Into Painfreak

by Lee, Edward

  I didn’t want to listen to Teddy anymore and I didn’t want to think. I’d failed at my one and only task; my mission was a loss. Being on the cross proved that well enough, and the fact that I didn’t see my competition bound up cinched it. I was a maggot of the first order, just as the headmaster said.

  What’s chlostis? Teddy asked.

  “The fucking winner,” I said. “Shut up.”

  One of the passing crowd paused before me, a stocky fellow with broad shoulders and a round belly. He held shears, fat- bladed and black handled. While the stocky one stared into my face another, this one with brown skin and gray hair, paused at his side. A third went to the stocky one’s opposite shoulder, her loosely-curled hair bouncing as she giggled. Within a minute a small crowd gathered.

  Blood play, Teddy said in my head. I ignored him.

  BLOOD PLAY! he said louder. Say it!

  Swapping the shears to his left hand, the fellow’s meaty right grabbed hold of one of my feet and spread the two smallest toes from each other with his thumb. With a quick “snick” he took off the smallest of the two at the base. They were tender, I knew that, but when lightning shot up from the tip of my foot, through my knee, and didn’t fail until mid-thigh, I knew much better. The worst part wasn’t the first shot, but the ebb and flow of pain afterward, like my life was dribbling out on the floor.

  MOTHERFUCKINGBLOODPLAYYOUMOTHERFUCK!!!!

  The pain caught my attention, so I shouted “blood play” at the top of my lungs. I had no idea what that meant, but the spasms in my one leg played games with my command and control. Teddy was doing better.

  The gentleman smiled at me while tossing my toe on the floor. Beside him the girl picked it up, sniffing the bloody bit.

  We’re on show, you stupid son of a bitch.

  “What’s that mean?” I asked. I didn’t think to get angry.

  The man who took my toe raised one eyebrow at me while poking at my taut belly with the tip of his knife. I felt each poke and thought that I needed to respond somehow before he took another piece off.

  “What does he want?”

  Right arm. Left still hurts.

  “What are you talking about?” The people in front of me looked left, then right. It occurred to me that I was the only one speaking out loud.

  Say right arm. I paused again, but remembered the lighting. So “right arm” is was. As emphasis, I flipped my right hand as well. No use confusing the tubby fuck again He looked around, holding his shears up in the air, and a few of the crowd closed in. After words, most of which escaped me, he traded the shears for what looked to be a meat knife with a dark-stained wooden handle and a blade with a spider web of scars. The little girl ran off giggling with the shears.

  After he rubbed the inside of my forearm until it warmed, he gave three quick slices with the knife. This time, instead of the shooting pains, I felt concurrent burning and tickling. It wasn’t bad.

  Better now.

  Teddy was right. This wasn’t only better than losing a toe, it felt good. Like a release.

  It makes me stronger, Teddy said. We smiled at our benefactor.

  The threat was reduced, and I could think again. I could think past the bolts of pain to something greater, like an option outside of exsanguination. It was then that I saw a couple near the edge of the light. One was a man built thin and hard, like hides stretched over bone, with slit eyes watched me from beneath a shallow forehead. Several lengths of rope, spotted and stained, lay over the back of his neck and ended on his concave chest. Some drooped even farther. In one hand he held a bundle of sticks and in the other a shiny tool. A saw. Beside him stood his paradox, a tall woman with effusive flesh, rumpled knees and a slouching belly, pendulous breasts and a wattles replacing her chin and neck. Even her earlobes dangled.

  Him I had no idea about, but her I immediately recognized as the chlostis. She had the shape, certainly, but mostly she had the eyes. At first my heart burbled because I saw that it wasn’t over yet. Then I looked from one of my hands to the other. Not over, but not looking good. The chlostis wasn’t up on a cross.

  What’s a chlostis? This time I spoke softly.

  “I and another who failed the military academy are here in competition. The winner gets to graduate anyway and captain a legion.” That was about as simple as I could make it.

  Sounds like bullshit to me.

  “Might be. We weren’t given a choice.”

  Let’s make the best of it, then. What are our options?

  What did I have going for me? My human liked blood play and it made him stronger. Right now I could use stronger. Otherwise, the chlostis held the high ground.

  He’s waiting for more. Tell him the whole arm. Teddy could really interrupt a train of thought, but I was getting used it. I liked the way he thought.

  “Whole arm,” I said. It bought time. “Both arms.”

  The other’s sore still.

  “Tough.”

  The man, who’d just worked his way into the crook of my right elbow, paused. I turned and winked at him and he winked back. Then he continued down my right arm, leaving a series of weeping slices. The tickle was gone, as was the sting. It was just warm. Fulfilling.

  You want her?

  “What do you know about her?” I whispered.

  She’s an amp.

  “What’s that.”

  I free my blood, she frees her parts.

  “Parts?”

  Look at hands. Legs.

  I don’t know how I didn’t see it before, as her right hand was a mess. Each finger on the right was, to some degree, missing and her left hand was gone, leaving compiled scars around its stump. The crowd was in the way, so I couldn’t see her legs, but I got Teddy’s point.

  What do you know about him? The one in the amp?

  “The chlostis? Big and stupid. Piles of bravado wrapped around an empty space. And a perfect warrior.” I paused for a second. “I have to beat him.”

  At what?

  “I don’t know.”

  Useful.

  He was right.

  The man with the knife scrolled bloody work into my left arm now, but I saw the audience wandering off one at a time, hoping to find more interesting sufferers.

  Turn them.

  “Who?”

  The audience. Amps are popular. Turn them on her.

  I have to give it to Teddy, it was genius. I couldn’t do anything to win or lose this competition, whatever it was, but maybe they could. Maybe the audience could handle her like they would have handled me if I’d not listened.

  Is the chlostis prideful?

  “Oh yeah.”

  My head lifted up to stare closely at her.

  Let me do this.

  “Not a chance.”

  Do you know what works here? This is Painfreak.

  I didn’t answer. What he said made sense, but you don’t just take a body and give it back.

  Let me do this.

  Instinctively I receded, trading places with Teddy and taking up room in his mind. It was a risk, but not a large one. I’m still stronger.

  “Sal,” I said out loud, in what I presume was Teddy’s voice now. It was deeper, more fluid than mine. “From the hips up, pretty me. The full routine, and make a show of it? Make a show the way only you know how. And Sal?”

  “Teddy?” Sal replied.

  “The hips up.”

  Sal stuck out his lower lip for a second, then sucked it back in and nodded. He cut off our clothing while whistling a happy tune, slicing with large gestures while Teddy and I nodded our head along with his music. The crowd started paying more attention, and souls came out of the darkness and from behind pillars. They couldn’t keep their eyes off of us.

  “What’s a matter?” Teddy yelled across the space. The woman looked up, her dark eyes unblinking and her thin lips pressed. “Can’t take a little pain, chlostis?”

  What are you doing? I asked.

  “You said this is a competition, right? It’s n
ot having to fight at all.” Teddy quit whispering to me and yelled across the space again. “You think watching will get…” Then he paused. “What? What do we get?” he whispered.

  A legion to captain.

  “…you think you’ll lead just standing there?” We yelled. “I’m fighting and you, you’re just watching.”

  You know bravado.

  “Audiences are my thing, but they’re hers too. She’s more popular than anyone. At least she was.”

  The large woman was talking to the man beside her, motioning at the ropes around his neck. He stood beside her, head cocked. As they chatted, more of the people passing through gravitated to me and my cross.

  “You got nothing,” Teddy yelled over at the chlostis, but she wasn’t paying attention.

  What can this do?

  “You don’t know what you’re doing here, right? I know what I’m doing.”

  We have all the audience now. Why challenge them?

  “If we do this right he won’t have legs to walk out of Painfreak on. Let’s give him a win.”

  I had to muddle through it first, but it made sense. Whoever left Painfreak had to be capable of leading a legion into battle. We walked, and that took legs. We carried weapons, and that took arms. Teddy nodded our head.

  Sal worked our belly now, making long, shallow slices back and forth. Our skin puckered along the edges, each dressed in occasional pearls of crimson. Our heart beat quicker. I wanted us to cry out now, to tear myself off the cross and help the scrawny man allot the chlostis out.

  “Wait,” Teddy said.

  Flat on the ground, the woman stretched at the urging of several ropes. Two were tied to her elbows and two more to her knees. The audience participated, with four kneeled around her on the ropes and the two largest ones taking spots at the top and bottom, one between her legs and the other at her head to hold her flat.

  The skinny man took a single stick and wove it underneath the loop on the woman’s meaty left leg, slowly rotating the stick and cinching the rope.

  We’re losing the audience, I said, watching two of my observers peel off.

  “That’s okay this time.” Teddy’s confidence saturated our thoughts, leaving me comfortable.

  The painfreaks pooled around us, some on me but more near the chlostis. The skinny man was starting with her left leg, and that damn leg brought in two souls for every one giving a damn about my seeping belly. Hell, I wouldn’t watch me either.

  The thin man had been working a long blade, but he traded it for the saw. Her leg was smiling above the knee, with puffs of yellow fat dribbling on the floor and smearing into the pooling blood. Another man kneeled at the thin man’s side, one hand furiously working the thin man’s groin. A few feet away a woman on hands and knees guided a man in from behind. I’m not certain if it was the leg coming off or the audience participation, but we started losing what little audience we had and no one wandering into view made it past the show. Her show. Only Sal remained with us, and he kept working. I don’t know if he knew what was going on behind him. Watching the chlostis losing left me giddy inside and I needed to see more, so I jumped out of Teddy. Needing to be closer to the failing chlostis landed me in the large man at her head. My hairy hands sank into her fleshy shoulders, squeezing her to the floor. With her eyes rolled back and her mouth a perfect circle, she wasn’t going anywhere. And I knew, right then, that she no longer held the chlostis. He was gone.

  Since I hadn’t put myself into Teddy, it hadn’t occurred to me that I could leave him. I just wanted to see what was happening, and there I went. It should have felt powerful, but I found it cold. This man offered nothing. He was empty, a void.

  I searched the others around me, looking in their eyes, but there was no chlostis. That meant he was jumping harder and farther. Fuck! Letting go of the flab beneath me, I tried to stand while scanning the room for a sign, but the others blocked my view. Then I saw Sal working his knife across Teddy’s chest. The lines he cut now followed the angular shape of one pectoral. There was no one around him. I jumped to him, where I found a silly kind of satisfaction, the satisfaction you feel when you pike the enemy from behind and they never saw you.

  Sal’s soul was whistling, just like his lips. I surveyed the room, but still no chlostis. Had he escaped?

  Through Sal’s eyes I looked up at Teddy and found the chlostis. He looked down, his lips stretched into a grim smile. I panicked.

  Had it been a trap? Did he mean for me to jump? Did he know? I crumbled inside as my mind took two parallel paths, at once both berating myself and struggling to discover what this meant. If I had Teddy, then left, then the chlostis had Teddy, did that make Teddy the goal? Was he what we were competing for?

  Then I noticed Teddy’s eyes wavering, this moment slitted and black, that one wide and brown, then back again. I heard his voice, back on the pier. He’d said called you. Did he mean he’d called me into him?

  Was that important?

  Knowing I’d fail, I still tried to jump back into Teddy. There wasn’t a doorway and I didn’t budge from Sal. It was like trying to pick myself up off the ground.

  Teddy’d called me, and then I left him. I had him, then lost him. Just leave it to a fucking chinny to fold a winning hand.

  I took control of Sal and waved the knife in the chlostis’ face. I knew it was an empty gesture, but did he? Teddy’s face didn’t change, his smile painted on and his eyes alternating between anger and pain.

  Then I had an answer. Maybe not THE answer, but an answer.

  Kneeling, I cut the tape from Teddy’s feet, freeing them from the cross and each other. Then I stood and, with a quick swipe, I cut one arm free. Teddy fell to the other side, his legs limp, hanging by the other arm. When I cut that free he fell on his side looking past the scene around the woman and into the vast warehouse. I wondered if he was looking for the city or the sea.

  That was it, then. It wasn’t much, but I’d taken everything from Teddy I had the power to take. No more blood, no more audience, and no more show. He was just a puddle on the floor. With that I walked back over to watch the skinny man piecemeal the woman.

  She was limp now and the pool of blood bathed her lower body and half of the assisting crowd. Someone from the audience was trying to tighten the tourniquet on her stump, but it didn’t change the blood loss. Her skin was sallow and her face empty. The amputator wasn’t going to make it to her second leg and I could see the disappointment in the eyes around me. He was losing his audience, too.

  It’s odd how inspiration hits you, like it jumps as well. What did I need to win here? I had no idea. But I did know the only thing which felt true was Teddy. He’d called me, and that’d never happened before. That’s what I needed.

  One second nothing, and the next I was yelling at the thin man.

  “You did it wrong,” Sal and I said. “You fucking idiot, you did it wrong.” I quickly jumped from Sal to a perky brunette standing across the crowd from me. “Wrong!” we said. “She’s dying and you’re wrong!” I wasn’t thinking the lines through and this wasn’t intended to be theater. I just wanted to get something going. Again I jumped, this time to the leg-holder working the whole leg. We stood up, looking down at the top of the scrawny man’s head, and I punched him as hard as I could. As a chinny that punch would have crushed a human’s spine, but as a dark-skinned old man it mostly hurt our hand. But my desired response was obtained when the others joined in.

  “This isn’t why I came here,” said one woman, one whole hand clenching three finger stumps on the other.

  “What the fuck’s wrong with you, dude?” It was another skinny man, this one with a young face and long hair. The lady on the other side of him pushed the scrawny man on the shoulder and he bounced off my leg. I stepped back as the crowd stepped in, wading into the dying woman’s blood to get some of their own.

  Looking back over my shoulder, I saw Teddy on the floor with his back against the cross and his bloody arms crossed. Other than sittin
g up, he hadn’t moved. I shrugged and smiled. “You win some and you lose some, chlostis. I think this one is mine.” I jumped again, not even sure where I landed, and searched until I saw Teddy. Raising one hand and waving, I said “Mine, too!” Then I waded into the crowd that surrounded the scrawny man, everyone taking turns kicking new screams from his throat.

  This had to work. It had to.

  Since I couldn’t just sit there staring at Teddy, I walked around to the backside of the crowd, mostly hiding but occasionally peering out to see what Teddy was doing. For the longest time it was nothing, but finally he stood. It was then that I saw the dark-skinned man kneel over the shivering of the scrawny man and say “let’s take his leg!” Immediately the crowd boiled over, people fighting each other to grab an arm or a leg, to be a part of holding him down and making him parts. Looking over at Teddy, I saw he was trying to stand now, so I jumped again. It worked.

  At first there was silence, but then I heard a sigh.

  You’re back, he said. Nothing more.

  “Sorry about that.”

  Sorry is not enough. That was pure shit.

  “I’ve fought beside them for an eternity, so I know. You didn’t even get an hour.”

  Ever have one in your head?

  He had me there, so I quit. He was right, sorry wasn’t enough.

  ««—»»

  We were presented the night and we took it, but I don’t know how. I didn’t know then. I didn’t know anything other than I’d made it back into Teddy and had no intention of leaving voluntarily. No one else I jumped to warmed me the way he did, and for that I was thankful. I hoped the chlostis was lost, but I have no idea where it ended up.

  We’d taken some stairs, leaving bloody stains behind as we walked, until we found a quiet room filled with naked humans. Sitting in the corner, my body slick with sweat, I pushed at random spots across Teddy’s body. My skin burned in the sweetest way, a sensation I’d never known before. It was…fulfilling. I had parts now that I didn’t know, parts I didn’t understand, but there were people here ready to understand these parts for me and it felt good.

  The space was, I expect, somewhere in the eternity inside that concrete warehouse beside the sea. There was the concrete floor, but walls replaced pillars and rose into the dark overhead. Some of the humans danced in silence, close to each other, while others splayed in an ever-shifting blanket of flesh. The room was blandly lit, making it difficult to tell where one body began and another ended.