“Lice are going around. Boss is having us shave heads.”
“Do I have lice?” I ask Vince, who picks through my hair with gloves, just like animals do with their babies.
“Not that I can see.”
“Then don’t touch my fucking hair.”
I earn myself a smack across the back of my head, but nothing more. After Clara and I were left alone in that room for days, two guards, not Ramirez, Culver, or Hannidy, along with Vince, came to retrieve us after forgetting about us. We emerged from the room one after the other. I’m used to being beaten, so my wounds didn’t look nearly as bad as Clara’s. I suppose that’s what made them easier to overlook. Clara, though, they took one look at her and assumed it was I who had torn her apart. It somehow earned me some sort of respect among the animals. The men here also liked to see the girls hurt, so it guaranteed I’d get Clara every time.
They like to see her hurt the most.
After a quick trim, just to keep the curls out of my eyes, Vince slaps me on the shoulders. “You’re done.”
Standing up from the uncomfortable stool, I glance at myself in the mirror. I keep it short, hating who I see in the mirror. He’s bigger and scarred, with a crooked nose and ears that resemble cauliflower. I’m ugly, but those aren’t the features I hate the most. It’s the blood staining my skin that never seems to wash away. In the years of being here, I’ve killed hundreds of boys and men. I carry each one on my flesh—a cruel reminder of what it takes to survive in hell.
Vince sees the knife resting against my hip, but he ignores the rusty metal while cuffing my hands behind my back. As long as I don’t turn that blade on him and continue making him money, he doesn’t give a shit what I do with it.
I’ve long upgraded from a tiny dog cage. Now, I sleep in a bigger concrete cell. I have a mattress and a hole to piss in.“Look how spoiled you are, my champion!”Marone’s chuckles stayed within the walls long after he locked me behind the bars. As we walk to my space now, there’s no laughter or even bits of chatter that usually sprinkle among the imprisoned fighters.
“What’s going on?” I ask, my voice tinged with the weight of their nerves.
“There are talks of a new girl.”So?I want to ask. There’s always someone new in a place like this, even if they don’t last very long. Marone’s a collector, we like to call him—an accumulator of broken, little trinkets. It’s not new, so why the fuck is everyone stressing over it?
“I’ll come get you later,” Vince announces before walking off. I wait until his humming disappears around the corner and out of earshot to knock on the left wall. “Max.”
A moment passes, two, before I hear the slight scraping of shuffling, followed by a hissed, “Blade?” I’ve asked this fucker,along with all the rest, to stop calling me that stupid fucking name. No one seems to want to listen.
“Why is the energy weird? Everyone’s all fucking quiet and meek. What’d I miss?” I was gone for only an hour.
“There are whispers that Marone wants to shake things up tonight with the fighters. There’s a new girl, and I don’t know her. He’s fucking bored, I guess?”
“So, he’s doing this because there’s a new girl?”
“I don’t know, Blade!” he hisses. Max was a heroin addict scooped up from some alley in Boise, Idaho. Marone thought it would be funny to see him slaughtered, and yet, despite them shooting him up and taking the drug away, playing some sick game with his addiction and withdrawals, he’s still here, but there’s always a jitteriness to his tone. “AllI know is that thereisa new girl,andhe’s bored!”
“Alright. Alright,” I respond, needing him to chill the fuck out. “Any idea what he’s planning on doing?”
After a moment, Max mumbles, “No, but guys have been disappearing all day. I’m surprised you haven’t noticed.”
Unless I’m in the ring, I do my best to shut my mind off. It’s torture listening to my internal screams and the screams of those whose lives I’ve taken. I don’t want to hear any more from the boys and men around me. So, I shut it off. Now, though, it seems to be an impossible task, with Marone’s boredom hanging over our heads.
Since Max mentioned it, I have noticed the cells across from mine are empty. I didn’t pay much attention to the twin brothers from Minnesota, Razor and Twitch, but now that they’re gone, their absence is a heavy weight on my chest.
They were only fifteen.
It has to be close to ten o'clock. I only know because the night shift guards are circulating. They don’t talk to me, but one of them comes for Max next.
“Where are we going?” I can hear him ask through the concrete walls. There’s that constant jumpiness in his tone, but beneath it, I recognize the fear. Some of us have learned to conceal it, but others never quite grasp it.
As the guards drag him away, I wonder, should I have said bye? Should I have said to fight? I don’t have many friends here. Clara’s about it, but Max… I got used to having him around. He was annoying and bashed his head against the stone whenever they put him through withdrawals, but I think I like him.
The questions bounce around my mind for maybe ten minutes before they come for me, too. “Come on. Let’s go.” Had it been Vince who came to get me, I would have asked where we’re going, but since it isn’t, and in his place is this dickhead, Vasquez, I keep my questions to myself. When we begin walking, I eye the cell beside mine, swallowing the sinking feeling in my stomach when I see its vacancy.
“But guys have been disappearing all day.”
His words follow me until we reach our next destination, and I realize they haven’t disappeared at all. After so many hallways, I enter a single-bulb-lit room. It dangles from the center of the ceiling like in those cop shows Mom used to watch when Dad wasn’t home. She used to say she liked the drama of them, but I’m pretty sure she was glued to those stories because so many of those wives killed their husbands. She had dreams, but she just wasn’t strong enough to commit. I didn’t think I was strong enough either.
Look at me now.
