by Ethan Cooper
Each step brings with it an increase in the static, but my thirst drives me forward. The clank of the chain on the floor sounds a rhythmic beat alongside the static’s monotone chorus. The memory of how good this water tastes is almost a tangible flavor on my tongue. I reach out with a cupped palm to catch some. I open my mouth. Want to feel it splashing on my lips, flowing across my tongue and down my throat.
It dies before I get there.
The stream of water snakes its way down into the drain. Dropping to my hands and knees, tongue out, I’m going to lick the floor.
(don’t you’re not an)
(animal)
Before I can do that though, the static changes, taking on a new frequency that I haven’t felt before. It’s more than just sound this time; my whole body is buzzing, as if some outside force is trying to shake me apart. If it’s the static, it’s different—there’s a rapid popping sound, but I can’t tell what’s causing it. Is it the static changing? Is it something bursting inside me? Or is it Calamity Carl? Is this him killing me?
(my baby)
The buzzing in my body intensifies, then things across my body begin to contract. My toes curl, my fingers gnarl, knees to my chest, head twisted, lips peeled back. If there’s a console somewhere that controls every muscle in my body, then somebody just started flipping switches randomly. Every limb is cramping. I’m unable to force my lungs to take their next breath. No, this can’t be how it ends. Stupid to go out like this. If I’m going to die, I want to be on my feet, fighting, not on the ground, as helpless as an insect turned on its back, unable to right itself.
Fuck this.
Filtered through whatever that popping sound is and the static is my growl of defiance. It starts deep inside me, tearing through me like an animal clawing its way out. It hurts as it builds, but there’s a trickle of pleasure in there. It’s her. It’s the automatic me, the one who’s going to save me. She’s coming ba—
bzzzzzZZZZt!!!!!
Sucking in great big gulps of air, I can breathe again. The popping sound is gone, and the static has receded back to a level that doesn’t hurt. My mouth is full of saliva. That’s when I realize that my lips are numb, and there’s a thread of drool connecting my lower lip to the floor.
In my peripheral vision, through the blue curtain of my hair, I can see the tips of Calamity Carl’s boots.
His fingers thread through my hair. Reflexively, my hands dart to his forearm and clamp down, which prevents my hair from being ripped out when he pulls me up, forcing me onto my knees, my torso curved back. He’s leaning down so that his mask is right up in my face. His crown rolls wildly on the surface of his head but doesn’t fall off.
“I’m afraid,” he says, no evidence of bells this time, “that wasn’t the answer I was looking for!”
“The fuck was that?” My mouth tastes like metal. I’m empty inside. The automatic me—the me that knows what to do even when I don’t—she’s absent again, once again abandoning me in my moment of need. I’d ponder my past more, but I have more immediate concerns right now.
“That was a consequence. I asked you a question, and you were rude. That’s unacceptable. So, now you know: you answer, or you scream.”
Can’t see what he’s doing, but I can hear him doing something with the chain. I feel a gentle tug on the shackle, then there’s a loop of chain in my face.
“Until you decide to leave, this is the conduit for your pain. What you felt was the lowest setting. I knew you’d want a little taste before we started. Now that we have that out of the way, are you ready to begin your testing?”
Several responses flash through my mind, but I keep it simple, “No.”
“I appreciate your honesty!” he says as he lowers me to the floor “But I won’t tolerate it right now.”
The windows to the room go dark, and the ceiling lights shift to deep red.
My body begins to buzz. I thrash uncontrollably on the floor, the swift pop pop pop sourcing from the shackle, thin fingers of energy streaking out like miniature bolts of lightning.
(makeitstopheishurtingthe)
(baby)
Calamity Carl marks each minute by counting.
He gets to seven before I’m able to summon enough control to squeak out, “Please stop, I’m ready.”
The buzzing stops immediately, but the muscles across my body are still pulled taut. I’m sprawled on the floor like a discarded marionette.
Calamity Carl’s voice seems to come from directly inside my brain. The bells in his voice aren’t merely tinkling this time; they’re ringing. “Let’s begin!”
Pop pop pop
bzzzzzZZZZt!!!!!
Agony resumes, and it doesn’t stop for a very long time.
40/Break
Unknown/Unknown
“Who the fuck are you?” I spit out though teeth clenched so tight I’m afraid they’re going to shatter. He’s got my whole body buzzing, and he’s not even shocking me right now. Can barely keep my eyes open, but every time I close them longer than it takes to blink, he delivers a brief but potent spark of pain. It’s not like I have a timekeeper, but even if I did, I’d have lost track of time. No clue how long I’ve been here, how long he’s been torturing me. The minutes and hours are blurred. He’s kept the windows dark and the ceiling lights bright. Half the time, the whole room is blurry. Sometimes my words come out slurred. It would be so easy to lie on the ground while he’s in here, but I can’t let myself do that. I promised myself I wouldn’t do that. I summon the will and the strength to stand.
“You’re repeating yourself, Blue,” Calamity Carl chides, bringing one boot up and perching it on top of that damned rod in the middle of the room. “There are much more interesting questions you could be asking.”
“I’ll repeat the question until you give me an answer that means something.”
“Who do you think I am?”
“No fucking idea.”
“What a silly, incorrect answer!”
Pop! Pop! Pain shoots up my leg, and one knee goes loose for a second. I reach down with both hands and push it back until it locks. Can’t go down for something as small as that.
The red lines in Calamity Carl’s armor flare briefly. “You can do better than that. Try again.”
“I don’t know what you are to me, but I do know that you’re a sick, demented clown.”
“What a horrible thing to say. I saved your life!”
“You killed innocent people. You’re disgusting. You enjoy stalking me. You enjoy torturing me. You’ve promised to kill me if I don’t pass your…tests—whatever that means. All you’ve done so far is abuse me.”
“Abuse you?” The tone of his voice gives off every indication that he doesn’t understand why I would describe his actions like that. “This isn’t abuse, little one. This is a course correction. And if that isn’t successful, then it’ll simply be the early termination of a plan. Devilgod will just have to devise a new one!”
“I’m not anybody’s plan. You’re not correcting anything. You’re inflicting pain.” Static is a dull, wavering throb. Having trouble getting my tongue and lips to form words properly.
“I do what I have to so you’ll do what you’re supposed to. Now, answer the question: Who do you think I am?”
Is this part of the test?
It’s clear he knows who I am, where I came from. What could he possibly have been to me? What part did he play in my past? Our current abductor/abductee relationship doesn’t indicate anything positive. Did I actually know him? The memories of who I was and where I came from are hidden somewhere in the recesses of my mind—at least that’s what I tell myself. I’ve gotten this far convincing myself that I just need to find the key to unlocking them. Calamity Carl could be that for me.
I take a step toward him. “We knew each other before.”
“Oh, Blue, now you’re getting somewhere! Not all correct, but keep going. Who do you think I am?”
“You’ve told me you’re a heral
d of this Devilgod. That means you’re not the one giving the orders. You’re not the one making the plans. You’re just working somebody else’s scheme.”
When he responds, there’s a low frequency tone in his voice that I haven’t heard before. “What’s your point?”
“Maybe I don’t need to be concerned with who you are, but who your master is. After all, if he’s the one who’s in charge, then I need to meet him, and I shouldn’t worry about a simple messenger who, even though he’s trying to kill me, is merely a childish, sadistic tarokk fucker who can’t even—”
Pop pop pop!
The shock tries to send me to the ground, but the rebellious anger I’ve allowed to take control mutes the pain. Leg is buzzing, now bringing a curious numbness, a strange sensation that flows up one side of my body as if I’ve been anesthetized. I push on my knee with one hand, holding it in place, glaring at my captor.
“This isn’t part of any test.” The words come out in a whisper, and I swallow a mouthful of saliva to prevent it from running out the side of my mouth.
“Everything in life is a test.”
“Don’t lie to me. You’re enjoying this.” The numbness is creeping down my arm. Not going to be able to resist gravity’s pull much longer.
His voice seems to come from far away, as if he were talking to me from the end of a long tunnel instead of from just a few meters away. “Hurting you? No! That is necessary, not enjoyable, but when you’ve been assigned a difficult task, there’s no harm in trying to find something to enjoy. I’m sure you understand that!”
The numbness has reached my shoulder now, flowing down my arm—the one holding my knee in place. It’s already taking almost all my concentration to keep that hand right there. At this rate, I only have a few more seconds of control. I should kneel now, lie down while I can still do it gracefully.
“Stop hurting me. I don’t know what you want!” My wrist tingles for a second, then it’s like it doesn’t exist. Somehow, my fingers are still able to keep my knee in place.
“I want you to tell me who you think I am.”
There go my fingers. My leg wobbles, the knee unlocking, and I topple to one side. Blasting through the numbness, pain shoots down my arm when my shoulder hits the ground. I loll to one side.
I swallow a mouthful of saliva. “You’re a clown. You’re a—” I look at that ridiculous crown of his. “—sharpened clown.”
Don’t know why I said that.
“A…sharpened clown?” Calamity Carl repeats. “I don’t know what you mean by that, but I like it! Just like I like you!”
The shock stops, numbness washing away, leaving me panting on the floor, everything tingling. Need to get up, but for once, being cheek down on the neoplastic is exactly where I want to be. Concentrating, I try to make my fingers form a rude gesture, but a barely perceptible twitch from my pinky is all I get.
“Get up, Blue.”
“Why should I?
“I told you to. Get up.”
“Messengers don’t matter. They just deliver messages.”
“Get up. Last chance.”
“I can’t. I can’t feel half my body. I couldn’t stand up even if I wanted to, and it’s all your fault. If you ever want me to stand up, you should probably stop shocking the hell out of me.”
There’s a hand in my hair and another under my armpit. I’m lifted up, dangling like a child’s doll. I try to make my limbs move, but everything seems to be offline, ignoring my instructions. If he’s hurting me in the way he’s holding me, I can’t feel it. He manipulates me with ease.
You’re the
(puppet he’s the)
Master.
Then there’s the sudden, cool press of him against me, errant strands of hair caught between my cheek and the smooth metal of his mask. “Every word out of our mouths is part of this test, my little wayward, blue-crowned girl. Every question. Every retort.”
This close, I can feel him talk. The frequencies in his voice seem to vibrate directly into my cheekbone. I’d love to reach up, put my fingers under his mask, and peel it away, if only my muscles were still under my control.
“How am I doing?” I ask. “Am I gonna pass?”
“The test isn’t over. Who do you think I am?”
My lips are close to where his ear is—assuming he has ears underneath all that armor—when I whisper, “To me, you’re nobody.”
His reply is lost in the wash of pain that explodes across my body. I cry out, my leg spasming. When my cheek leaves his, I see a spark flare between us, and that’s when I know that he’s experiencing what I’m experiencing. The buzzing, popping agony hammering through my body is doing the same to his.
He sets me down on my bottom, catching my head when I flail backward. When he releases me, there’s a bigger spark—a little bolt of blue lightning that arcs between us.
He’s shakes his head, grabbing my foot, his fingers sliding along my arch. “Enough about me. Let’s move onto the next part of your test. Let’s talk about your friends the wirewitches.”
He grabs the little toe on my left foot between his thumb and forefinger. I’m so lost in the shock he’s delivering down the chain that I hear more than feel it when he pulls my toe up and back until it breaks.
41/Interrogate
Unknown/Unknown
BLINK.
This isn’t unconsciousness, but it’s somewhere close. In this dream-like drifting my brain is allowing me to retreat into, the pain is gone. Actually, there is a remnant, but it’s like somebody else experiencing the torture.
Somebody else has their leg shackled.
Somebody else is being electrocuted.
Somebody else’s little toe is folded over backward.
Somebody else is lying on the floor whimpering and begging to die.
BLINK.
Static and shock resound through my body, all mixed together like notes in a song.
BLINK.
Cradling my head. Grabbing my foot. Eyes transfixed on the sight of my toe, swollen and red, curled over itself like the petal of a wilting flower.
BLINK.
Water in my face, some of it in my mouth. Choking, coughing, don’t manage to get much of it in my stomach before the shock resumes.
BLINK.
Tortured and twitching on the floor, time is a meaningless concept. There is only the buzz through my bones and the struggle to inhale another gasping breath of oxygen.
BLINK.
“Of all the travelling companions you could have picked up, you had to choose a wirewitch,” Calamity Carl says, standing over me. “Why?”
He’s stopped shocking me, and there’s no static right now, but my profane retort comes out as a grunt, followed by a jumble of syllables that don’t make sense.
“They’re dangerous! I warned you that you’d get hurt if you stayed with the youngling, and that’s exactly what happened. Isn’t it?”
I answer, not because he asked me a question, but because I want to hear myself say it out loud. “Yes.”
“A wirewitch is everything you’re not.”
“Yes.”
“Your friend; she’s a machine.”
“I know.”
“You’re pure.”
That, I find I don’t have a response to. It’s patently untrue—nobody is. I’m curious why he might say something like that.
“Your friend is a killer. She and the rest of her kind will be the death of us all.”
I shake my head. “Nobody can claim that much responsibility for our inevitable destruction.”
“You’d be surprised. The only reason they haven’t taken over is because once their covens are complete they don’t reproduce. I’d hate to think of what would happen if they ever changed their behavior!”
“I’ll be sure to ask JACK about that the next time I see her.” That I do want to see her again, despite everything, isn’t so much me changing my mind as it is me acknowledging how much she meant to me so quickly, and how much I w
ish I was with her right now.
Anyway, is this conversation part of the test? At least he’s not shocking me.
(or the)
(baby)
“Tell me, Blue, how could you let yourself become a witchfriend?”
“I…didn’t do it on purpose.” Can’t help it—when I think of JACK, my heart starts to hurt.
“As you already know, lying to me will be painful,” Calamity Carl says, stepping to one side, walking in a circle around me. “Lying to yourself can cause irreversible damage. Now, why don’t you try answering my question again? Remember, when you lie, you’re only hurting yourself.”
“Don’t hurt my baby,” I plead.
“Right here, right now, the fate of your child is entirely within your control. Answer my questions. Pass my test. Your spark has a chance at life.”
“Does it feel pain when you—”
“Again, it’s you not me, but does it really matter? Don’t get distracted with possibilities when you know for certain what happens when you don’t play my game.”
How much damage have I already done?
“Answer my question,” Calamity Carl says. “Why the wirewitches?”
“It wasn’t wirewitches.” My eyes track him as he circles, the clack of his boots on the floor an unwelcome, monotonous beat. “It was wirewitch.”
“Oh, I’m sorry to hear you say that.”
“That wasn’t a lie,” I squeak out as quickly as I can, tensing my body in preparation. When, after a few moments, nothing happens, I say, “JACK is my friend.”
“Not the others? Not even one of them?”
“No.”
The shock he delivers is low, crawling up my leg from the inside, as if it’s a cancer eating its way up my tibia.
“You have a problem, Blue, and it’s not me,” Calamity Carl says. He’s got his arms crossed now. “You’re either lying to both of us, or you’re in denial.”