It's deafening. My heartbeats are making me dizzy. I can't think. What the hell am I doing here? Breathe. Breathe! Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. Again. And again. No one can see me. The street is empty. Calm the fuck down. Count. Locate them.
Two in the next streets. One to the east. One further west. Three more two blocks north. A confrontation. The others are too far; I can't pinpoint their positions. I have to keep my mind in the game (pun intended, you'll get it eventually). Things are moving too fast down here. I'll keep track only of the two closest.
The targets now. My head is about to explode. Focus on the here and now, damn it! The next second. The next minute. I have to concentrate on the immediacy−is that even a word?−Breathe in through the nose, long and profound. Exhale through the mouth, slow and quiet. I spot a sphere a few steps away down in a gutter. I inch closer until I can touch it with one fingertip. Its light dims. I collect its chip and drop it in my bag. One point. One more bloody sting on my right thigh.
What's that squeal? I retreat into the shadows. Or rather, the darker shadows. Another squeak. Dear lord, a rat, here! My breathing hitches up. Do not throw up. Do not throw up. Forget the rodents! The targets. Solely the spheres! Sense them.
Kendrick in all his royal powers never warned me about the playground's furry inhabitants. A-hole.
He'd been exhausted, he said. High. Lonely. Thirsty. Angry. Both scared and disgusted by the other players. Of the rats, though, not a word. The bastard knew how much I loathe those beasts. They were crawling the castle's caves where we used to hide. He'd killed them for me. This entire area had been abandoned and sealed off for decades before they started the competitions. How can vermin survive here? What do they eat? Who−Do not go there!
Rule 1: Have fun
Lithe, quick and stealthy, but not muscular or bulky (quite the opposite). I can handle a sword, knife, or gun; I am my father's daughter after all, but I don't have the stamina nor the skills to beat half the players here. Anyone can play, the advertisement proclaims. Yah, right. I have a secret weapon, though. Kendrick was ever the logical brain. He wanted to understand how it worked. I want to shut it the fuck down. Try living in a world where everything, and I do mean every fucking thing hums, hisses, purrs, whines, croons, murmurs, buzzes, vibrates, rumbles, throbs, pulsates, drones. And that's when I'm alone. Add the voices of the crowd, and you have cacophonic chaos. Welcome to my life.
Down here, among the ancient dilapidated underground city, the stones have turned mute after years of loneliness. The few street lamps still working hiss without successfully cutting through the darkness−those things aren't emitting any rays above one lux, tops.
In this almost-silent world, the spheres beckon me. The players repel me.
Nowadays, most train with machines. You hook yourself before sleep, the machine works its magic, sending tiny electrical shocks to your muscles while you doze off, and voilà! In the morning, you've trained like Mr fucking Universe. I'm old-fashioned. I jog. I want to know what it feels like to sweat. To ache. Ain't no damn machine down in the playground, bubba.
YOU ARE READING
Opus
General FictionI left out the real reason I'm here. Kendrick, my ex-lover, is dead. He was the game's winner three and two years back. On the Competition's Registration Form, at question 78: Why are you participating? Answer in 100 characters or less. I si...
