The film jumped and all of a sudden I was looking at the back of Amir’s head and Clive’s bladed hand slamming into it. Amir tipped over like a falling log. Clive had pulled the same move on Amir that Amir had used on Frank. Clive stepped over him and squared off with Noab.
Noab flexed, his gaze fixed on Clive. “I told them this was a stupid idea.”
“Fun, though,” Clive said.
Frank was now awake, sullenly standing by himself and watching.
When Noab moved, so did Clive. I got seasick trying to track what was happening. All I got were flickers of punches and blocks, throws and hits on a continual loop.
Eventually, though, someone must win. Clive flipped Noab, landing on Noab’s back, Clive’s knees drilling into Noab’s spine. When he tugged gently on Noab’s neck, Noab hit the mat with his hand, accepting Clive’s win.
Clive hopped off and extended his hand to his friend, pulling him to his feet.
Amir, Sandoval, Wei clapped. Cadmael nodded approvingly. The two Asian Counselors shared a wary look. The Australian Counselor laughed, though the humor didn’t reach his eyes.
“As there’s nothing for the judges to discuss,” Vlad said, “perhaps we can call it a night.” He checked his watch and then glanced over at Sebastian, who was watching Clive with a thoughtful look on his face.
“Yes. That’s it for this evening,” Sebastian said, crossing the room to walk Ava out the door.
“When did you arrive?” Clive asked Noab.
“Earlier this evening. We got here as those other guests were being escorted out. It looked as though we missed something, but no one has seen fit to share with us what it was.”
“Ask me again someday and I’ll tell you.” Clive gave him a significant look and then turned to Amir. “It’s been a long time. I see deadly grace remains your gift.”
Oliver stayed to chat with Clive and the fighters. The judges and other applicants, though, left quickly. The conversation was interesting, but I was exhausted. As I didn’t know anyone they were referring to, their voices became white noise. I pulled out of Clive’s mind and fell asleep.
A door slams, waking me. My eyes pop open to see a cockroach scuttling toward my face. Flying up, I realize I’ve been sleeping on the floor of one of the rooms in the asylum. I rub at the grit on my cheek, unable to stop the full-body cringe from having anything in this place touch my skin.
A woman in a long gray dress pulls a bedpan out from under the narrow rusty bedframe, pours the contents into a bucket, and drops the pan on the floor, kicking it with her foot back under the bed.
The crash of the pan makes me jump but doesn’t seem to wake the woman on the bed. I look more closely and realize her eyes are open, wildly roving around the room. Her head, though, is strapped to the bed, unable to move.
The attendant in gray says something in Hungarian to the woman in the bed, whose eyes fill with tears. The attendant shakes her head as the woman in the bed keeps opening her mouth, though nothing comes out.
A dark stain blooms on the thin, moth-eaten blanket that covers the patient. She’s wet herself. The attendant shouts and stamps out of the room, leaving the poor woman strapped down and sobbing silently.
If she’d unstrapped the poor woman, this probably wouldn’t have happened, but rather than the attendant taking responsibility, she blames the patient. It feels like I’m watching a Hungarian version of the Stanford prison experiment. These attendants have complete control of the patients and are cruel with it.
I know there’s nothing I can do about something that happened decades before I was born, but I desperately want to. I lay my hand on the lump her feet make.
“I’m so sorry.” I feel a whisper of the scratchy cloth under my fingertips as I squeeze, trying to comfort the memory of a woman long gone. Stepping out of the room, I pass the bucket and look up and down the hall.
Other doors are open as bedpans are emptied into other buckets. One woman is being dragged out of her room by two attendants, while another walks quietly beside her attendant. Both groups are walking toward the main hall. They pass and I follow.
They turn left at the main hall, away from reception. A sconce on the wall flickers, casting a thin, sickly yellow light over the graying tile floor and walls. There’s a grainy photograph on the wall of Budapest from over a hundred years ago. Another one has two men in white coats standing in front of a wall of books. And yet another features a group of haggard attendants in gray dresses.
I know old timey photography required sitting for an extended period of time to get the exposure, therefore people don’t smile, but this group looks particularly grim. Perhaps it’s just that I’ve seen them in action and have yet to find one behaving like a caretaker rather than a jailer.
The women and their attendants go through the door that leads downstairs to the basement rooms and the tub. The whole asylum is creepy, but there’s something about the basement. It feels important, so I descend the steps after them.
Sixteen
The Bloody Ruin
The first woman ends up sliding down the stairs. I can’t see if she’s fallen or was pushed, but the attendants mutter as they pick her up and march her down the hall to the right. The quiet woman and the Gray Dress lag behind. Neither seems eager to follow the group of three ahead.
A distinctive stench has me looking over the railing. A rat scurries beneath the stairs, a cockroach in its mouth. My uneasiness grows as I reach the bottom of the steps. The walls and floor are again a dingy white. It feels makeshift down here, as though this area was an afterthought. No one is in the hall and the doors on either side are closed.
