by Kieran Song
She closed her eyes and tried to block out the sounds of the pit but it was overpowering. The speakers hissed as the announcer’s voice echoed throughout the building.
“The next fight is to the death!” he roared.
They were all fights to the death, Allegra thought. What was the point of telling everyone what was already known?
“Our first combatant was found on the streets, living like a mongrel. He fought his first battle three days ago and won, slaying his opponent with a ferocity that the Arena hasn’t seen in a long while. Raise your voices and welcome to the pit, Dog!”
The crowd broke out into a chorus of both cheers and obscenities and suddenly, Allegra’s heart dropped and she felt sorry for the boy. He had lived a life of abandonment. No one had taught him how to love, so how could he cherish his own life or anyone else’s for that matter? Living in cold and hunger was all he knew. Dog had lost his innocence long ago, just like her.
The voice of the announcer silenced the mob as he introduced the other boy, and he too was both praised and vilified by the spectators.
When the fight began, a hush fell over the crowd as they were drawn into the action in the pit. Allegra closed her eyes and tried to block out the sounds of the fight, but what seemed like seconds later, the crowd was already cheering in a frenzy. The fight was over.
Ryker practically leapt out of his seat and applauded with joy, like a child on Christmas morning.
“He killed him already,” Ryker exclaimed. “Dog killed him in fifteen seconds.”
The Goblin rose from his throne and went to his computer. He sat behind the monitor, his ugly face illuminated by the blue light, and he clicked on the mouse while staring at the screen. Finally he raised his hands in the air triumphantly and laughed.
“It’s a new record,” Ryker said. “Unbelievable.”
The fact that Ryker was celebrating on how quickly it was to end a life made Allegra feel sick.
“You’re in luck as well,” Ryker said. “Looks like you’ll have it easy tonight. Dog suffered no injuries. Take him to see Jacob instead. I’ll have him decorated for his third fight.”
The final card of the night had Tiberius ending his career in the Arena undefeated. His opponent never stood a chance. The crowd savoured Tiberius’s victory and worshipped him with praise. He was a god to them.
Ryker was so pleased with the outcome that he addressed the audience himself, something he did on rare occasions. He spoke of how Tiberius was the greatest fighter that the Arena had ever seen and as a reward for his one hundred and fiftieth victory, he was elevated to the status of Ryker’s own personal bodyguard. Only the most elite were given this honour.
Tiberius nodded respectfully to both the crowd and Ryker before making his way to the iron gates. His body was decorated with many tattoos, each one symbolizing one of his victories over the years and tonight, he would add the final one to his collection. The crowd chanted his name ceremoniously. He was a lion in Ryker’s Kingdom of Shit.
Chapter Nine.
She found Dog sitting on the cold, damp ground outside the pit’s gate. He was shackled and there was blood on his chest and face, none of it his. Two guards stood over him with guns drawn and pointed.
“Are you hurt?” Allegra asked. Dog looked up at her with eyes that were glassy. He blinked and his gaze was distant, as if he were a world away.
“He was weak,” he finally said. The guilt was splattered on his face along with the blood. At that moment, Allegra saw Dog for what he truly was: A sad, hopeless boy.
She knelt down and took a cloth from her medical kit. Allegra showed him the smiling moon on the front of the bag and saw the tension slowly melt away from his body as he relaxed.
“I’m going to clean up some of the blood,” she said. He nodded. Allegra brought the white cloth up to his head and removed some of the gore from his cheek. She was careful to be gentle as she eased the cloth along the side of his face. Dog closed his eyes and exhaled slowly, as if he were feeling every sensation of that cloth, and sat there peacefully as she stroked the wet fabric across his brow.
When Allegra was done she took a bottle of water and poured it over his head and he breathed in deeply and allowed the wet beads to drip down the contours of his face. His eyes remained closed and his breathing became rhythmic, like a slow beating drum. The wildness left him and he sat there in a peaceful bliss, ignorant of the blood that stained his body and the guns pointed at his head.
She let him rest for a minute, but only a minute. The guards were impatient and just as cruel, if not crueler than the Goblin. They wouldn’t stand around waiting forever.
Allegra touched him delicately on the shoulder and he snapped out of his waking dream.
“I’m going to take you to see Jacob. You won’t be hurt. I promise,” she said. Dog looked at her with suspicion, but finally nodded.
The door to Jacob’s chamber was locked. A high-pitched buzzing that came from inside the room made Dog grimace.
“Don’t worry,” Allegra assured him.
He stared at her with paranoia at first but perhaps Dog saw the honesty on her face and he eventually agreed. “Okay.”
After some time, the noise of the drill ceased and the doors to the room opened. Tiberius stepped out. Like a giant colossus, he towered over everyone. His skin was the colour of dark rust while his arms were thick-corded muscle and his body, bearing as many scars as tattoos, was like hard iron. He had additional scars across his left brow and on his right cheek, but that didn’t detract from his striking features. His hair was dark water—black, flowing, and exhaustive—and his beard was neat and trim. He looked at them with dark grey eyes that were both hardened and inquisitive.
“Allegra,” he greeted her. Tiberius was always pleasant to everyone. On nights before the fights, he wished his competitors well and treated them with respect. That was until he killed them with his bare hands in the pit. There was a controlled dignity about him that could just as easily turn into a dangerous savagery. It seemed like his emotions operated on a switch that was easily flipped back and forth.
“Congratulations on your success,” Allegra said. Tiberius grunted.
“Success…” he lingered on that word. “An interesting way to see it.” He glanced over at Dog for a brief moment before speaking to Allegra again.
“Jacob’s given me my final tattoo,” Tiberius said showing Allegra the mark on his hand. The symbol was a circle with four intersecting lines drawn through the centre of it. At the tail end of each line were three horizontal lines and a ‘U’, which resembled a pitchfork at the tips.
“What does it mean?” Allegra asked.
“Invincible.”
“I suppose it’s well deserved isn’t it?”
He looked at the black ink, still fresh on the top of his hand, and nodded. “I suppose it is.” The two guards escorting Tiberius gestured for him to move on.
“I have to meet with Ryker and prepare for my new role,” he said. He eyed Dog one more time. “Good luck,” he said. “The pits have a way of taking both your life and sanity. Don’t let either happen.”
Tiberius walked away as the two guards trailed behind him, guns by their sides, as if escorting a dangerous convict in a prison.
“How long has he been here?” Dog asked.
“He’s been fighting for eight years,” Allegra replied. “He was brought in at sixteen but Ryker had him fight the nineteen-year-olds on the account of his size. He beat them all. And then when Ty turned nineteen, Ryker raised the odds against him. Two people were sent in to take him on at a time, followed by three and sometimes even four.”
“Why?” Dog asked. “If he was his champion, why try so hard to kill him?”
“Ryker doesn’t like keeping anyone older than nineteen here,” Allegra replied. “I think he’s afraid that older and wiser men would find a way to -” but she stopped herself from finishing the sentence. The guards were listening.
“Ty found a way to keep
winning and the crowds loved him,” she continued. “He made a lot of money for Ryker and he realized it was far more profitable keeping him alive than dead. He’s the reluctant poster boy of this place.”
“So why retire him now?”
Allegra shrugged. “Who knows? Perhaps Ryker was grateful for all Tiberius did for him. Or maybe he wanted to give the other slaves in the Arena a fighting chance?”
One of the guards heard enough and waved his gun at them. “No more talking,” he ordered. “Bring him inside already.”
Allegra walked through the door and motioned for Dog to follow. “Come.”
He hesitated at first, but eventually followed her inside.
Jacob greeted Allegra with a smile, the only genuine one she ever received in this place. Though they were different in every possible way (he loved piercings, heavy metal, and was a night owl while she dressed conservatively, enjoyed classical music, and slept like a rock). There were two common bonds that they shared, forming the roots of their friendship — they both loved art and they both hated Ryker.
Allegra was ashamed to admit that when she first met Jacob, she was a bit judgemental of his appearance. He had piercings on his eyebrows, nose, lower lip and a colourful red phoenix tattoo displayed on the back of his head. His look was a bit shocking at first glance. She wondered how Ryker even allowed for Jacob to walk around the Arena with such a radical appearance.
“Ryker loves tattoos and artwork, and I’m the best he’s got,” Jacob had said. “My talents as an artist allows me a bit of leeway with what I can get away with. I don’t make any trouble for Ryker and I give his fighters the coolest tattoos possible. I guess I’m protected because my talent, just like you are with your beauty.”
Along with being a wonderful person, Jacob was a wonderful illustrator. In fact one of his childhood dreams was to be a professional artist. With every visit, Allegra always found new drawings up on the wall of Jacob’s room. Most his pictures had fantastical elements: dragons, fairies, and unicorns. But every so often there was one of a boy who had died in combat. Their faces were always so sad, but Jacob managed to bring out their humanity in his drawings and he gave them an identity that never existed for them here.
Allegra asked him once why he drew pictures of the dead.
“So we remember them as people,” he had said, “and not as sacrificial lambs to be killed for sport.”
There was a day that Ryker had discovered Jacob’s pictures. Allegra feared of the punishment that was to come for him. Surely he was going to be beaten. However the Goblin looked at the pictures with an inquisitive eye and merely shrugged. She wondered if Jacob’s drawings stirred something human inside of Ryker, perhaps some type of compassion for the lives of these children. But the following day, Ryker tossed two nine year olds into the pit with a pair of hedge clippers and Allegra retracted any thoughts of the Goblin having a soul.
Allegra gestured for Dog to sit on the steel table covered in towels that formed a bed of sorts.
She introduced them. “Jacob, this is Dog.”
“That’s not much of a name,” Jacob said as he tossed an old needle out and opened a fresh one from the package.
“It works for me,” Dog replied as he stared at the needle in Jacob’s hand uncomfortably. “What’s that for?”
“We’re going to put some art on you,” Jacob replied.
“Why?”
Allegra sensed Dog’s suspicions and was worried he would retaliate with violence if Jacob brought the needle anywhere near him. She walked over to Dog and laid a hand on his shoulder, hoping to calm him.
It did.
“Ryker likes ink on his fighters,” she said. “He wants winners decorated so it gives them a unique personality and a reason to cheer for them. It also makes you look more menacing.”
“All for the crowd,” Jacob said with disdain.
“And you’re going to be the one drawing on me?” Dog asked as he gave Jacob an uneasy look. The tattooist nodded and showed him the needle and hand machine he used.
“I’ll make it look good, I promise,” Jacob replied.
“I don’t trust anybody with metal on their face,” Dog said as he glared at the piercings on Jacob’s lips, nose, and eyebrow.
For a second, Jacob looked to be taken aback by the comment, but he answered with a smile.
“That’s fair. Not everyone does,” he said with warmth. “But you can trust me Dog. You get one tattoo for every victory and I promise I’ll make it look cool.”
“Fine.”
“What do you want me to draw,” Jacob asked.
“Draw whatever you want.”
“How about barbed wire? I can draw it around your bicep.”
“That’s just stupid,” Dog replied.
“Okay then. I can do a butterfly on the ankle,” Jacob teased. Dog glared at him and the hand by his side began to coil into a fist. Allegra had to hold him in order to ease his tension.
“Tough crowd,” Jacob muttered. “I can do Japanese characters. Ryker likes those.”
“I’m not Japanese,” Dog said. “You could be writing nonsense for all I know.”
“Well give me a suggestion then,” Jacob said.
Dog thought about it for a moment and then replied, “Draw a smiling moon. Like the one on her medical bag.” He pointed to her med kit, which she left on the table by the door.
Jacob smirked. “You’re kidding right?”
Dog was serious. “Draw me that smiling moon.”
“I can’t do that,” Jacob said. “Ryker has an approved list of things I can draw. I can’t do anything cute or anything that insults the competitiveness of the Arena.”
“Do it,” Dog insisted.
“Jacob’s right,” Allegra said. “If he were to draw that on your body, we’ll all be skinned alive.”
Dog looked disappointed. “Fine,” he said. “Give me barbed wire then.”
Jacob set to work, pushing the needle gently into the skin of his arm, breaking it and filling it with little black beads of ink. When he was finally done, Dog looked at it and scoffed.
“This is stupid,” he said.
“I’m sorry,” Jacob replied. “But seriously, think of something for next time and I’ll draw it with the exception of flowers and smiling moons.”
Dog stood up from the table and headed for the door. “Whatever,” he said.
Allegra called out to him. “Don’t you want to see what it looks like?” She pointed to the mirror resting in the corner of the room. Dog shook his head.
“Come on, it actually looks pretty neat. Come look in the mirror,” Allegra urged.
“No!” Dog snapped and without another word, he stepped out of the room and into the custody of the guards, who were waiting to escort him back to his cell.
“He’s an angry fellow,” Jacob said when the two were alone. “Maybe in another life he was happy.”
Allegra watched as Dog treaded down the tunnels, a guard on each side. His head hung low and his hands and feet were bound together. He walked with shoulders slumped. Allegra felt so sorry for him.
“Maybe in another life we’re all happy,” she said.
Chapter Ten.
News of Dog’s record-breaking fight had spread quickly amongst the guards and into the prison cells. When Dog returned to his cage, none of the other boys had the guts to look at him. They were scared of Dog.
Of course, that suited him just fine. If he were to survive as long as Tiberius had in the pit, he needed an edge and their fear of him was a great one to have.
Dog sat behind the iron bars and looked into all the other cells, staring at each one of the boys, daring for someone to look him in the eye and challenge him. None of them lifted their heads.
It was because of this that Dog knew he had defeated each one of them before the fight even began.
*
Ryker and his men left Dog alone for the next couple of weeks. Food was brought to him—not by Allegra but another serving
girl named Maria—and he ate vigorously to keep his strength up.
Once per day, the guards took him to a grimy gym in the basement of the complex and allowed him to do strength training. Dog tried his hand at it, but he was foreign to the weights and how to use them.
Garret, the guard on duty, watched him lift the dumbbells clumsily until he couldn’t stand to watch anymore.
“You’re doing it all wrong,” Garret said shaking his head. “The key is to isolate your muscles and work on one part of your body at a time.”
Garret showed him how to use the machines in the weight room and introduced him to a set of exercises to focus on, and Dog listened. For some reason, Dog felt comfortable around Garret, but he couldn’t figure out why. The way Garret put himself together was different from everyone else. Perhaps it was because of his older age? Life had taken its toll on the old guard and his face was wrinkled and tough, like boiled leather. He had crow’s feet at the corners of his soft brown eyes and his neatly cropped hair had gone completely grey. Despite the rough personalty he had when roaming the Arena’s hallways, he was warm and friendly while alone with Dog. The one thing about Garret that hadn’t aged was his smile, which was full of youthful innocence and energy.
The next day when Dog returned to the gym, he displayed a new confidence around the weights. When he finished his workout, Garret nodded with approval and took him back to his cell. Despite the soreness all over, Dog felt a sense of accomplishment.
He began looking forward to his workouts and found satisfaction in exercise. By the second week he noticed slight changes to his body. His muscles were tighter and his body no longer felt as sore after finishing his work out routines. Each day he lifted with the same intensity, working until he was exhausted and his body was physically shaking.
“Don’t push yourself too hard. You need time to rest,” Garret told him.
“There’s no time to rest,” Dog said. “I may die tomorrow. I’ll rest then.”