by Chad Leito
The volume was turned down, but Baggs could still hear the roar of the crowd. There were walls and obstacles without roofs erected in the sand, behind which competitors could hide from one another. Baggs counted, and saw that there were five members of the purple and gold team left, and only two members of the blue and yellow team. The blue and yellow team was hiding behind a wall, swords drawn. The purple and gold team was hunting for them.
The crowd’s roaring began to get louder as the purple and gold team got closer to the wall. They would soon find what they were looking for.
Baggs’s heart began to pound as he watched. His pupils dilated.
One of the competitors on the blue and yellow team looked like Baggs, but was a little smaller. He had a black beard, broad shoulder, and hairy arms.
Baggs licked his lips. He completely forgot where he was while he watched the event. He tried to imagine what it would be like to be that competitor. He looked at every detail, trying to mentally transport himself into the arena.
He saw that the man’s left arm had been cut badly, just below the shoulder. Blood was running down his arm, making it sticky. Baggs imagined how that would feel, standing there, in the middle of the blood soaked sand with two hundred thousand people screaming as he was hunted. He imagined his arm throbbing in pain, limp by his side. He imagined being light headed from blood loss, holding the sword in his right hand because his left was practically useless. He tried to imagine what the man must feel like, his back against a wall, not knowing when the other team would turn the corner and attack. He must be scared out of his mind! He must know that he will likely die soon!
The crowd cheered on.
Beside the bleeding competitor, whom Baggs was trying to picture himself as, was his teammate. His teammate was a gray haired old man who wouldn’t be much help in the fight to come. He had been stabbed in the stomach and was unsuccessfully trying to retain his blood by applying pressure to the wound.
The purple and gold team got closer. They were crouched down, walking slowly. Baggs wondered if the blue and yellow team knew that they were coming. They probably know because the crowd’s cheering has intensified.
Baggs wondered what it would be like to stand there beneath the hot sun and be hunted like that with all those dead corpses surrounding you. Some still had their eyes open. Some were facedown in pools of blood.
When the purple and gold team was two steps away from the wall, the hairy man on the blue and yellow team charged.
Baggs imagined himself doing everything that the hairy man was doing.
He imagined the sand, damp with blood beneath his sandals. He imagined turning the corner and seeing five humans, swords in hand, standing before him. Did he know that there were going to be five of them when he charged? He imagined watching the gold and purple team back up at first as they saw his aggressive move. He copied the queer grin he saw on the hairy man’s face. He imagined his left arm limp beside him as he swung his sword with all the force he could muster, feeling the vibrations as the blow was blocked by an opponent’s steel weapon.
Baggs was breathing rapidly. If I enter Outlive, will Tessa watch? I know that she doesn’t like to watch it normally, but will she watch if I’m on? If I die, will I be aware before the deathblow comes that I am about to leave this world? Will she understand that I did it for Maggie, for Olive and for her? Will Tessa know that I didn’t want to leave them—that I didn’t want to die a violent and merciless death in front of such a crowd? Will she know that I had no other option? How long after I’m gone will my daughters be heartbroken? How long will it take for Olive to forget about playing pony? Will they appreciate my sacrifice when they are older, and didn’t starve, and they’ve actually tasted cake?
His eyes grew hot and welled up with tears.
The hairy man was taken by surprise; while he was sparring with a man on the purple and gold team, a woman came forth and stabbed straight through his leather armor into his lower abdomen. Baggs imagined feeling the blade, first as a punch on his leather, and then going deeper and deeper until he looked down and saw that he couldn’t see the tip of the sword anymore. Where did it go!? Where did it go!? And what is this red?
He imagined taking his sword and chopping a great gash in the woman’s neck. He imagined watching her fall to the sand, hands at her neck, and her eyes that say, why did you do that? He wondered the same thing; Why did I do that? It was apparent that I would die anyway! Why stab her? What’s wrong with me? Why hurt more people than necessary?
I’m sorry! I wish that I could take it back!
He imagined his sword, still lodged in her neck, and trying to pull it out and defend himself as the pack of purple and gold came up on him. He imagined seeing his own teammate run from behind the wall to his assistance, and watching him be taken down in a single swipe.
I always thought that Tessa would be at my side as I died. Females usually live longer than males, and I smoke and she doesn’t. I always thought she would hold my hand as I take my last breath and float away into the unknowns of death that I fear so much. But now, as the crowd roars and these horrible warriors fall upon me, there is nothing to do but die here on the hot, unforgiving sand where no one loves me. I hope Tessa doesn’t see this. I hope my girls don’t see this. And I hope that they appreciate that I’m sacrificing my life for them.
He felt the first blow—a blunt chop—ring against the metal helmet on his head. He felt a scream tearing up through his vocal cords that sounded like the high-pitched whine a teakettle makes as it lets off steam. He tried to pull back his sword, but it was still lodged in the woman’s neck. Another sword was still in his abdomen, and the red kept painting the ground. He heard the crowd’s sounds reach an even more frantic crescendo of noise, and thought, this is it; they know the deathblow is coming. He saw the sword, gleaming with sunlight as it was raised above him, and didn’t have time to see who was holding it as it came down, and slashed through the front of his neck and his windpipe.
He tried to breathe, but couldn’t. He felt what it was like to know you’re going to die. He felt the red, hot liquid gush out over his front and then the other swords came down too. Merciless. Frantic. As mechanical and unforgiving as cancer that unknowingly grows to the point that its host can no longer live.
“Baggs?”
Baggs screamed, and jumped back from the HoloVision Box. His heart was thudding. He was back at Greggor’s. He wasn’t dead, and he would see Tessa, Olive and Maggie tonight.
“Baggs, are you crying?” Greggor asked.
Baggs reached a palm up and felt that his cheeks were wet. “Yeah. Just allergies, though.” Baggs looked around and realized that Jacque was gone. “Could I use your bathroom, Greggor?”
“Sure, go ahead.”
Greggor looked worried. Baggs stood up, went inside the bathroom, and locked the door behind him. He flicked on the light and stared at himself in the mirror. His eyes were red and puffy. Big tears were glistening on the thick beard that covered his upper cheeks. His skin had taken on a pale, sickly color, and he felt like vomiting.
Get it together! If Greggor thinks I’m a loon, he won’t want to endorse me. Calm yourself, Baggs.
Baggs closed his eyes, but all he could see was the sword raised high above him, about to come down and slice his neck. He couldn’t believe how surreal what he had just experienced was. His knees were trembling and he put his hands around the lip of the sink so that he wouldn’t fall.
It was only a show. It was only a rerun on a HoloVision box.
His eyes shot open and he backed up against the wall. He thought of his two little girls. He nibbled absently on his huge fist. He felt the tears coming back, but fought them off.
“You’re okay, buddy,” he whispered to his red-eyed reflection in the mirror. It was what his dad used to tell him when he got sick as a little kid. “It’s going to be okay, child. It was just a show. It wasn’t real.”
Baggs concentrated on breathing for a few moments, willing
himself to calm down. He thought, you haven’t entered Outlive. You weren’t there. You just had a scare is all. Normal. That was normal. Now, go see if Greggor has any gigs. I’m sure that I’ll feel better once Greggor books me for a few gigs.
Baggs flushed the toilet, turned on the faucet for a moment so it sounded like he was washing his hands, and then exited the bathroom. Greggor standing in the middle of the room, with his leathery arms crossed over his pudgy chest, staring at Baggs in the cautious way a person looks at a feral animal. Baggs made a point not to glance back at the HoloVision Box. He pretended not to notice the odd look that Greggor was giving him.
“Greggor, it’s been too long, my friend,” he said, stopping a few feet from his agent and giving him a big, happy grin in which he showed most of his crooked teeth. Greggor had never explicitly said so, but Baggs believed that his agent didn’t like shaking hands with Baggs. Baggs thought that Greggor viewed him as dirty.
“It has, it has,” Greggor said. He smiled back uneasily, showing a mouth with more gold teeth than white ones. Baggs was now close enough to see that Greggor’s nipple rings had diamonds on them. “How is your hand? Did you see that surgeon I recommended?”
He’s so out of touch with what it’s like to be poor that he doesn’t understand most of us can’t afford to go see a doctor for basic vaccines. Why the hell do you think they get people to enter Outlive, you ignorant ass! Baggs thought. Do you think they’re just stupid? Do you think that they want to die? Can you not realize that some people actually don’t have any money and they are STARVING like Olive and Maggie are while you adorn your fat nipples with diamonds!
Baggs held up his left hand and tried to not let the anger seep out in his tone. “Good as new. Yeah, I went and saw Dr. Turner. Real nice man.” Baggs did not feel guilty for lying to Greggor.
Greggor frowned. “Your hand doesn’t look right, Baggs. You sure it’s okay?”
“Oh, yeah. Doc Turner said it wouldn’t be pretty, but that I could still play. Say, you got any upcoming concerts or anything I could play at?”
Greggor made a clucking motion with his tongue, and then pulled out his cell phone to consult his calendar. While he did so, Baggs continued to do his best to appear at ease. See, you still have a job. There’s no reason to enter the arena.
“Next thing I got is a birthday party in two months,” Greggor said.
“Two months?” Baggs said a little too loudly. His voice echoed throughout the room. His heart was flooded with adrenaline and began to pound against his rib cage.
Greggor looked up at Baggs. “Is that a problem?”
“Yeah, it kind of is! I need work, Greggor.” We’ll be out of CreditCoins long before two months are up. “You don’t have anything sooner?”
“No. I’m not the one who was running through London with my daughter on my back and broke my wrist! Look, I did a lot for you as far as rescheduling when you couldn’t play, so don’t use a tone with me, or you can get the hell out of here! Got it?”
Baggs swallowed. His mouth was dry. He thought of the McKesson family. Greggor had a temper, and if Baggs made him mad now, he’d be out of work for good. Greggor didn’t need Baggs, but Baggs needed Greggor. “Yeah. I understand. Just, ahhhh, if something comes up, maybe you could pass it along to me. Like, I don’t know, if someone breaks their wrist or something like that.” Baggs smiled. He had meant it as a joke, but Greggor was scowling at him.
“I’ve got work to do, Baggs. Do you need anything else or are you just here to chinwag?”
Baggs wanted to say, you weren’t busy when Jacque was here, chatting you up, touching your upper thigh, but he held his tongue. He said, “I actually wanted to get some practice time in.”
Greggor went behind his desk and typed a few keys on his keyboard. “Just opened room 14. Go on ahead.”
“Thanks, Greggor.” Baggs opened up the door to the staircase and began to walk upstairs.
As he was on the lower steps, he heard from the HoloVision Box: “If you’re interested in a 20,000 CreditCoin reward, and would like to enter into the next episode of Outlive, contact us online at www.Outlive.com/applicants, or stop by your local media studio and meet with us in person.”
Baggs thought, I bet most applicants just show up. I bet that not many people with internet would want to enter into such a lethal agreement.
Baggs continued to climb. Greggor called angrily behind him: “And I’m going to listen to you before I send you away to this birthday party. You’ll lose your spot if you can’t play with that hand of yours.”
“Sure,” Baggs called back.
He was perspiring lightly as he opened the door to room 14 and entered.
The piano rooms had always been a place where Baggs found himself relaxing. The plastic black and white keys had always felt good under Baggs’s fingers. He had always had good associations with the smell of disinfectant. To Baggs, it had always felt and smelled like home.
Now, the keys looked threatening, like the exposed teeth of a feral dog. The smell stung his nostrils.
He pulled back the chair, squeezed his body in between the seat and the keyboard, and sat down. The keyboard rooms were no bigger than closets, and they filled the hallways of the building’s second floor. Each of the compartments was sound proof, which Baggs was thankful for. He didn’t know if he would be able to experiment on the keyboard if he thought that Greggor might hear.
He was also thankful that the room was soundproof so that he didn’t hear any more noises from the Outlive rerun drifting up the stairs.
Baggs looked behind himself to see if the door was shut properly and then, knowing that no one could hear him, began to talk to himself. He sometimes liked to do this in the keyboard rooms; he found that it helped him to gather his thoughts.
“Okay, before I start, am I seriously considering signing up for Outlive?”
The big man just breathed for a moment, thinking. He recalled the terrified expression on the hairy man’s face as they ripped him apart with their blades. He kept his hands on his lap, as though if he put them on the keys the keyboard might bite him.
“How much will the birthday party pay? Greggor didn’t say. Maybe fifty. Maybe less. Enough to eat for ten days, probably. But that’s in two months! We’ll be completely out of capital in two weeks, three at the most.”
He breathed some more. He couldn’t believe that he was actually having this conversation with himself. He felt like the walls were moving in on him, slowly, until they were the size of a coffin. He tried to calm down. His throat felt tight. His chest felt heavy.
The Baggers had been in economic jams before, but nothing like this. They had one hundred and five CreditCoins in their account and literally no way to get more for two more months. The cheapest calories they could buy were in noodles. A pack of dried noodles cost them 4.99 CCs, which was cheaper than buying a single apple. The noodle package suggested that it contained four servings. The four Baggers were able to make a package last a day, but that was if they demonstrated a lot of self control and remained hungry at all times.
And what is eating only noodles every day doing to all our bodies? Baggs wondered. When money was good, he and Tessa would buy peanut butter and each of the Baggers would eat one bite after their dinner of plain, gray noodles.
The thought of eating any more noodles made Baggs’s stomach do a flip. He had been eating the same thing every day for years, and his body was sick of it.
But then another, more awful thought than having to eat noodles again slipped into his mind: If I don’t enter Outlive, in three weeks my kids won’t have even noodles to eat.
Baggs closed his eyes for five seconds and was tempted to cry. He opened his eyes and gritted his teeth.
“What if we ate less?” he said out loud. He could hear that his own voice was shaking, but he ignored it. “We could cut down on how much food we all eat.” He stared at the wall, doing quick math in his head. “If we each eat only a third of what we have been…”
He stopped, shaking his head. The uncomfortable lump in his throat had grown to the size of a tennis ball. Cutting back on food wasn’t an option. It would stunt their children’s growth. The amount they were eating was the bare minimum. And, there were other expenses, too. They had to buy soap, toothpaste, and would have to buy more clothes when Olive and Tessa grew more. Rent, water and electricity were free, thanks to the Gates Initiative, which was a charity started long ago that helped poorer people attain some commonly needed items. The Gates Initiative helped, but it couldn’t do everything. It was illegal to give such items as food to the poor. As the legislation said, “This law is enacted to prevent the growth of ‘social parasites’ among the impoverished.”
Baggs looked down at his malformed left wrist. He could hear his heartbeat in his ears. He had walked all the way to this side of town to practice just to be told that it didn’t matter. There was nothing left to consider. The amount of money they had wouldn’t last two more months, and they couldn’t get more for two more months.
Baggs blinked. He knew that there was no other way to make money. He had spent the past six weeks trying desperately to find some other way, while his wrist was broken and he couldn’t play piano.
He sat there, staring at the chipped paint on the wall, breathing in the smell of the piano room. He thought, I love my life; I don’t want it to be over.
A dull fear was tugging at his throat and chest. He pushed it away and turned to the piano.
His fingers came up to the keys and he lost himself for a time, pressing on the white and black plastic and listening to the sound bounce back to him. As he had expected, the pointer finger and thumb on his left hand were useless, but it didn’t matter. He couldn’t be a pianist anymore anyways. The math just didn’t add up.
Baggs played for another hour, missing notes occasionally because of his deformity. He didn’t mind that he was missing notes. He wasn’t lying to himself anymore, and was purely playing for pleasure. He played a lot of different songs, but kept coming back to Moonlight Sonata. When he was done, he turned off the piano, and headed downstairs. Greggor was not in the entryway, and he slipped out the front door into the London night.