The weariness settled in around him, and sleep began to work its way through him. But that was when he heard her, when her face swam through the blackness.
You can’t go to sleep. You can’t give up. I didn’t raise a quitter, and I refuse to watch you lay down and die in the sand. Now, GET UP!
Roger flung his eyes open even as the words were still ringing through his temples and propelled himself into a sitting position. Grains of sand clung to each of his pores and his mouth felt as if it were stuffed with cotton, but the weariness had abated and his limbs now hummed with tension and anxiety. Trey still lay on his side, but as Roger watched, Trey’s ribcage slowly rose and fell.
Time was not something he had a lot of, but Roger was determined not to leave Trey, so he stood up and managed to roll Trey onto his back. Roger grabbed the shoulder straps of Trey’s backpack and pulled as hard as he could. It took a couple of tries to get him moving, but within a few minutes, Trey’s heels were leaving steady imprints in the sand.
The sun beat down on his back, and sweat coated his body, dripping off him only to be sucked up by the hungry wasteland. If he continued to lose body water at this rate, the desert would win. His muscles had become hardened knots of rope along his back were he had been stooped over for so long. A droplet of sweat slipped into one of the open wounds from the dart and stung so bad that Roger’s right hand froze up, dropping Trey’s pack. Trey’s body rolled and his other arm slipped out of the other strap and he fell to the ground, leaving Roger clutching a half empty pack.
Roger ran over to Trey and gently pulled him until he was once again on his back. Roger then brushed the dirt off his mouth and face, uncapped his canteen and allowed a few drops to roll into Trey’s mouth. Once Roger was sure that Trey would be okay he stood up, his palms biting into his lower back as he grimaced at the sharp, needle-like pain that tore through his entire body in a long wracking spasm that almost knocked him to his knees.
When the pain subsided, he reached for Trey’s backpack and immediately noticed a movement to his left. A blue haze rose and shimmered from the sand before settling down and revealing another Obawok sitting ten feet behind him. A heavily tattered rug covered the area of ground he was on, and an array of items sat in a half circle in front of him. He had been very calmly watching Roger work his way towards the circle. From where he was, he must have seen Roger approaching for an hour, but he had done nothing except sit on his special rug and watch.
Roger wanted to run, to scream at the little man and rip all of his fluffy hair out, but as quickly as the anger had filled him, it left him even more depleted and weary than before. Instead, he dropped Trey’s backpack and scooped him up by grabbing his armpits, pulling him until they had both entered the circle in front of the Obawok. There, Roger collapsed next to Trey. As he caught his breath, he uncapped his canteen and took a large swallow of the metallic tasting water. There wasn’t much left, but he didn’t figure it mattered too much at this point.
“I’m Adenitril, and I’ll be…”
“The little man of the second trial, I know all of this already.” Roger said as he rolled over and sat up in front of the Obawok.
Adenitril looked at Trey. “Two of you are not allowed to take the test at once.”
Roger followed Adenitril’s gaze and watched Trey’s chest rise and fall before responding. “I don’t think he’s going to be able to take the test, but we both made it here under the required time.” Roger looked directly into the violet eyes as he spoke. “But since we made it here together, I figure he has the right to wait until his time is up to see if he doesn’t come around.”
Adenitril nodded once. “Okay. Well then, if you could just sit upright with your legs crossed on the opposite side of the rug, we’ll get started.”
“One second.”
Roger went back to Trey and gave him the reset of his canteen’s contents.
“Catch you on the flip side,” Roger told him before he took his seat on the opposite side of the rug.
Adenitril grasped a small, smooth stone off of the rug and enfolded it in his hands and then cradled it to his chest as he rocked back and forth, humming. After a few moments, he moved his hands to his mouth, whispering to them in a language that haunted Roger’s ears.
“Himkical woghesh yidfigliw….”
The words rose and fell like music in the stagnant air, and Roger began to sway back and forth with the rhythmic chant. He closed his eyes and could see himself lying down in his own bed with Bear asleep on the floor. He could feel the soft, downy pillow and the little feathers that poked through every now and then. A soft breeze that carried the scent of wheat sifted through the room and brushed across him.
And then he fell asleep and fell into nothingness. The world was a blank.
“Tigaffo!” The President spat the name out like it was an unholy word that burned his mouth.
“Yes, sir?”
“I want you to fetch me as many lanterns as you can and set them up in a circle around one of the chairs.”
“Why?” Tigaffo asked, so confused by the President’s request that he forgot what he was saying.
“Did I ask you to figure out what I was doing? Are we playing a guessing game here? No, I just want the goddamn lights, and I want them now.” His voice was so low and ominous towards the end that Tigaffo could barely hear what he was saying. But the low, rolling whisper was enough to make Tigaffo back out of the door with his head bowed so low he was looking at his chest instead of his feet.
A box of lanterns was kept in the back of the council’s chambers. Tigaffo ran his hands along the dark shelves, knocking a variety of items to the ground until his fingertips brushed across the large box. He worked the box down and felt around, confirming that these were the lanterns he was looking for, before scurrying back to the President’s office.
Tigaffo had seen drawings of a spiritual human ritual called a séance when he had been in school, and those dark, thrilling pictures came to his mind as he placed each of the lanterns around the chair. Tigaffo was so absorbed in his thoughts of mystical spells and enchantments that he almost didn’t notice what was going on around him.
Almost.
Firturro had been taken from his place on the wall and was tied to the chair as soon as the lanterns were set and lit. Not only were his hands and legs bound to the chair, but his head was also tied back so tightly that the chords of his neck strained against the taunt green skin. They had gotten him in this position by wrapping a thin rope around his hair and then anchoring this rope to the thicker ropes that bound his hands.
Tigaffo stood silent in the doorway and watched as the President emerged from the shadows holding a three-foot jewel encrusted silver sword in front of him. He placed the point against Firturro’s neck.
“Where is Del, and what is she planning?” the President demanded, pushing the point against Firturro’s skin until it puckered from the weight.
“You’ll kill me anyway.” Firturro’s neck was pulled so far back that he could barely speak, and the words were soft but harsh, the raspy whisper of a dying man.
“Maybe, but you can’t know that. If you tell me, there’s a fifty-fifty chance I might let you go.” The tip of the sword sank into Firturro’s skin just enough that a trickle of blood flowed down his neck before disappearing under his cloak.
Firturro remained silent.
The President’s face had become that of a demon, contorted by the rage and the flickering lights, and his thin toothy smile was grotesque. He raised the sword into the air with one fluid movement, and its jewels flared with brilliance in the shadowy room.
The room was filled with the sound of tinkling glass. Tigaffo looked down and realized that he’d dropped the box with the lanterns in it. The sharp, clear sound rang out across the room, stopping the President.
“Tigaffo, were those the lanterns I sent you after?” the President asked, his eyes never leaving Firturro’s exposed neck.
“Yes.”
“Sorry.”
“It’s no matter now, but there is something else you can help me with, something far more important than lanterns.”
“What?”
“Let me see your hands.” the President commanded, and as the obedient Tigaffo held them out, the President placed the sword across them. Tigaffo cringed as he felt its smooth cool touch against his flesh, but the jewels were filled a glittery light that danced in the darkness, and his flesh began to sing along with them as he waited.
Del reached forward and then let her hand drop.
“If you don’t believe me, I have other ways of proving it.”
He raised his eyes and looked directly into her face, trying to see if he could read her as simply as he had read so many of his books. “How?”
Del sighed. “Follow me. I want you to hear what’s going on in the President’s office. If we’re caught, he’s not going to believe that I forced you to go with me. He’ll want you punished as well as me.”
“So I’m faced with a double edged sword? If what you’re saying is true, he already wants me dead. However, to get proof of this, I’m going to have to risk punishment?”
“How else could I prove anything? If he weren’t good at getting rid of evidence, he would lose his empire. He’s extremely cautious and more than a little paranoid.” There was a long moment of silence in which Del wondered if she had pushed too hard too fast.
Then Trulle re-shouldered his bag. “You lead.”
Del nodded and walked into the dark. She was only certain he was following her when the light he was holding began bobbing through the encapsulated night behind her.
They didn’t say anything else to each other, not even when they reached the end of the long hallway. Del took the lantern out of Trulle’s hands and held it near the wall, sliding the lantern across the stone surface until she saw a small latch.
As she pulled down on the latch she heard something give within the door and it swung inward just enough that she could get a good grip on the stone with her fingertips. She blew out the lantern and darkness once again fell between them. As she was setting the glass container on the ground, she heard Trulle prying the door open, and she immediately turned to help him. Something blocked the doorway on the other side of the wall. Del brushed her fingers against it and realized that it was a giant rug. Fragments of light seeped around its edges, and voices drifted through as they pulled the door open and sat in the entryway behind the protective rug.
207
Twenty-Four
It’s too late now the avalanche has already begun.
Firturro’s head throbbed more with each heartbeat as the blood pumped through him like a demonic bass line in one of those rock songs humans were always listening to. A cold sweat had seeped out of his pores and coated his body in slime.
None of that compared with the pain in his throat and neck. He had been tied back to the chair at such an angle that every muscle in his throat burned with the fire of three suns. He tried to swallow the spit that collected at the back of his throat, but all he succeeded in doing was making useless clicking noises. To keep himself from drowning, he used his tongue to push the saliva out of his mouth, the warm, sticky liquid slid down his face.
The President was going to kill him, of that he had no doubt. Even if Firturro had told the President everything, he would still be dead. He listened to Tigaffo’s harsh breathing fill the room and knew that Tigaffo was going to go through with it.
He heard the President whispering to Tigaffo, coaching him on how to do it, how to slice through his neck in one, quick stroke.
Firturro closed his eyes.
He offered himself up to the controllers of the universe, if there were such things. There wasn’t much he was sure of anymore, but he couldn’t believe that every world was comprised of a random jumbling of cells and energy that lived on without purpose.
So he prayed to the gods of nothing and everything all at once and asked them to see Roger through this. He prayed with bloodless lips and a spit covered face, and he prayed without ever knowing who he was praying to.
The numbness from his bindings raced through his body, but he couldn’t feel its tingling touch anymore. If he had been a true Buddhist, he could’ve said he’d meditated away from his pain, but as far as he was concerned, his body had become a shell. A useless thing tied to a chair.
207
Kristi Brooks
“Do you have anything else you want to say, Firturro? Anything that might stall your death, like where that bitch Del is hiding?” the President asked from somewhere beyond his line of sight.
Firturro smiled, the tips of his lips pointing into cheeks he could no longer feel as the spit made small rivers across his dirty face before pooling into shallow lakes on his shoulders and neck, turning his body into a living replica of earth.
The President leaned over Firturro, “I hope her pussy was worth your life.” He stood up and walked towards his chair. “Go ahead, Tigaffo,” he said absentmindedly, as if instructing someone to clean out his office.
For a few tense seconds, nothing in the room moved. Not even the air. It clung to them as if it were a thick, warm fog that refused to be stirred. Firturro didn’t open his eyes, but in his head he could picture Tigaffo standing over him, looking down on his pitiful, smiling face and not being able to move. He could see everything in the room as if he were looking in from behind a window.
Just then, he heard something move in the back of the room, and he knew it was Del. Without even seeing her or hearing her voice, he knew she had entered the equation. And at that moment, Tigaffo swung the sword down as hard as he could.
Firturro could hear its blade singing through the air, could hear it biting into his flesh. But he felt nothing. As the last tendons on his neck finally groaned and gave way, his head fell back, swinging through the air in a giant arc.
In the depths of his mind, he sighed as everything went black and the silence rushed in.
Roger opened his eyes and knew something was wrong. He could feel it in the cool nothingness as it rushed into his pores and swarmed around him, as if he were being sucked into a pit of thick black goo. And that was when it happened, when something in the darkness passed him, reached out with a ghostly voice and whispered directly to his thoughts. Just say my name when they ask, Roger.
And then it was gone, as if there had never been anything in the void except Roger and the suffocating substance. He began to struggle against the blackness that held him prisoner. With each movement, the confinement, the nothingness, closed its grip. It oozed into his pores and slipped into his mouth, pulling him farther into its grasp. The memory of being pulled through the mirror surged to the front of his thoughts, and he braced himself an impact.
Instead he opened his eyes and saw the world as if it had suddenly become a split screen. On one side there he could only see a black parking lot and here the faint click-click of high-heeled footfalls. On the other side of the screen, he appeared to be looking out at the same vacant parking lot and a lone woman as she walked toward a maroon car. It was the same maroon car that was immediately in front of him on the opposite side of the screen.
What the hell is going on? Roger thought as he watched both stories unfold. He felt tense and anxious and yet, at the same time, adrenaline surged through his body, fueling him and making him feel alive. He was hungrier than he could ever remember being. In fact, the desire was so great that he wanted to catch something living with his own two hands and rip the flesh off of it with his teeth.
Just then, the screen on the left side began moving. The world bobbed up and down in rapid movements as the person raced across the blacktop, the heavy thud of each footstep echoing into the stillness. On the right side, he could now see a heavyset man running towards him, threatening him with a gun. He tried to jump in the car and get away, but the man pushed his way in, fo
rcing the other person to the side of the car.
That’s what Firturro meant: one story, different perspectives.
He saw the woman’s scared face and the man’s bold sweaty face. They both loomed over him like gods. Roger could feel the thundering adrenaline of the man threatening to take over his entire body, but he was also filled with a fear so immediate and pressing he could feel his bladder threatening to drain out in a giant whoosh. Both points-of-view and emotional states flooded his senses so entirely that he could no longer think about what was happening. He was rendered useless and forced to watch the horror unfold before him.
The primal part of him that was obviously linked to the man was eager for this encounter. He needed this to sustain himself. He thirsted for her pain and her blood as if it sprung from the very fountain of life. At the same time, he was so saturated with terror that he didn’t think he would ever be able to move again. Thoughts and memories flooded his mind, and he suddenly knew more about her than he had anyone else. He knew that her first cat’s name had been Crickett and that she had lost her virginity in the backseat of an Oldsmobile when she was seventeen. She had dropped out of college when she was in her sophomore year because she wanted to get a jumpstart on working in the real world. But most importantly, he knew that she was mortified of death and the bleach-white bones she was destined to become.
Roger knew everything about the woman but nothing about the man. That person was hidden behind all of the rage and the energy that he wrapped himself in. Roger didn’t know a single thing about him except that he wanted to hurt the girl, to teach her an important lesson in humility and show her that she was the hunted. He needed to put her in her place and the best way to do that was to…to….
It was then that Roger realized what the man was planning to do. It wasn’t going to be as quick as murder. He planned to rape and sodomize the poor woman. He wanted to hurt her for being what she was with the only part of him that was a hundred percent male. The word cunt kept flashing before Roger’s eyes, rising out of the fog of this guy’s head like a huge red flashing neon sign as he stopped the car and pulled the woman into an abandoned building.
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