The Coliseum

by Patrick Lestewka

  Like an earthquake or a flash-flood or a forest fire, the battle rages fast and furious. A natural disaster on a miniature scale, one that will leave no grieving populace or relief funds in its wake. Thirty-eight men are killed or lay dying in the span of twenty minutes. The stands are slathered with blood and chunks of flesh, organs lying in glistening dollops on the floor. Hacked limbs lay scattered about, giving the battlefield the appearance of a haphazardly-organized mannequin warehouse. Many seat-backs are hung with scraps of torn skin and cupped rags of scalp. A Skineater with a wickedly-sharp skate blade protruding from his throat clutches a wooden pike with a Baboon Boy’s head impaled upon it.

  Harlan stands amidst the carnage, clad head-to-toe in gore. He walks amongst the dying to crush the life out of those whose feeble struggles continue.

  After killing Edward, Jackson had covered himself with the carcass. Now, like a cockroach on the heels of a nuclear holocaust, he scuttles from his hiding place and looks about. Only the man-beast remains.

  Samson, Goliath, Lazarus…all had their weaknesses. I must slay the mighty infidel.

  Jackson slides the piston-rod from Edward’s ear. It pulls free with the sound of a boot sucked from mud. Jackson creeps down the steps, careful not to slip on clotting blood, flanking Harlan’s blindside.

  Look at the size of him, Jackson thinks as Harlan’s impossibly broad back looms before him. Man or monster? He crouches low, cat-like, stepping over Gregor’s mutilated corpse as if he were clearing a mudpuddle.

  Ten feet, five feet, two…

  Huey singing: It’s hip to be square—da-da-da-nah-nah-nah—so hip to be square…

  “I stab at thee, Satan!” Jackson screams as the piston-rod descends in a silvered arc. Harlan grunts as the piston finds a home in the groove of his shoulder-blade, puncturing to a two-inch depth before pinging off his clavicle bone. He wheels, clawing at it like an arrow-stuck grizzly.

  “Bad move.” He plucks it out as if no more painful than a bee sting. “Going to cost you.”

  “Wait.” Confusion flickers across the preacher’s face: Killing Edward had been so much easier. “Wait a moment, brother. I thought you were going to kill me. I was acting in self defense.”

  “Self defense?” Blood pulses between Harlan’s collarbone. “Is that what the pious call stabbing a man in the back nowadays?”

  The preacher extends the pointer and index fingers of his left hand in a “V”. He smiles grovelingly. “Peace, my brother.”

  Jackson backs up to the balcony. Harlan follows, cutting off the angles, corralling the terrified preacher until his ass rests against the parapet. It’s a fifty-foot drop to the second level. He grabs Jackson’s robe and spins him, bending his upper body over the railing.

  “Have mercy, dear brother!”

  Harlan notices something glinting on the floor: Small and cylindrical, glossy with blood. The percussion grenade. He remembers what the master guard said: Nothing that’ll kill a man… unless you jam it up his ass.

  Harlan looks at the preacher’s sallow buttocks, the grenade, and back.

  Why the fuck not?

  “Dear God, no!” Jackson hollers as his robe is lifted and a cold tube inserted up his bunghole. “The Lord frowns upon buggery!”

  Harlan pulls the pin.

  It’s a delayed fuse: Jackson turns as Harlan releases him, fingers clutching at his backside. He grunts like a constipation geezer, squeezing his eyes shut. “This is a terrible indignity,” he gasps, “to treat a man of God in such a manner—”

  BOOM.

  Jackson’s stomach distends like a cherry-bombed trashcan. This is accompanied by the firecracker-sound of every major bone and vertebrae snapping up and down the preacher’s body. Jackson Cantrell’s skull goes off like a steam whistle, blood and gore spraying from mouth and ears and nose. His eyes bulge out of their sockets to the point where Harlan could clearly see the optic nerves. A second later they exploded with a moist pop. The sound of clattering metal as the spent shell drops from Jackson’s ass is followed by a loose goulash of liquefied organs and splintered bones falling from the shell-hole. Jackson’s body topples over the balcony like a dead leaf. It lands on a plastic chair and the impact sends what’s left of his spine rocketing through the remains of his guts.

  Who’s left, Harlan thinks. Who’s next?

  He shoulders his weapon and turns from the battlefield.

  Searching for undiscovered territory.

  ««—»»

  PSYCHOLOGICAL EVALUATION

  Prisoner: 15008 Cranston, Lazarus

  Consulting MD: Dr. Adam Coles

  Security Designation: Red

  July 10, 1995.

  Lazarus Cranston is the most terrifying individual I’ve ever met. Apart from the sheer physical dimensions—six-foot-nine, 423 pounds—and well-documented criminal history (78 known murders, at least 30 unsolved cases that he may be responsible for; easily the most prolific serial killer in North American history), Cranston possesses a genius-level IQ. Unlike the others I have profiled, Cranston does not harbor a pathological hatred of society, his parents, women, racial groups, or any other stimuli that frequently drive serial killers to their acts. Cranston kills for the sheer joy the act affords him.

  He kills for the simple pleasure of seeing living creatures die.

  Cranston had no particular victim or manner of dispatch. The only clear linkage appears to be that the killings were inventive, merciless, and often slow—coroners reports indicate that many victims died over the course of hours, or days, or, in one extraordinary case, months. This, of course, was the infamous Celia Heinz case. Cranston kidnapped the seventeen-year-old Heinz after a high school soccer practice and, in a secluded location, severed each and every one of her appendages, cauterizing the wounds and injecting powerful narcotic cocktails to keep her alive. The only thing she was permitted to consume were the amputated parts of her own body. Investigators found her armless, legless, featureless, yet horribly alive exactly two months to the day she had been abducted. (Those in search of further information should direct themselves to the Niagara Criminal Forensics Archive, Autopsy File A-303.1) His murderous tendencies have not slackened since incarceration. He dispatched his cellmate within an hour of arrival at Fulgate penitentiary, strangled the man to death with a twisted bed sheet.

  There is nothing intrinsically good in this individual; not one fiber of Lazarus Cranston’s being reflects the slightest capacity for humanity, or kindness, or compassion. If it is indeed possible that a person can personify perfect, undiluted, dispassionate evil, that person is Lazarus Cranston. I know this may sound both melodramatic and unprofessional, but it is very difficult to maintain professional discipline when discussing such a patient.

  For these reasons, it is obvious that Cranston should NEVER be released. As the death penalty was discontinued in 1955, I can only stress that Cranston live the remainder of his life under the tightest security. If, as the newspapers are reporting, a new prison is soon to be erected in the Northwest Territories, I highly recommend he be transferred.

  —Dr. Adam Coles

  Addendum:

  I hazard to add this, as it may render me the laughingstock of the medical community.

  I refer to Cranston as “he” only because “it” would cause confusion—although “it” is perhaps a more apt designation, as Lazarus Cranston is hermaphroditic. Unlike most, he is not sterile: Medical examination reveals both penis and vagina, while stunted, do function.

  Two weeks ago I was summoned to the solitary confinement wing. The guard had reported strange noises from Cranston’s cell.

  He said it sounded like someone crying. But not Cranston himself.

  Infantile cries.

  Cranston was hunched in the darkness when I first saw him. He was flushing the cell’s commode violently and repeatedly. I asked him what he was doing. He made no reply. I asked him to step away from the toilet. He did not. I summoned the guard and instructed Cranston for the last time t
o step forward.

  He charged at the bars, teeth bared, arms flailing, spitting and gibbering and hissing like some kind of rabid beast. We were all quite taken aback. He was shaking the bars and his knuckles were white around the metal. The following is only speculation: I believe Cranston was frightened.

  For the first time since I’d known him. For perhaps the first time in his life.

  Terribly frightened.

  The guards administered dart-gun sedation and removed Cranston to the infirmary. I requested a moment alone in the cell and approached the commode.

  What I saw astounds me to this day.

  It was a body. A tiny infant body, dead of drowning.

  Not a normal infant.

  This child—if that’s what it indeed was—did not appear...natural. Its limbs were long and ropy and somehow primitive. The face had none of the charming cherubic qualities of a healthy baby: Instead it was flat and wizened; it seemed so atrociously old; the body of a newborn with the face of an ancient, and deformed in so many disturbing ways besides. Its lips were thin bloodless slashes between which teeth glinted in needle-ish points; a tongue, narrow and forked as a snake’s, protruded from its slack mouth and its breath smelled like a sick animal’s. It possessed no sexual apparatus to speak of: A smooth sexless groin, the skin pebbled like the rind of a tangerine. It looked so terribly wrong floating in the stainless steel bowl, nightmare limbs outspread. And I could not conceive—my mind shrank away at the notion—of what such a thing might grow up to become.

  I wrapped the body in a towel. It possessed that strange weight dead tissue tends to have. I dropped it into a garbage can and covered it with soda cans and candy bar wrappers.

  Medically improper, I know. But, you see, I could not bear touching it anymore, couldn’t cradle that dead weight in my arms another second, or stare into those lifeless black eyes…

  Good Lord, I was terrified.

  Unreasonably, unprofessionally terrified.

  — | — | —

  VI. SUB-TERRAINIUM

  The basement.

  Descending the stairs is like entering a tropical forest. The air became dank and the humid air thick as fog. Boxes once filled with skate blades and paper cups and hockey tape are jumbled high, wispy with cobwebs and alive with nesting rats. The darkness is first impenetrable, then invasive: A second skin.

  Somewhere in the twisting warren of perspiring concrete and exposed pipes, sound:

  Low, surreptitious scratching.

  Harlan presses his bulk to the wall, advancing steadily. For the first time in years he is tense. The blackness is absolute; he must guide himself along the wall like an earthworm, blind and moving on instinct. The heat is intense. His brow is soon slick with sweat. Something brushes his face, thin and filamented, perhaps cobwebs, or shredded insulation fibers; he recoils, clawing at whatever it is. Strands cling to his hand and he wipes them on his overalls. His foot collides with something in the darkness—something hard and quivering.

  “Mother?” A man’s voice. “Mother, is that you?”

  “No,” Harlan kneels. “It’s…a friend.”

  “Mother,” the man mewls. “So hungry, mother.”

  “Shshsh,” Harlan says. “Who are you?”

  “Silly mother.” The man’s breath is a wave of stench. “Silly, silly mother.”

  Harlan reaches out and places a hand on the man’s shoulder. Cold, clammy flesh tenses at his touch. “Don’t,” the man squeals. “Don’t h-huh-hurt me, moth—”

  “It’s okay, okay,” Harlan says. His hand traces the curve of the man’s shoulder, down his upper arm…

  “What the—?”

  The skin under his fingers is mottled like melted candle wax. Continuing downwards, Harlan’s fingertips brush against what feels like smooth polished ivory…flesh-stripped bone. The other arm has also been stripped clean, shoulder to fingertips.

  Harlan reaches lower. Blood pounds at his temples with the beat of a tom-tom drum. The flesh of the man’s legs has been stripped to the pelvis; his naked femurs clickety-clack like castanets on the cold concrete. The man is nothing more than a free-floating torso. His flesh has been methodically peeled away by someone, or something.

  Rats?

  No. Something else.

  Mother.

  “Who did this to you?”

  “Silly, silly mother,” the man says. “Your children did, mother dear.” His voice rises to an off-key singsong: “You feed me and I feed you and that’s what makes the world go round. You feed me and I feed you and that’s what makes the world go round…”

  How long has he been here? Harlan wonders. Down here in the dark, being picked apart?

  “Did you come to feed me, mother?” the voice becomes sneaky-sly. “You feed me and I’ll feed the children. They love me, the children do. Love my taste.”

  “What children?”

  “Your children, silly mother,” says the armless, legless thing. “Your beautiful little children…but such appetites, oh my. Feed me and I’ll feed—”

  “I didn’t come to feed you.”

  “But I’m sooo hungry.” The man’s femurs beat a querulous rat-a-tat-tat on the floor. “Please, mother, please feed me.”

  Starving to death in this sightless hole, limbs slowly stripped away, his only companions the engorged rats who skitter over his prone body…is it any wonder the man is insane?

  “Just a little,” the thing says. “Just a little just a little just a little taste…”

  “All right,” Harlan says, twining his hands around the man’s neck. “All right, now.”

  “Do you still love me, mother?”

  Harlan does not answer. Instead, he wrenches the man’s head sideways, shattering his neck. The man dies quickly; eagerly. His body slides down the wall, a cooling buffet for the vermin. Harlan continues into the blackness.

  A pinprick of light somewhere ahead. The sounds are getting louder.

  Harlan approaches cautiously, ear pressed to the wall, eyes squinting for movement. A pair of recessed track lights flicker on and off; the others have been smashed. The walls are pockmarked with manhole-sized caverns, inky and fathomless. They look like mole burrows, but far larger. The floor is covered with dark stains and mounds of foul-smelling pellets.

  Is that…animal shit?

  He peers inside one of the holes that honeycomb the walls. It is deep, the cement appearing to have been chipped away with a crude implement.

  Looks like it was done with a sharp piece of metal…or…or claws.

  He stares closer.

  What the fuck—

  A flash of pink flesh, creamy and smooth.

  Babyish-looking, his mind whirls. It looked like baby ski—

  “What are you doing here?”

  Harlan spins on his heel, railing-bar raised. A form slouches in a darkened nook. Its body is shrouded in shadows. It shifts, seeking deeper shelter.

  “There was an incident above,” Harlan says.

  “You should leave.”

  “Why?”

  “Things are different down here,” it says simply.

  The lights cut out and the hallway is thrown into momentary darkness. Noise—hesitant and scuttling, a sound like nails raking a chalkboard—coming from behind, above, all around.

  Coming from the holes.

  The lights flicker on.

  “Who are you?” Harlan asks.

  The form stirs, settles. “My name is Lazarus.”

  “Lazarus Cranston?”

  “Yes.”

  “I remember hearing about you.” Harlan feels like a bush-league player meeting Joe DiMaggio. “You’re a…legend.”

  “In all the wrong places and for all the wrong reasons.” A pause. “Leave. Now.”

  “There was a man back there,” Harlan points down the hall. “He was in bad shape.”

  “I brought him down,” Lazarus says. “For…company. But I have other company now.”

  “He’d gone crazy.”

&
nbsp; “Everyone’s crazy. You, me, everybody. Crazy.”

  “I killed him.”

  “That’s all right. There’s always more.”

  “More what?”

  Lazarus shifts again. Dark shapes move in the shadows behind him. “More…meat.”

  Just beyond the light’s feeble scope, someone moans pitifully. Harlan barely glimpses the outline of a figure in the murk. He steps towards it.

  “Who’s that?”

  “Another lost soul.”

  The man is shackled to the wall, his wrists encircled by loops of barbed wire. A sound like fat raindrops splashing a puddle’s surface as a dark pool of blood collects below the hanging body.

  Harlan lifts the man’s drooping head and slicks back the stinking mop of hair that has fallen over his face. The man’s milk-white features have been ravaged by sharp implements; razors or scalpels or perhaps broken glass. His nose has been halfway torn off and dangles on a strip of ligament just above a mouth whose lips have been ripped off or bitten away. The forehead has been stripped of all skin and muscle and the almost-perfect rectangle of exposed skull-bone shines in the darkness like a drive-in movie screen. Nearly every tooth, except for the canines and a few back molars, have been ripped from his gums, giving his lipless mouth the appearance of a neglected picket fence. Something has hacked the bone off the man’s chin and pulled something, perhaps his tongue, through the hole. His ears have been sliced off with surgical precision and short white sticks have been jammed deep into the eardrums; Harlan realizes, with dawning horror, they are the man’s finger bones. The toothless thing’s lips pooch out like a suckling babe, sucking at the dank air.