Yet she doesn’t feel its weight at all, doesn’t know if it even has weight.
It whips out in front of her, then retreats backwards, out of her sight.
But she can feel it twitching behind her, delightedly, like a puppy finally let out of its confinement to greet its owner.
She can feel its power source tingling at the base of her spine.
A tail? she asks amusedly.
your Pulse, he says back.
“Give it to me!” the assistant shrieks.
he’s non-regen, that pathetic pigfucker, Malek giggles. he can’t grow back any body part, he can only reattach it.
Let’s cut off something more valuable then.
Malek almost whimpers with excitement.
(Victoria, I really did underestimate-)
She dives at the assistant, her Pulse streaming behind her like a war banner, lashing back and forth with bloodlust, its curved spines bared.
But something hits her in the side, knocking her off her path and sending her body skidding on the hard ground.
Her Pulse, without her willing it to, catches her before she falls and maneuvers her back onto her feet.
She pauses and remembers she has two opponents.
Now she has a clear look at the journalist’s Pulse, the one that had first grabbed her and taken everything away from her.
Swirling patches of blackness cover his face and arms.
They’ve erupted through his skin in some places, passing through his clothing as if it doesn’t exist, and wave from his back and chest like a grotesque forest of razors.
They spread out into a mess of massive distorted limbs, angled and sharp like a bat’s wings, but hard and wicked like no animal she’s ever seen.
“You’re my favorite,” he says fondly.
“I’m not your anything,” Victoria murmurs.
The assistant moves at the same time she does; the journalist moves a split second later.
The assistant’s Pulse springs forward to seize her, but her Pulse, or perhaps it’s Malek, responds immediately, curling through the air like a coil and encompassing it like a boa constrictor.
She throws him bodily over her head and he smacks into the ceiling.
He hits the ground with a thump, but at that point she’s already turned her attention to the journalist, whose Pulse is faster, who reacts much quicker.
Her tail seizes one limb of his Pulse, a monstrous wing, but the right one swells and seizes her leg, claw-like and harsh.
She lets out an involuntary grunt.
Her Pulse squeezes his tightly, but he refuses to let go.
With one quick flex, the journalist crushes her leg into a gooey mixture of blood, splintered bone, and fleshy mush.
47
“They don’t like me, Dad. I’m never going back!” she tearfully tells him after the first day of school.
“He’s gone to a better place,” says the youth minister of Callahan Church.
“Doesn’t he look so peaceful in there?” her aunt says. “Why are you scared to look? Don’t you want to see your daddy just one last time? You’ll never see him again.”
“Why don’t you look at it, Tori?” the journalist croons. Blood on his hand. Her eye in his palm.
She stares at her father’s corpse in its coffin and sees it sitting up and whistling, gesturing for her to join him, just like he used to when she was young. When they’d spend all day in bed watching comedies or sci-fi movies and go out in their pajamas to dinner.
“So peaceful. It’s so peaceful here,” he rasps. “Everyone likes you here. You’ll be happy and that’s all that matters, isn’t it? Being happy?”
Victoria.
Victoria.
She feels like she’s sinking, floating in an endless white pool of light.
An ocean made of light.
She’s staring up at a rippling surface of blackness.
It is peaceful here.
She closes her eyes and sees without seeing someone below her.
Resting on the ocean’s floor.
It’s her, Tori, of course.
Lord of the Flies clutched to her chest.
Hair blazing in the sunlight.
Neither caring, nor even noticing that she is drowning.
Victoria blinks, her hand moving slowly through the thick light.
She blots it out with her palm.
It cascades down around her in a shower, a lovely downpour of incandescence.
It’s all dark now.
She can’t see a thing.
But she can breathe.
Victoria.
“I know,” she says to the voice in the darkness. “Just give me a moment.”
you don’t have one.
get up.
She chuckles a little.
“Of course not.”
48
She is blinded by light once again.
But this one isn’t quite so heavenly.
It’s merely revolting. Artificial.
She’s repulsed by its hospital-like glow, its cold sterilized impartiality.
“Bitch!”
Something hard and fast strikes her in the cheek, snapping her neck to the right.
She can’t seem to move, not yet, but her tongue swirls in her mouth, jostling the teeth he’d just kicked loose.
She spits a few out.
they’ll grow back.
She spits again, this time in contempt rather than urgency.
The assistant kicks her in the side.
She lets out a surprised grunt, winded by the force and thrown onto her other side.
She hardly has a second to breathe before he’s bearing down on her again, this time stomping his foot down on her stomach.
Caught again by surprise, she really feels this one.
Her insides turn to jelly and she howls.
For a moment, she’s Tori again, just Tori, in so much pain she can barely breathe, with a missing leg, missing teeth, and two sadists to witness her at her weakest.
He bends down onto one knee, hovering above her like a vulture, sparing her from the light but enshrouding her in his invasive shadow.
His hand is on her throat and his Pulse begins to materialize again.
victoria.
Such a regal name for such a regal little princess, am I right, sweetheart, Victoria, a name fit for not just a queen, but the queen, don’t let anyone call you Tori, every syllable has power, doesn’t it-?
He bears down on her throat, wanting to cut through it, to detach her head from her body.
But who cares what he wants?
Victoria surges up.
She’s in the air and so is he, and he’s shocked, his eyes are wide, they flicker downwards, to the suddenly distant ground, and now he’s falling, gravity taking a hold of him, and she’s falling too, she’s twisting, gracefully, instinctually, in a practiced twirl learned from years and years of dance training, and her Pulse, which had propelled them upwards in the first place, cuts cleanly through the air like the blades of a helicopter.
His eyes are impossibly wide.
They’re rounder than she’s ever seen, almost laughably so, as though he were an animated character.
His mouth opens in shock.
And both he, and his detached, dazed and still blinking head, fall to the ground.
The latter rolls some distance before it comes to a stop.
She sticks the landing, as always.
Lands on the balls of her feet.
On both legs.
Her Pulse extended in a graceful arc behind her, bending through the air like a cursive letter, dripping with blood.
Her arms extended as though she were landing from a high beam.
She gives the journalist a bow, one mocking arm crossing her chest, the other outstretched in faux respect.
Malek’s smile on her lips.
The journalist stares at her listlessly for a moment.
Then he applauds.
49
She looks down at her new leg.
What the hell is this, Malek?
well…that is unusual, he comments.
She scowls.
And continues to stare at her leg, which is from knee to toe covered in greyish-black skin.
It almost looks like it’s rotting.
She shakes it to make sure she can actually feel it.
Wiggles her toes and flexes her foot.
Strange.
“I really didn’t like him,” the journalist admits.
She doesn’t look at him.
Instead, she’s inspecting her arms.
There’s a patch of darkened skin on the inside of her elbow.
Another trailing on her wrist.
They swirl on her skin like living tattoos.
Like original sin.
“So coarse. Vile. A real brute.”
He raises his arm smoothly, blocking Victoria’s high swing.
His other arm shoots out at her, his hand clasping her throat.
He shakes her like a disobedient puppy, her feet dangling in the air.
Then he throws her back with a careless flick of his wrist; her body rolls several feet before coming to a halt near the center of the Arena. Victoria, on her back, is blinded by light.
“Most distasteful company. Thank you. I quite enjoyed that.”
She wipes blood off of her mouth, getting back to her feet.
How do I kill him?
Malek doesn’t answer, but she can sense him thinking.
Sizing the journalist up.
His thought process is quite curious.
She eases back even further on her control, letting him take a firmer grip on the reins.
He’s the balancing act keeping the tail under control and her body in sync with its thrust. He’s the ease with which the tail swings back and forth, the nimble, agile flexing of muscles.
She’s never used it before. She doesn’t know how to manipulate it and actually has a hard time just with the way it feels, the way it lingers on her skin, drags against it, feeling solid yet not quite. It is sharp, intimidating, and too bulky for her. An alien limb, attached to her spine.
But Malek wields it like a weapon made just for him, belonging only to him. It might as well be his arm, his leg, his eye.
lend me your body and i’ll lend you my soul.
It’s almost a promise.
A proclamation of loyalty.
The journalist’s Pulse, split into two halves like wings on his back, blots out the light.
It ripples with thin spines.
Black needles on two monstrous limbs that almost seem to breathe.
One of those needles bites into her arm.
She curses and stumbles back, wary of more projectiles, but before she can react, the journalist bears down on her with his left wing.
It rakes holes through her as his Pulse splits skin and muscle, the needles tearing her apart like bullets.
She brings up her own Pulse just in time to block the second blow and some of the barbs.
But she’s straining, pushing with all of her might against the journalist, who merely looks amused.
He relents on his force.
She falls forward, stumbling due to the sudden loss in opposing pressure.
And feels his hand in her hair, throwing her face down into the dirt.
She lets out an agonized scream, clutching her broken nose as her back arches in pain. The journalist’s hand is still in her hair; it presses down harder and harder.
With that punishing blow and the painful, steadily increasing pressure, she retreats even further.
Malek.
She is back in the darkness.
But it is an open darkness, not the crushing confinement of her cage.
He is by her side rather than behind her.
She lets him pass her.
He is outlined with light.
His hair, brilliant white, a shock of lightning.
She closes her eyes, but still sees the white, imprinted on her mind and soul.
She has little knowledge of how to fight.
She doesn’t have the technical know-how or the instinct for it.
But he does.
He’s brimming with excitement, with anticipation as he lashes out with his Pulse.
He lurches upwards, his Pulse slashing backwards, cutting through both her hair and the journalist’s fingers.
They fall in bloody clumps onto the ground, resting alongside strands of hair.
Her head feels light.
I’d been needing a haircut.
Malek finds this thought amusing.
He pushes her body off of the ground as he smiles manically through the pain, a mask of blood on his face.
He wipes it off, but she can still feel it there, hot, wet, and sticky, aching with pleasant savagery.
For the first time, his mind is almost completely open to her, his emotions and memories rushing through her, over her like a river threatening to pull her under.
The faces of people she’s never met flash before her eyes, some patient, some furious, some wise and compassionate, some taunting and judgmental.
All of them fighters.
The people she’d-he’d known, who taught him everything, directly, indirectly, with him, against him.
All of them run through her veins, flex her muscles, direct her eye.
She dives to the left and narrowly avoids another hit.
Malek rolls her back onto her feet and his Pulse catches the journalist off guard. It throws him off his feet.
Eager to capitalize on his unbalance, he uses his Pulse to propel himself faster at his enemy.
Victoria feels a thrill of exhilaration as she sinks her fists into the journalist’s face, hammering down on him with all of her might.
The journalist’s Pulse twists like a dying animal, lashing at her arms and any bit of skin it can reach, but she ignores it, even as it bites through skin, muscle, and major arteries.
He surges underneath her, easily managing to knock her off of him with a strong shove.
They stumble away from one another, almost like gentlemen agreeing to adhere to strict dueling distances.
When they both straighten again, he charges and she rushes to meet him.
He uses his Pulse rather easily too, she notices, their Pulses colliding perfectly, neither giving in to the other.
He seems to know how to twist, how to flex his body, take careful steps around her Pulse. The way he throws projectiles at her is easy, experienced, graceful, no movement wasted.
Victoria is disgusted by the degree of admiration Malek has for him.
i can’t help it, his pulse is so nice, Malek giggles like a child. large and he knows how to use it.
Victoria grits her teeth.
Enough games, Malek.
Malek grins.
The journalist is measured in his movements. He knows not to overextend.
Malek does the opposite.
His thoughts aren’t so much words as feelings, she realizes.
She can sense his understanding of the situation, read his instincts and reactions almost as well as her own.
And she is overwhelmed by his emotions too.
By how powerful they make him.
How the desperation becomes joy.
How he relishes every hit, how the pain makes him more frantic, more anxious for victory.
It’s more than a competitive streak; it’s a mania, a desire for closure, for triumph, for the sweet taste of domination.
He’s driven a little mad by his obsession.
And she, driven to desperation herself by her desire to survive, to escape, to live, is not immune to it.
his pulse is nice…
but mine is better.
So when he directs her body to move faster, and sloppier, she feels anxiety, but a touch of anticipation too.
When the journalist begins to falter, when his Pulse begins to stagger under hers as he’s battere
d again and again by her sheer brute force, by their brute force, she feels his vicious glee, combined with her own grim, savage satisfaction.
Her daddy told her that black wasn’t a color.
White is.
White is every color.
It’s light.
But black is the absence of light.
When she was little, she would close her eyes and feel a little scared, even though it was ridiculous, impractical to be so afraid of the dark that you couldn’t even close your own eyes.
scared of your own darkness?
it makes sense.
for as long as you live, it will hide within you.
it will be with you always.
just…as i will.
She feels his lips on her ear and shudders.
He’s repulsive.
Unbalanced.
Crude.
Sadistic.
But he’s hers now.
The journalist falters, his arm trembling ever so slightly as his Pulse is thrown back by hers.
Malek sees the weakness, the chink, and drives his dagger in immediately.
Victoria screams out in shock as pain splits her spine, as her Pulse divides itself into two.
Despite everything she’d felt, despite the elevated levels of pain she had ascended during the past hellish week, this is a pain she’s never experienced.
(that’s not true. it felt a little bit like this when you saw your father’s body, lying in that box, didn’t it?)
One half of her divided Pulse lashes out like a whip.
It’s met by the journalist’s Pulse, but the other half slides out to meet his arm.
And cuts it clean off.
The journalist’s mouth opens in shock, but before he can say anything, or even make a sound, she feels it tear again.
This time, it hurts a little less.
Just a smidgen.
Her Pulse, now divided into three lashing tails, is out of her control.
In a frenzy, the pieces wave like blades of grass in a tornado.
She turns her back to the journalist.
For most, turning one’s back on their opponent is dangerous.
But she has a feeling that for her, it is dangerous.
For the journalist.
For her enemies.
She doesn’t need to see it, think about it, or even control it.
All she has to do is feel it.
Feel her Pulse, Malek’s, slide through the journalist’s warm, soft body.
Victorian Tale Page 12