.
I want to express my doubts concerning the veracity of this result.
It’s a mistake.
“There’s to be a mistake.”
“Are there cockroaches in heaven?” David asks behind his black and copper gas mask in a static droid voice.
I look around in confusion, unsure of what he’s suggesting. I confront him on our deal raising the gear to him above my head.
“What’s this? We made a vow. You put me in the Quaestor class, I bring him to you,” I mutter heatedly glancing about the other tents, assuring no one else overhears.
“Tommy is no longer called for,” he says violently standing up over the desk. He slams his hands flat on it and looks down on me. I become paranoid, looking around once more, believing others might’ve heard.
I shush him and ask what’s wrong with him.
Before I can get a valid answer, a surge in the wind current hits me from behind and jolts me forward, off my platform. I fall onto the front of the desk. David leaps from his place in the tent onto the surface of the desk. He squats on top of the desk and stretches his left arm down to me, offering up his hand with his palm face up.
“Do you fancy a challenge Plebeian?” David asks, tilting his head.
The humid night temperature drops, and I look to the sky at the sound of a falling old fighter airplane. Meanwhile, David stays watching me unreceptive to the sound. A fiery translucent egg descends from the night sky off in the distance. A meteoritic fall into the darkness of the cloud forest. It blasts an icy gale into the prison yard while in transit from the air miles east. The sudden gust of wind lifted the wine purple flag on the black spiral lamp post in a grandiose sweep and hardened the textile so it froze in place. It’s as if time stopped as the flag was waving. The boys on stage freeze standing followed by the boys in line.
There’re screams. The freeze goes from a hypnotist preventing movement to a surrealist artist sculpting freakish ice sculptures. The first to turn in line was to be the next Nihil to come up on stage. A blond boy in an extra–large magenta dress shirt, no pants, and a white lab coat. An homage to Salvador Dali’s ‘Crucifixion’ oil on canvas painting; this boy is frozen with his arms reaching out to the ends of the earth. Blocks of ice materialize on his wardrobe and it’s unknown whether he himself is levitating or there’s ice amassing under him that’s lifting him. Due to the height of the stage, I’ve an obstructed vision and cannot see all that happens below as above.
Monkeys outside the force field crank up their volume to make a terrifying unanimous howl. The tumult of shouting melds in my head and I can’t tell apart the monkeys’ howl from the boys’ screams.
Nihils’ exposed skin transforms into patches of chalky white and clear, lightly tinted blue crystals start to form on their clothing. From their blotted bodies rise lengthy spikes of ice. A number of Prefects collapse from their chairs and onto the stage floor, trembling.
The first Prefect to come tumbling out of his tent and onto the stage has a voluminous yellow cape with the hallmark of a golden tree on it. Its roots and branches with triangular leaves make up a strange geometric pattern on the cape that extends to his individual earth yellow gas mask. The finest taffeta fabric of the cape is as lustrous as the polished metal of his gas mask. He rolls himself into a cocoon using the appreciable cape. Rows of spikes that resemble thorns tear through layers he’s made over his skin, only managing to stick out an inch from the top cloth.
One Prefect rips off the jacket portion of his solid black slim–fit suit as his legs swipe the stage floor. He manages to stand up on stage and a spike of ice rises at an elevated angle from his chest, through his white dress shirt, popping out three of its buttons. With it, the single spike of ice takes the red ascot silk tie around his neck and as it extends the tie begins to choke him.
Within the clear glass that showcases his eyes inside of a platinum gas mask whiter than snow, he turns to face me steps ahead of the burgundy sitting jaguar statue and a step behind the boundary of the stage. The blood vessels in his eyes burst and scarlet lightning lances down his face. The beige in his irises succumbs to a thick coat of milky white frost. His lifeless body falls on stage once more. The ice spike, withholding the tie that choked him, busts as a glass vase would if dropped on concrete. He lies face down with an arm and leg dangling over the edge of the stage.
Survive this and tomorrow will come.
A Nihil next to me on platform four grows becoming abnormally round. His head sinks into his shoulders and his limbs disappear into his torso. He possesses the same spikes of ice as the boys in line, taking after a blown–up pufferfish as he continues to grow more globular. The dark green cube splinters under his weight. As a ball he keels over, shattering the ice spikes protruding from his skin on the stage as he rolls. His feet face me as an emboss of what once was.
Off the stage and onto the dirt below he goes. By the time his mutated body contacts the ground, ten to one he’s an obliterated statue. His body demolished with the swift pop of a dozen balloons bursting all together at once. I can’t see the aftermath left over the stage and on the ground below. Though rising is his body’s only remnant—a cloud of fine, powdery ice resembling snow.
Chaos is smothered. The whisper of my heavy breathing is the last scrap of sound.
Every white light within the prison yard goes out instantaneously. Only the red lights within the jaguars’ mouths on the ends of the black spiral lamp post remain lit. No longer dim. They illuminate the stage up to my platform with the threatening warmth of a fire–heated branding iron millimeters off the skin. At the end of the red lights’ reach is Dante’s Ninth Circle of Hell incarnate. Prefects on stage and Nihils in line lie in darkness, encased in ice. Each brother progressively coated in greater spikes.
The stage cracks under my feet. In the mixture of the red fairy lights and starry night, I only see his big glossy eyes. The sound of hail smashing on the metal stage rises above my breathing. Not a drip of that benign rain that came before the shock wave. I’m able to see a faint ring just outside the line of his right eye’s deep–blue iris.
“David?” I get on my tip toes and reach out to grab his offered hand.
“You’re a cheat Mr. Califf. Squeal as they die and you fall,” he alludes to me being a pig.
A trap door swings loose, and I fall, taking his black rubber glove with me. I drop down into a wide gulf. I scream, feeling the ultimate betrayal.
“David!” I bellow, my voice fleeting.
I descend along with a cascade of nails hoping the waves I’d witnessed below me are water. If not water, then it be liquid mercury from the underground factory. Shall it cause my skin to fall off? A snake sheds its skin to make room for a new resplendent coat. Nature hasn’t equipped me with the chance to.
The dark green wooden platform I’d stood on tilts into the open gap in the stage. It falls following my descent from over my head. I try and position myself for a dive into a whirlpool of churning fluid. Instead, I quickly hit the fluid flat on my front side and with a mighty splash. I hold my breath as I roll over on my back. I’m whipped afloat by a geyser of this free–flowing substance. Admittedly, there’s no immediate burn. This is water.
I vacuum seal one last breath, pumping my cheeks. The dark green moss concealed cube drops straight on my face, and I suffer from an inescapable blackout.
Now I can sleep.