King Henry Short Pack One (The King Henry Tapes)

by Richard Raley

  Welf blocked the punch.

  Not all the way, just partially, and with his forearm. A crack followed. As promised, King Henry broke the wrist. Hope screeched behind him. What I say about gender politics at the Asylum being different? There was a threat at his back but King Henry was so focused on his target that he ignored it.

  More noise: a rapid one-two of blasting anima behind him. Cold at his back and then a wall of air whipping in to block it.

  Hope screeched again, “You fat whore!”

  Miranda had his back that time . . . not every time, but that time she did.

  King Henry kicked at Welf, nothing fancy just the weight of foot into ankle. Already off balance, Welf went down onto the ground face first. “Foul Mouth . . .” he mumbled through pain, dazed and confused.

  Fucking asshole. Fucking pompous asshole with a cold bitch of a girlfriend, treating people like shit, lording their fucking ‘lineage’ over our heads for years. Fucking sick of it. Fucking can’t take it anymore. “You bleed just like me, Welf! Blood ain’t blue, see?” King Henry screamed at him, slamming a fist down into his face.

  He crumbled the rest of the way.

  King Henry stood over him, shaking.

  He was still too focused to notice but he’d had the scene relayed to him enough times to know how it all went down. Welf made a move on him. Pocket noticed, started to follow, but Jason stopped him with a big hand. Jesus took exception and told him to please remove it . . . about as nicely as King Henry himself would have in a similar situation.

  After King Henry punched Welf, those three started throwing at the same time. Behind his back, Hope threw a cryo-spike at King Henry that could have done some serious damage—and is about as fun as it sounds—only Miranda blocked it with a gust of air that threw all the snow and frost into Hope’s face.

  Jesus and Pocket weren’t a match for Jason . . . no one was really a match for Jason, but they slowed him enough. Enough for King Henry to repay Welf for his kindness that first day back from the funeral.

  If the fight had ended there, if it had just revolved around the usual suspects of the Foul Mouth and the Nazi Asshole . . . but it didn’t. Samson had placed the class in such a way that every reaction created yet another and another, the atom bomb of class fights.

  Val sees Miranda needs help, Quinn and Jessica block her path. Raj tries to step in to save Val, Asa pushes Raj for protecting Val and he ends up colliding with Quinn, who . . .

  Or maybe the second group? All the floromancers and faunamancers yell at Jason for pummeling Pocket and Jesus, all the corpusmancers back up Jason, who . . .

  Or maybe in the middle? Estefan and Curt both react and try to be the leader in diffusing the situation, both of them run into each other, Curt pushes Estefan, since Estefan is a momma’s boy, it’s Debra who screams at Curt for touching her man, who . . .

  Fucking insanity.

  Pushing, anima discharges, yelling, screaming.

  Behind him, Miranda and Hope pulled at each other’s hair.

  In front of him on the ground, Welf’s eyes rolled into the back of his head.

  Guess I did break something.

  I accidentally broke the whole class.

  Jason finally removed Pocket and Jesus from his path and on he came for Round Two.

  Wasn’t no foreplay with the words this time around. Welf was down, Jason was pissed.

  Jason went at King Henry like a force of nature. Like some Conan the Barbarian shit.

  King Henry threw a punch but Jason caught it in his huge hand. That’s never happened before, King Henry had time to think before Jason yanked him into the air by his wrist. He dangled there like a piñata on a string and Jason’s fist was all the stick the corpusmancer boy needed.

  One.

  Two.

  Three.

  Huge meaty right crosses smashing into King Henry’s face.

  Four.

  Just for good measure.

  King Henry tumbled to the ground. He’d never been so overmatched in his life. Hadn’t even been any time for an iron fist. His face already bruised up and blood dripped from a broken nose. Ain’t the first time you taken one for the team, buddy, you wasn’t pretty to begin with.

  King Henry slouched, on his knees.

  Jason’s chest heaved looking down at him. “How the fuck are you still awake, Foul Mouth?”

  King Henry started laughing. It was phlegmy, so King Henry spit out some blood mid-laugh, but he never stopped the chuckles from flowing. “That all you got, pussy?” he cracked through bloody teeth.

  Jason’s foot reared back and slammed into King Henry’s face.

  Five.

  The smaller boy finally tilted over backwards, splayed out on the ground. Beaten soundly. A bloody mess.

  King Henry still laughed, his nose blowing bubbles of blood. “Thanks for helping, Jackson, but there’s not enough snow to make an angel.”

  Dark as his skin was you could still see Jason’s face pale. “You’re crazy, Foul Mouth.”

  King Henry stayed there in the dirt long after Jason had collected Welf. Long after Samson had restored order. Long after Pocket and Jesus and Raj and Miranda and Val had all come by to see if he was okay.

  King Henry stayed there, looking up at the sky.

  Guess you win.

  But I fucking fought, didn’t I?

  *

  There are a number of possible punishments at the Asylum.

  Most ain’t as odd as you’d expect them to be. Asylum does nothing better than pretending to be normal. Of course, normal school punishments make a showing before the abnormal ones. Detention is euphemized into Forced Remedial Study, taking place every school night at the Asylum during the nightly free time students are given around dinner. Free Sundays can be taken away from you and, since the Asylum is a campus as much as a school, there are also the punishments not related to academia: horse stall duty, bathroom duty, dishwashing duty, far far too many duties.

  The biggest threats come from the carrot, not the stick. Every student with family wants dispensations to go home for the holidays. Of course, if you don’t have any family to go back to . . . it won’t work to keep you in line. Especially if your family is shrinking in number every day.

  But if the shit really hits the fan . . . there’s only one punishment worthy of note at the Asylum, one punishment whispered at, hinted at, feared by every single student, even the most pugnacious and larcenous among them: the Holding Room.

  The entirety of Ultra Class ’09 was bundled up and thrown into the Holding Room.

  Sitting inside of it, looking around, it’s not as scary as its reputation. King Henry had been inside it once before. When . . . uh . . . someone . . . wink, wink . . . nudge, nudge . . . stole the Lady’s ceremonial staff at the end of my first year. It was returned. No harm done. The perpetrator was never caught. A whole lot of fuss for nothing.

  But it won King Henry a stay in the Holding Room.

  One night.

  Enough to make him understand why it had a reputation.

  King Henry was a geomancer. You lock me up and I try to break the lock. The lock don’t break and . . . I guess I’m gonna sit there like a good little boy, ain’t I?

  The Holding Room is in the basement levels of the Administration Building. Which means it is serious shit. ESLED offices, the Learning Council, Recruiter offices, all are located in the same basement levels. To get to them you must walk through a metal detector, through a guarded reinforced steel door, and down a stairwell with two more guarded gates. The guard firmly in the school portion of Admin building was a kindly old fat man that was more likely to need saving from a heart attack than anything else. But once you reach the secret government side of the doors?

  Fucking sidearms and taser prods.

  Tell you right away you’re in serious trouble.

  Not as a student but as a mancer.

  It wasn’t thirty teenagers being led down to the Holding Room, it was thirty adults who sho
uld have known better than to overstep the rules, especially into a full out brawl. Classmates had used the Mancy on each other as a weapon.

  Not.

  Fucking.

  Allowed.

  Outside of the Winter War or a teacher’s direct instructions it’s one of the gravest actions that can be taken at the Asylum. If you get caught, punishment is swift. It’s why even evil bitches like the Three Queens are smart enough to do their work in bathrooms and closets where teachers won’t stumble upon them.

  Thus: the Holding Room.

  The Holding Room is shaped like a sphere. A sphere, at its center a single pillar, all paneled with the same white plastic reflective surface. It reminded King Henry of Cerebro, of all the X-Men comics he’d read growing up. Only this sphere was not an object of hope but a prison cell of the utmost despair. It had slender beds jutting from the incline, in two rows completely around in circles. All white, all surgical. Hard beds, barely more than rubber mats, you wouldn’t even let your dog sleep on something so tough.

  There was no sign of comfort in sight. Just the sphere, just the white reflections, just the pillar.

  The pillar . . . the pillar was why the Holding Room worked the way it did.

  Every ten seconds in the Holding Room, whatever anima you managed to pool was ripped right out of your body.

  Not a fucking clue how it’s done.

  Maybe one day though.

  Locks are made to be broken.

  *

  Fines Samson led the class in, told them to sit the fuck down, and to shut the fuck up—his exact words. He then took off to find some backup for dealing with the mess Ultra Class ‘09 created.

  Sitting there, King Henry felt good for the first time in months. He looked horrible. But he felt good. Need any more proof how fucked up you are? His face was mash, would be bruised for days. His nose bled, broken probably. His knuckles hurt, bled too, all that, but this was a familiar feeling. Hands in pain no matter how he held them, arms tired from all the swinging, the rest of his body strangely light from the adrenaline, his heart reacting to the merest changes from his fight or flight instincts.

  He felt good.

  King Henry felt something other than anger.

  Something other than anger kept the Gap at bay.

  Even King Henry’s little surprised bouts of grunting and humping with Valentine had been either angry or oddly impersonal. But this . . . satisfaction after putting a beating on Welf’s dumb ass . . . gratitude at the way Pocket and Jesus threw themselves on Jason to keep him from interrupting . . . hope that maybe it’s not just grunting and humping and maybe it might lead to something more over the way Val took out Jessica, Quinn, and Asa . . . He even felt respect for Jason over him being such a gigantic monster.

  King Henry felt.

  He felt good.

  Three months of emotion flooded into him all at once. At being alone. At being without a reason to keep going. At the Lady for sending Ceinwyn away. At Pocket for having his back. At Val for her hug that was so perfectly timed. At Raj for his stupid lady troubles with Naomi. At Miranda for waking up to see if he was okay that first night. At Welf for being such a pompous ass but . . . it’s such a Welf thing to do, ain’t it?

  Three months of emotion and King Henry could either laugh or cry . . . so he started laughing.

  King Henry’s classmates stared, like maybe anima had finally gotten to him, and it only made King Henry laugh harder. Pocket had two black eyes. Jesus had a bloody nose. Welf kept making little moaning noises from where he laid with his head on Hope’s lap. Jason’s pant leg was missing. A hunk of Miranda’s red hair had been pulled out. Hope had frost burns on her face. Estefan had somehow lost his coat. Curt one of his shoes. Quinn, Jessica, Asa, and Val all had burn marks on their clothes.

  King Henry looked the worst out of all of them, but . . .

  It was such an absurd scene, so King Henry laughed. He laughed until he cried. Not the tears of rage and frustration he had shed every morning for three months but tears of joy about how very stupid, wonderfully stupid the people around him could be when it came to protecting each other.

  Pocket stared at him, worried.

  King Henry pointed at his eye and grinned back, still laughing. “If you had a mirror . . .”

  “What?” Pocket asked, uncertain. It made his eyes wide and . . .

  Jesus burst out laughing beside Pocket. “Raccoon boy better than anyone at putting his face in front of fists, El Rey, even you and your nose. Should have seen him out there. Such skill, he never let Jason miss.”

  Across the room, Jason chuckled. “You crazy bastard, Valencia, where you learn to make an arm go dead like that? I still can’t feel my fingers.”

  All the guys in the class—save Welf—immediately started filling in the details of what had happened, laughing over it all.

  The girls . . . not so much.

  “What is wrong with you all?” Hope screeched. “Look at what he did to Heinrich, Jason!”

  Welf moaned his consent.

  “He deserved it for defending you,” Miranda shouted across the room.

  “Shut up, Daniels!” Quinn backed up her girl, “sit your pasty ass down!”

  “I really don’t think we should be fighting—” Raj tried to keep things calm.

  “No!” Miranda stood up, pointing at Hope. “You are horrible. You are mean! I feel bad for what happened to Heinrich but maybe next time he’ll think twice about having . . . a . . . a . . .”

  “Frozen twat,” King Henry whispered under his breath.

  “A frozen twat for a girlfriend!” Miranda finished, seeming surprised by her own word choice but not pulling it back either.

  Hope stood, Welf’s head thudding on the rubber bed. “Are you actually defending the Foul Mouth?” she asked, aghast. “Even you never stooped so low!”

  “This isn’t about King Henry,” Miranda decided, “this is about you and me!”

  “I see it now,” Hope responded snidely, “just waiting for Valentine to get through with him, were you? Now you’re standing up for the poor broken bad boy with a dead mommy?”

  Silence filled the room.

  Hope seemed to realize she’d gone too far in the open, right in front of all the different cliques and counter-cliques of our class. But she’s a Hunting; an Eighth Generation mancer. She stood there proud, sure in her own correctness.

  “Sit down and stop arguing with the frozen twat, Miranda,” King Henry said to cast away the silence. “She’s not mad about me beating up Welf, she’s mad about you beating her up.”

  “I am not!” Hope complained. “And she did not!”

  “Your face just magically freezer burned itself?” King Henry asked.

  Everyone studied Hope’s face.

  Even the girls laughed this time. Quinn slapped Jessica’s arm to get her to stop giggling.

  Miranda smirked at her work. “Aero-updraft conjuration,” she said. “Samson taught it to me in Survival and Defense.”

  “Samson also told all of you to shut up and sit down,” Fines Samson himself bellowed as the Holding Room’s door swung open.

  Aww, shit.

  He had Strange and the Lady behind him.

  *

  Fines Samson stalked the room, glaring at the whole class as Miss Strange dove quickly from student to student, checking out the damage from what was now being called ‘the Brawl’. Strange’s expression was hardly any friendlier than Samson’s. Mostly, she scowled over each scrape, cut, and bruise like its very existence offended her.

  No Slush was applied, making King Henry think that maybe the Holding Room screwed with more than just mancer pools. Instead she handed out pain pills, squirted iodine from a bottle, and applied band-aids with the ferocity of a four-year-old’s new discovery.

  No more laughter was heard.

  Grins and smiles over how stupid the situation was were hidden behind backs or aimed at the ground and quickly mastered when Samson’s gaze fell upon anyone looki
ng too pleased with themself.

  Hate from Hope and Miranda was also hidden, each girl masking feelings even if their eyes never left each other.

  King Henry . . . still felt good. Or better than he had before the fight. Punishment had long ago ceased to have any effect on him. No guilt here. Once you’ve been whipped with a belt, detention—even detention in an anima-devoid sphere—ain’t much of a worry in your life.

  It can get a lot worse.

  It had been a lot worse.

  The Lady hobbled over to him, motioning Miranda and Pocket to move out of the way. They did—standing up to Hope being one thing, the Lady’s another—and the Lady creaked her way down to the bed one popping joint at a time. She let out a deep sigh when she was down, situating her cane, her burgundy sweater, and her breasts . . . cuz they are trying to escape to the floor like a pair of slinkys.

  “Is this the earthquake we were talking about or should I expect more chaos in the future?”

  He glanced down at his bloody knuckles. “No promises,” he said through an equally bloody mouth.

  She took his hands in her own. “I’ve never understood why you men like to punch each other so much when this is the result.”

  “Provides a quick resolution to arguments you women let rage for years,” he shot back.

  “It does that, but resolutions of that sort can be final when anima is deployed in their making,” she cautioned the whole room.

  “I didn’t,” King Henry said.

  The Lady seemed surprised. “You did that much damage to poor Mr. Welf without a geo-interlace conjuration?”

  He shrugged, it hurt like everything else but . . . feels good, man. “He’s never been able to take a punch.”

  The Lady considered King Henry for a time. After a moment, he felt anima pooling and then hydro-anima flushed into his hands from hers. The Holding Room’s effect wiped it out almost immediately, but not before his knuckles scabbed over, healing days in seconds.

  “Why are you helping the Foul Mouth when Heinrich can barely talk?” Hope snapped at the Lady. “What is wrong with this school?!? Have you all gone mad? He’s a Welf and this . . . disgusting perversion of the social order . . . is . . . nothing!”