even though the dummy barely moved when I kicked it. “Keep your knees bent and your center of gravity low. It’ll give you more power to work with.”
“Yes, Miss Pearl,” I sai
d, doing as she instructed.
My thighs, already burning from the exercise, screamed in agony as I worked through the series again. This time, when I finished the combination with a kick, the rubber man moved, almost tipping over from the blow.
“What did I tell you?” Pearl asked, and as I looked at her, I noticed a small smile that quickly disappeared. “Now run it again. I want that dummy on its ass before we finish things up today.”
I nodded, tightening the wraps on my hands.
When we next took a break, I couldn’t help but feel a little frustrated.
I’d kept my knees bent and my center of gravity low, but I still didn’t get as close to knocking the dummy over as I had that first time.
If anything, I was just getting worse, and I told Pearl as much.
She chuckled and handed me a bottle and a towel. “You’re thinking about it too much. The point of repeating these combinations over and over again is to let your muscles get used to the moves so that when you actually have to use them in combat, your body remembers what it’s supposed to do. It’s called muscle memory, and it’s essential. When you can act without thinking, you’ll stand the better chance at living through the fight.”
Clementine came over to us, taking a long swig from her water bottle as she flipped her towel over her shoulder. “If you don’t mind my asking, how do you know all this, Miss Pearl? I mean, you seem better at this than running us through cleaning this place, but you still haven’t told us what you actually do. Have you ever killed anybody? Have you used these skills?”
Pearl chuckled softly, turning to Clem and rolling her neck. “You’re a lot less perceptive than I had you pegged for, Clementine. You’ve been here for over a month now, and you still don’t know what it is we’re training you for? What do you think it is that we do here?”
I shrugged, even though the question wasn’t directed at me. “I thought you were some sort of security service. Protecting people, helping the innocent.”
Pearl smiled at me like I’d just said something adorable and then turned back toward Clementine. “Yes, I kill people. Because aside from keeping the two of you out of trouble, that’s precisely what my job entails. I went through a similar training regimen as I’m giving you, though I was a lot younger when I started.”