by A. R. Moxon
yourselfselfselfelf
you? ours?
sell? elf?
fel
el
F
And then he is alone and alert again. Whole again. Strong. Eyes focused. His wound closed, but the healing goes deeper still; it’s restoration of lost blood, it’s recalibration: of enzymes, electrolytes, chakras, synapses, hormones; of the carnival sideshow of bacteria residing in the gut, together with a variegation of other physical complexities comprising the sum of himself, his essential Julius-ness—all this biological hash has been fully aligned, tuned up, optimized, his interior detailed, his exterior given a nice wax and wash, his nostrils cleaned of occlusion, his auditory canals unblocked by wax, his pores free of excess sebum.
Without pause or consideration, Julius rises and runs from the day room, taking physical inventory even as he banks right and pelts down the hall. His betrodden nuts ache no more. The slices in his robes and the unhealed throb of the self-inflicted bite on his hand provide the only signs he hasn’t hallucinated it all. He knows instinctively where he’s going. Not why. Not what. Certainly not a bit of how—only where, as though the next steps were a recipe written out already.
Julius skids on the tile floor outside the break room, running heedless, guided by uploaded internal certainty: Turn right, right again, head left, now straight down the hall toward the double doors which reveal, as he pushes through them, a cafeteria. He scampers crampless between the low rows of tables, and here’s the door leading into the kitchen, and here’s, yes, exactly as you knew it would be, here’s what looks like a pantry door, empty inside, here’s service elevator doors in one corner and in the other a spiral staircase leading down. On the stairs, Julius checks himself—here his instinctive guidance ceases—and descends more cautiously.
It’s a tunnel. White walls. White floor. White ceiling. Lit by powerful fluorescent squares set at wide intervals. Blinking in the snowblind whiteness. The tunnel reaches to vanishing points in either direction, but off to the right, at a distance hard to gauge, small in the distance, Julius spies the unmistakable shape of a man pushing a stretcher, walking without concern of pursuit—he’ll hear you soon, sure. And then it’ll be a—Julius can’t stop the grin coming—a footrace. How lovely.
Julius breaks into a sprint, wishing away the traitorous flat echo made by his footfalls. He hasn’t heard you yet. Impossible not to hope it can be easy, to hope he won’t notice you until you’re within grabbing range, but—ah, shit!—he’s taken a quick startled look backward. He’s hoofing it, going fast, gaining ground…you go right ahead, cousin. Go ahead and start fast. Long tunnel. Looks like miles. I’m betting I can run your bitching legs right off.
Julius eases into the well-worn harness of his old familiar pace, lets his body take over the metronome action of steady progress, as his mind troubles itself in a space of its own, thoughts testing themselves against the madness of circumstance. Men who are sometimes there and sometimes aren’t. Mortal sword wounds healed. A man claiming godhood with a flippancy demanding skepticism, who nevertheless offers undeniable proofs. And—and—this goddam tunnel. What hand dug it, so straight, so long? At what expense? What architects hired, what engineers, to bring this vision to reality? Whose vision? And…why?
Don’t ask questions you can’t hope to answer. Focus.
This is the thing about the run: It’s just the next step. If you have it, there’s no contest. Eventually even the horizon falls to your will. You’re the drip of water grooving stone plains downward into canyons. You’re relentless howling wind hypnotizing desert mountains into hallucinatory shapes, making two-century oak bow down, driving the prairie wife slowly mad. You’re the cruel inexorable passage of time, transforming flesh to dust, writing empires into history books. You’re the ancient biped, running slow death down on the swifter but less hardy antelope. That’s you, Julius tells the slowly growing figure of the man pushing a seemingly empty stretcher. You’re my antelope, bub.
He watches three times as some strange black intaglio in the distance, standing out in stark contrast to the blizzard of all this white, slowly reveals itself to be an iron ladder sunk into the side of the wall, leading up to a manhole-sized cylindrical cavity bored into the ceiling. He has, without increasing his pace, gained significant ground on his prey—but haste is needed. Far in the distance he spies some sort of circular portal, which suggests an end to the tunnel, escape for the quarry. With a finish line fixed, they’ve joined a new game with clear rules. If the quarry reaches the portal, he wins; if he doesn’t, he loses. But Julius smiles—I’ve caught you already, fucker. The portal is still far off, and the prey is stretcher-burdened and lagging. Antelope. He begins panting it, subvocalizing to the rhythm of his footfalls, synched to the rhythm of his breath: ANtelope antelope ANtelope antelope…soon he’s close enough to see the tag sticking up from the neck on his quarry’s blue cotton shirt…but the portal looms larger, too. He’s made a formidable effort, lasting this far against Julius’s own endurance, and with a laden stretcher to push, no less. A dozen feet separate them, footfall and breath in one accord beat out the time:
Close enough now to hear the labored breath.
Close enough now to see the stretcher’s restraints being jerked frantically by invisible arms.
Almost within grabbing distance.
Morris releases the stretcher and makes an adroit, almost balletic, spin, Julius seeing only for an instant the silverflash of a long knife pulled from some hidden pocket but not recognizing it for what it is until it’s already been halted mid-swing, tearing inches-deep into the plaster, embedding itself in the wall and Julius, realizing only dumb luck has prevented him from yet another fatal wound, unceremoniously smashes into Morris with all of his weight, seeking to drive his enemy’s head into the floor, crush skull and snap neck, but Morris twists, somersaulting underneath, foot deep into the priest’s belly, using his attacker’s own momentum to push off, sending Julius overhead into a painful heap on the floor. The stretcher coasts off course behind the prone priest, stopping as low guardrails and rubber wheels scrape against the wall, leaving parallel silver and black gashes on the white.
Ah, yes, Julius admonishes himself. You miscalculated, leaned too heavily on your own metaphor. You aren’t the only predator in this equation. This antelope has tooth and claw. Julius scrambles to his feet, panting. Morris stands, breathing heavily.
“You. Lived.”
“Yep.”
“Where. Are my followers?”
“Dead.”
“I’d say. That’s. Unlikely.”
Eyes narrow. Not anger, but confusion. Trying to work out the perplexity of some new arithmetic previously unconceived of. “Who are you?” Morris asks. “Who sent you?”
“Nobody. Sent me.” Julius pants. He’s dismayed to see Morris has begun to recover his own breath.
“OK. Your story,” Morris grasps the knife and works it back and forth to divest it from the wall, “is that you bled out a few quarts, then all by yourself, you got up, healed that sliced wing of yours, killed several of my best people, and then happened to find me down here? Who sent you?”
Julius can see Morris choosing to remain watchful, obviously ready for an attack and obviously more capable than Julius of meeting one. But it’s going to have to come to blows and grapple soon, before the knife—a short sword, really—re-enters the equation. It’s sunk deep into the wall, but Morris is working at it, at all times keeping his big calm owlish predator eyes unblinking upon his prey. Julius prepares to leap—but at that moment, behind him, a soft voice speaks from the stretcher.
“I know where he’s taking me.”
Julius keeps his eyes on Morris, who’s getting some wiggle on his sword now. “Oh yeah?” Julius asks, “And where is that, buddy?”
Gordy’s statements come like waves, a series of sighs. “But I don’t have what he wants. I
don’t have what he wants. I don’t have it anymore if I ever did. All he wants is for me to tell him about the ticket—”
At this Morris makes the error Julius has been praying for; taking his eyes for an instant off the priest. “YOU SHUT YOUR M—” he screams, and Julius comes fast, pushing hard off the floor and rushing as if to plow straight into him once again. Morris moves underneath to throw him over once more, but Julius, anticipating the trick, instead pulls up shifts momentum to his right leg kicks Morris thock under the chin. Even as the kick throws Morris backward, hand flies from sword, blade drops easily ting-clatter upon the floor, and Julius sees the ruse—Morris had already loosened it entirely, feigned his struggle with the wall, waiting for Julius to make his charge and then it would have been sixteen inches of steel right through the chest—but never mind that—what a kick! Foot meets chin, a perfect strike, a home run, a neckbreaker! There goes C1 and C2! There go those cervical nerve-icals! But no, it’s not that lucky—Morris takes the blow, leans out of it, accepts the force of it and claims its momentum, executes a backward somersault, lands crouched but on his feet. Looking up, the owl eyes now perch atop a blood sheet running from nose to shirt. Still lucid, newly furious.
Julius steps back toward Gordy and hisses pain; his big toe feels broken. So, he thinks, foot takes nose, nose takes toe. With this sort of situation, the toe is going to be the more necessary piece. Did you punt him in the face and take the worst of it?
Calmly, Morris says: “Bad things are going to happen to you now.” Neither of them looking at the blade. Each watching the other. “You’re probably realizing you’ve made a terrible mistake.”
“My specialty.” Julius tries for a brash tone, fights against a rising gorge, a loosening feeling in his gut. They stare at each other. Something behind Morris’s eyes shifts. “Walk away,” he says. He sounds extremely reasonable. “I don’t need you. You don’t need me. All I want is that loony on the stretcher.”
“OK.”
“Just turn around and go and it’s bygones.”
“Sounds good.”
They both leap for the blade. Morris is quicker and gets the sword in one hand, but Julius gets his big mitts on his wrists, his knee deep in the stomach, bashes the fist holding the hilt—one, two, three—against the floor and wall, his wounded thumb protests this action, but not as loudly as does his outraged injured toe pushing for leverage against the curve where floor becomes wall, and Morris bucks and writhes beneath, seeking advantage with every part of himself, his calm eyes promising slow torture. Julius presses down close enough to smell the blood, the smell of soap underneath, close enough to see pores on the nose, the occasional gray hair among the black. In desperation he tries to lower his head to bite, but Morris is horrendously strong, there’s no way to safely perform this action and maintain advantage. He can keep the sword arm down if he makes it his sole focus, affording Morris the opportunity to struggle promiscuously beneath; or he can stop the struggles, allowing the sword arm to come creeping up, slowly but inexorably, the rigid tip rising to rendezvous with his neck. Julius pushes the arm down again, and the body beneath him once more scoots and shifts, and his broken toe screams…Morris suddenly goes entirely limp, throwing Julius off-balance, then flicks his neck like a cobra, pumps the crown of his head into the sudden purpleblack aurora borealis of Julius’s left eye.
Julius turns his head in instinctive pain, luckily catches on his cheek the second strike meant for his right eye. He’s pushed back onto his ass. Half his vision’s nothing but bursts of yellow-red stars reaching him in waves from a field of purple and black, but his right eye, uninjured, still projects for him a clear vision of what’s happening. Morris stands, smiling friendly, holding the sword…in all truth, thinks Julius, I prefer what the bashed eye is showing me. Here it is at last, a true revelation. Look at that: the object that’s going to kill you. Here you are: the place you’re going to die. You know the time and the place. The biggest mysteries are finally solved. Ah. Julius watches the sword that is going to kill him begin to move. There comes from behind him a voice. Gordy, visible again, says:
no harm
Julius watches the sword that is going to kill him stop its arc, then begin again and stop again. Exhausted now; resting in a totality of defeat, the relief of the fox brought to bay, only slightly interested in why he isn’t yet dead. Yet even so, as the sword begins the killing blow and halts, begins and halts, begins and halts, Julius finds new curiosity. The void and stars from his left eye are fading; beyond them he can see Morris trying and failing another dozen times to behead him. Julius sits, entranced. His killer appears no less confused at the iterant rise-fall-halt. It’s as if the blade is being caught by a transparent, tough, gelatinous web woven from floor to ceiling. Morris waves his hand in the air before him, feeling for hindrance and finding none, rage and desperation growing in his eyes. Julius feels on the verge of hysteria, either laughter or weeping. You’re not meant to die, he thinks. You’re not allowed. Morris has gone berserker. Julius watches him as if he were a projection on a screen. He’s no longer precision-slicing but hacking, each time halting in the same place. He pulls up close and stands before the priest, trembling like one struggling against knots. At last he turns and throws the knife behind him. It tumbles end-over-end and rests flat on the white floor. Panting, glaring furiously from priest to stretcher and back. He screams. He kicks the wall. Slaps it. Looking around for something to smash but there’s nothing…and then he’s calm again. Turning to the stretcher, he says “All right, then. I hope it’s worse than ever. I hope it wrecks you for good.”
Gordy is straining from a prone position, leaning up as far as the straps will allow, watching fretfully, flickering. His hair remains a mass of pinwheels and corkscrews, his cheeks still hairy and hollow, but his eyes, once merely deadened and scared, now hold something deeper than dread. “Okay,” he says. “Okay, okay, okay.”
“Did you do that?” Julius asks.
Gordy stares through Julius. “Marvel at Wembly,” he says, distantly. “The wisest gorilla in captivity.”
“Who are you?”
“He’s nothing,” Morris says. “Only a common thief.”
Gordy sinks back down to the stretcher. “Okay,” he says, closing his eyes. He begins panting, quick and shallow, nearing hyperventilation. His hands grip the rails as if in preparation for a long drop.
Julius limps to the stretcher. Gordy gives him the crazy eyes.
“Please get me away. I used it and now it’s here.” Hands gripping, knuckles white.
“What did you use? What’s here?”
Gordy unhinges his mouth, puts all teeth on display, and emits a singular yowl, a spine-scouring shriek of impossible volume, amplified by the tunnel’s echo, continuing without a hitch for breath for what seems an impossible length even as he flickers once again out of sight and discernment—nothing left but the scream, dying slowly like an air siren, the manner of its going suggesting a dissipation of breath and voice rather than a cessation of either the physical act of the scream or of the terror provoking it. Morris turns his attention to Julius. “You’ve got some large problems,” he observes.
“Appears to me you’ve got a few yourself,” Julius says. Morris chuckles.
“Where do you think you and your unconscious friend are going?”
“Out.”
“Fine plan. Really first-rate, but…do you know how to get out?”
“It’s a pretty straight shot back the way we came.”
“You’re not going back this way.” He spreads his arms and legs, filling enough of the tunnel to prevent passage.
Julius considers this. His eyesight has returned, but his head throbs like it’s been whacked with a sack of doorknobs. His foot feels like there’s glass in it. “How about this,” he growls, as convincingly as he can. “How about I walk over there and…” But it all goes hazy on him somehow; he’s forgo
tten the gist…what was I saying just now…?
Morris smiles, ingratiating. “Beat me until I stop breathing?”
“That and more.”
“You’re a shit priest, then.”
“You’re not the first to suggest it.”
“But I know something you don’t know.”
“Which is?”
“To be precise, I, being—forgive me—of considerably greater intelligence than you, both generally and regarding the particulars of this situation, suspect something you don’t suspect.”
“Which is?”
“That you’re in the same boat as me. With Gordy, you’ll want to pay attention to every word. It truly is a ‘letter of the law’ sort of thing. Do you remember what he said to us? I remember very well. ‘No harm.’ Me to you or you to me.”
Julius sighs. “OK. You want a beating, you get a beating.” He moves forward, hands going to fists, and Morris, spread-eagle in blockade, smiles. Julius reaches for his neck, but then he thinks: I won’t do that, why would I do that? He reaches again, butl…no, that’s not such a good idea. Curious. He tries again, and stops—how odd.
“Problem?” Morris asks, knowingly—The hateful prick. Smash his nose. Teeth down the throat. Make him grovel. Julius reaches again, fails again. He reminds himself to breathe normally; this isn’t a problem, it’s ridiculous. He strikes quickly, as if to surprise himself into compliance, punching Morris in the throat, but…why would you do that, punch this guy in the, in the throat? You don’t know him, you don’t even know his throat, punching a strange throat? I mean, there doesn’t seem to be any…any point…
In dismay, Julius looks down; his hand hasn’t yet moved.
“It’s that you just…don’t want to,” Morris remarks. “Correct?”
Julius glowers. “I want to.” But realizing—he’s right. You lose interest in the midst of the act. If you stop trying to injure, the rage returns, but as soon as you act upon that rage, it recedes entirely. Less physical inability than deficit of will, some existential boredom lounging between himself and vengeance.