Unbreakable

by Will McIntosh

  There was a terrible taste in her mouth, like rotten eggs mixed with rusty iron. Had she ever actually tasted rusty iron? Maybe as a kid in the nursery.

  Celia tried to sit up. Her forehead slammed into something, shooting white streaks through her vision and knocking her back down. She reached up into the darkness, touched a wooden ceiling a foot above her head.

  She tried to reach to her left, but struck another wall.

  “No. Oh, no.” She reached to the right, knowing what she’d find. Her swollen fingers brushed a rough wooden wall, sending razor blades of pain through her hand.

  “What’s going on? Anand?”

  Buried alive. The record was a hundred and forty-seven days, held by Robert Ellis. “Anand?”

  “Celia. Welcome back.” It was Max.

  “How’s your head? You must have needed about eight thousand stitches.”

  “About. But I’m tough—I’m from Record Village.” He waited for a reply. When he didn’t get one, he went on. “So here’s the deal, Celia. You’re an international sensation. Everyone is tuning in to watch you. So put on a good show, and before long there may be Celia dolls, a clothing line, you name it.”

  “We could have beaten them, if we all fought together.”

  “All right, how about this: if you keep the viewers watching, you get to speak to Anand—”

  “Anand’s alive? Is he all right?”

  “The amount of time you get with him each day is directly tied to your performance. More people watching means more time with Anand. Do a good enough job and once you break the record we’ll move Anand into Record Village. Do a crappy job, and Anand gets retired.”

  Celia let out a howl of rage and despair that came straight from her belly. Everything they’d done, all the suffering, all the death, and she was back where she’d started. No, not even back where she’d started. She’d helped Dominion. They’d been in trouble, losing viewers, desperately trying to stay afloat, and she’d helped them rebuild their viewership.

  “We’re on commercial break, by the way. Save that emotion for the show. If you reach back, there’s a line for water, a compartment with supplies—food, medicine. Be sure to take a vial of anti-venin every eight hours for the next three days. Don’t worry, we’ll remind you. There’s a slide-out section at your waist with a porta-potty below. Any questions?” He waited about a half-second. “If you say anything to encourage viewers to stop watching, Molly retires on schedule, too. Okay, we’re back on. Infrared cameras, so don’t pick your nose even though it’s dark.”

  Celia pounded the ceiling with her good hand, and cried. No. She was not going to help them. She would lie here for five months, staring straight up. She could use a rest.

  Get the viewers on your side, Calysta had said. The way Max had put it, it sounded like half the world was watching. How was she supposed to get them on her side?

  If someone wanted Celia on their side, they had to be kind, and honest. More than that, they had to reveal themselves to her. The more she knew them, what they felt, what they cared about, the more she cared.

  “It’s hard to care about breaking a record after all that’s happened. I’m worried about my friend Anand. I’m thinking about all the people who died, evidently for nothing.”

  She felt around in the dark until she found the water tube and took a long drink.

  “When Dominion tried to get me to pretend I had a change of heart and come back here, one of their executives—a woman named Lara—told me we didn’t feel things as intensely as humans. Well if that’s true, you must feel like you have no skin. You must feel everything so intensely you can’t stand it. Your heart must be raw from the love and the hate and the grief you feel, like it’s on the outside, pressing against the world. Because that’s how I feel. If you feel things more intensely than me, you must feel like you’re on fire.”

  The little speech wore her out. Her hand still ached, although nothing like before. She closed her eyes and rested for a few minutes. Then, “Still here? I was having a private moment there. Oh, wait. I don’t get to have private moments, because I’m someone’s property.

  “Do you want to know how that makes me feel? It makes me so angry I’d like to blow the shit out of this place. Oh wait. I already did that. God, that felt great.”

  Max hadn’t said she couldn’t badmouth Dominion, but she sensed she was pushing it. She’d been pushing it from the beginning, though, and Dominion had kept the camera rolling, because people were watching. She had the feeling Lara would film herself being eaten alive by ants to get good ratings.

  “Landing on that beach and discovering I was not actually human didn’t feel so great, though. My dream was to bring that medicine back to Record Village to save my mom’s life, then take off again and live in Chicago. When I found out I was so small I could never have a job, an apartment, cool city friends, I was devastated.” She heaved a big sigh, sipped some water.

  “Turns out I was a joke. The people at that party were laughing at me, and I didn’t even realize it.”

  She thought of that guy, Essan, hitting on her, felt her face flush with embarrassment.

  “I’m not a joke to Anand, though. That’s all that matters. You can all think I’m a joke, a runt lying here in my miniature coffin. Anand thinks I’m wonderful.

  “I think he’s wonderful, too. He’s pretty messed up from the things Dominion put him through to keep you all entertained, but he’s still wonderful.”

  In order for Anand to be alive, he must have gotten real medical attention—a surgeon, a blood transfusion—just as she’d been given this anti-venin. They’d gone through a lot of trouble to keep the two of them alive. If Anand really was alive.

  “But maybe some of you don’t think I’m a joke. Maybe some of you don’t fit in, either.” She laughed. “Maybe you’d even be friends with a runt like me, if we had a chance to meet. Well, we’re sort of meeting now. Maybe if you get a chance to know me, it won’t matter that I’m small. Maybe you’ll like me anyway.”

  Chapter 26

  “New terms,” Max said over the intercom, waking Celia. She’d been dreaming she had huge feet that wouldn’t fit into any of her shoes, and brightly-colored patches of skin on her face.

  “Oh, this should be good.”

  “Talk up some of the other towns. Mention Luckytown, Circus Town. Make it clear that you like the towns. Remind the viewers that they’re filled with people, too.”

  “I want to talk to Anand.”

  “It’ll be a few more days before he’s strong enough to leave the hospital.” Or he was dead, and they didn’t want Celia to know because Anand was their leverage.

  She would swear the coffin was getting smaller. It felt like she’d been lying in it forever, but she guessed it had only been three or four days. That left...too many.

  Talk up the other towns. In other words, sell her viewers on other Dominion shows. Why would they need her to do that? Was she turning people off from watching the other shows?

  “Don’t forget. You’re on.”

  Celia smiled into the pitch blackness, and continued her monologue. “Good morning. Or evening, or whatever time of day it is. I’ve totally lost track of time...”

  Chapter 27

  “I have some lines for you,” Max said.

  “Lines?”

  “That’s right. You’ll memorize them and say them verbatim. Work them into your conversation casually. Spread them out. The first line is, ‘Hey, do me a favor? Check in on my friend Raithi over in Romance Chateau, she’s—”

  “I’m not saying that. I’m not whoring myself for Dominion.”

  A woman’s voice cut in. “Then your friends are as good as dead. Anand. Your friend what’s-her-name. Both dead.”

  Celia recognized the voice. “Hi, Lara. How long have you been listening in?”

  “You will deliver the lines Max gives you. And that’s just for starters. You need to think of something, some game-changer that gets your two-billion-plus v
iewers watching other shows, and you need to do it now.” Lara was angry, but there was something else in her breathless tone. Desperation. Panic.

  “I need to think of something?”

  “I will authorize Anand’s retirement. In a heartbeat.”

  “What’s going on out there?”

  Neither of them answered.

  She wouldn’t help them. Not even to save Anand’s life, if Anand was still alive. She pictured Anand as he’d been on the day of her tumble down the steps, turning to smile at her as if they were already in love. She could see him so clearly, his dark hair, his eyes filled with warmth and sadness and humor all at once. “I’m not saying those lines.” She knew Anand would understand.

  “That’s your choice,” Lara said. “You get to choose whether Anand lives or dies. It’s all on you.”

  The words hurt, but Celia was used to hurting. Now, at least, she was suffering for something real, something beyond other people’s entertainment. “You can’t break me, Lara. If you don’t know that, you haven’t been paying attention.”

  “Celia, you need to stop thinking short term. We’re talking about the survival of our species. Those are the stakes here. What are the lives of a few of us, or a few thousand, compared to the continuation of our entire species?”

  “You make it sound like they’re doing it out of the goodness of their hearts. We’re products. They use us, and when they’re done they throw us away.”

  “Who cares why they make us?” Max shot back. “They give us life. And they do offer opportunities. Our fates are in our own hands to an extent.”

  Lara cut in. “You’re on in eight seconds. Say the lines we feed you, or we’ll yank you right off the air and start retiring your friends.”

  “You’re on,” Max said.

  Celia took a few breaths to calm herself. She took a deep breath, and screamed, “They’re going to kill Anand! Please. Stop them.”

  “You’re off the air,” Max said. “Why don’t you lie there for a while and think things through?”

  That was fine with Celia. She could use some time to think.

  Chapter 28

  She hadn’t needed five days to think.

  Every muscle in Celia’s body ached. She would give anything, anything, to stand up and stretch. The silence, the darkness. A dozen times she had filled her lungs to shout that she’d say the damned lines, just talk to her, just let her speak to Anand for five minutes. But she hadn’t. They weren’t going to break her.

  They’d trained her too well for that.

  Chapter 29

  Celia heard the barely audible click that meant the intercom had been turned on. When you’d spent eternity in silence, even the smallest sounds seemed loud.

  “Who’s there? Max? Lara?”

  Silence. For a split second she’d let herself hope it would be Anand’s voice. Wishful thinking. Fairy unicorn thinking. Celia smiled, remembering those moments on the water when they’d thought things couldn’t get any worse.

  “I hope you’re pleased with yourself.” Max’s voice startled her.

  “How long have I been in here?”

  “I don’t know.” Max sounded empty, sluggish. “Forty-something days. It doesn’t matter. You’re never coming out.”

  Celia willed herself to keep it together, while every fiber in her body told her it was time to flip out, to kick and punch those wooden walls until they cracked.

  “Why is that?”

  “It’s over. You won. And you lost.”

  “What happened?”

  “Dominion went under. The corporation that created us no longer exists.”

  “Then help me. Get me out of here.”

  Max grunted. “I seem to have forgotten my shovel. Even if I had a backhoe, I wouldn’t waste the gas.” There was a squeal, microphone feedback maybe. “We’re the last of our kind. Do you realize that? You could have saved us. You had a choice, to help our parents or kill them. You killed them.”

  “Good. Our parents were abusive. They deserved to die.”

  “So do you.” Max’s tone sent a chill through Celia.

  She had stopped noticing the gentle hiss of air pumping into the coffin, but when it stopped, she noticed immediately.

  “Max, what did you just do?”

  “I cut the power. There’s no one to pay the bill anymore. And believe me when I say that you of all people, you want someone to pay the power bill.”

  If it weren’t pitch dark, Celia was sure she’d be able to see her heart thudding beneath her shirt.

  “I loved you like a daughter, Celia. I really did. Now even the thought of you makes me sick,” Max said. “You and your psycho boyfriend. He’s next. He is so next.”

  Celia kicked the ceiling as hard as she could. “Leave him alone! Max? Leave Anand out of this.”

  There was no answer.

  “Don’t you dare!”

  The coffin was truly silent now, except for the sound of Celia’s breathing. She was painfully aware that each breath carried her closer to death.

  She was tempted to scream for help, but no one would hear her with the intercom off, because she was buried under six feet of dirt. That was the regulation depth to qualify for the record. Only, was it really two feet? Probably. It didn’t matter—no one would hear her scream either way.

  She willed herself to calm down. She’d seen it in a movie once. You had to stay calm to conserve air. Everyone in the world knew she was buried alive. Someone would come eventually. The question was, would she still be breathing when they came?

  Relax.

  How many breaths did she have left? She had no idea, but she wanted a number, so she decided there were six hundred and fifty good, deep breaths left. For most people that wasn’t many, but Celia wasn’t most people. She could hold her breath longer than anyone on the planet.

  She took a good, deep breath and held it. If this one breath was enough to last ten minutes (without hyperventilating and lung-packing, that was probably her limit), then how long would six hundred and fifty breaths last her? Math wasn’t her strength, but it was a long time. She would choose to believe it would be long enough.

  Maybe Max would have a change of heart and come back. In his own sick, brainwashed way he still cared about his people. He’d been so kind to Celia when she joined the team. Surely that kindness was still in there somewhere.

  When she couldn’t hold her breath any longer, she blew it out, and took one, and only one, deep breath and held it. Breath number two. Six hundred and forty-eight left. Her lungs wanted more, but she didn’t let them have it. One breath at a time. Yes, it hurt. Yes, she was already dying for more air, and it was only going to get worse. This was what she did. Her talent wasn’t in what she could do, but what she could endure. Her talent was the ability to suffer, and no one was better at it than she was.

  Celia willed herself to go somewhere else, out of her body. She went back to the moment when Anand had kissed her. She relived the three kisses they’d shared, all of the things they’d said between each kiss. When the last kiss was over she backed up her memories and relived them again.

  #

  When she inhaled breath number two hundred and eighty-eight, she was still kissing Anand.

  That wasn’t so bad, was it?

  No. I’m touching you, and it’s wonderful.

  She’d miscalculated. She was now holding each breath for an average of six to seven minutes, not ten. Each breath was a little less satisfying than the last, and her average kept dropping. Still, it had to be some sort of record. Least breaths taken in an hour, in two hours, in five hours.

  How long had she been in here? An eternity.

  Can I kiss you, Celia?

  That wasn’t right, though. Anand hadn’t said her name.

  Celia? Can I kiss you, Celia?

  That was even more wrong. Her brain wasn’t getting enough oxygen. It must be pissed at her, pissed off and punishing her with hallucinations. She didn’t blame it, but what was she g
oing to do? It wasn’t like there was an oxygen store in this place.

  After her next breath, she took a sip of water, and cheated, sneaking in an extra breath.

  Celia. Can I kiss you, Celia? Celia. Celia.

  The fantasy was spinning out of control. Anand wouldn’t stay still, his lips kept moving. “Celia.”

  Her current breath squeezed out prematurely. That last ‘Celia’ had pulled her out of her fantasy, back into the coffin. She was slick with sweat; the box had grown stiflingly hot. She took a breath, but it barely refreshed her.

  There weren’t six hundred and fifty breaths in the coffin; there weren’t even four hundred.

  “Celia.”

  She heard her name, coming from a thousand miles away.

  “Anand?” She meant to shout, but the word came out as a breathless peep. She tried again, but it was no better.

  “Celia?”

  Celia raised her fists and pounded on the ceiling.

  “Celia. I’m coming, Celia.”

  “Hang on,” a second voice called. That son of a bitch clown Beaners was still tagging along. That wonderful son of a bitch with his giant feet.

  Celia heard a muffled thud in the earth above, then another, and another. Gasping for each shallow breath, she was laughing uncontrollably, as if that sound was the funniest thing she’d ever heard. The thuds grew louder. So did the shouts, mostly Anand’s, until whatever he was digging with hit the coffin.

  “Celia?”

  “Dig,” she whispered, laughing.

  She heard scraping, as Anand cleared dirt off the top of the coffin. Finally, a sharp crack as he pried two boards apart.

  Dirt spilled into her face, as sunlight, and sweet, cool air flooded the coffin.

  Celia breathed, laughing between the breaths.

  A plank flew up and away, then another, and Anand and Beaners were staring down at her, faces pinched with concern until they saw she was laughing.

  She raised her fists into the air. Beaners reached down and yanked the last plank off. Anand grasped Celia’s arms and pulled her up until she fell into his embrace.