Chapter16
“Bow to me,” said The Bitch Queen in her grotesque manner of affection.
Ruff, Donal and Eve were surrounded by a guard of vicious hounds; of whom were then strengthened by two snarling monolithic boars; their tusks cutting through the clouds of smoke and black silt that gathered around their faces, blown into the air by their warm hurricane like breaths that expelled from their heaving lungs. The earth sifted and turned like the young boy’s mind, whose thoughts raced; fuelled by adrenaline rushing through his veins, blackening his perspective and heightening his resignation.
“Bow to me and I will let you live. I will grant you passage on your journey; to where it is you wish to be but first, you must love me and the first test of this love is trust. Lift your head high into the air and howl my name” she screamed as the hounds surrounding them in the arena all raised their snouts to the air ushering a subservient chorus of deranged amatory bedlam.
Ruff looked to his human friends who were shaking horribly.
The young boy, Donal was now standing in a pool of his own urine, his legs wobbling as his body; weighed down by confounding fear, sought to tumble into solitude like a droplet of water falling from the tongue of the desert of humanity; hitting the cold concrete and bursting into a billion tinier droplets, invisible to the unquenchable thirst of nature.
Every atom in his body sought to merge with something of more splendor than the savage violence born from the mephitic breast of their abased vanity; the kind that now swelled in the air as every hound suspired for bloodshed. The howling hounds hungered for their Bitch queen to punish these vile creatures and tire her wrath on their mettlesome seditiousness and leave only appeasing defection for their amenable gentility so that the absence of her smite may be the caress that gently warmed their hibernal impoverished hearts.
Ruff lifted his snout to the air looking willingly and indirectly at his human friends who watched him studiously. He howled her name into the air along with the constituent chorus and the two humans did the same, throwing their voices high and reaching into the depths of their turning stomachs where their courage had been curdling into passable waste.
Their screams were loud and piercing.
The Bitch Queen yapped angrily.
“Shut them up” she screamed as every hound quickly sank into submission, the tribute of their adoration cut short by the lashing of their queen’s dwarfish temper.
“Stop barking” yelled Ruff to his human friends; whose rapture was more annoying than inspiring or heart felt.
Eve stopped immediately, but Donal continued to howl, swept away by the catharsis of the purging of his fears. At that moment he was one; separated from his conscious mind that had incessantly counted all of the indifference in his being and instead he rode a single current of energy, propelled from the well in his stomach out into the openness of space; deporting the fear that resided in his heart; it in itself, dissipating in the damp musky air.
Eve reached her hand across to cover Donal’s mouth and as she did his eyes opened to see the arena, all silent and focused entirely on his dissention. His bravery quickly turned to liquid again and his legs warmed as even the fluids in his body fought to escape the detention of his coming sentence.
“How dare these creatures make a mockery of my giving heart with their soulless wailing. It means nothing to me that you show me your neck; especially with that horrid decorative helotry. What does it mean?” said The Bitch Queen referring to the collar around Ruff’s neck; a simple piece of cloth with a small medallion with his name inscribed upon it.
“It was a gift, from my friends,” he said.
“They bound you?” she said looking at his two friends.
“No mam. It was my previous friends. Of whom I made my home. Before the humans lost their way. Before they relinquished their crown” he said.
“Forty seasons have passed since the changing of the guard and the end of human rule. Forty seasons unbound and still you contain yourself to the idea of their cruel mastery by fashioning that bondage about your neck and then be so cool as to brush it in my face. What is its significance to you?” she asked.
“I’m not sure. I never thought about it. I just always wore it. It reminded me of them. And I loved them. I like to be reminded of them” he said.
“Reminded you of what; their yelling, their provocation, the expedition of their displeasure? Did you want remembrance of how they mutilated you; castrating the nature of your being, reducing you to a role of domestic clown; chasing your tail, walking at their pace. And what did they ask of you; what did they think of your astuteness? They demanded only that you sit, roll over, speak and fetch on command. They didn’t even dare to understand the depth of your conscious mind, the extravagance of your intellectuality. That is all they wanted of you; four imbecile commands” she said.
“They were never clever it is true; in about how they engaged with and failed to comprehend the complexity of the nature in which they inevitably quashed, but all of this could be forgotten with the a touch of their fingers against the rough of one’s skin. They were stupefied by all of the insignificance that mattered only to themselves, even going so far as to taking credit for their own shadow, but all of this could be forgotten and all of their arrogance zeroed as they perspired the lovingness and adoration in their heart through the tenderness of their skin and their soft gentle caress. Can you do that?” he asked.
“Mother Nature failed in bestowing her key to these primates and putting us; the far superior of the species, at the charity of their humour. Now Mother cares not for her child. Her breast is dry. And look where we are. No longer are we the scrimmaging tick on the arse of humanity. We are the hound; and this is our kingdom” she bellowed in her miniscule voice in a tone that pinched the nerves of Donal and Eve as they squinted and squirmed during her oration as if someone where pushing a small scorching set of tweezers deep into their inner ear canal and pinching the tender skin all the way down.
“And now that you have your title, what will you make of it? Now that you have a kingdom, what will it become?” asked Ruff.
“I am the Mother of all” she screamed as the hounds in the arena all buried their heads into their paws; their tails pulled under their bodies as a chorus of delicate whimpering reverberated off the walls and fed into the distended ego of The Bitch Queen; now rising up from the centre of her crown, her tiny chest inflected upwards as her snout directed towards the great reflection on the ceiling in sublime magnificence; she looking down at herself encircled in gold that was encrusted in jewels.
Donal crouched beside Ruff and clung to the thick matted fur on his neck; keeping his eyes tuned to the throne, watching for the command of the yapping Chihuahua and trying to avoid the thirst mongering stare of the great monolithic beasts at each side of her; the dirt still swelling about their tusks and their desire to eat him sounding out in their low rumbling growl and their thick heavy breaths.
As Donal scratched at his fur and skin, Ruff was overcome by a wave of exhilaration, completely separated from the immediacy of his fright as his conscious state was hurdled into his back leg which kicked wildly as the young boy scratched away; he himself, distracting from the threat from which would not reason, bargain or validate his liberty.
The Bitch Queen angered, her voice cackling in disgust as the hounds watching about all erupted into furor, the hairs on their necks standing on end as they barked insults and degradation at the small matted dog lost in human touch.
“Enough of this. I want blood. Prepare the boars” she said coldly.
“Prepare the boars” yelled a voce from behind The Bitch Queen.
A pack of twenty hounds; all of them Bulldogs, rushed from behind the royal curtain each clenching a metal rod in their teeth and pulling behind them a clanging spiral of chains. The Bulldogs positioned themselves on all sides of the great boars and buried their sturdy heads towards the cold concrete, steadying the bulk of their mass to heave; when called upon, these mammoth b
eats to their positioning.
“Is there no bargain for their lives?” asked Ruff.
“They walked into my kingdom, their lives are mine. They have no leverage. But you it seems have somehow managed to make a friend. Your friends will race alone. There will be no bargaining” said The Bitch Queen.
“But this is cruel. They are not deserving of this torture” pleaded Ruff.
“If they didn’t like it, they would say something and all I hear is stupid human yapping. Yap, yap, yap, yap. Stupid creatures” she said.
Eve was trying to console Donal keeping him close and while he spoke, she observed her surroundings, looking for an exit, anywhere at all.
But there was nothing.
The arena where they stood below the height of The Bitch Queen had two entries. The one in which they had arrived stood behind them and was guarded by four Dobermans. They didn’t look too kindly and their savagery was only slightly lesser than the gigantic beasts whose senses were now being drenched with the scent of the boy and his much older and far less trustworthy human friend.
“This is not where we die,” Eve said to Donal.
“I just want to see my father,” said Donal.
Eve wrapped her arms around the small boy. He was shaking uncontrollably. She pulled him close to her chest, covering his eyes with the length of her arm and whispering a tune into his ears that carried on her warm soft breath. Quickly he felt overcome by her placidity and calm restored itself to his body. His heart slowed and his breath heavied again.
“Tell me something remarkable about your father. Tell me something funny about him. Take me there” she said, leading the boy willingly into distraction.
They were going to die shortly.
A smile washed over Donal’s face as his conscious mind lit with familiarity and he was transported far from the imaginings of the inevitable. Eve turned him to face her and stared him direct in his eyes, she herself being swept up by the rising sea in his eyes, watching as the colours danced about his iris as inside his mind she could sense that a fire had ignited; one of love and missing.
“There was one time my father wanted to take us; me and Safrine, to learn how to fish. He said it was important that we knew how to serve ourselves and survive out of The Industry” said Donal.
“Do you remember The Industry?” asked Eve.
“No. I was too young. We lived no different to today, though; under bridges, in the cracks of the side walk and in the shadows of havoc. It was the only place people like us could survive without being collected. No Industrialist would dare tread where it was that we made our bed. That’s what dad would say” he said.
“Turned out to be the safest place in the end, at least after The Industry collapsed,” she said.
“Yeah,” he said laughing.
“Could you fish?” she asked.
“No. I was terrible. Safrine was more of the fisher. I never found my niche. I broke dad’s rod twice. He insisted though on teaching me. He wasn’t mad about it. He didn’t make me feel bad because I couldn’t get it, but he just believed that if you stand in the rain long enough, you’ll catch a cold. He had the same blind optimism about fish” he said.
“Did you catch one in the end?” she asked.
“No, but I did get a cold,” he said.
“Why was this day so special?” she asked.
“Not a day, dad always fished at night. This night though I will never forget. Dad was well…fat. Not always, I mean now he is skinny on account of starvation and all but at one point he was very big. I remember he was so excited about taking us to a spot that his father had kept to himself for millennia. Grandad didn’t come with us. He was drunker than usual and stayed at home. Anyway, we had to sneak through some pretty rough places to get to this spot. I guess in the past; before the blackout, it would have been easier” he said.
“This was before the uprising, yeah?” she asked.
“Yeah, it was. Safrine was still with us. We were a family. Everything was normal. It was still pretty dangerous, though. I mean after the uprising things got really crazy and then with The Famine… But before, it was still dangerous. Anyway, we had to sneak past this guard house. It was an old Industrial Guard Post just on the edge of The City, near the ports. They still had patrols at that time. Things didn’t stop entirely. It kind of took some time for people to stop doing what they had been told to do their whole lives. So we managed to sneak past the guard. Dad got a woman to bring drinks to the guard posts with some flower. We waited behind and old car wreck watching the two men inside at first talking loudly and banging their fists a lot, then slowly it looked like they were getting tired and pretty soon it looked like they just got bored of breathing because they up and fell over then and there and I don’t know if they were dead or not but they definitely didn’t see or hear us sneaking past. That was when dad got stuck” he said.
“Got stuck? What happened?” asked Eve with a smile widening in her eyes; staring directly at the boy, keeping him awash in distraction; blind to the movement of hounds all about them.
Eve fed the boy’s concentration while in the creases of her sight, she alerted herself to the movement of the animals who were now dragging the two monolithic boars away from the feet of the small Chihuahua who sat regally within the much larger golden crown on the throne fit for a human king; it in itself heightening her stature making her appear unrealistically magnificent.
Donal’s eyes were a magnitude of absence and his touch was without fear; gripping at Eve’s hand in exhilaration as his mouth raced through shapes of sounds that would electrify the image illuminating in his mind.
As he escaped inside a pure memory; outside of the indecency of reality, Eve followed, mouthing every word that he spoke while diving into his imagination and still watching as behind the boy, a pack of Bulldogs lined the two monolithic boars opposite the entrance to the arena; the small muscular hounds struggling to contain the force of the two beasts whose hooves dug firmly into the ground as they swung their monstrous heads left and right ; the sharp white tips of their tucks the only thing more visible through the clouds of dust.
“It was so funny,” he said. “We had to crawl down the side of a bridge to get to the spot. Dad hadn’t been there before so he didn’t really know where or how we were supposed to climb down. I found a spot that looked like you could climb down. There were three large poles that stuck out from the water holding up one side of the bridge. The only way to get down was to squeeze through a small gap where two wooden planks overlapped. I remember going down first and squeezing through the gap. I had to hold my breath and suck in my belly to get through but when I wriggled a bit and turned my head I slipped through no problems. I got my footing and then scaled carefully down the poles using the planks as steps. When I got to the bottom, I looked up and just saw these two legs kicking away and could hear dad screaming and cursing. He had gotten stuck in the gap and he couldn’t lift himself up because he had no leverage. He was too far to push himself up and too fat to squeeze through so he just hanged there, his fat legs kicking all angry like. I laughed so much. Safrine was on the bridge looking down and she was laughing too. It was hilarious. Dad was so angry. He was swearing; words I’d never heard before. He was yelling at me to stop laughing and help him but every time I looked up and saw his little legs kicking I’d start laughing again. It was really funny”
“How did he get out?” Eve said, keeping the boy talking and engaged in delight and away from whatever disaster was amassing against them as he spoke.
“I climbed up the pole and tried to push his feet with my hands. I used all my strength, but he was too fat. He was stuck. There was nothing I could do so then Safrine started pushing on his head with her foot and then she jumped on his head and he just screamed louder and we both laughed harder. Dad yelled at me to go to the bottom of the poles where they met the water and grab as much algae as possible and bring it up to him. I went down and I started scratching at the wall of the pole un
der the water scraping off this slimy green stuff and laughing as dad’s fat little legs kicked away at the air above me. I climbed back up the pole and gave him the algae and he squeezed it between his belly and the wooden planks. He tried squirming again and I was pulling on his legs and Safrine was stepping on his head and eventually he managed to wriggle free and squeezed through the gap. His belly was so red and squashed. He looked like a bruised tomato. Then when Safrine was coming down, she looked to the right and saw a passage that had no planks blocking it. She walked down with no problems. Dad was so angry. My stomach hurt so much from laughing. We didn’t catch any fish that night. We just listened to dad tell stories about all the times he caught massive fish and how Grandad had caught sharks in that very spot. The only thing I caught was a cold, but it didn’t matter. Cause dad was happy. After he got stuck I mean. But it was the first time he’d been happy in ages; since mum died” said Donal.
“When did your mother die?” asked Eve.
“She died when I was born when we were born. I never met her. Grandad told me lots of stories about her. He said that she died in an embrace, that she had us both at her breast and while we were feeding and she just died. They don’t know what happened just that she smiled, then she closed her eyes and she never opened them again. Dad was never the same after that. That’s what Grandad said. He changed. Like a light went off inside him and then he just did everything all automatic like. I think he blamed us. Maybe not. I don’t know. I would you know; if it was me. I think I’d be angry. What about you? How would you feel?” asked Donal.
“I hope I would be clever enough to feel as you feel. Do you blame yourself?” asked Eve still watching in the corner of her eyes as the small Chihuahua stood high in its golden crown yapping wildly while the small matted dog by her side; Ruff, barked subordinately in return.
“By your own definition, you need them” shouted Ruff.
Though he was a small dog, his voice carried like a solar flare and each syllable lashed against the swollen ego of The Bitch Queen who had not yet met with such insolence and reaction to her rule.
The other hounds were unsure how to react. They had never seen another hound question her majesty’s oracularity. Overcome by strangeness in their beings, they were unsure of whose side they leaned as the two hounds traded insults and philosophical ranting.
The small matted dog now stood without fear and he spoke without anger. His voice travelled like light; passing through the blinds of pessimistic doubt put forward by The Bitch Queen who thrashed about worn ideals founded entirely on the abatement of human idealism, which on its own could not exclude the ideal of man and therefore succeed in nothing more than turning the shoulder in which one slept whilst keeping warm under the same blanket.
“I used to” Donal said, his voice turning to a slight tremor.
“I hated her,” he said.
“Who? Your mother?” asked Eve.
“No. Safrine. I hated Safrine. I hated her for killing my mother” he said.
“You were sad because you never knew your mother,” said Eve.
“No. I felt nothing for her. I didn’t remember her. I never felt her love. No. I hated Safrine for killing my mother because that is what made our father so sad. And I know he looked at us and he felt the same. Every time Safrine or I spoke, he heard the silence of the woman he loved. She gave him children and those children took his love away. I get it. I hated Safrine so much” he said, his voice now shaking; the slight tremor turning to a wave of anxiety.
“You couldn’t be blamed for feeling how you did,” said Eve.
“I wished her gone so many times. I wished the collectors would come and take her so then maybe dad would stop crying whenever he looked at me. I wished my own sister; my twin, to be taken. I wished her dead. I told her to her face. I said; “I hope they take you away and eat you.” She just cried and tried to hug me. I pushed her away and watched her cry. I sat there with my arms folded pushing her whenever she came close. I wanted to hug her and say sorry, but I just kept pushing her away, watching her cry and I wanted to say I was sorry. And I would look at my father and when he looked in my eyes he would see my mother and he would cry and he would take the bottle and drown himself. What was I supposed to do? It wasn’t my fault” he said, tears welling in his eyes.
“It wasn’t Safrine’s fault either,” said Eve.
“I know but he didn’t hate her, he only hated me. He abandoned me, not her. He was always kind to her wanting. He let her hold his hand. He never smiled, but he let her hold his hand. He couldn’t even look in my direction. He couldn’t stomach the sound of my voice. He made me walk in his wake just so he wouldn’t catch my reflection. And I hated Safrine for that. That night, when my dad left; the night of the uprising, I wanted to hurt him. I wanted us to be gone. I wanted him to find us. I wanted him to be angry, to be caring, to be disciplinary; to be anything except sad” he said.
“But he was happy when you were fishing. That night he changed” said Eve.
“For a moment he forgot that he hated us. For a moment, he was distracted. He forgot he was sad. But it’s not something you forget for long. The next morning he was worse, sadder than before. When he left that night and turned the handle on that door, I thought he was never coming home. I didn’t want anything bad to happen. All I wanted was for my dad to love me. I wanted to feel love. It wasn’t fair. I wanted to not hate my sister. I just wanted him to care and I wasn’t thinking” he said.
“And Safrine was taken,” said Eve.
“I just remember those words playing in my head over and over. I hope they take you away and eat you. I knew that they played in her head when they took her. I remember the look on her face. She was so scared. And she was reaching out to me, her brother and there I was, standing high on a platform, out of reach just like I had always been; pushing her away every moment of her life. She spent her life reaching for me, for me to love her and all I did was abandon her. I pushed her away like my father pushed me away. She was so scared. Her eyes were so white and her hands… Her fingers were curling trying to catch my hand, but I was so far away. I didn’t even reach for her. I just stood there numb, watching her being taken, just like all those times I sat there numb, watching her cry. It’s all my fault” he said, overcome by tears; his eyes watering, his voice trembling and his restraint gone.
Eve pulled him close and took from her pocket a small canister and as she stroked the boy’s hair, she held the canister under his cheek and caught a stream of his tears.
“Empathy is unkind,” she said as she tightened the lid and hid the canister back inside her pocket, out of sight.
Donal clung to her; his tears carrying with them the sediment of his attrition, freeing the weight of his soul and abrogating his fear. He felt that he could die at that moment and be lifted away from the burden of his own birth, far from how much he hated himself and from the accuracy of his self-abasement.
As he wept, a pack of hounds surrounded the two and separated them from the small matted dog. Eve kept Donal blind to what was happening. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway, he couldn’t see outside of the storm in his eyes washing away all of the things he wished he could have said to the people that mattered when it was, they could have listened.
“Take them to the starting gates. Tie up the boars. My benign friend here knows nothing of love. So let us show him my dears, how much you love your queen and the giving of your heart. Who will fight for me, for my heart, for your kingdom, for your queen!” yelled The Bitch Queen.
Eve gripped Donal tight as The Doberman Guards surrounded the human pair, growled intently and urging her to move forward tentatively, step after step.
“What’s happening?” asked Donal.
“Do you remember that boy?” said Eve.
“The boy who was running?” asked Donal.
“Yes,” said Eve. “Do you think you can run faster than him?” she asked.
“I think so,” he said.
“
I know you can,” said Eve.
“They’re going to chase us too, aren’t they,” said Donal.
“They’re not going to catch us. Trust me” said Eve.
Donal had no reason not to trust her. She had been something of a shelter to him since he abandoned The Nest and escaped the wave of Famined in the morn. The hours that had passed had felt like days or weeks and it had been her that had walked beside him, holding him close and girding his direction at every turn and into every step.
“I’ll protect you,” she said, gripping his hand, the two walking with their chests lifted and their eyes engaging the darkness, preparing their minds for what may come.
“Dance bitches” yelled The Bitch Queen to the centre of the arena where there gathered an assemblage of female hounds, all garnished in colourful tassels that were fawned from brightly coloured bows that were wreathed in the long hair that drew from their necks and as their snouts touching the floor, they outstretched their front paws and buried their heads into them; in a perfect semi-circle before their queen, awaiting her command.