BLACK RED BLOOD WHITE

Chapter Eight, I

CHAPTER EIGHT

The huge gymnasium that opened to their sight was more than five meters high and at least thirty meters deep. In the center stood the ring, a classic wooden ring with elastic bands on either side to contain and delimit but also to rise and fall. It was fire red, with blue and black edges. An aluminum cage, big enough to hold an elephant, towered in the center. Seats lined the sides and all the steps surrounding the ring. From the ceiling of the vast gymnasium, between cables and pylons, hung a giant screen, evidently to capture every detail for the spectators. It was an American-style wrestling ring where exceptional fighters could engage in battles, creating suspense and fear of the highest order. Not even cinema, with its unbeatable special effects, could match the extravagant spectacle of real wrestling and the sight of viscous blood.

The air was thick with the smell of sweat, that salty and acrid scent that penetrated their nostrils, numbing them to the odor over time.

"Did they make you fight here?" Kate asked, her voice hesitant, both eager for the answer like a journalist seeking a scoop and afraid of the horrific truth.

"Yes, we fight with dogs here. Many get mauled to death, but some win, usually the older ones, the teenagers, those who have endured the transport, the cage, and the change. Those who suffered much earlier, they have a better chance of surviving."

A heavy silence descended upon them as they continued to circumnavigate the ring, hugging the walls, like a long single file of misfits and suffering souls lost to the world.

"Is there an exit?" Kate asked.

23 replied calmly and glacially, "Maybe, somewhere they would come in, so I think from there, we could get out."

"And then what?"

"And then I don't know, maybe we eat."

"Do you have someone to go back to? Parents? Relatives?"

"No, I lived in a Reformatory, I was on the street, and one day the cops took me away, but where I was, I could cover myself at night and eat three meals. Sometimes they visited me inside my room, but it wasn't so bad."

Kate avoided asking what that sentence meant, but the meaning was clear to her. What intimidated her was the coldness with which this reality was accepted and shared.

23 continued, "The night they brought me here, I had taken out one of the guards' eyes. With a broken glass, I had plucked it from his body like a flea from a dog. He didn't expect it; he was there enjoying himself inebriated. I took the broken glass and stamped it well on his round, wrinkled face."

"What happened?"

"Nothing, he screamed, his eye fell out, blood spurted everywhere, and the guards came to help the demented man."

"And after that?"

By now, they had all arrived in front of a door that looked like the one they used to let spectators in through, wide and double with a long panic bar.

Kate repeated the question. By now, they were on their way out, and the idea that perhaps it was worse to go out than to stay was beginning to make its way into her troubled consciousness.

"Afterward, they beat me. Then they tied me up, and in the morning, I was here. I heard them say that I was among the irredeemable ones, so what flesh I became."

A small dark child with large glassy eyes stepped in, little more than six or seven years old. He was ragged and dirty, with black skin everted lips parched with thirst and hunger, skinned and made pink by anemia.

"I killed my mum and dad," he said.

Kate turned towards that atonal voice. The party had turned into a merry confessional.