The crunch of the gladiator’s spine spits from the speakers overhead. Endless rain pelts its tortured electrical wiring. Paupers, aristocrats, and scumbags line the ringside and unite in their overtures for blood. They moan in chorus as the fighter crumples to the ground, folding in three places as the rusted mace withdraws from his scrambled vertebrae.
His killer, helmeted and bleeding from her furred arm, stares down at her prey. She pauses, letting the storm cleanse her tarnished, powder Blue armor of mud. While she scrutinizes the criminal-cum-combatant choking his last breaths, Red painted armor flooding with gore, water, and earthly sap, her thoughts fill your mind. They snake through the monsoon, up to the nosebleeds, intertwining with your own consciousness.
The mare huffs as stray thunder and applause rocks through the ancient limestone complex, that of the George Merrick Amphitheater.
“Too easy.”
You grip your shawl, fingering the plastic lining of your poncho with soggy fingers. Purely functional, it insulates you from the forever-rains of New Port Moresby. Droplets coagulate on its tasteless form, its patchwork of plastic replaced and repaired with local ingredients. Your poncho, now of Theseus’s design, is old as the settlement of Algonquin itself.
For nearly five months, the humidity has choked you. Here on the dull emerald of a planet, every month, a standard thirty cycles each, for every single hour of the galactic twenty-four, the rain dodges the hundred-meter-tall rainforest ceiling to land atop your head. This several-month sabbatical has you pruned, susceptible to a skinning in the arena, a degloving followed by a terminal infection.
Your once-calloused skin is soft, your mind waterlogged.
Beneath your promontory, the gladiatrix straightens herself. As she saunters towards the arena’s exit, jaws open to allow escape, she looks to you. Even at this distance, she can find your eyes through the crowd’s shiftings, their Red, Blue, and Black ponchos, masks, turbans, headdresses, all merging into a pointillist work of state-sanctioned terror. She peers above them, the masses, to the ruined box seating above. Here you hide from passerby, face hooded, squinting through falling sheets of precipitation.
She always finds you, even when you’re camouflaged in the gestating crowds.
It’s her ‘secret,’ as you both call it. The little mental connection you share. You speak to her without moving your lips. She reads your thoughts, and you hers, as your bodies touch across distances. A living magnetism draws you together, tying you at hand and foot against your wills.
Or in her case, hand and hoof.
Moments earlier, you whispered for her to step to the side. Just a simple, subliminal suggestion in the heat of battle. You watched her tired prey readjust his feet against the muck with your own eyes, and through her perspective you saw his winded, shaking form. Your suggestion, to open her opponent to attack as he stumbled, ended with another blood-soaked mace in her possession, crude metal flanges intertwined with shredded skin.
Once again, another win under her belt. Another where she begrudgingly thanks her ‘secret’ for the upper hand. As if she hadn’t won in this same arena years prior, without your supraliminal nagging.
Victorious, embittered, the mare tosses the mace to the arena’s ground with a flourish. George Merrick’s mud graciously accepted the tribute, the weapon’s heavy form half-sinking on impact. From her mane to her fetlocks, she’s two meters of gladiatrix. She removes her chanfron facemask, ripping at its worn leather restraints to allow the rain to pelt her anthropomorphic equine head.
The writhing crowd of Blue fans erupts for the walk-on killer. To the grateful Blue faction, she’s but an unknown malcontent from the aether. One who delivers them from a year of poor performance in the pits, and, for The Circuit tomorrow, promises them further good fortune. The Blacks and Reds can only look on with indignation, spitting and swearing as their bets become worthless.
As she nears the exit, against the hollering of victory, her look is one of murderous boredom.
She’s lost track of these easy victories against other criminals. Others who had landed, in mutual destitution, on the frontier planet where she had once spent her life as a slave. Here she is, she laments, returned to New Port Moresby. Back in the stomping grounds that nursed her into the killing machine she is today, her name once more lecherously, surreptitiously whispered through the louvered betting windows by the voyeuristic masses, “The Galactic Gladiatrix.”
Only recently did she trawl the galaxy as a pirate queen, beheld to nothing. But now, her eyes reluctantly drag up the stands to yours, as they’ve done since your first fateful encounter. Her psyche kowtows, locked in magnetic connection beyond your mutual comprehension. In that moment, you’re gifted with the bliss of celestial silence. The scent of sweet chestnuts, ones from beyond the veil of reality, wafts through your nostrils and her voice whispers to you through the surging crowds.
“Thanks,” she snorts.
She’s becoming less generous with her forced thank-you’s.
With that, she disappears beneath the railing. Under the onlookers, the grandstands, hawkers, gamblers, towards her locker room. The groaning metallic omniscience announces the next match-up over the dying speakers. To begin after a quick clean-up interlude, of course.
Her opponent’s corpse has not yet sunk into the mud of the stadium’s center, and can yet be collected.
The amphitheater’s slaves slither from their cavities to retrieve the meat. The teakettlers’ stubby, inhuman, doglike forms trudge through the muck to haul the carcass into the recesses of the complex. All for some unseen, feral purposes.
You’re alone in your nest. Hidden in the dilapidated private boxes of old. From here, in the many open-air enclosures of George Merrick, onlookers watch from the worst seats in the house.
There are no doors. Only broken hinges remain, their sturdy fixtures replaced with tattered plastic drapes. The ceiling, too, caves in too often to warrant a replacement. A voluptuous channel snakes the stone floor, carved with constant erosion. Its steady stream of water collects in the corner before seeping elsewhere through limestone cracks.
Like the general seating below, your nook provides no safety from the elements. Instead, it rewards you with a vague sense of privacy. Which, of course, the wandering drunk or lost spectator interrupts.
They’ll linger in silence only briefly. Their eyes will transfix through the fog, making out hazy forms of gladiators below, straining to hear the dying gurgles of entertainment. Inevitably, they’ll return to the crowds, stumbling once more down the ancient stairways and into the safety of their colorful compatriots. The stadium is a joint venture for these Blue, Red, and Black multicolored gangs, identified en masse by their colored outfits and ceremonial garb.
Corroded stelae, half-sunk into Algonquin’s soft earth, forgotten monuments surrounded by overbuilt slums, imply that forgotten powers first organized these fights. To entertain, to pacify the populace hundreds of years ago.
But unlike the forgotten warlords who sought placation, the rough-and-ready gladiatorial tradition persists, outliving and outlasting its progenitors. Unchanging through centuries, bloody amusement acts as the sole column upon which the stability of the region’s economic, political, and cultural spheres rests.
The George Merrick Amphitheater is the self-sustaining organism that, through divine incompetence, keeps the settlement of Algonquin alive throughout the planet’s endless downpour.
You reach for the laminated betting sheet before you, detailing the day’s events. It’s sopping with water near your open window. As you wipe away the rain, you notice seepage within its plastic shell. The daily flyer inside has melted, its text coagulating into meaningless blots. The various Blue, Red, and Black fonts hemorrhage in their cocoon, the three factional representations now a mess of mixed ink.
Whereas normally you review the lineups and bet for or against whomever you believe to be more capable, you instead toss the document to the floor. You trace its path as it floats away, joined by discarded foodstuffs, detritus, and the odd cigarette. There goes the rest of the day, at least until Ø’s forthcoming arrival.
Her post-match routine is short. If you focus hard enough against the deluge, you can make out the vague shapes of her perspective hundreds of meters beneath your waterproof boots. You see through her almond eyes, which beat themselves dry in the safety of the stadium’s locker room. There, beneath the Leviathan, she’s shielded from rain.
Some say, hidden in these stone catacombs, it’s quiet. No more dripping, yelling, slipping, falling, praying, only the breathing of the last remaining gladiator. This, sadly, your mare knows to be untrue.
Murals devoted to carnage adorn the pristine marble walls of the private underground spa complex, the tricolor color combinations stretched to the limits of creative imagination. The compound’s columns, arches, and vaulted ceilings cup tiled floors that are heated, unlike the cold air that whips your face aboveground. Carvings and reliefs of fighters through the ages, crafted in homage to the de facto tripartite government, are repainted and resealed with every passing coup.
One fresco remains empty, anxiously awaiting tomorrow’s results.
She reveals her white diamond of a chest, her slave’s branding gleaming in the low-light. She discards her aged Blue lorica, pulling the armor from her scarred arms. Woven into a sinuous patchwork, its hundreds of copper scales shriek against the polished floors.
Then the teakettler serfs that scurry through the tunnels beneath, or the causeways above, arrive to dote on her. Their beady, soulless eyes ogle unflinchingly as her furred digits peel at her stainless steel greaves, manica over her left arm, polysynthetic tunic from her body. At a third of her size, the drones repair the armor to working condition, as their kind has done for centuries beneath the pit. They’ll hammer away at their makeshift anvils. Down there, further within the catacombs than where the walls have collapsed, archways sunken, too small for mortal man to traverse.
Then she showers, paradoxically. The water is hot, piped from the outmoded hypocaust beneath. Unlike the rain, oscillating between lukewarm and cool, dancing with wind and humidity.
It runs through her pelt, through the spaces between her fingers, trailing down her back and off her fraying tail. Across her sternum with its unflinching slave’s barcode and coat-of-arms emblazon. Blood, grubs, and tangled fur hits the heated floor and clogs the drains in her decadence.
If you focus hard enough, you can feel the warm water for only a moment, selfishly, as if it were on your own skin.
After, she dons her pedestrian outfit. It’s the same set of clothing she had worn those months ago at your first meeting. All those months back, at the beginning of your divine kidnapping that demoted her from pirate queen to your partner in petty crime.
Her skintight black bodysuit is ruined. Torn, like her home-made patchwork poncho. Her ivory top far from white, now a sordid hazel. Her clothes would have melted into her sorrel coat, had the teakettlers not taken them every match for an imperfect sponging and pressing.
Unlike most residents of New Port Moresby, she begrudgingly accepts the rain. She allows her mane to become a sopping mess, spoiling her meager clothing, resigning herself as you wander the streets of Algonquin. It’s the tradition she had abided while enslaved, competing on the planet all those years ago. A silent, overt gesture of dissatisfaction.
Ø’s eyes are hooded, nearly relaxed, when faced with a moment’s rest. She sits among the hand-crafted wooden benches adorned with caryatids. Her ten minutes of respite after a kill are meant to recharge her, although she never achieves such nirvana. Even sitting still, her pelt stands on end.
She hides her hands in her lap, letting them shake with adrenaline, her merited insecurity never subsiding on the hostile planet.
But, among the locker room’s commotion, she enjoys her temporary moment of mental loneliness. Here she can barely hear you or your continuous anxieties. Even the meandering gladiators, on their own quests for survival, melt away with her dissociation. Alone, she can relish another kill without your subconscious, exasperating civility.
She draws her short nails to claw at her pelt, scratching the excess water from the shower onto the floor. Her legs stretch out, hooves scraping against the tiling. Mineral scents caress her cuts and scrapes, electrifying her.
Here she waits for her pay. A paltry gesture of congratulations—a portion of bets plus a fee for showing up. Enough for limited food and shelter, to survive the night and crawl back to George Merrick in the morning.
A morsel, compared to the luscious bounty of another match survived.
With a slam, the locker room’s bronze double doors fling open, revealing the same figure as always, confidently striding to meet your mare. It’s Miss Gates. Unlike her supporters in the stands, the leader of the Reds is dry.
Her bright Red, tailored crepe suit announces her presence almost as loud as her pumps against the tiles. The woman’s predatory, toothy grin curls, always on the prowl for new sacrifices. Her hair is bobbed. Short, scorched into position, giving breadth for crow’s feet to bubble from beneath her thick makeup. Clutched between her manicured, cinnamon-Red nails is the simple share of credits to reward Ø, begrudgingly, for another kill in the ring.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
“Anuvver well-fought strike! Bless yous Blues, yer putt’n up a sound straightener recently.” Her voice is teeth on glass. She hands Ø the envelope, addressed to the care of one Xanthippe Barron, as the public has known your mare since touchdown. A paper-thin disguise, shredded in the rain, along with every other courtesy. Gates tut-tuts as Ø’s furred digits attack the envelope as a tribal picks the bones from a still-writhing fish. “Ye nah, ay think yous a criminal. Yous should be one o’ me Reds.”
“Then go ask Old Blue to sell you my contract.”
“Owd Blue’s tew focused onniz ‘quali'ty’ strategy to entitain a trade, ye nah dat. Not like he ever comes down ‘ere ter check up onniz stock. Ay may not know who ye’are, or where ye come from, but ye haven’t even seen Owd Blue’s face. Fickle loyal’y, ye’ve got. Blast, innit?”
She teeters around the room, clip-clopping her heels and pursing her cheeks at the sights, as athletic managers often do. Spying the vestiges of dried blood on Ø’s bench, she licks a dry thumb and snuffs it out into her palm, breaking the coagulation and returning the bench to its pristine wooden state.
“But, if ye’r not will’n ter walk out on the owd bag, ye can still be sound meat for me young, strapp’n little murderers.”
Gates reaches out a stray hand to nobody in particular, snapping and jittering with energy, the gold bangles around her wrist twinkling. She receives an imported Keowee brand cigarette, lit by one of the magnate’s many teakettler followers, their subhuman forms circling the room, performing their chores in a whirlwind of emotionless, canid muzzles. Her lips, coated in a dark Red matte burgundy, gnaw the cork-tip.
Cattishly, she draws the largest breath possible with a grin, never losing the spring in her step. Never becoming still.
“So ye know, ay’ve gotta Blessed recruit be’n shipped in from Ticonderoga Station termorrer. Sprung ‘im juss last week. He’s a multi-felon, ye know. Wa’ supposed to serve, what, fifteen ‘undred years under de ice for subconscious reprogrammin’. Proper ‘edcase, Bless ‘im. Rapist, arsonist, barely a brain cell left from all’a the drugs. Juss to die fer, really. Nearly escaped custody without me ‘elp, if ye could believe it. Spaced two eggheads before they could put ‘im under de ice, Bless dat.”
Gates savors the taste of warm, dry tobacco with a self-satisfied smirk. Ø’s eyes trace the cigarette’s tip, recalling the hazy, sordid taste. She picks at her fingers in nostalgia, toying with her few remaining nails, remembering the sensation of Keowee. Wafting from her nostrils, seated atop her captain’s chair. Commanding the Cimarron. At her peak.
“Ay got ‘im pre-registered for timorrer, me lit’le Wild Card. Cut through all de Red tape. ‘E’ll be foam’n at the mouth to get a hand on ye once ‘e’s fight’n. ‘E’ll put on a clinic, Bless ‘im.”
Her head swivels. Her bobbed hair flapping with bubbly unison. Brows furrowed, canines on display, Gates lets out a shrill laugh before contorting, stretching, into an energetic attention. With an air of charity, she takes a final huff before passing the mare the last half of her cigarette with a knowing, pitying smile.
With her usual business hustle, she pumps her arms and speed-walks away, shouting through the doors with a cursory wave of goodbye.
“Think about me offer! Maybe if yous switched colors, you’d be able ter afford a place to sleep fer once, ye and dat diddyman o’ yiz!”
Ø feels the flame between her fingers, letting her pelt sear as much as possible before placing it between her lips. Her heavy sigh exhales smoke through her nostrils, and with it the memories of excess that seem so foreign. She wonders if Gates would pay her enough to stay somewhere other than the flop-house you both called home.
The thought of it makes her grimace. The tens of plasticwood beds and hammocks arranged around the grimy, oily floor. A cramped warehouse of filth that shelters local criminals with nowhere to rest. Including yourselves, now destitute. Shells of your former glory.
But, it’s livable, you cope against her negativity.
For safety, you sleep with your trusty 418 sidearm with only a single round remaining. Plus, the no fighting policy keeps most trouble away. After all, without somewhere safe to spend the night, you can’t nod off streetside. Not with the pulsating fear of flash floods, as many find out the hard way.
Back in your nest, you hear steps from the distance. Not the normal wet clip-clopping of Ø on cracked limestone, but the squeaking footsteps of dura-leather, pseudo-calfskin shoes. With open boxes like yours, it’s never a surprise. However, as a newly wanted man, you place a hand on your sidearm.
This past year has taught you that most conversations begin friendly, but end rudely. Poisonings in bed. Hidden explosives under public benches. Service workers with concealed blades. Luckily, Ø is here to reprimand you when your guard is down, to chastise you incessantly for your passivity.
Learning experiences from a concerned party, you cope further.
The plastic curtain opens. It’s a short man. Bespectacled, with rectangular, silver alloy framing and foggy lenses. Although his skin is a sickly sun-drained pale, his puffy eyes and running nose show he’s new to New Port Moresby’s spongy atmosphere. Underneath his antiquated black umbrella, completed with a straight handle of foreign beechwood make that matches his simple cane, his wool suit is newly moistened. He must have his own box, you think, one with doors.
One that’s insulated. Clean, even. With imported moonshines marked up at twenty-five times their value. Filled with plastic faux-fauna that preserves the planet’s sanitized image, the one advertised across the galaxy as a destination of rustic excess. Home to hush-tone conversations with the few literate servants available, and interactions within the semi-nomadic, genteel society of sporting fans that lounge at the top, upon which the entire local economy revolves.
He’s no doubt lost on the way to another glittery destination hidden from your impoverished lifestyle.
First, he’ll commit the one of many faux pas by initiating conversation at all. Then he’ll ask directions, referencing the litany of destinations on faded signs, to the ruined caldarium, the repurposed thermopoleium, the forgotten luxury fixtures left without upkeep for centuries. A mixture of jealousy and impatience turns your head, and you contort to allow for a shot from the hip should the situation require one.
Startlingly, the man simply nods.
“I’m sorry to intrude, but this is a public box, after all.” His glasses fog. Warm breath mixes with the cool rain. He holds up a single open hand for peace, flashing a polite smile from the doorway. “Don’t worry, I’m unarmed.”
You stiffen. A rare capable stooge. He’s an obvious omen of danger.
“If you’re here to bet, sit down,” you gesture with your free hand, careful not to cross your body and give up your shot.
“No, thank you. I’m not here to bet. I’m here to talk.”
“Why? Don’t know you.”
“Sure, but I know you.”
“I don’t think so.”
Your jittering finger curls across the smooth metal beneath your poncho, inching closer to letting a round loose, announcing your presence, starting another disastrous chain of escalations.
“It’s rigged.”
“What is?”
“Tomorrow’s matches, they’re fixed,” he says matter-of-factly.
Inconvenienced, but maintaining his erudite aura, he removes his glasses to streak them across the milli-cotton dress shirt beneath his sport coat. He replaces them with a huff, wriggling his human nose and pressing them against his short eyelashes. A real professional, even in danger, you think.
“You’re out of your mind,” you sneer.
Every planet has a calendar full of nonsense holidays. Days off to lounge. Vacations, centrally planned galas, parades for some higher purpose. However, unlike the glittery worlds or pleasure habitats, New Port Moresby has only one celebration. A single, paradoxically never-ending festival devoted to the spectacle of violence, The Circuit.
The Circuit is an endless Gordian Knot of gladiatorial knockout brackets. An entertainment structure with no climax. A ubiquitous observance that manifests into social fabric, and upon which pivots New Port Moresby’s axis.
This year-round bloodletting spits through the daily radio broadcasts, mythologized beyond advertisement. A long march of single, winner-take-all matches, a continuous tournament on tour from settlement to settlement; from the smugglers’ haven of Ocklawaha, to the corporate botanical research settlement of Lakota, the broken idylls of Osceola, the hurricane-whipped twin cities of Eufaula and Muscogee—their seawalls broken, today ten meters below sea level and oscillating—and every pitiful census-designated location in between that clings to life.
Each with their own temples to state-sanctioned murder, their own manicured sacrificial altars. Their own George Merrick.
These traveling fighters, dead men, doomed laborers, roam the planet. They perform until either sporting death or terminal fame. Matches of man against man, beast, machine, it doesn’t matter. All so long as the rabble can enjoy sport on a global level, huffing it from cathode ray tubes, millions of kilometers of television wiring meticulously repaired and dripping with perspiration.
Between the monochromatic commercials, the bishops proselytize. They shout dogmatic slogans to the tune of credits-per-second, fixating upon a single notion; that if one performs well, they too can become a fighter within The Circuit. To some, this is fame, wealth, recognition amongst their own tribes, self-actualization as a collective color.
To others, to you in particular, it’s a way to get out of Algonquin.
And so blood flows freely from the stone of George Merrick. It’s in nobody’s sober interest to fumble with the alchemy. To rig the year’s largest money-making opportunity is impossible. In Algonquin, a gangrenous blight with a limited cast of scoundrels, any perpetrator would be hunted down within the time it takes for thunder to follow lightning.
For the big swingers at the top, reclining in the climate-controlled private boxes from which this clown must have arrived, it’s a blasphemous implication, as the Law of the Jungle dictates you can never starve the beast nor deny The Circuit its gore.
After all, who does this guy think he is?
“There isn’t a stooge warped enough to think they could fix Circuit matches. Too many eyes. Too small a reward. Besides, how would you know? Doesn’t seem like you’re from here.”
The man continues, staring past your insolence and side-stepping your loaded comment.
“The Reds and the Blacks have rigged the event. All to collect a few bounties, yours included. Some fighters from The Circuit, some miscellaneous gladiators like your mare friend. A sizable sum combined with the stolen proceeds of a few hundred thousand stolen bets. At the expense of you and the Blues, of course.”
“What bounties?” You bluff. Your willingness to plead ignorance is a tired, but true tactic.
“Listen, I’m not a Red, Blue, Black, or any other color. I just wanted to let you know you’re in danger and wish you the best of luck.”
“You’re a pretty nice guy, showing up announced and giving advice nobody asked for. You seem like a real friend.”
“Sure,” he laughs under his breath. “Sure, you could say that.”
Below, a stray trident snaps against a full-body shield, the recycled metal losing its shape under pressure. You bend, realizing that your disguises, bluffs, and attempts at intimidation are so easily dismissed. Behind you, the ten-meter drop into the maelstrom of angry crowds. No escape.
An animistic fight-or-flight discharges and your anxieties take over.
“Alright, ‘friend.’ How about you have a seat? Let’s get to know each other. It’s only polite, right?”
You finally reveal your pistol, careful to hold it beneath your baggy sleeves away from the rain. It’s an antique, after all. In the humidity, you’re uncertain if it’ll fire at all.
“It’s a bit too wet for my tastes. I think I’d rather return to my business,” the man politely declines, dismissing your childish display. “And I suggest you return to yours.”
He gestures over your shoulder, out of your balcony, into the unknown. His eyes fixate on something behind you. He nods, as if giving a signal.
Without wasting a moment, you spin, arms akimbo, ready to face the newest threat. However, all that greets you is the milling of the stadium, meters below, as it awaits the next match-up.
You wait for a shot. One from a distance. From somewhere between the flapping plastics and confused drunks. There it’ll be. The next, only round needed to dispatch you, to end your running for good. You’re prey. Hunted, present and future. Only after a minute do you once more draw air and become human.
But there’s no shot, only an uncomfortable lack of danger. You’ve somehow forgotten the impossibility of your fears. Unsurprisingly, by the time you turn back around, the gentleman is gone. Possibly, you think, the oldest trick in the book.
Another embarrassing mistake.
Eerie silence of an afternoon’s rainstorm fills the roofless area, and before long, the distant clip-clopping of hooves accompanies the orchestra. A furred arm swipes open the curtains on the opposite of the room, revealing a familiar mare’s tired eyes.
“Do you know who that guy was?” You blurt out in fear, shouting over cracks of lightning and newly resumed chanting.
Ø, perplexed, follows your glance towards the opposite doorway. The plastic curtain sticks to itself amid the rain. A rogue wind brushes past you, chilling you to the base of your skull.
“Who?”
“The guy that was just in here. With the glasses, umbrella, cane...”
Ø cocks her head in annoyance. She shrugs her shoulders, snorting in frustration.
“Think about it from my perspective, from my mind,” you plead. “Can’t you see him? Think, through my eyes, not yours.”
“Are you joking?” she growls. Deep circles swell beneath her eyes. Even ignoring her single shiner from last week’s bout, you know she hasn’t been sleeping well. Her long eyelashes stay in place, raindrops fluttering into the pools at her feet. “All I see is what you see. And I didn’t see a thing.”
You pause. The blood returns to your fingers, your nerves once more fighting against the precipitation. As you stow your filthy gun, you wonder how yet another impossibility can befall you. Maybe your connection is finally breaking down. A temporary telepathy unraveling with time, overstaying its welcome.
“Oh,” the mare interjects, spitting at you through the rain. “And would it kill you to give me some privacy after a kill? I think I deserve some after getting us enough credits for another meal. I can’t even enjoy a cigarette without feeling your eyes all over me.”
There’s no point in either of you hiding your frustrations. Since you’ve crossed paths those several months ago, your lives have become immensely more complicated. She chuffs as she spots the betting sheet in the corner, hovering as it circles a drain.
“At least one of us is trying to earn us enough credits to get off this garbage heap.”
“You really think...” you begin before pausing. She can hear your thoughts, and you hers. It’s pointless to explain how you want to escape the planet as much as her, to manage passage off-world, to return to normal lives.
At least she can get her frustrations out on the soppy, muddy floors of the arena. You can only watch from your vantage. Suggest, in the torrent, forever, the next middling course of action. At least she can kill and enjoy the slaughter.
Her wide nostrils can suck up air, practically drowning herself to take in the ambrosia of her prey. It vibrates through her maw, into the roots of her teeth, releasing vihimsa through her keratin. A bulbous, bleeding tongue caresses her own lips at the thought. Her flat molars crave the sticky, slimy texture of tripe, or the dense muscle of raw hearts. You relish them from her tastebuds, eaten directly from criminal ribcages, in this same arena, match after match.
Every twitch of anger you hold drums hers further, and you find yourself on your toes, pressing against the rubber of your worn boots.
Her fur sticks in between your human teeth as they press into her living skin, her pelt chewy from the rainfall. It’s a waterlogged daydream, runoff from her subconscious that floods into yours. You grind your incisors against canines, desperate for psychotherapeutic release. Yet another one of the Pavlovian mechanisms embedded in her soft mind, the consciousness of a tank-bred fighting slave. Ones that implant on you in turn.
For months, you’ve dealt with these subconscious quirks. The unbearable give-and-take present in any relationship, only magnified, communicated telepathically without cessation.
But, dutifully, your mental forces massage her back from her zeniths of bloodlust. You expense yet another chakra, another mental burden that it takes to control the soul which you are charged with protecting in imperfect syzygy. Perfectly inconvenient, you think, as you contort your jaw against the obnoxious drip, drip, dripping from her mane.
Your chore is a continuous practice, and no matter how much she resents her position, she relies on your stability. After these few months, you’ve realized, as the sub-digital wanted posters warn, that your mare is unhinged. The former cannibalistic slave, a piratical parmularius who has hacked, shot, and disintegrated her way through life, is too dangerous to exist alone. And, at your expense, she can’t resist your suggestion for long, plodding along beside you.
Her subordinate, anthropomorphic mind is meant to be broken by design. That’s why it’s a ‘secret’. A weakness, she spits.
With every drop of water that taps your head, you attempt to lean further into your control, paradoxically unable to handle the situation. You’re unwilling to make an effort. So you force yourself to try. But, as always, you’re disappointed with your eventual failure, as the struggle to civilize is difficult to overcome and the burden squarely on your shoulders.
You’re just tired of her madness, that’s all.
“Forget it,” she says. Her fingers dip into the filthy water, picking up the discarded betting sheet. Finally, believing it’s truly illegible, she looks to you for permission to say her next piece. She takes your sleep-deprived resignation as an acceptable response. “Let’s get out of here.”