3MA

3MA | Chapter 6

6
PERSISTENCE

An ominous sheet of paper waits for me at the top of the fire escape, plastered across my apartment's cracked kitchen window.

Even before I'm close enough to read it, I can see Mayor LeMorte's official seal -- two crossed bolts of static -- emblazoned across the poster. I pull it off and it flaps in my hand like a dismembered raven's wing.

FINAL NOTICE OF EVICTION: Residents of this apartment have one month to pay all past due rent plus interest or face removal from the premises by Camelot police authorities.

I crumple the notice into a ball and chuck it over the railing. I knew this day would eventually come. After everything I've done to make ends meet, bouncing late nights at the bar, selling my jacket, pawning all the jewelry mom left behind, and fighting like a dog in the Octagon -- in the end it all wasn't enough. In thirty days, Mag and I will be out on the street. And what then?

I think of the subway corridor lined with the pleading homeless. I can't allow that to happen to us. I won't.

I slip through the window and lumber across the moonlit kitchen. I rip open the refrigerator in search of something to drink. There's nothing inside but a shriveled apple with a bite already taken out of it and a half stick of butter. I slam the fridge shut with a grunt.

The rest of the apartment matches the interior of the fridge; cold, dim and mostly empty.

A faint but persistent tang of manure lingers in the air.

It reminds me of the the first night I bounced at the Drunken Sailer. A wasted patron named Goggles stumbled over to me to inform me that I was raised in a horse stable. After I had thrown the drunkard out of the bar, headfirst into a mound of trash, the bar's owner, Sheamus Ludlow, laughed behind the dripping beer tap and told me it was true. According to Ludlow, more than a century ago, our apartment was used to house Camelot Police Department's horses, before the animals were all replaced by Hoversteeds.

I limp passed the paper accordion wall that I use to separate the apartment from my bedroom area. A bare and battered mattress hulks behind it, splayed across the floor looking more worn and tired than I feel. Beside it, a wooden whiskey barrel poses as a bedside table.

Typically when I come home this late, I find Mag passed out in my bed, his rising and falling chest covered in potato chip crumbs. But the mattress is empty tonight.

I peer down the dim apartment, lit only by flat, pinkish moonlight that comes sifting in from the wall of dusty windows. Over the slumped silhouette of a battered sofa and a scattering of cardboard boxes--our glamorous living room area--I can see Mag at the opposite end of the apartment. He's perched on the top of an eight-foot ladder with a can of spray paint clutched in one hand, and an old photograph in the other. He wears a leather tool holster around his waist, fully stocked with cans of paint and stencils.

For the past couple of years, I've watched Mag develop a dangerous passion for plastering Camelot's walls with graffiti. The LeMorte administration doesn't tolerate vandalism. Minimum sentence for getting caught is five years in the slammer. No matter how young you are.

"I told you to cut out the graffiti," I say, craning my head up to look at the worn bottoms of Mag's sneakers.

"You told me to stop tagging outside. This is clearly not outside. Although it feels cold enough to be," he says, his breath forming a white cloud in the air.

I take a step back so I can take in all the details of Mag's latest mural. It's an image of a 3MA fighter standing in the middle of the Octagon, a sea of unconscious bodies surrounding him. The fighter in the middle is grasping the hilt of a sword made from gold static. Lightning emanates from the electrified weapon, spraying out like an explosion of confetti. Above the fighter, the word "EXCALIBUR" gleams, each letter made from an iron blade.