Little Dead Monsters (2 page)

Chapter Two.

Allegra turned away and did her best to hide her contempt. It was a difficult thing to do. The balcony view she had of the pits was the best seat in the house, and she loathed being up there.

Two more lives,
Allegra thought as she watched the boys, no older than she, lunge at the knife on the ground. For her, the loudest aspect of this fight was not the roaring of the crowd, but the silence of the two boys, looks of desperation on their faces.

For almost a decade she had been subjected to these fights and one would think that she was desensitized to them by now, but she wasn’t. She couldn’t.

The sight of their bloody wounds always tore at her heart but what completely broke it were their tears, that moment when they realized that their lives were forfeit. No more loving families, no more laughter with their friends, no more hope and no more future. All that remained was the fight…and death.

She hated it.

Ryker on the other hand was in love with it.

He watched the violence with money on his mind and whisky on his breath. The bloodier the fight was, the better mood he was in because it meant more customers and more customers meant more green. On the nights where he made a lot of money from the seats and the bets, he allowed Allegra to leave with most of her dignity in tact. She was his top medic after all and it was her task to make sure that the “winners” survived long enough for their next fight.

On the flipside, when the fights didn’t please him or the crowd, he slugged her in the stomach and slapped her as hard as possible on the backside. But he never touched her face. It was far too valuable.

“Your looks will fetch me a good price one day,” he always said and it was in his best interest to keep his investment in perfect condition. “When you become of age, I can retire from the goldmine between your legs,” he sneered, stroking her caramel-coloured hair that flowed, like satin, down to her shoulders. She was only fourteen.

She had developed a maturer body than others her age with elegant curves that drew the attention of all the perverted guards. What entranced them was her rosy face that displayed full-red lips and powder-blue eyes filled with innocence. Her movements were fluid and delicate, though she walked with her head down, shielding those soft eyes from all the horrible sites of the Arena, as if trying to preserve its innocence.

By nature, Allegra was a gentle soul who prayed a lot. She prayed for strength (for her and for the other slaves), for happiness and peace (which seemed a miracle in her eyes from where she stood), and for Ryker to die. Allegra had always tried to find the good in all people, but when it came to Ryker, she found nothing redeeming about the man.

She hated his guts. She hated his long greasy hair that dangled around his chin, she hated his narrow slanted eyes, she hated his crooked pointy nose, she hated his indecent smile, and most of all she hated him for forcing her to watch the gruesome matches at his side, which he ran every week. Allegra found him physically repulsive as well. Ryker had the pale complexion of a maggot and his diet of whiskey made him wiry thin. He slouched as if he had weights tied around his neck and often walked with his oily hands in the pockets of his faded pants.

“Another drink,” he ordered as his eyes remained glued to the fight down below. He licked his lips like a hungry jackal and stuck out his tongue with anticipation as he sensed that a deathblow was moments away. It was barbaric.

Allegra reluctantly obeyed him and poured him another shot of whiskey while doing her best to avoid any glimpses into the pit.

“That dog that we brought in is a savage,” Ryker laughed as he sipped from his glass. “He fights as if he were a wild animal. The street kids are always like that. They’re like primitive apes. Do you see it Allegra?”

“Yes,” she lied.

Ryker stared at her with his narrow eyes and frowned as disdain seized his face and distorted it.

“You’re a liar,” Ryker said. “A filthy, contemptuous liar. What do you know about the fighting pits? You’re just a whore.”

Allegra had grown numb to his verbal attacks. “Yes,” she said. She had learned long ago not to disagree with Ryker, unless she wanted to be on the receiving end of a vicious beating.

“Watch them fight,” Ryker ordered and Allegra obeyed. That tiny glimpse made her shiver. She swallowed hard and did her best to keep her emotions, and the bile, down in the trenches of her stomach.

The two boys were covered in blood. Whether it was their own or each other’s, Allegra couldn’t tell. One of the boys, Sunny, clumsily clutched a knife in his hand while tears streamed down his dirt stained face. The other one that Ryker referred to as “Dog” was barely standing, but he was surprisingly calm. And there was his stare. It was fierce, as if he were watching the world catch fire, burning into ashes before him.

“Which warrior do you think will win?” Ryker asked, as he pointed down at them. Allegra saw no warriors in the pit, only two young boys robbed of their innocence and their lives.

“The one with the knife,” Allegra answered. Ryker laughed and finished off the rest of his drink and slammed the glass on the mahogany table. He hollered at the fighters.

“End it,” Ryker shouted down into the pit, his voice adjoining to the chorus of cheers from the violence-hungry patrons that watched. The crowds that gathered for these fights were unsavoury individuals that frequently consisted of gambling addicts, gang-bangers, bikers, mafia of all sorts, and the occasional rich guy in a suit, which always surprised Allegra. They were almost always men, though she saw the rare female wander in here as accompaniment. She watched these women closely from the distance of Ryker’s balcony pavilion, and was amazed when they didn’t flinch at the sight of gore. Were the women just as heartless and cruel inside as the men?

Ryker turned his attention back to Allegra and flashed her a devilish grin. He looked like a Goblin.

A couple of years ago, while scavenging through a freshly kidnapped boy’s belongings, Ryker found a comic book, which he thought useless and discarded it into the trash. Allegra took the comic when he wasn’t looking and secretly brought it back to her cramped quarters. The comic book was beautiful. It had been so long since she saw any new artwork come through this place.

Allegra had flipped through the pages of the fantasy comic and stumbled upon a drawing filled with goblins and was astounded by the resemblance that those frightening looking creatures had with Ryker. Henceforth, when Allegra was alone and praying aloud, she whispered for death to come for the “Goblin.” She dared not use Ryker’s name, just in case he, or one of his men, were listening. Why she prayed aloud, she didn’t know, but it became a habit. Maybe subconsciously she believed that the power of her voice could carry her prayers through the thick walls of the Arena, past the infinite sky and space, and reach into the heavens.

The Goblin was condescending as he spoke to her. “You haven’t watched enough fights to predict winners,” he said. “Your choice of Sunny is stupid. Just because he’s the one holding the knife doesn’t mean he knows how to use it. Knife combat is an art form. You need to bleed a man first before you can truly know how to wield it. Until you popped that cherry, it’s nothing more than a toy in a child’s hands. Watch the Dog. He will surprise you.”

Allegra did as she was told and stared into the pits, but she forced her mind to drift far away from this place. She daydreamed of the world she remembered in her youth, before she even knew of the Arena’s existence. It was wonderful.

She remembered the smells of summer, in particular the flowers that her mom planted in the family garden with their sweet and fresh scent. If pink and green had a smell, Allegra was sure it was that of the Japanese cherry blossoms that rained delicate pink petals.

As a child, she spent most of her afternoons with her big beautiful collie dog
Pineapple
, who followed her everywhere, bathing her in slobbery kisses. And how could she forget her mom's freshly baked cookies? Their soft sweetness that melted inside her mouth was as warm as her dad's hugs and her mom's kisses.

Allegra's daydream was interrupted by the cheers of the crowd and she glanced down into the pit where Sunny advanced towards Dog, knife in hand, his eyes a mix of fear and adrenaline. Blood oozed from his gashes like red lava flowing out of flesh coloured craters. He raised the knife and howled as he lunged at Dog.

Before the knife could reach its target, Dog grabbed Sunny by the wrists and held him at bay, the point of the blade mere inches away from his left eye. They both howled like maimed beasts in the wild, fighting for their lives.

Dog finally managed to wrench the knife out of Sunny’s hands and it dropped to the ground. While Sunny tried to reach for the weapon again, Dog took advantage of the opening and used his hands as weapons instead. The thud to the back of Sunny’s head from Dog’s fist was heard across the Arena.

Allegra tried to tune out the horrors of the fight and thought of her Dad, who used to read to her every night. It didn’t take Allegra long to grow bored of all her picture books so he ended up reciting poetry instead. The Tyger by William Blake was always her favourite. It always calmed her.

“Tyger! Tyger! Burning bright, in the forests of the night,” she found herself whispering, “What immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry?”

Sunny lay on the ground, face in the dirt, shuddering with each subsequent blow from Dog’s fists to the back of his head. He was defenceless to Dog’s vicious attacks.

Ignore it,
Allegra thought.
Don't see the blood. Don't see the boy dying. Remember something else. Remember my brother, and what a brat he was, always picking on me and teasing me. But I loved him with all my heart, and he did the same. He always protected me and kept me away from harm except for one time…

The roar of the crowd tore Allegra away from her memories and her thoughts returned to the Arena, like a carefree soul forced into a paralyzed body.

Sunny lay dead in the dirt. His blood drained into the sand and amassed into a red pool that spread into a perfect crimson circle.

“What did I tell you,” Ryker squealed with delight. “Dog is our winner. Those street boys, they know how to fight. What a show. Listen to the audience, they loved it.”

The audience was as sick as he was. “It was...impressive,” Allegra said before adding, “Can I tend to his wounds now?”

Ryker nodded and shooed her away. He stood up and took in the fervour of the crowd. It was another record setting attendance for the Arena. How sickening.

If Allegra didn’t feel like such a coward, she would set fire to the damn place. She would gladly burn with it just to see the end of the fighting pits while watching the Goblin’s skin melt alongside her. There wasn’t much for Allegra to live for nowadays anyways.

But like all the other slaves here, she was too afraid to do anything so she dreamed instead.

She dreamed of freedom, a day when either Ryker, or she, was dead.

Chapter Three.

Ryker liked to call them paramedics, but in actuality, they were low-level guards who were too weak and too stupid to provide any real muscle. They brought Dog in on a stretcher and laid him on the old wooden surface, which served as her operating table.

The table had seen far too much blood over the years. It used to be a light hickory colour but over time, the blood and gore seeped into its fibres and rotted into a dark and filthy red, reminding Allegra of a dying rosewood.

She asked Ryker for a new table once but he scoffed at the idea and urinated on the table in front of her as if he were an animal, yet to be housebroken. She rarely asked him for anything anymore.

Allegra had washed that table at least eight times before she managed to get rid of the Goblin’s stink. It was important to keep it as clean and sterile as possible for the children. She wouldn’t allow for any of them to die from infection due to an unsanitary operating table.

By the time Dog was brought to her, he was unconscious. His wounds were deep and required a lot of mending but at least that was better than being dragged off the pit by the gravediggers. Underneath the layer of dirt that caked onto his face, Allegra could tell that Dog had handsome features. Black wavy hair covered most of his eyes and brow and she brushed it to the side to reveal an honest-looking face. He was pleasant to look at, despite the noticeable scar underneath his left eye. His cheeks were hollow from the lack of proper food over the years. In fact, his entire body was fairly thin. He was evidently malnourished.

Allegra prayed as she always did before she worked. “Please Lord, give me the strength to treat him so he may live another day.”

She examined the knife wounds on Dog’s body. There were lacerations on his arms and legs and a large one across his chest. Luckily, they were flesh wounds and no major arteries or veins were sliced. The bleeding was controllable.

Last week a boy had bled to death on her table. Everything was drowned in red as the blood flowed as freely as her tears. She would not allow that to happen tonight.

Allegra opened the medical bag and set to work. She strapped on the latex gloves and applied pressure on his chest and waited until it stopped bleeding. She cleaned the wound to prevent infection caused by the dirt and filth from the Arena. 

Ryker refused to sanitize the combat grounds and the weapons. He told her the dried blood, caked on the sand and smeared against the walls, gave the pits character and as for the weapons, it made them look more dangerous. Ryker used this to create a medieval-like atmosphere. A marketing tactic as he liked to call it.

Allegra frowned and focused her thoughts back on mending the wounded boy on her table. She was a nimble seamstress as she sewed up his gashes with delicate precision and dressed them with clean bandages. Finally she administered antibiotics and allowed him to sleep while she cleaned up the mess and sterilized her tools.

Allegra worked in silence, her back turned to Dog, so she was startled when she discovered that he was watching her with his chestnut-coloured eyes.

“Do you want some water?” Allegra asked as she grabbed a clean glass from the cupboard and filled it from a bottle. She brought it over to Dog, who ignored it and stared at her with the same look on his face as she saw in the pit.

“Take it,” Allegra said, holding the glass for him with an outstretched arm. He made no effort to reach for it.

Instead he turned his head away from her. “Get lost. I don’t need anything from you.”

The resentment he felt was as clear as the water in the glass, but she didn’t fault him for it. How could any of the boys not feel fear or distrust after going through what they just did?

No, it wasn’t the boy’s fault that he was full of venom. The Goblin was the one to blame — he, his cronies, and the damn crowd that watched these fights. Ryker had created a kingdom of misery, ruled by his tyranny, and his loyal subjects gathered around to watch the suffering he delivered to his slaves.

She placed the glass on the stool beside the table. “I’ll leave it here then,” she said as she picked up the worn, black medical bag that displayed a small graphic of a moon on it with a smiling face. A brownish-red stain smeared its left side.

The image seemed to calm Dog as his eyes softened into a child’s and he stared at it with a youthful innocence.

“Do you like the bag?” Allegra asked. “It’s supposed to be the man on the moon. It was quite a popular cartoon character when I was younger. They gave me this bag to use for my medical tools.”

Allegra’s voice had disrupted whatever trance Dog was in and he looked away and ignored her. She could feel the distance he was creating between them.

“I can leave the bag here if you want? I just need my tools,” she said.

“Leave me alone,” Dog spat.

She shrugged and zipped up the bag and walked towards the door. His voice stopped Allegra in her tracks.

“The next time I see you again, I’ll kill you,” he threatened.

“No you won’t,” she replied before leaving him alone to his silent rage. He would be asleep soon. The needle she gave him made sure of that.

The smell of death clung to the air like maggots on dead flesh, and what she wouldn’t give to smell those sweet cherry blossoms again.