City of Cruelty and Copper (Temperance Era)

by Rhiannon Paille

  “You knew the theme.”

  He smirked. “I requested this theme ten years ago. The Senate chose it this year.”

  I didn’t know whether to think of this as sympathy, a grudge or something else entirely. The crowd stomped wildly on the bleachers above and the sound interrupted our quiet moment of contemplation.

  A trap door opened and a platform underneath the sandy floor rose from it.

  I screamed. It wasn’t even something I was aware I was capable of anymore. I flailed against the chains matted to the wall. I kicked but Cray was on the other side of the room, far enough away that my anger did nothing.

  There was a young girl in the center of the Arena. She had fiery red hair. She wore a costume that was meant for me. Light blue sparkly jeans covered her spaghetti legs while a Canada Wonderland t-shirt covered her barely defined chest. She clutched a ratty brown teddy bear in her left hand. She looked disoriented, like she had just woken up from a long nap. To me she was the epitome of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, only, they were going to find her and rip her to pieces.

  “Fable the Immortal!” Rab Ketterling shouted as the crowd went wild.

  I begged the girl to scream, to say something but she moved to her feet, dumbfounded, nodded blithely and Rab grabbed her hand and held it up for everyone to see.

  My stomach churned. I was a dare devil, stunt woman, insanity case. She was just a girl, a real fifteen year old girl that was in my place. If they cut her she would bleed, if they burned her, the skin would blister, if the animals or the zombies bit her, she wouldn’t heal. If they brought out the maze, she’d be crushed.

  I had no words.

  Of all the dirty things I thought Cray was capable of, this wasn’t one of them. My shock registered with him and he winked at me, actually winked. I wanted to strangle him, put him in the Arena, make him face the things they threw at me.

  “I told you there was more than one way to kill Fable the Immortal.”

  “I’m going to kill you.”

  “Go ahead, nobody will care once their beloved Fable the Immortal is found out. We can stop these silly celebrations and start doing what’s really important.”

  I was listening now. I was also watching the fake Fable as she numbly walked over to the rusted Ferris Wheel and sat down in one of the carriages. It shuddered to a start and soon she was flying around and around. It went slow at first, and sped up incrementally, tossing the fake Fable around in the chair. Normally I would have been doing acrobatics, twirling, climbing around the thing, dangling at dangerous heights, but all I wanted fake Fable to do was hold on tight. Don’t let go.

  “You want to know who she is don’t you?”

  I growled. “Get to the point, she’s not going to last five minutes and you know it.”

  “Fine. I don’t agree with the other Crays. I think Immortality is a mistake. We should be out there rehabilitating the Earth. We need to find other civilizations, we can’t be the only ones that survived.”

  The Ferris Wheel stopped, a dizzy fake Fable stumbled out from it, shielding her eyes from the sun. She tottered on her stilettos and pitched forward, slumping in the sand until the carousel lit up, the painted horses spinning up and down. The crowd booed. They thought this was all part of the act, my act. They thought I wasn’t giving them what they came to see, me doing death defying stunts and impossible feats. They came to watch me burned at the stake, impaled by knives, shot by tommy guns, decapitated, shredded by bears. They came for the danger and the carnage and the fact that they never had to feel guilty for their sick obsession because no matter what they did to me, I lived.

  Fake Fable stumbled to the carousel and narrowly jumped, catching one of the ponies by the neck and sliding down to the metal floor. I watched her grip the boxy metal stirrup with both hands as the carousel spun at incomprehensible speeds.

  “So you want me dead.”

  “I want the public to think you’re dead so they can vote on Nuclear Expeditions.”

  “You want them to forget the Fountain of Youth.”

  “Yes.”

  I hummed, my heart careening out of control. The carousel slowed to a stop and the girl fell off it, landing on her back. She didn’t move. “Sounds noble. Except for her.”

  Cray moved a fraction of an inch closer to me, putting his fingers on his lips. “I know what you’re thinking. We stole some unsuspecting girl from the East Side, drugged her and put her in the Arena. Or she’s a clone. Or she’s a great grandchild of yours. Or she volunteered.”

  I tasted bile in the back of my throat. Who would knowingly volunteer to be tortured and killed in front of a crowd?

  Fake Fable sat up, faced with a Gladiator, one of the guys I regularly sparred with when it wasn’t Temperance Day. He picked her up and threw her across the Arena. She skidded as she hit the sand, her body slamming against the metal crate of the boat ride. Her arm looked broken. I begged him to realize it wasn’t me but the crowd was on their feet, shouting at the top of their lungs.

  “FAY-BULL! FAY-BULL! FAY-BULL!”

  They chanted my name like it might convince me to fight against the Gladiator. A whip caromed off the metal boat basin and I cringed as the tip flicked fake Fable’s ankle. Her mouth formed an O as she gasped and cried out, the wound on her ankle gushing blood. I remembered my first shaving experience at twelve, only three years before I was made immortal. I nicked myself, a fresh line of blood spilling from my fair white skin.

  “This is going to cause a riot.” I wanted to close my eyes but I couldn’t stop watching the girl in the Arena. She whimpered as she dragged her body around the basin away from the succession of whiplashes that struck the metal, coming dangerously close to her skin. I knew what was on the edge of that whip, barbed wire. It was added when they realized that the regular whips did nothing to my skin, not even welts. It wasn’t fun if I didn’t heal instantaneously in front of them.

  Cray glanced at me sideways. “It’s going to start a civil war.”

  Probably.

  If I died there would be an uproar.

  Somehow I cared less about that than about the girl in the Arena risking her life on my behalf. Maybe she thought this was for the greater good. She was the spitting image of me in a lot of ways, maybe she was trying to end my suffering by making the people think of me as dead. Whatever her reasons were, I hated all of them. She didn’t deserve to be in that Arena, I did. There was no way I was going to stay in captivity, hidden from their city until the end truly came. There was no way I was going to consume the isotope poisoned orange juice Cray had offered me for weeks before Temperance Day. I wanted him removed, replaced.

  The Gladiator wrapped up the whip and attached it to his belt with a leather button clasp. He was dressed traditionally, all leather, face mask, bulging tanned muscles striping out from everywhere the leather didn’t cover. Fake Fable huddled on the other side of the boat basin, the crowd still shouting at her. The Gladiator played the crowd, spreading his arms, laughing, pretending this was all part of the show. He lifted fake Fable over his head and twirled her around, tossing her into the middle of the Arena. Her jeans split open at the knee from the force as she slid across the gravelly sand.

  A bomb hit the Arena. It wasn’t well aimed but it was enough to make fake Fable jump to her feet. The measly fire ball popped reminding me of caps. Shots we used to put in those toy guns. They were basically blanks, but they could still generate a nasty bit of fire and smoke. They always loaded the crowd up with projectile bombs, nothing as big as a grenade, but deadly enough.

  Cotton candy bombs hit the Arena floor as Fable dragged her human body around the Arena, avoiding the Gladiator. I was surprised she was still alive. I was surprised Hattie hadn’t sent out the firing squad yet, why the F-16’s hadn’t unleashed the real bombs, why flame throwers hadn’t come to prove I couldn’t be burnt to a crisp. Fake Fable reached the Ferris Wheel again and climbed into a carriage. They didn’t turn it on, she just sat there cowering, hoping th
at the metal contraption would protect her from the bombs. She held her left arm to her chest, it looked loose, definitely broken. She had fear in her dark eyes, like she expected them to bring out the guillotine and chop her head off.

  If I was going to die, it wasn’t going to be a quick death.

  Hattie.

  She must have known. She must have thought that they were going to play up the death of Fable the Immortal. Make it some part of the act. Prolong the death defying stunts, make me a tourist at a Theme Park, make me seem like a normal girl. There was no way she knew it wasn’t me out there. She must have been standing there watching me like everyone else, waiting for the old Fable to emerge from the bones of this weakling.

  For once they were really waiting for me. Their voices shouted my name with a twinge of desperation. They didn’t want me to die, they never wanted me to die. It was easier to justify their insanity if I was impermeable.

  “Are you enjoying yourself?” Cray sneered.

  “The first thing I’m going to do when I get a hold of you is rip your fingernails off one by one.”

  “And why is that?”

  “Fable the Immortal isn’t meant to die.”

  “I beg to differ,” Cray said, turning his attention back to the Arena. He took a step closer, his face practically pressed up against the checkered metal window.

  I followed his gaze. The Gladiator had retreated. The trap doors opened, and fake Fable screamed as a zombie tiger lumbered out from one of the doors. Come on fake Fable, I thought. It was a zombie tiger, nothing like a regular one. Ones that hadn’t been tested on were lupine, nimble, acute. These ones were sluggish, disoriented, and easy to kill. Fake Fable noticed it at the same time I did. She crawled out of the carriage carefully, looking for a weapon. Seeing nothing she shook her hair out carefully, keeping eye contact with the zombie tiger. She reached down and plucked off her stilettos, holding one of them with the razor sharp heel outwards.

  I almost cheered her on.

  The crowd mentality changed.

  I smirked.

  “You so sure she’s going to die?” I drawled at Cray, loving the fact that any second now fake Fable was going to lunge at that zombie tiger and kill it. Pack the four inch heel into its skull and call it a day.

  Cray didn’t look at me. “You so sure she’s going to live?”

  A blast of heat erupted from behind the little stick figure fake Fable, her hair, her clothes, everything blazing. Flames rolled across her skin, blisters formed and popped, her face distorted, her eyes rolled into the back of her head. She twisted and fell on her back, seizing at the pressure of the heat. My mouth hung open, my eyes stung with tears I didn’t know I could cry, a single drop from each eye.

  The crowd went silent.

  Men in biohazard suits came with fire extinguishers, sprayed off the charcoal Fable. “You can’t do this Cray! You can’t kill me and keep me locked up forever! Bullshit about the Nuclear Expeditions! Bullshit about everything. You want to shut me up so the people don’t believe in me anymore! You want to erase the past, you bastard.” I flung all of my force onto the chains, loosening them minutely. It was enough. My bones shifted, my hand slid through the thick metal shackle. I focused, pulling my other hand free. Cray crossed the room faster than me, threw the door open and shut it behind him. I heard the lock snick.

  I rammed my hands against the door, pushed as hard as I could. I glanced at the bolts that kept the door on its hinges. My fingers worried away at the cracks between the metal, desperately trying to pull the pins out.

  The Arena was silent. It was like nobody was in the stands. I glanced at the window for a second, the smoke clearing, the fake Fable a black skeleton. I gagged on my own tongue and kicked the door begging it to open. I didn’t care anymore if she was a clone or a great granddaughter or a volunteer. All I cared about was getting into the Arena before all hell broke loose.

  It was too late.

  Colin Cray stepped into the Arena, his gait steady as he assessed the corpse. The other founding families crowded the edges of the Arena, most notably, Connie Chung, ancestor of the late Michelle Chung. I forgot how many generations.

  Connie looked broken.

  I felt broken, and I wasn’t even the one in the Arena.

  Colin tilted his face to the sun. “Fable the Immortal . . . is dead!”

  The crowds booed. I pounded the metal grate covering the window. He wasn’t going to do this to me. It was enough that his family considered me a menace to society. They thought it was unfair. I was immortal, they weren’t. Therefore, I should be locked up, kept in a lead box forty stories under their fair city. I should be punished because of the fortune I had founded. I screamed at the top of my lungs hoping that someone – anyone was in the hallway. They had no idea. The Crays had no idea what it meant to live forever. It meant watching everyone you knew die. It meant being unable to eat, unable to sleep. It meant watching the same sun rise in the same sky, in the same city, day after day after day. I was exhausted. I was bored. The only interesting thing I had to look forward to was this day, Temperance Day, when they’d lovingly try to kill me. Hattie made a game of it, coming up with different themes, surprising me with new attractions at the last second.

  I loved everything about Temperance Day.

  The crowd was stunned. Nobody spoke as Colin Cray crouched over the body and plucked fake Fable’s hand from the sand. He touched her with his bare hand, gross. He let go, her limp limb falling to the ground like a dead weight. Whoever she had been, that Fable was dead.

  I turned to the door, crouching, working on the pins. The door swung open before I had a chance to remove the first pin. My fingers got caught, bending them backwards, snapping the bones. I winced, feeling nothing as the door swung back. I pulled my hand out and stood.

  “Mom?” Jonathan Cray asked, scanning the room. His eyes fell on me. He froze. “Fable?”

  I licked my lips, an inside joke rolling across my tongue. “Will the real Fable please stand up?” I brushed past Jonathan, his mouth hanging open, questions in his eyes as my pop culture reference abated his intelligence. I popped my joints on the way down the hall. This was going to be fun. The people were going to castrate him.

  “Fable!” Jonathan called after me.

  I quickened my pace, my combat boots calmly clicking along the stone. I reached the grates and pulled them open effortlessly. Hattie Alexander was on her knees, her eyes puffy from crying. She looked up when she heard me, her eyes wide.

  “Fable?” Her voice was a squeaky whisper as I stepped into the chamber and pulled the gate closed behind me. I didn’t lock it. Hattie looked at me, questions in her eyes.

  “Who was that . . .?”

  I thought about the answers Cray hadn’t given me and chose the one that hurt the least. “A clone. Don’t worry. Cray thinks this will work and I think he’s going to get a stiletto through the back of his skull.”

  “You can’t—“

  Hattie didn’t get to finish as Jonathan reached the grate and hastily pulled it open. I wasn’t waiting for him. I slammed my fist into the button that lifted the gate to the Arena and strode inside. From the sounds of it, Cray was giving a fair weathered eulogy, trying to calm the people while also giving them hope that there was another future ahead of them. Oh, there was another future alright, one that involved him being dead.

  Jonathan was on my heels, his towering six foot shadow covered my five foot something shadow as I stepped lively and grabbed a stray stiletto from the fake Fable.

  “Fable!” Jonathan shouted.

  “Fable!” A little girl in the crowd echoed. Colin Cray turned, his face blanched. I smiled devilishly, savoring every moment. The sound washed through the crowd as I shook out my fiery orange-red hair and put my hands on my hips.

  “Nobody kills Fable the Immortal and gets away with it Cray.” I raised my stiletto prepared to puncture his puny skull with it when a strong hand wrapped around my wrist and pulled me away.


  Jonathan.

  Damn him.

  I whirled out of his grasp and lunged for Colin but he scurried out of the Arena like the rat he was, coming face to face with Hattie Alexander. I watched as men in Biohazard suits slapped metal shackles on him. He wailed like a child as they dragged him into the bowels of Temperance.

  Jonathan’s gaze cut into me. I met his stare and opened my hand, letting the stiletto fall on the ground.

  “Remove the cadaver, I’ll distract the crowd,” I said through clenched teeth.

  Jonathan let go, but instead of fading into the shadows like the rest of the founding families, he stalked to center stage and looked at the crowd.

  “Well? Fable the Immortal isn’t dead!”

  I rolled my eyes as men in biohazard suits moved deftly towards the cadaver and under the guise of a couple of smoke bombs, made her disappear from the Arena. I still had no idea who she was or why she had ended up in the Arena, but I was glad that her death had been quick.

  The crowd erupted, a fresh burst of ruckus shaking the stands so hard my body vibrated.

  Jonathan winked at me.

  “Are you ready for the real show to begin?”

  Oh hell, all this shit and he was still going to make me jump through hoops? He had to be kidding me. He stretched his hand out and I took it, flashing my award winning smile as he raised our clasped hands to the crowd.

  “The show must go on, right?”

  About the Author

  Rhiannon is a booksmith from the North, telling her fantastical tales to unsuspecting folk on mountains, in valleys and mostly in cities around the world. She holds a PhD in Metaphysical Science and Parapsychology, which is to say she happens to know a lot about what goes bump in the night. When she's not writing she's singing karaoke, burning dinner, and hiding her superhero identity. She'd like to own a unicorn one day, as long as it doesn't eat her. You'll find her sipping iced cappuccino despite her allergy to coffee at yafantasyauthor.com

  Thank you for taking time to read City of Cruelty and Copper. If you enjoyed it, please consider telling your friends or posting a short review. Word of mouth is an author’s best friend and much appreciated.