Cool Running Water

by Slush

He was falling backwards in slow motion, as if he was honey being poured from a jar; mounding up and thickening before oozing through the air and spreading over the rug, gaining ground but losing consistency until his breaths were short and wet. I decided to wait it out. I took my watch off my arm and placed it on the table in front of me. I took out my Canasta pack and shuffled for a while before snapping the cards down for Solitaire. Only I wasn’t alone now, the snapping had brought my master back from the abyss, snapped him back inside his head long enough to catch me unawares.

“It’ll cost you more than you think, always does,” then something, thick and throaty and then clearly again, “I’ll finish this later,” and then snoring as though to fall asleep at a time like this was the most natural thing to do. I watched him now over my kings and queens and hated him double for all that he had made from me. I had had a decent life before he tore me out of it and put me in the show. For every ten men I bested he earned enough to have whichever girl pleased him most in the audience, beguiling them with perfume and jewellery while I went backstage to have my jaw rewired. I heard him night after night sweating like a pig trying to deliver on his empty promises. From town to town I struggled through sailors and farmhands while he struggled through redheads and blondes, I fought like an animal at night and wept for what I might have been by day. I thought of all this while I waited for him to die.

He spoke again, waking in a flash, flailing on his back, unable to turn over. His movements were wrong but he spoke clearly, “I’ll finish this later,” and then abruptly his breathing ceased. In the moments that followed I should have left and never looked back, packed up my cards and said goodbye. Instead I stared at him and remembered, letting it all rush back in like a punch out of left field.

And I heard his voice again from across the years as he said, “Get undressed and show me what I’ve paid for”.

I knew that I had been sold, and was no longer my own to do as I willed, but his words shocked me. He must have noticed my hesitation, because he rushed forward, seized my tunic and tried to tear it from me. He had not the strength, but he was holding a whip, and hit me with it in the kidneys, just to stop me from getting any ideas.

Keeping my eyes lowered, I lifted the tunic over my head. He grunted.

“So the old man wasn’t lying,” he said. “You’ll do me very well, once I’ve taught you a few good moves.”

He lunged. Before I could react he landed a blow to the side of my head. I gasped. Bright dots exploded before my eyes, and I nearly fell.

“There, you see. Clever, eh? I’ll show you how to do that. Gets them every time. They don’t see it coming. Get in first, get in fast, and hit them where it counts.”

I was still reeling from the blow, and tried to focus on his face, which he had brought very close to mine. Lips drawn back as if in a smile, nose wrinkled in a snarl. I felt like retching.

“Can’t take it, eh? Well that’s something else you’ll be learning. The winner’s the one who stays standing.”

Again he hit me, this time on the back of the head, knocking me to the ground. I lay there, on the verge of losing consciousness, with the wind knocked out of me.

“Last one standing is the winner, boy,” he said, and placed the sharp toe of his snakeskin boot on my neck, pressing down. I blacked out.

Oh, I got better at the fighting, of course, in time. I was determined not to let him keep breaking my bones. Well, to be truthful, it wasn’t that at all. I was determined not to let him keep humiliating me. The broken fingers healed and the bruises went black then yellow and disappeared but the humiliation just grew and coiled inside my gut.

He kept me chained up in the wagon at first, until he found better ways of imprisoning me. And he fought me every day. He was much stronger back then. I was bigger, but he knew how to fight.

Somewhere among those first (how many were there?) blows he did something to my brain.

One day, as he stood over me with that detestable greasy boar-hide whip I felt a sickening drop and I was abruptly there, right behind his eyes, looking down at myself on the floor, bloodied and exhausted.

“Get UP!” his voice said. "GET UP!”

I watched myself grab at the floor, breaking my fingernails on the packed earth. The air was stuffy and smelled of hot canvas. I could smell it through his nose.

It came to me that he could sense me there inside his head and I felt a cold tiny panic from him. But his hand raised the whip smashing it down across my face and shoulders and I snapped back into the pain and the overwhelming gulf of despair.

I looked up into his piggy eyes.

“No.” I said. Somehow, I sensed, and in some way, the rules had changed.

For a moment he hesitated, hand held high. Maybe he was even a bit frightened. And then down came the whip, again, and then again and again.

I couldn’t always do the swap by force of my own will, but I knew now that I was bound to him. I was his slave by exchange of money, and he was mine, by agreement of violence.

And he was doomed from that day to know it.

Like the day I came out of Sarah’s wagon. She stood at the door leaning on the frame, wearing that pastel kimono he’d bought her in the last town. I’d been walking by, nursing a sore left hand when she nodded her head at me.

“Going somewhere?” she said. I just grunted. I could feel him still looking at me from back at the ring.

“Listen,” she moved forward a bit, then close enough for me to make out the two vertical wrinkles at the bridge of her nose. “I need something fixin’. In there.” She tossed her head back, making her cheap earrings chime.

I knew it was a bad idea at the time, but crossing Sarah was as good as crossing him. And besides, things had changed. I managed to make her see clear though. When I’d fixed whatever it was she needed fixing and left the wagon, he was waiting for me, standing with his hands crossed over his swollen belly. His belt was wrapped around a fist. I guess he hadn’t the time to go get his whip.

“Come here boy.”

I slunk across to him like a dog. That was what I was, back then. But he didn’t hit me. After a long pause I lifted my head and looked him in the eye. He was blinking back beads of sweat. He looked like he was trying to say something but couldn’t. My hands were by my sides, but I felt like I had him by the throat.

“Get back in the ring. You’ve got work to do boy.”

He made a gasp, sweating freely now with the effort of speaking, then pushed past me and into the wagon. As a walked back to the ring I could hear the shouting start. Sarah was getting my beating.

The practice ring was a few ropes strung around wooden poles hammered into the dirt. Close to the ring was the old camera on its big wooden tripod he used to take photos of me getting pummelled. I don’t know what he did with them. A few of the workhands, old men too old to do anything else with their lives and young men on the run and full of anger, kicked the dust, making the most of the brief pause in their work. I climbed through the ropes and stood in the centre of the ring, alone.

It was twenty minutes before he came back. The men hastily stubbed out their cigarettes and came up to the ropes.

“You better be working hard now boy. Tonight’s a special night.” The greasy sweat dripped from his brow and he rubbed a stained hankerchief across it. “Yeah, a real special night.”

Coloured paper lanterns danced in the fetid breeze, their pale lights brushed the faces hardened by sun and ale. I walked to the ring, flanked by the keepers who used to drag me. I wondered what He had lined up for me on this special night.

The crowd was bigger than usual. Mostly men. Women were forbidden to attend meets, but some always crept in, ugly toothless faces hidden under dusty coats. I stepped up on the platform and waited, calm, in my corner.

My opponent arrived. I pushed the crowd’s roar back. He, too, was flanked by keepers. Not dragged, but an encouraging prod in the back. He was large. Massive. A mutant. A freak! He must have been over seven feet tall. Weighed over 300lb. The bastard! He was determined to have me killed.

He, too, mounted the platform. The crowd surged forward as the platform lurched an threatened to give way to his bulk. I shoved away fear, anger, noise as we approached each other in the centre of the ring.

The keepers removed our robes. Mine blue. His red. The noise of the crowd broke my concentration and I turned to look at him. Then I saw why. He had three arms. each massive. Two coming from the right and one from the left, as if his right shoulder had been cleaved in two. Shock tuned to panic which I didn’t have time to quell before the bell sounded.

He got in several blows to my head and torso and only my speed saved me. I had lost my rhythm and there was no time to get it back. I couldn’t feel the cold or the pain, mesmerised by the speed and strength with which he could use his all limbs. He easily won the first three rounds.

There would be no mercy in this fight. No stopping to prevent injury or death. I drew ragged breath and spat blood on the ground. I let my broken ribs expand to suck in the air, and sought His presence.

He was with Sarah. In her wagon. I felt the noise and violence bring him to the brink. What will you do, you bastard, after I’m gone? I felt His arousal and stepped back into the ring. My opponent seemed to slow, as if moving through treacle and now I could land my blows with repetitive force, sending him back into the ropes, then dancing away from his feeble attempts. The rhythm accelerated and pumped in my ears. My blows rained harder better stronger faster and he was down and I was on top of him and I could not stop as He felt release and I did not stop because I knew the last one standing is the winner ... boy.

I did not stop until they dragged me away because I was raining blows on a three armed corpse.

Then I was back, in the room with my cards and with Him. In the left corner, his tripod. In the right a new shadow, which surged towards me.

There was no sound, no grunt, no battle cry as the black wraith launched itself at my chest. My reflexes saved me as I ducked below, and I could feel smooth fabric slap my cheek. I pushed upwards with my arms flinging it off my shoulder. I spun around, unsteady on my battered legs, expecting to hear the satisfying smash of body on wood but I just caught a glimpse of the figure dancing off the wall, upside down and spinning, before it launched itself at me again.

The bosses laugh broke the silence and tore through me from the inside out. I only had time to duck again and the creature was above me. I grabbed around its waist, using its momentum to twist over so I could use my weight to smash the flying demon into the ground. Instead of struggling its arms circled me and time slowed as the room swung past. Its soft body yielded to my every muscle. I had never held a body like that, never been held like that, but I knew it was what I had always wanted. A body surrendering to me, a body I could surrender to. A soft cheek pressed to mine, an exotic feminine scent filled my senses and I let out a ragged breath that sounded long and low, like the groan of a dying beast. The floor swung past again as I crushed the softness to me.

The impact of my chest on the floor drove the breath from my body. A small black foot landed beside my face and a spot of pain bloomed behind my brain.

When I regained consciousness the negotiations were under way and it soon became obvious I was the centre of their bargaining. The pain had localised to a spot at the base of my skull, where I could feel the point of a dagger already below my skin. My limbs splayed out were useless. I could only lie and try to force air into my tortured lungs. The creature was breathing hard, the first sound I had heard from it. The light quick breath of a woman.

The boss saw that I was awake and his big dusty boots pounded in my head as he crossed the floor towards me.

“Get up you oaf”, he said with a laugh in his voice.

“I can’t, the dagger”, I managed to gasp.

His anger filled my head. My defeat was his defeat and I would be punished.

“He’s holding you down with one finger you bat turd”, he said and his boot swung back. The small foot beside my face moved in a blur and the boot was turned politely aside.

“Don’t damage him further.” A voice of authority from out of view turned the boss around. I thought it was a woman but the strange singing accent and my recent confusion with my opponent made me unsure.

The creature settled back over me as the negotiations continued. The hot pain eased slowly and eventually I could feel that it was a finger tip that kept me poised above certain agony. All my muscles gave way in a rush and I slumped into the floor exhausted but this made it harder to breath.

The boss was haggling as I had heard him many times before. I never thought he would sell me. I was his champion. Now I could hear it in his tone, feel it in my pounding heart he wanted rid of me and he’d found a buyer with enough money. I could taste his greed in the blood and sweat in my mouth. He offered a trade for the creature that held me pinned by a finger, but it was the buyer’s turn to laugh and only a woman could laugh like that.

The thing above me thought it was funny too and only I heard its soft “Huh”. The pain bloomed momentarily as I stiffened.

I hated the thing above me who had tricked me, bested me, but I was powerless. I seethed on, tearing what little oxygen I could from my shallow breaths, conscious of my ragged groans in the room and not caring, my fingernails clawing the floorboards. Another finger touched the base of my skull and all my awareness was drawn there. It moved down along my spine rolling over the knotted muscles in my neck and down between my shoulder blades, its insistent pressure seeking out the pain. I gritted my teeth steeling myself for the inevitable torture. I might have been tricked into surrendering, but I knew what suffering was all about. The cruel finger found the centre of pain, down past my shoulder-blade. I knew it wasn’t a knife this time but that did not stop the hot sharp metal from piecing my skin, pushing down into the centre of agony. I resisted but soon could hold my breath no longer, and the air was pushed from my lungs by a searing weight.

Before I blacked out, I felt his cheek on mine again.

“Breathe”, he whispered, and I could.

I have no memory of how long I was out cold, but I do remember my dreams — if that’s what they really were.

Once again I seemed to be inside that all too familiar mind, looking through his eyes, perceiving the world of my gaoler. The boss appeared to be peering at the face of the stranger, and it was plain from his palpitations (and sundry other excretions) that he was terrified. The creature before him was indeed beautiful, but it was possessed of a somewhat gender-less and unearthly symmetry. Its cool facial expression seemed to embody a patina of lethal potential. I knew (and so did the boss) that his life was now hanging by a spider’s thread, and the creature — having temporarily dealt with me — was now toying with him, possibly for its own amusement and apparently little else. I heard the boss saying:

“He’s got potential this one, more than when I found him. The neural interface got him going — nothing like picking up skills from a master.”

“A master of what I wonder. Pusillanimous you are Slug, and your arc of usefulness plots inevitably towards its nadir.”

“What? Surely you don’t mean that. I’ll get you other fighters, I mean I’ve never let you down before have I? This idiot was hopeless before we linked, really slow. No, there are plenty more where he came from, and I can teach ’em. After all, don’t forget who found you.”

“Spare me the rodomontade hermaphroditic spine-ling. Yesss, found me you did, and placed me upon a stage. No neural networks then, no, nothing of use other than watching you fatten, collect your precious coins, whilst others of your species laughed and jeered.”

“It wasn’t that bad, look at you now! You’re famous, invincible, they sing of your glories on Mars Field — and to think I had some small part in it. I’m proud of you Deltis, you’re like a son ...”

“Of a fool like you? No Slug, I’m no offspring of yours, but perhaps we should awaken your latest prodigy, yes, and see how he greets his ’father’, see what form his gratitude takes for a mentor such as yourself!”

I recall at this point the boss furiously shaking his head. He was on the verge of unbridled terror, and for the first time in what seemed forever, I was enjoying myself. However those sensations of his were abruptly muted, like water whisking away down a drain.

I found my eyes opening, and for a moment was startled at the clarity of vision I now appeared to posses. Every microscopic detail of the room had jumped into absurd over-focus. I could see the bosses’ legs underneath a grimy card table, but even single leg hairs had taken on the perspective of a veritable oak tree. Tiny spots of dirt appeared to me as literally ’islands’ floating on a greasy sea of sweat.

It was then that I became aware of the sounds:

The bosses’ laboured breathing — betraying all the hallmarks of a doomed man.

A dog’s faraway barking, replete with the touch of screeching brakes.

A miniscule cricket, on the ceiling — gently rustling its wings.

I could hear my own breathing too. Rather than causing me pain, it was more like a triumphant whirlwind in an eternal chamber. And my limbs! They felt suffused with power — as if hot iron was extruding through my veins. My heart felt like a refinery: Precision pistons pumping in unison. My cognition and vocabulary were also enhanced. I was no longer stumbling over the rudiments of grammar, but describing and perceiving my surroundings with superluminal speed and accuracy. Crucially though, the next thing I heard was Deltis’s near-silent whisper: “He’s all yours.”

“I’m a fighter, not a killer”, I whispered to the empty air, then I stared across the room at the man I’d slaved and fought for through so many years and towns. I’d been harnessed to his life like a beast harnessed to a plough until flexing my shoulders I could almost feel the pull of the leather. I smiled as I realised that now, somehow, the yoke had been lifted.

I focussed on him again as, with a mewling frightened sound, he made a movement towards the door. With uncanny speed I flashed in front of him to stand with my back against the door, his sweaty quivering jowls an inch from my face.

“Don’t get in my way,” he said, automatically undoing his belt buckle. Then I met his eyes and he backed away, hands shaking.

“Get in your way?” I said, wondering why all these years I’d let him beat me down. “Do you think I’m finally free and all I want to do is stay here with you?”

His piggy eyes widened as he gaped at me and I realised I’d just spoken more words than in all my time with him.

I turned the door handle and he rushed up close to me again. “Don’t leave me hear with that,” he gasped.

I looked back at him. “With what?” I asked as he made a nervous circle of the room.

“There’s no-one else here,” I said and watched him jump as the cricket rubbed its wings noisily together on the ceiling.

I opened the door and made to leave.

“Don’t think you can get away free,” he rasped. “It’ll cost you more than you think.” But his last sentence was lost in the slam of the door behind me.

Then vertigo hit me and I seemed to see the world through tiny faceted panes, looking down on the red greasy face of my tormenter. Then the world shifted again and I was behind his eyes, staring up.

I was almost to the end of the passage behind the main tent when I heard him scream.