Mercy House

by Adam Cesare

The cafeteria had a smattering of residents, most of them docile, silent as they passed, either surprised that there were young people still alive in Mercy House, or out of deference for the three-man army that traveled alongside them.

  The man who moments ago had been standing on his arm was Harry Beaumont, a resident with a good attitude and a rotator cuff problem. They’d spent the last year working on the injury and had gotten to the point where Harry could keep up in the endless lap pool turned up to its second-highest setting. The man didn’t seem to know Paulo now, and if he did, all those hours of therapy didn’t mean they were buddies.

  The third man in the troop, the one with the mustache that may have been thick before he changed but was now stretched thin across his face, Paulo didn’t recognize. That wasn’t a rare occurrence. There were plenty of residents Paulo didn’t know, the old folks that either didn’t need his help or hid their disabilities well enough that he was never brought in for a consultation. More than glaucoma or arthritis, what most elderly really suffered from was an excess of pride, hiding and denying their aches and pains until they died from them.

  The rec room was happenin’ in comparison to the cafeteria, with the residents seeming to be in a better mood and more aggressive because of it. They were a pack of hyenas, cackling about the arrival of fresh, wounded meat.

  In the relatively clean air of the fridge, Paulo had been able to smell the blood of his wounds; it wasn’t a strong smell, nothing that had time to become gangrenous, but that didn’t mean that the residents around him, their senses clearly sharper than his, didn’t smell the cloud of death and weakness surrounding him.

  Below the laughter and growls was the familiar Tic Tac maraca backbeat of pill bottles shaking, a possible explanation for the room’s high spirits, and a definite explanation for all the tented sweatpants they were passing. Most of the room was happy to see them.

  Paulo added a new piece of scaffolding: Don’t live long enough to be fucked to death by a group of superhuman monsters.

  The rec room had fires, too. Small, blue chemical flames contained in tin cans danced while balanced on piles of garbage, and tables that still had all four legs housing bigger cisterns of burning wood. Cardboard Candyland game pieces were tossed into the bigger flames for kindling as they passed, the flare-ups causing flashes of light that illuminated the various atrocities of the rec room.

  They were moving toward the center of the space, the troopers in front and behind him losing their stone-badass swagger, their confidence beginning to crack as they moved farther in and were surrounded by the bigger and meaner residents at the center of the room.

  The distinction wasn’t only physical but in the way they decorated their bodies and clothes. These were the most successful members of the rec room community. If it were a casino, a comparison that seemed appropriate, the center of the room was the high-stakes area and these were the whales, the players who dropped big money and had all their meals comped.

  Poker chips and playing cards were looped together with string and tape, prizes bedecking their necks and wrists. The men wore gold chains taut around their foreheads like laurel branches, with several marriages’ worth of rings on each finger.

  Their group approached the most pimped out of these men and women and came to a stop. The man was not only tall but fat, something Paulo had gotten used to not seeing, the transformation thinning most of the residents as it stretched them. The man stood behind a large cardboard box heaped with pill bottles and rubber-stopped insulin bottles, which had probably gone bad in the heat, all their strands breaking up.

  As their group was appraised by this man, the don or pit boss or whatever he was called, the men and women who’d begun to crowd them took two big steps back, forming a small circle in the center of the room. They stood under a disco ball and Paulo stared up at it, amazed that the residents had not tried to take it down, break it up, and add the reflective squares to their bling.

  How Arnold knew that he would find this man—and his box—waiting for them here was anyone’s guess. Either they had set up this deal before taking their prisoners out of their holding cell, the refrigerator, or the residents had all become latently psychic, communicating with one another on a wavelength inaccessible to mere mortals. Nothing would surprise Paulo at this point, and he toyed with the idea that maybe the only reason he’d been able to stand upright this long was because he wanted to see the depths of absurdity that their situation would continue to plumb.

  The terrifying surreality of the night and day would have to plateau sometime, right? But even if it did, he was numb to it, these bastards had lost their ability to shock him. It wasn’t resignation, he still wanted to live and would go down swinging when it came to that, but he just didn’t much care how they planned on topping themselves.

  He wanted to live, but the other two? Nikki maybe did. But Sarah? Stick a fork in her. That nurse had always been a pain in the ass to deal with, her stiff upper lip giving her what one guy he’d once known had called “resting bitch face,” meaning that her features were such that even when her expression was completely neutral she ended up looking severe and pissed. Glancing over at her, she couldn’t even manage neutral, her face was downturned, eyes dead, her neck ready for the chopping block. He couldn’t blame her, only God knew what she’d been through.

  The fat man, Big Chief Popomatic Trouble, nodded to Arnold and pushed the cardboard box forward with his foot.

  The two leaders regarded each other for a moment before Arnold pulled the box closer to himself and knelt to paw through its contents. After what seemed like much too short a time to take any kind of inventory, the former Mr. Piper nodded to the chief, who in turn waved two of his people forward, a man and a woman, to check over Nikki, Sarah, and Paulo.

  The man who checked Nikki rubbed her throat like he was feeling for her lymph nodes, probably a remnant of a memory from his own checkups that he had decided would look official. He then motioned for her to open her mouth. She did and he stuck two fingers inside, pulling at her cheeks and checking her gums, when he was finished she spat at him, not working up much more than a light mist. He hit her for her insubordination anyway, a sucker punch that doubled her over.

  Paulo moved forward to help but was stopped by a squeeze to his elbow, or where his elbow used to be but now a handful of crushed glass apparently resided.

  The woman who had hurt him giggled at the sound he made, not a polite response but still about what he expected. She was the same height as Paulo, meaning that she had probably gained a good half a foot as her bones and spine expanded a few hours ago. She was able to look him in the eye without looking up or down. There was something flirty in her eyes and Paulo felt the need to rebuff her, even though she hadn’t said anything or been as rough with him as she could have.

  “You’re not my type, hon,” he said, meaning it, owning the quip, but not getting a smack for it, either because she didn’t understand or he looked too feeble to roughhouse with.

  The sunlight spilling in the windows and diffused by the clouds of smoke made it easier to see how truly grotesque these monsters were.

  Before now, Paulo had not been disgusted by wrinkles and liver spots, quite the contrary. He thought the markers of age that stooped and shrunk the residents of Mercy House had made them kind of cute. Like Yoda.

  There was no more cute, now that their wrinkles stretched into leather over their misshapen skulls. Where they used to blur into a sea of fake pearls, pomade, and blue hair, the change had made each resident unique in their ugliness. The transformation had manifested differently with each, the growth of their bones akin to tumors that had sprouted rapidly and then ceased, leaving the men and women bigger and lumpy with spurs.

  Sarah let herself be pawed, her scrub top lifted up to reveal her mangled bra and painted straps. Whatever resident had done that to her had a twisted view of arts and crafts, and it turned Paulo’s stomach. Seeing how she’d been assaulted, he did not begrudge her right to
give up.

  The two inspectors nodded to the chief, who then smiled wide, revealing a mouthful of custom dentures, each tooth looking like it had been painted a different color, some glinting with metallic glitter. It was so ostentatious that even Paulo had to give it up: There was a reason this guy was in charge. Abfab.

  After perusing the lot, Arnold’s shoulders dipped, relief slackening his posture as he rose to his feet, the cardboard cube tucked under one arm. He backed away from the chief without turning around, careful not to show weakness or give an opportunity.

  Harry Beaumont and the man with the mustache took steps back to match their leader. The handlers who’d inspected them did not move, keeping an eye on Paulo and his two fellow prisoners.

  The troopers moved as a group, headed north toward the doorway to the rec room, back to the relative safety of the hallway. Their trade was now completed, three human lives for whatever had been able to fit inside that box. It didn’t seem like a fair deal to Paulo, and as if to echo this thought, the chief kept his smile wide, laughing through his teeth as Arnold’s men approached the edge of the circle, each pointing a different way to watch the others’ backs.

  Paulo watched them go, feeling oddly fond of the troopers. He had known two out of their three names and they’d treated them to food and drink, even if they hadn’t done it on purpose. They were the devil that Paulo knew and he would have preferred to stay in the fridge, rather than take his chances with whatever sinister activities the people in the rec room had planned for them.

  In a small way he got his wish as Arnold reached the edge of the circle and motioned for the residents there to move to one side and let him through.

  “Stay,” the chief said, the first word they’d heard him speak, the first word that any resident had said clearly since they’d entered the rec room. Come to think of it, there had been a hush upon their arrival and the murmurs of the crowd had never returned. That was some power that the chief wielded, able to calm this group down to complete silence.

  “Stay. Watch,” the chief said, laughing. A small bubble opened up at the edge of the circle, not allowing them to pass but allowing Arnold and his men to complete the circle and turn their bodies inward to watch. They did, after a few cautious looks to one another. Weapons were gripped a little tighter and a few more inches of space were afforded the group; the gamers of the rec room were not looking to get stabbed.

  The chief pointed to Paulo and then stuck out two fingers to indicate the girls.

  They were then separated and brought to opposite ends of the circle. There Paulo winced as hands were laid upon him, the woman who’d looked him over was now massaging his shoulders. It was confusing, maybe even a bit enjoyable until the hands moved up and his mouth was wedged open, a handful of pills shoved inside and a swig of warm water poured onto his tongue. Before he could spit out whatever they’d given him, two hands were clamped over his mouth and a third pinched his nose, forcing him to swallow the golf ball mound down like a finicky dog that wouldn’t take his medicine.

  Hoots and murmurs began beyond the circle and worked their way inward, and pretend money began to change hands. Clouds shifted and torches were handed forward, the change in light causing Paulo to take note of the puddles of blood gathering at the time-sunken points on the tile, a burn hole where a contraband cigarette had probably once fallen. More interesting than that, more aberrant, there weren’t just footprints in the blood, but handprints and slashes, droplets and long, curved slashes. These designs weren’t the result of casual spillage. This was a killing floor.

  It didn’t take a PhD to figure out what would come next: This was fight night.

  Part VI

  Friendly Fire

  Chapter 40

  There was a taste like shit and turpentine in the corners of Nikki’s mouth. The guy who’d checked her teeth had been wearing nail polish that hadn’t been allowed to fully dry.

  Nikki and Sarah were separated from Paulo and placed on opposite sides of the circle. At the sideline, the spectators doubled and tripled up, residents pushing one another out of the way to get a better spot but never crossing the invisible line that had been drawn before their arrival.

  “To the death!” the leader of the rec room shouted, raising both of his hands up high, the extra skin of his underarms swinging like membranous wings. The fat man’s fingertips glistened, light bouncing off his rings at the center of the circle as he walked outward, flanked by his attendants.

  The rest of the room picked up the chant, some residents able to form the words, some hitting the sounds, “To dad et!” becoming the pervading chant after a few cries. The chieftain seated himself atop a pile of refuse that’d been built up. At the top were two broken chairs joined into one, the ramshackle throne was extra wide but didn’t look comfortable. The man layed back anyway, putting extra effort into looking like he was luxuriating.

  Sarah looked at Nikki, raising her sunken eyes, the look in them not alarmed but resigned. Their handlers began to rub them down, and on the other side of the circle Paulo was offered more water, which was squirted into his face when he refused. He wiped his chin with his shaking, uninjured hand and made eye contact with Nikki.

  Off to Nikki’s side her handler giggled and forced her to take a blade, the handle gooey from the man’s fingers. It was a jagged piece of metal that had been sharpened and wrapped. There seemed to be no shortage of ready-made weaponry in Mercy House, so why this particular blade had been assembled was a mystery. Maybe the man who’d made it used to tie his own flies for fishing, it would explain the decorative feathers attached to the hilt of the shiv. Everyone needed a hobby.

  Sarah was similarly equipped, but she dropped the shard of glass as soon as her handler’s fingers uncurled from around her grasp. The weapon shattered and the handler growled at her, calling for a replacement, which was handed through the crowd to him. She didn’t drop the second blade, holding it firm by its taped-up hilt.

  From what Nikki could gather, because her preparation was happening so close to Sarah’s, the fight would be girls against boy, two against one. They were gladiators, armed and about to be set forward to kill their friend, the man who’d saved her life more than a few times and done it for no other reason than that he was decent.

  Behind them, their handler threw an arm around Nikki’s shoulders, bringing Sarah in a second later.

  Before the man spoke, Nikki could feel Sarah’s breath on her, life seeming to return to her, whatever reservoir of endorphins she had remaining were emptied into her bloodstream, color returning to her cheeks.

  His foul breath close to them, the man whispered, “To the death, then you go. Free. Get out,” stringing the last two words together before breathlessly dissolving into hissing laughter.

  It couldn’t be true. How could they trust them? How could these monsters be capable of such mind games, but still think they were that stupid? No. The only way out of this was sticking together and escaping, but even that was a distant prospect, surrounded as they were, wounded.

  The handler took his arms from around them and called for water bottles, which some people held above their mouths and squirted at their lips. Looking to placate them, Nikki opened up, getting a blast of warm water and swishing it over her mossy teeth.

  No, not water. It was diluted rubbing alcohol. It burned her throat and she spit and gagged. The crowd was amused by this, already getting their money’s worth even before first blood was drawn.

  After they’d been properly watered, the ring girls and cutmen left them, and Nikki reached out for Sarah’s free hand, taking it in hers and giving it a few pumps, her palpations like trying to resuscitate a dead bird, careful not to break its tiny bones.

  “Stay together,” Nikki said. Sarah didn’t squeeze her hand back, but she didn’t pull away, either. The girl’s skin was hot.

  The chief, or whatever he was, seated still, brought both his hands up again and almost toppled off his throne in the process. He had only tha
t one theatrical flourish, it seemed. “Fight!” he called out, and the chanting was taken up afresh, easier to continue and sustain now since it was only one word.

  Fight!

  Paulo didn’t move, his eyes pleading, looking like he was trying to solve a difficult equation and running out of time. She knew the feeling.

  Nikki’s handler patted her on the ass and then did the same to Sarah. They didn’t move and the pat became a push. Sarah took the first step and Nikki moved with her, not wanting to let go of the girl’s hand.

  Paulo took a step toward the center of the ring without being pushed. He held his knife aloft and waved it to them, indicating to Nikki that they should meet under the disco ball. There was no fight in his face or body language.

  Nikki and Sarah took their steps together, not just a team in the arena but moving as one person, a three-legged race with their middle legs pumping in unison.

  A few steps from Paulo, Sarah stopped.

  “We need to do something,” Paulo said, Nikki strainin to hear over the din of the rec room while Sarah leaned away from them, not willing to get close to Paulo.

  Nikki moved closer to him, dragging Sarah along. The girl was scared and seemed to think that there was actually going to be a fight. “Come on, he’s not going to hurt us,” Nikki said, getting close to Sarah’s ear, ensuring that she could hear her. There was no change in Sarah’s panicked expression.

  Paulo circled them, making it look good, not having to affect the limp in his tread. His sheer size and sloped shoulders looked threatening no matter how sure Nikki was that he would never hurt her.

  “They’re going to kill us anyway,” Nikki said, and Paulo just nodded.

  “Huddle up,” he whispered, and then let out an exaggerated roar and dove toward them, waving his knife but not pointing it at either of them. Nikki threw her arm around him, catching him in a boxer’s embrace, hugging him more than wrestling, and trying to be careful not to crush his broken arm.