words. How could I, a kite in the wind, possibly relay my innocence when even I as a misplaced bystander have seen what all else saw—an atrocity backed by grandiose evidence. I never imagined before today, until now, that I’d be seen by the world as a monster. So long as I’m here, I can’t clear my name.
Who but Abeni can attest to our sex game?
I intend to escape into the otherworld for I doubt someone’s bound to see me for me in this world. I’m perfectly capable of escape with Tommy’s power—a battering ram fit to breach these castle walls.
“Silence speaks volumes. Silence is incriminating,” Tommy says to me, his lower lip quivering superfluously.
The Celers stand still, calling for a picture of what was heard.
“Not heard. Seen,” Arnold says disconsolately, rising to his feet. Arnold shuffles up next to me, places his chin on my shoulder and whispers in my ear, “He’s gonna kill you. We need to go ASAP.”
Tommy rises over us. The Celers blindly fire shots in his direction but the bullets freeze, then palpitate just below him. A handful of bullets that missed Tommy hit several of the books on the shelves behind him. One of the shelves gives in and collapses onto another bed of books. We dodge the falling books with those that sustained bullet wounds shooting a steady stream of teal goo into the air and belting their loudest train wreck.
The books’ cries cause all men in the room to drop their guard in order to shield their ears, yet I cling steadfastly to the gold rifle entrusted to me by Tommy, summoning every ounce of willpower to resist the urge to release it and protect my own ears. Tommy’s limbs contort in the air as he succumbs to an inverted spin. “Fiend!” he cries as Arnold butts his head against my back, hurriedly pushing me out of the locker. Arnold, unable to cover both ears, begins to bleed from the right, and I quickly sense my own eardrums nearing their pain threshold.
I accidently nudge a fallen book aside as we press forward. It reacts, releasing streams of teal goo from its green skin, propelling the substance with remarkable accuracy towards us. Each droplet of the mysterious secretion appears to carry with it the uncanny ability to adhere to any surface with unparalleled strength, effectively ensnaring the gold rifle in my hands in its web of teal strands, glistening with moisture. Forced to abandon it, I grit my teeth in frustration, cursing the circumstances that robbed me of it. Yet I know, the focal point of my ire lies with the circumstance that stripped away my dignity, unveiling a facet of my being meant for veiled sanctity, not the world's probing gaze.
The cacophonous blast persists unabated. It's striking Arnold be the sensible one now after losing a hand whilst I weakly stumble in the direction I’m getting shunted. The only excuse for my sluggishness being a lack of self–worth. I feel less than that of a man. Visually stricken by what feels like the world deciding I’m something I’m not. Baba clicked ‘share’ on the jaguar wide web, taking my personal life for the cats to lay waste.
Arnold moves the stump from his right ear and points it towards the fire, shouting for me to snap out of it as we make it into the Lemon Room’s main corridor. He forcefully clenches my tank at the chest with his left hand, glaring into me, making sure I understand. Letting go, he bolts for the exit, passing the three flaming crystal chandeliers having melted partway into the floor. It’s not easy for me to keep up but I manage to do so for fear if I don’t, my feet will get cemented into the ground. Pieces of the pale–yellow floor stick to the soles of my feet and singe the skin.
The biting pain wakes the athlete in me. My senses fully catch up to my speed once we’re in the gray halls somewhere near the theater. Arnold stands by the grinning gargoyle materializing from a gray wall, catching his breath. I meet him at the statue. The only statue, from what I’ve seen, that’s in these gray halls.
I now analyze the creature for the first time. Quite senseless. The same beady eyes of a bare–nosed wombat occupy its face with other, more unnerving features. Its grin overtakes half its face with a long, slim pointed nose alike a swordfish. Its horns are small and straight, peeking out of a disheveled bush atop its head. Long floppy ears alike a bloodhound’s stretch down to its shoulders giving it a mild lightheartedness.
The creature’s been sculpted so that intricate ripples on its long robes make it seem as though it’s fighting a strong wind. Its grand bat wings tear through the robes from its back, extended for flight. Only its upper torso is present, with its lower half lost in the wall. Its arms are extended horizontally at shoulder level, with palms that could wrap around my head facing outward, toward the observer. Its lengthy fingers are outstretched with fine nails that could slice open a pineapple. Its stance conveys a sense of urgency and authority, demanding the admirer freeze in place.
I remove the sparkling cat ears from my head and reach for the gargoyle’s, ordaining it the new cat. It’s a tad less threatening now but not a touch less farcical. In that moment, the epic theme music of a retro adventure videogame starts playing. Campy fighting sounds are weaved into the mix. “I know that sound.”
I dash from the gargoyle, into a dark hall with all but a white light coming from a gaming device. The beam of light strikes the ground. Its sound gets distorted, emitting a tame buzz with small bursts of the prior theme music coming through by way of a DJ dragging the vinyl record of an animated score back and forth against the needle on their turntable. I cautiously approach it first with Arnold on my heels, getting submerged in a darkness quite nice. Such darkness reminds me of the nights I missed out on in my prison cell. The only escape into darkness was in closing my eyes or under the cover of that pink frilly apron with white polka dots. No one’s around when I go to pick up the familiar gaming device, now quiet, squinting at its cracked screen and flickering light.
An icy bitterness sweeps my skin of its warmth.
“Be careful where you flash that light, lest you see shadows that belong to none,” a man’s voice cautions, dark and foreboding.
I shine the malfunctioning gaming device behind me, towards he who spoke. Aside Arnold is the second archer we’d lost in the blue grass. His mustard long sleeve plaid flannel and oversized lavender puffer vest have been run through the mill. He explains how he managed to catch up with us, wrestling a croc and getting rescued by a tall tweeting figure wielding a katana. Surely the same warthog who saved me. Though all he gathered at the time was that whoever rescued him didn’t matter; he needed to get away.
Arnold and he had agreed the gargoyle statue would be where they’d meet should they split up, referring to it as an effigy of Totolinqua. This second archer introduces himself to me as Floki Stewter—Arnold’s herald. “The false fire in the Dragon’s Throat must’ve gone out, allowing the erehaha an easy way out.” He describes erehaha as invisible, weightless creatures that bring the bite of the north with them wherever they go. They’re drawn to hopelessness and despair, hence the prison’s infestation.
“That fire be the only thing keeping them locked in with the prisoners,” he says peeved, hovering his palm over the gaming device’s dying light. “Erehaha are repulsed by fire. Everything about it. Its light, smell, and movement; no matter the size, keep erehaha at a wide berth.”
“Well, they out now. So, can they cause harm?” Arnold asks, quivering slightly.
“An erehaha’s shadow can but, their shadows can only be seen in rooms or corridors of pitch–black and in the direct presence of bright artificial light such as a camera’s flash or a simple flashlight. Those unfortunate enough to encounter an erehaha’s shadow…well, just look at Bo—Baba’s personal taxidermist—alive but at the cost of his sanity.”
“I thought Zorian’s dad had mental problems stemming from his high exposure to inorganic mercury working in a factory below us,” I recall stumped.
“That’s what Baba told him. Many other Servus and Plebs work in the Extraction Plant, using mercury day in and day out to extract gold from ancient alien computer motherboards and hardware. None are mad like Bo.”
“Never mind Bo,” Arnold says pressed. “Magumga is still out there.”
“I say we follow this hall to whoever was playing this videogame amid an animal takeover. Suspicious. Is it not?” Floki nods ahead, moving further into the hall before we can agree.
“What of my watch?” I look to Arnold frightened as we step to meet Floki’s pace. “Tommy’s been using it to track me.”
Floki briskly turns to me and snatches my wrist, unstrapping the watch and nearly chucking it as I seize his wrist. I notify him of the watch’s grander significance to me. Arnold mentions how leaving it here would do no good either way, seeing that once Tommy finds it, he’d know we discarded it specifically to lose him. Floki then suggests hiding it somewhere we could lure and entrap him.
“Hate to go back, but the prison do seem like the only viable option,” Arnold admits stiffly.
As we move into the light from several spherical red paper lanterns hung on intersecting ropes above us, I recall Felix mentioning an organ in the vestry of Church Apple and suggest going there instead. Floki believes Felix likely spoke of the instrument and not of one of the fourteen organs named after each one of Neptune’s moons. While more likely than not, I implore them to try Church Apple and deal with Tommy after we get a much needed power boost. The description of what Arnold and I saw happen to my herald in his hidden library makes Floki sick. Floki heeds my warning and begins pacing anxiously as he reconsiders.
Tommy did say Felix was entrusted by Baba to guard the organ, Triton. Or magumga as it’s repeatedly been called. And while he no longer possesses that particular organ because Tommy stole it, and someone named Pilot was able to bamboozle him thereafter, it follows that if the Caesar—the highest, likely most respected class in this fraternity—trusted Felix, someone from a lower class would too.
Arnold agrees. Likely as relieved as me there’s a side quest nulling his initial recommendation to go back to the prison straightaway. Floki hesitantly agrees but is dead set on me doing away with my watch regardless of my feelings on the matter. He returns my watch and pivots to Arnold’s missing extremity in clear view, bandaged in the pages of that howling book. As the two talk over that horrific episode, I attend to an unimposing man creeping along the stone floor like a spider, frozen in place till I began moving toward him.
Nearing the man from behind, I observe small horns peeping from the top of his head. As I extend a foot toward the horned man’s shoulder, he releases an eerie shriek like a military trumpet call suspended on a high note. I swivel on my heel to run the other way. His shrill wailing is held for several seconds. When I reach Arnold and Floki, the man’s passed from sight beyond an extension of this hall.
Floki equips his bow and stands at the ready, fully aware and attentive to meet danger. To my left, my eyes catch the flutter of a tall hanging medieval tapestry depicting a joust without horses. Rather each knight rides atop different color variations of the snake–like Chinese dragon. Against it, an inconspicuous boy with brittle clothes partly melted to his skin is knelt trembling with an extended index finger on his lips. His body appears badly charred and the cool air from the importunate erehaha whisk chips of his skin and clothes away, disintegrating into dust as they twirl. The relaxing sounds of something in the distance clopping ahead sees Floki’s arrow shift slightly to the left and shoot.
Another high energy, aggressive note emerges with the breakneck sounds of hooves against stone advancing. An ill–tempered elk appears, head forward with widely branching antlers and broad shoulders, running in graceful strides. Such hurtle does justice to highlight its aggressively muscular physique built for speed. I too prepare to engage the incoming threat by holding out the brain. The boy to our left lets out the cry of a demon and startled, the brain tumbles from my grasp. The elk fast approaching raises its head temporarily to do the same.
Arnold passes one of his arrows to Floki and he doesn’t hesitate to use it. It cuts the air to meet the elk with vigor, matching its thirst for blood. I take the gaming device I’d kept on my waistband and slam it across my chest and open palm, halting its variable flickering. I strap my watch to it, get low and flick it across the stone floor into the darkness we left. Cautious not to look back, I gather the two in my open arms and tackle them onto a wall across the now silent still boy with near vacant eyes.
The elk, with an arrow lodged in its shoulder, narrowly avoids us as it dashes into the dark hall where a small beam of light now persists. Perhaps even more agitated, releasing a heavy grunt, the stressed animal employs an emergency brake, quickly turning back the way it ran.
“Should Tommy follow the tracker, he’ll be welcomed by the company of an erehaha’s shadow. Till then, I’d like to see if this animal is affected the same as man in the presence of their shadows,” I speak to my actions atop of the two, getting shoved off as I do.
Another high pitched, demonic squeal escapes the blackened boy across from us. His head twitches temporarily like a bee’s vibrating flight muscles. His eyes then widen far apart onto the sides of his head, bulging from their eye sockets and ditching their former light brown color for a coffee black. His nose caves into his face and from a sewn mouth extends an elongated muzzle with a newly formed broad, short, black and bumpy nose. All the while, long pointed antlers extend from his head, above rotating wide mule–like ears.
Forthwith, an arrow pierces his broadened neck just as tan fur began to cover his skin. Blood steadily squirts from the wound and streams down in between his broadened shoulders, seemingly stopping the transformation. Another arrow gets plunged into his forehead for good measure. The elk that missed us returns, having likely escaped the visual encounter with an erehaha’s shadow despite my gimmick. It's drawn to the half human instead of us. Another species tends to its own just as it’d happened with the wolves, rats, tigers, and baboons. The elk intakes a short breath and struggles to swallow like a human on the verge of crying.
“Could it be all these freakish animal encounters are mutated men?” Arnold gulps, sickened.
“If so, there might just be some humanity left in them,” Floki reckons. A few steps ahead, Floki guides us through a red door. At the foot of which is rooted one of those bulb–headed stick figurines composed of metal pipes. This one’s multiple arms hang down, its legs are together, and its glass head is broken. Just as the door begins to close behind us, I notice the partial silhouette of an immense elk moping forward with a limp body pinched in its horns, carried off without any apparent weight. We hike up a moaning narrow staircase that twists around a circular steel blue bubbling pool with a delicate flow of steam pouring out.
“Tommy told us magumga’s responsible for all these animals having a manic episode. But apart from their manic episode, magumga may also be a means to human transfiguration,” I comment, nervously walking aside Arnold on the side with no railing, behind Floki.
“Magumga works through the people it entices to bite it. Baba Azul, as far as we know, was its first victim,” Arnold notes.
“I’d say profiteer,” I blurt.
“Leto was next, then Tommy, and now Pilot. All were presented with unique gifts. Mind reading and some form of control over the visual cortex that reshapes how we see the physical world,” Arnold explains.
“Leto has the ability to reverse time,” I share, having borne witness to it.
“Tommy appears to be telekinetic. I suppose Pilot can turn people into animals and make them go insane,” Arnold concludes.
“The insane part might just be the natural aftereffect from getting turned into an animal,” Floki interjects.
“Their reach and power level also differ,” I add. “Zorian told me Baba, Leto, and Tommy are desert spoons. Named after a species of flowering plant with leaves that spread from the center of its apex in all directions. Their power too is meant to flow from their core in all directions till their individual limit is reached. He’d said Leto could only reverse time within arm’s distance and within split seconds while Baba could reach anyone within Neptune and for an infinite amount of time. But in the library, Leto’s sphere went beyond its presupposed limit.”
At the height of the stairs lie scores of wooden boxes carved with anthropomorphic pigs playing medieval musical instruments. “Is there a plan?” I pester Floki. Floki proposes waiting a few hours, then heading back down to check if Tommy’s floating about aimlessly through the halls. He sits atop one of the large boxes and retrieves a black paper lettered in gold from an inside vest pocket. One of many scattered about the Honeycomb Lodge.
He rashly unfolds it, nearly tearing it and reads aloud, “Congratulations on one year and four days without offing yourself! Your perseverance has helped the Immortal Jaguars secure one part of a complex whole and brought you one step closer to proving your worth for consideration into our delightful fraternity.” Floki temporarily raises his stare from the letter to give us a congratulatory clap before progressing. “For this second round of the Gauntlet, you must retrieve a feather from a mitotiqui, then make an offering to the monster above the health farm to receive directions on round three. Godspeed, Nihil!”
“Some game. Keeping me locked in prison,” I speak confounded.
“Keeping us in prison,” Arnold corrects me. “Every Nihil who arrived here the day you did had to endure the same.”
“But…you knew it was a game?” I ask Arnold, puzzled and piqued at the thought he was prepared to sit in an experimental prison cell.
“This is Arnold’s second go–around through the Gauntlet,” Floki mentions, slightly uncanny.
“I failed the final round last time. So, I did what any brother of this fraternity would when confronted with failure. I got up and decided to do it all over again. I was chosen to go through this game because I’m special. We all are. I won’t ever let failure define me.”
“So, you know the rounds?”
“The Prefects change them each Gauntlet. Only they know the rounds beforehand. We find out what they entail as we progress through each with the help of our herald to guide us through.” Arnold reveals, stepping across wooden boxes gaining in size till he sits on the highest, balanced by five larger ones below it. “However, being here the time that I’ve been, you pick up on trends, even if it’s just through reading historical logs. Like the fact the rounds always center on providing an ingredient to the Immortal Jaguars’ singular product—padda divinorum.”
“The Gauntlet for all intents and purposes is part of a supply chain that uses Nihils as laborers to gather the resources needed to create and sell the drug padda divinorum to all other branches,” Floki contributes, extending a foot to the decorative wood box ahead of him and tipping it over.
“How does a little over a year in solitude contribute to the supply chain?”
“Hard to say,” Floki shrugs. “I’d have to look at the recipe for the drug and scroll through its endless list of ingredients to find which calls for such activity.”
“I told Zorian I’d no interest in playing whatever game this is yet here I am over a year later,” I share, feeling betrayed.
“You accepted your role as a Nihil in the Gauntlet the second you accepted the mochi leaf from Baba Azul,” Arnold informs.
“I didn’t know why I was being given a leaf at the time. Still don’t know its significance.”
“It’s but tradition. The Caesar always gives a mochi leaf to those found worthy of taking on the Gauntlet. All mochi leaves vary in shape, size, and color for when a mochi tree sheds its mint green leaves each winter, all at once I might add, not one leaf is a copy of another. If you still got it, taste it,” Arnold tempts.
“What’s meant to happen?”
“It will aid you in letting down your defenses, making the journey into this world easier to swallow. It also prepares your body for the arrival of the Jaguar spirit, which will only come once your spirit’s been broken,” Arnold unfolds, staring off into space.
“To inhabit the Jaguar spirit is just a motto given to those in the act of overcoming adversity despite their weakest point. Who’s to say if the mochi leaf actually yields this strength or if it’s always been instinctual to those chosen for this game. I’m partially biased in that I’ve seen what I believe to be the Jaguar spirit through a glint of purple fire in the eyes of men who’ve given up all hope, only to rise like a phoenix thereafter. Of course, we all have different pain thresholds and what destroys us we’ll only ever know in the moment.” Floki skims the black letter in his hands, whispering to himself, “A mitotiqui eh.”
“What’s a mitotiqui?” I make my way to Floki to read the shimmering gold words over his shoulder.
“Death by a thousand cuts!” Arnold laughs from up high. “You dropped this by the way,” he announces, holding out the blue brain in his left palm. “Don’t stress ya unbridled libertine. I’ll keep it safe from here on out.”
“About that,” I begin, disgruntled. “That wasn’t the thing it was made out to look like.”
“Rape.” Floki’s plainspoken. “Frankly, I don’t know what that was about or why Baba would even put us in that state of confusion and unease. I didn’t see the face of either party, but I guess I wasn’t the intended audience anyhow.”
“You ain’t gotta explain yourself to me bud,” Arnold says with a sternness in his tone. “That’s with you and your god.”
I tense up. “At least my god’s real. Where the fuck is your god now?!” I gravitate my anger towards Floki.
“The new sheriff in town is Baba Mora,” he speaks calmly, unphased by my outburst. “Although, I suppose your gripe is with Baba Azul. I suspect he’d be done packing his bags by now, over at the Wolf’s Den, leaving this mess to a new order.”
I don’t doubt I’m lucky in finding the likely only two people in Neptune who don’t feel disgust or have murder in their eyes in my presence. But I can’t help but be angry at them. They know so much about this world that I’m blind to. They seem more or less unstirred. Arnold lost a fucking hand, and he seems perfectly sane now.
Should I? I wonder, pulling the mochi leaf from my Union Flag swim trunks’ only pocket. A home it’s made on my right butt cheek. The leaf adopts a look of seduction. I forcefully shove the pickle green leaf in my mouth and grind it with eager teeth. I swallow what tastes like cotton candy and accept the claim, this leaf will calm me. Placebo or not. “I is maika`i.”