by Tia Wilson
The tips of his fingers on his right hand split open as new sharp claws emerged from the surging red of the torn flesh. Nasak yanked and jerked like a trapped puppet against his ropes. He could feel his internal organs move and shift inside his body, a warm liquid pulse as they rearranged themselves into a new configuration. The dull snap of multiple bones breaking and knitting themselves together filled his mind. I’m going mad he thought to himself as he felt the vertebrae in his back crack and move.
Thick course white hair began to sprout on the back of his clawed hand and Nasak tried to shout again. It came out in a burbled and bloody roar as his gums bled and several teeth fell out as new ones pushed them out from below. He twisted and jerked against his bindings begging for it to end, he couldn’t take any more of the searing pain, the breaking bones and the images of screaming faces dancing in his mind. “Please make it stop,” he said, his lips pulled back in a snarl. He was engulfed in a hurricane of pain and he could feel his sanity slipping away and the darkness spilling back in as his body was ravaged by the changes tearing him apart.
The buzzing in his head stopped suddenly replaced by the sound of his blood pumping in his body. It was like he could hear every inner and secret part of him working together to bring forth the change. He arched his back as a devastating wave of sheer pain tore through him. This is the end he thought to himself feverishly. His body sagged and spasmed for a few seconds as the last throes of pain left him. He had closed his eyes tight and then he slowly opened them. The pain was gone, the sound of his heart beating didn’t blare in his ear, the organic tide inside him had ceased moving.
He raised his head and his vision began to clear, one side still had a milky blur running from top to bottom. The people surrounding the pit came into focus. Women covered their children’s faces against their bodies, men’s mouths hung open in wide O’s as they stared at Nasak. The crowd was completely silent and frozen in place waiting and watching. He looked across the crowd and Nasak could see the mens surprised expressions quickly darken and turn to out right rage.
“He’s a mongrel,” a man’s voice shouted from the back of the crowd.
“Cut him down,” shouted a woman’s voice.
“Banish the freak,” shouted a gang of men with blood red faces.
Nasak looked at the crowd, hoping to see a familiar face, someone, anyone that could help him. “Help me,” he said and his voice came out sounding foreign to his ears. It was deeper than before, more commanding with a slight snarl at the end of his words.
“We don’t help freaks,” someone else shouted.
People near the edge of the pit spit onto the sand below them.
“Father,” Nasak cried in a long and ragged roar.
“Enough,” a voice shouted. A voice Nasak and everyone in his clan knew. It was the leader of all white bear kind, Tannis.
Nasak twisted painfully and looked in the direction of the leader. He stood flanked by his two commanders. On his right stood Nasaks father, his face unmoving, his jaw clenched so tight the tendons stuck out like steel cables in his neck.
“Please Father help me,” Nasak wailed.
The crowd erupted into a jeering and mocking laugh as they shouted obscenities at him and cursed his existence.
“Enough,” The clan leader bellowed and the crowd immediately stopped.
“You father cannot save you Nasak. You know the rules of our tribe. You are a mongrel, a beast so low that you have to be cast out and banished from the clan forever. Broken and twisted creatures like you cannot exist within the walls of the clan. Your presence is an abomination, you are an aberration. We are a just clan and we do not kill our own, to do so would make us no better than a rabid animal. This law we uphold above all others. We even extend it to mongrels like you Nasak. Be thankful you live in such a just society. Our half brothers the black bears would show you no such mercy, those savage beasts would have you ripped you limb from limb and your internal organs served up to your family and everyone you have shamed,” said the clan leader in a deep bellow. “Mark this mongrel before he is banished for he shall never return to us. Never make contact with one of the clan. He will forever be a mongrel, a low born twisted creature that we have nothing but pity for,” he said nodding to a man in black standing at the edge of the pit.
The man clad in black from head to toe pulled a hood over his face and turned to the fire burning beside him. A long metal pole with a stamped iron brand sat in the flickering blaze, the metal white hot. The man pulled the pole out of the flames and held it by its worn wooden handle. He walked up behind Nasak who screamed. “No, don’t do it. Father please don’t let them do this to me. Father please,” he shouted jerking and twisting his body.
“Brand the mongrel,” the crowd shouted in unison again and again.
The man dressed in black jabbed forward with the pole and the white hot brand sizzled against the flesh of Nasaks lower back. He threw back his head and groaned in pain as his flesh bubbled and burnt beneath the searing hot metal. A sickly sweet smell of burning flesh filled the pit. The man dressed in black stood back and admired his handiwork while the crowd shouted, “Mongrel, Mongrel,” over and over again.
The man in black took a long pole with a blackened steel tip and cut the ropes binding Nasak to the cross beam. He fell to the ground and his legs collapsed out from under him, all strength drained from his body. Nasak lay in the sand panting as pain continued to wrack his body. He lay there looking up at the crowd shouting, he knew they would never refer to him by name again, he was a mongrel and deserved no respect from the tribe. He rolled onto his side and tried to prop himself up into a sitting position. His clawed hand throbbed and blood ran from the ripped flesh that the nails protruded from.
He looked wildly around the crowd and picked out his father watching him from his position beside the clan leader. “Father please don’t do this,” he said in a ragged plea. His fathers face was a stone faced mask which betrayed no emotions. He turned and walked away pushing through the crowds until Nasak could no longer see him. “No,” Nasak screamed in agony. The clan leader nodded and then turned to leave. Nasak did not notice the man in black walking up behind him. The last thing he remembered was the world exploding in a bright flash of colour and then fading to a pinprick of darkness.
A noise like someone flicking heavy sheets of paper crept into Nasaks mind, the sound was repetitious and increasing in speed. Something landed on his eyelid and then his cheek and then his forehead. The blackness of unconsciousness folded away like a concertina and he awoke lying on his back in a forest. Rain spattered down from above. He opened his mouth and the rain tasted like sweetened water as it slacked his arid throat. Every part of him ached, the brand on his back was a burning nexus of pain. He sat up and his joints and tendons popped painfully.
Someone had taken him out of his blood stained rags and dressed him in a simple shirt and trousers. Beside him was a leather satchel and inside was a roll of money and a picture of his father giving a rare smile to who ever was taking the picture. Nasak flipped it over and written on the back in his fathers block like scrawl was the word sorry.
Nasak sniffed the air and breathed in the scent of loamy earth, pungent blossoms and the sweetness of tree sap. There was something else under the rich scent of the forest,he had smelt it only a few times before, he could smell the acrid stench of people. Nasak was being watched from the woods.
“Who’s out there,” he shouted as he rose unsteadily to his feet. “Show yourself.”
A tight clump of fronded ferns rustled up ahead and Nasak headed in its direction.
8
Tulimak & The Pit
Tulimak walked across the raised walkway that circled the fighting pit. Blood stained the sand floor of the main pit in the centre of the wide open barn. “How is the new meat coming along?” he asked Slattery who was walking beside him with a notepad and pen in his hand.
“Very good, Sir. We have a bull of a man who was on death row. He w
as months away from the lethal injection. He is hungry for life. He came so close to it he could practically see it over his shoulder. I have no doubt he will put up a mammoth effort. For something a little different I have a man who was one of the most notorious burglars in his city. This guy used to scale the side of buildings with nothing more than his bare hands and a small pouch of talc. He’s small and compact and extremely wiry. His reflexes are second to none. He should be a very interesting opponent and quite different from the usual brawlers you face,” Slattery said.
“Very good,” Tulimak said circling the main pit again. “How are the youngsters coming along in their training?”
Slattery flipped through the pages of his book and ran his finger over a list of names and said, “Eight out of the ten understudy class will make excellent soldier material. The other two are possibles leaders. Both are strong, smart and have a wild viscous streak.”
“Do I know them?” Tulimak asked.
“The young man, Trey Lanin I think you are familiar with. You had had his father disembowelled in front of the whole family when the uprising was squashed five years ago,” Slattery said.
“This young man joined the corps even after what we did to his father?”
“He thinks his father was a weak man, someone who didn't see the bigger picture of what you were doing for the clan as we move forward in this time of instability. He is fully on board with the cause, zealous doesn't even begin to describe him. I think he feels like he has to redeem the family name after his father brought shame to his clan,” Slattery said.
“Wise boy,” Tulimak said picking at his teeth with a toothpick. “And the other?”
“A young girl, strong-willed, independent, a little reckless at times. She is a natural leader, the other recruits seem to have nothing but respect for her,” Slattery said.
“How did she manage that,” Tulimak asked flicking the toothpick into the bloodstained fighting pit.
“During her first week of training, two of the other recruits, thick headed grunts in the making would not let up on her about her lack of family. She was found abandoned in the woods sixteen years ago by one of our border scouts and given to a barren woman as a surrogate. These two kept giving her grief about her lowly status in the clan, how she was nothing without family. They were starting to get increasingly physical with her. Pushing her in the lunch queue. Knocking her tray out of her hand, that sort of thing. One day she turned around and leapt on one of the boys. Bent his arm back until it snapped at the elbow. She did it in front of the whole mess hall. While he lay on the floor pumping blood and white as a ghost with a huge sliver of bone sticking through his skin, she jumped up and knocked the other guy to the ground. She ripped his left eye out and was about to tear his throat wide open. She was pulled off him by some of the advisors before she did anymore damage. It took three of them to wrestle her away from him. They threw her into a cell for three days to cool off,” Slattery said.
“Did she turn during this bit of spirited play?” Tulimak asked smiling, his incisor teeth extending over his top lip.
“Barely. Her eyes shifted and that was it,” Slattery said.
“Impressive control for such a young fighter. Send them both up to my office tomorrow I want to check them out. I may have some work coming up that they would be perfect for,” Tulimak said heading across the walkway towards his raised office. Slattery followed behind him writing notes in his pad. “Prepare the pits for tonight. I need to release some pent up energy. I can feel something in the air, a change in pressure, a scent I cant fully make out. Change is coming Slattery my old friend and I want to be ready when it shows its yellow teeth and black fur. We are about to enter a new age of dominance for the white bear clan. I can feel it. My time is now,” he said turning to look Slattery in the eye, “I never needed my father. Him scurrying off into the woods was the best thing to ever happen to our clan. He was too stuck in the old ways. He couldn't see the mistakes we were making again and again. The old man was getting soft, allowing the black bears to get too close to the borders of our territory,” Tulimak said and laughed. “And his ideas about a peaceful union? Can you imagine Slattery making any kind of deal with the black bears, those savages eat their young. Peace is a fools dream,” Tulimak said and closed his office door behind him leaving Slattery standing on the walkway still taking notes.
9
The Pit Awaits
Lewis was doing push ups when he heard the metal door at the end of the corridor being pushed open. He continued his exercises and focused on the yellow straw underneath him as he counted off each one. Someones boots scuffed on the floor outside the cell and he continued his exertions.
“Good to see you keeping fit,” Slattery said.
Lewis ignored him and finished his one-hundredth push up before he got up and faced the man. Slattery was flanked by two armed guards both pointing snub nosed machine guns in Lewis’s direction.
“Its show time,” Slattery said in deadpan. “Get back against the wall, hands on your head. You know the drill.”
The guards entered the cell, one staying in the corner with the gun trained on Lewis. While the other approached from behind. What if I rush this guy and try to wrestle the gun from his hand Lewis thought. These thoughts always entered his mind right before he was cuffed, he was like a man standing on the edge of a bridge who was afraid that some ancient gnarled part of his brain would spring into action and cause him to leap to his doom. Lewis was cuffed and chained at his ankles and escorted out of his cell in jerking shuffling steps. He glanced into Phil’s cell as he passed and all he saw was a slumped figure in the corner of the room with a rough woollen blanket covering him.
“Is he ok?” Tom said tilting his head in Phil’s direction.
“Not your concern,” Slattery said.
Slattery slid the metal door back and walked out onto a metal platform. Embedded in the hand rails where yellow lights at intervals giving the impression of a runway stretching off into the distance. Lewis walked forward and the guards behind him closed the door, the metal clang echoing around them. Lewis looked over the side of the handrail and could see nothing but darkness, up above was the same. We could be hundreds of feet up and I wouldn’t know it he thought to himself.
Slattery motioned for him to stop. A light came on overhead and illuminated a circular concrete pit below the walkway. The floor of the pit was raked sand and one metal door was embedded in the wall and connected to a covered passageway. The noise of gears whirring came from up above and Lewis looked up into the gloom to try to see what was happening. He could make out a system of rails cross back and forth into the darkness. Sliding on the track directly above the walkway was a metal hook attached to a pulley. It stopped above Slattery and lowered to his should height.
“Who am I fighting?” Lewis asked.
“Raise your arms over you head,” Slattery ordered him.
Lewis glanced behind him and one guard was kneeling with the other behind him. Both had their guns pointed at his chest. Slattery attached the hook to Lewis’s wrist handcuffs and the hook retracted into the ceiling above. Lewis stood on his tip toes until he was raised off the ground, his wrists and arms straining with the weight of his body. The hook moved away from the walkway and he was hanging over the pit below. Slattery reached out and unchained his legs. I could kick him right in the face and probably break his jaw Lewis thought. That would do you know good he reasoned with himself, he would be left hanging up like a pig to the slaughter ready to be shot at by the guards.
He was lowered to the sandy floor of the pit and the hook retracted and unhooked from his wrist cuffs. He stood there rubbing his wrists looking up at the walkway above. The three people above him where hidden in deep shadow..
“Uncuff yourself. The key is stuck on the side of the hook,” Slattery said.
Lewis reached up to the hook and spun it around. On the opposite side was a key held magnetically to the flat surface of the hooks head. He took them off
and stood staring into the light.
“Place the key and the cuffs on the hook,” Slattery said.
Lewis held them up to the hook and they pulled out of his fingers with a snap as the magnet pulled them forward. A motor whirred in the ceiling above and the hook retracted up into the dark. The men on the platform above walked away and off in the distance Lewis heard another heavy metal door slamming shut. The strip of light bisecting his view went off and the walkway disappeared into oppressive dark. A single light hung above the pit illuminating it. The walls were smooth grey concrete at least twenty feet tall and the circular pit was the size of a basketball court.
Lewis stood and listened to the soft mechanical whirr. He could feel it more in his bones than actually hear it, like the weird scratch sensation of a t.v tuned to static playing in another room. The ground beneath him vibrated gently as if the pit was sitting atop a large piece of machinery chugging away in the depths of the earth.
“Hello,” Lewis shouted as loud as possible. His voice was swallowed up by the surrounding dark and then like a pebble thrown into a pond his voice echoed back to him. What is this place Lewis wondered? When he had been standing on the walkway he had seen at least three more pits like the one he was in all in a row, until he could see no further because of the dim light. Is this some sort of large scale betting operation he thought, a place where multiple fights can be had simultaneously while the people observed and betted from the walkways above. In all his years working the streets and mixing with societies underclass he had never heard of such a place. Sure urban legends were numerous, he had heard tales so far fetched when he was in prison but none about such a large scale underground fighting ring. If this place was as big as he thought, the fights were on an industrial scale with the opportunity for dozens of them to run at the same time. It’s got to be the columbians he thought. They were the only ones with the money and power to pull off something on such a large scale. If he was right he was fucked.