39
I wake up to a damn intolerable headache, with the sound of Leo and Woo’s voice saying: ‘If I could only see through your eyes.’
Leo and Woo are gone. One is dead and the other, well, I hope not.
I sit up wherever I am. All I see is a waterfall in front of me.
Heaven?
I have a headache, which turns out to be a good thing. It means I am still alive.
Foam-like water is cascading down from the top of an enormous grey mountain in front of me, gliding like silver strings of silk, deep down into a river that runs to my left and right. Black rocks stand bravely against the white foaming current in the middle of the river. Amidst the rocks, I see Leo’s Super-V, turned onto its side, crashed and broken, and stuck between the rocks.
I can’t see Leo though.
I cover my eyes with my hands, afraid to get a glimpse of his corpse. A vision I don’t think I can handle.
Where am I?
I stand up, and the ground beneath me crackles. Boulders roll from under me and slide over the edge, down, deep down, into the river. My whole body aches. I spare myself from checking out the bruises. As long as I am still alive, it doesn’t matter. My right arm stings from where Carnivore slashed it.
Taking a minute to get my bearings, I realize I am standing on a narrow ledge sticking out from the side of the mountain, midway between the cliff above me and the river below me. Looking up, I see the cliff’s edge about twenty to thirty feet above me. That’s why I am not dead. I was saved by crashing onto this small cave-like part sticking out of the mountain. How lucky is that?
The mountain is grey and curvy. To my right and my left, I see a number of other ledges and caves. They are too far away though. I can’t jump that far. There is no way I can climb up either, since there is nothing to hang on to on the side of the mountain. Its surface is too smooth. Besides, with my right arm hurting so bad, I can’t use it for climbing. Even if I could climb, Carnivore is waiting for me up there.
Looking downward is just as scary. It’s a long way down to the river. If I look long enough, I’ll go into a daze, faint, and fall. Having removed that iAm receptor from under my ear still makes me dizzy occasionally.
I let out a long sigh, not believing I am actually still alive, but grateful that I am. I could have landed on my neck or on my head, but somehow I’ve landed on the backpack I am wearing, padded with all those things stuffed inside, absorbing some of the impact.
I can’t believe this. I am standing in the middle of a large mountain, hanging midway between earth and sky. How am I going to get out of here? There’s no way I am going to jump into the river — although it could be done, but I don’t think I can bring myself to do it, and I am afraid I would hit one of those black rocks down there.
Wow. This is an even better setting than the strangest you could possibly imagine in the games. Speaking of the games, where are the Zeppelins? Where is the damn audience, those who never get enough of the entertainment?
I feel so alone with only the wind next to me, whispering through what’s left of my messed-up and scraped hair.
Carnivore roars for me from above.
“If you want me, come down here, if you dare,” I shout at it.
“What does it take for you to stop following me?” a voice moans behind me.
I snap and turn around. It’s Leo, lying on his back, his leg bleeding badly.
He is sprawled back in the small cave behind me, too small and too low. You’d have to crouch or lie on your back like him to get inside.
“Leo!” I scream with joy, and duck to hug him in the cave. “You’re alive.”
The cave is too narrow, so I stretch my body on top of him, with the cave’s ceiling only a hand-span above me.
“Even Hell is too crowded,” he mumbles, feeling my body over his. I think he is hallucinating. His eyes flutter, and his breathing is irregular. He has lost a lot of blood.
“Leo.” I grab his head with my hands. “It’s me. It’s me.”
“Who?” He cranes his head a little, and winces when he does. “God?”
“It’s Decca, Leo. Please wake up.” I shake his head and discover it’s a bad idea, since his eyes slip shut and his head falls back. I wipe the sweat and dirt off his forehead, trying to wake him up again. “Leo,” I moan one more time.
He wakes, opening his weary eyes again. “Hi, God,” he says, looking at me, but not really seeing me. “It’s me, Leo.” He stares at me, but he looks as if he has forgotten everything.
“I am not God, Leo,” I yell at him, shaking him. “Decca. I am Decca. D. Pixie. The girl you were sent to protect.”
“I hear you, God,” he mumbles, and lets his head fall back again. “I hear you. You don’t have to yell at me. I tried my best, you know.”
“This can’t be happening,” I say to myself, part of me wanting to wake him up, and another part so glad he is still alive. “Please God, help him.”
“I am not God, God,” says Leo, as if he were drunk. “You’re God. Stay brave, God. We need you.” He is out of this world.
“I am not God!” I insist, and hit his head accidentally against the boulders on the ground again. This time, my heart aches. “I can prove it to you,” I say, and plaster my lips onto his, tasting him and the blood trickling from his wounded head.
After I kiss him, his head rests in peace with closed eyes, and a broad smile fills his face. All he needs is a tuxedo and a rose between his hands, and this will officially look like his funeral.
I am glad he smiles.
“That was weird, God,” he says, still smiling. “But nice.”
“That wasn’t God,” I repeat. “Just to let you know. That was me.”
“I know,” he says with closed eyes. “I know.” He falls asleep, and starts snoring.
“Leo!” I scream again, not shaking him anymore, since it’s already proven useless to do so. “Wake up. I need you. What can I do to help you?”
“Get off me, so I can breathe?” he suggests, narrow-eyed and angry all of a sudden. At least I know two new things about him now. For one, he snores, and two, he talks in his asleep. Not the best qualities for a future boyfriend.
“Oh—” I shake myself off him and sit next to him on the ledge. “That.”
He breathes out and opens his eyes, tilting his head and grinning at me. “What the hell are you doing here?” he manages to say, although he looks weak. I look at his leg. It’s a mess. He has been bleeding badly.
“Let me help,” I say, and open my backpack. I pull out a t-shirt and wrap it tightly around the wound in his leg, then knot it as tight as I can. It might help stop the bleeding for a while. When I knot it tighter, he screams, and his head falls back. I think he’s fainted this time.
Looking desperately at him, I can’t believe this is the guy I thought to be Terminator-like. Hell. At some point in the games, I thought that if I opened him up, I’d find him all wires inside. He isn’t weakened much by the fall, since I have survived it. He is weakened by the amount of blood he has lost from the wound in his leg, and maybe something else that I can’t figure out.
As he lies silently on his back, a bee flies over his head, then rests on his nose. Leo, lying down, helpless with a bee on his nose, looking funny. He breathes, up and down, and the bee stays put on his nose.
Before I can try to wave it away, it flies over to the edge of the ledge and settles between two single yellow flowers sticking out of the grey mountain. It amazes me how these two flowers have made it, rising out of this dead and cold mountain.
Still, I wonder why I am so disconnected. Where are the Zeppelins? Where is Timmy?
I pull my iAm from my pocket, and check it. It’s turned off. I must have pushed the button accidentally, and Leo must have lost his since I can’t find it.
When I push the on button, it doesn’t work.
What? Am I going to spend the rest of my life in here?
I push. Push. Push.
The green light finally turns on.
Even technology needs a little first-aid revival.
“Don’t forget to watch the recap.” Timmy is talking to the audience. “DVD’s will be out soon, and ZVD’s. Decca’s exceptional outfit and backpack will be available on the market in two days and—”
What is going on?
The words under Timmy’s on the screen read: End of the Tenth Monster Show. No winner this year.
What?
“No!” I scream into the iAm. “I am alive!”
Timmy’s face turns red. He turns around, and pushes some buttons. The camera shifts to Prophet Xitler, greeting his guests with the clinking glasses of champagne. Now, he will have a lump called Decca in his throat. Instead of the crowd leaving the Zeppelins and going back home, they’re standing still in front of the iScreens. Kids raise their heads from their video games. Mothers drying their hands in the kitchen stare back at the TV. The world is looking back at me. Why am I not on TV? No cameras nearby?
“Come again?” says Timmy reluctantly into the microphone. The sound of his drooling saliva is audible. He is afraid that a Monster will pop out of his microphone, and eat his heart out.
“I am alive, Timmy,” I repeat. “Can you hear me?”
“Oh. Boy.” Timmy covers his face with disappointed hands.
“Is she for real?” Faustina furrows her thin and fake eyebrows.
“Holy monkey.” That’s Sam, still wearing shades, smoking a cigarette. He is not angry. He is chuckling with admiration.
“Is this a joke?” Prophet Xitler wonders.
The audience is back in their seats in the Zeppelin. The viewership meter peaks from one million to six million in seconds. I caused this. I am supposed to be dead, but I am alive. Clueless, heartbroken, and tired, but I am alive.
“Put me on camera, Timmy,” I demand.
“We can’t,” says Timmy. “Our cameras don’t cover this side of the Playa beyond the cliff. How are you even alive?”
“So you’re only hearing my voice?”
“That’s right.”
“Don’t give up, Decca!” some kids scream from their iAms. They’re about ten or twelve years old.
Timmy mutes their voices. “Kids. Kids. Kids,” he mumbles, sounding like the evil witch from Hansel and Gretel.
I turn my iAm’s camera on, noticing that two-thirds of my battery is already empty. I’ve got about ten hours left, before I need to charge. I don’t have a charger.
The audience can see me now.
“Here,” I say. “You can see me. I am not dead.” I move the camera around so they see the cliff and the river.
The audience is astonished.
I move the camera toward Leo. Although he is unconscious, it’s easy to tell that he is breathing.
The audience is speechless. Six million people watching, no one is saying a word.
“I have won!” I say. “Admit it.”
“You haven’t killed the Carnivore,” says Timmy.
“It doesn’t matter,” I say. “The Monster Show is three days long. Whoever survives the three days is the winner. I don’t have to kill anyone. Those are the rules.” Timmy has another lump in his throat. I did it. “Let the audience vote,” I demand. “They’ll declare me a winner.”
“You’re not a winner yet,” Faustina suddenly interrupts. “The third day isn’t over yet. It will end at midnight. You’ll still have to survive the next ten hours until midnight. I doubt your iAm’s battery will last that long.” I shrug, hearing her words, while rummaging through my backpack, looking for a charger. I find none. “And even if you find a way to survive until midnight, still capable of announcing that you’re still alive, you will still lose.”
“What do you mean?”
“What do you think the definition of staying alive is?” Faustina wonders. “To me, staying alive is to still have a beating heart, and be capable of moving wherever you want. Look at you. You’re far from having your freedom. You’re stuck in what looks like a cave in the middle of an enormous mountain. At midnight, you will only have survived this game by mere luck, standing where you are. Can you tell me how you will survive the next days where you are, after you win? How will you get out of that cave? It’s not our job to pick you up. You’re dead. You just don’t know it yet.”
My whole world collapses in front of my eyes. Faustina’s words are harsh and twisted.
“Seriously,” Faustina muses. “Can you climb up? Can you jump down to the river and survive? If you can, you’re certainly the first one to win the games.”
Timmy touches his nose proudly, admiring Faustina’s attitude.
She is right. I can’t jump down or climb up. What good is it going to be if they declare me a winner, and leave me behind in this cave?
“I don’t care,” I say. “The rules state that as long as I am still able to say ‘I am alive’ in the iAm, the games haven’t ended yet. And I am alive!”
“You’re right about that,” Faustina says. “Smart girl. But how long can you keep it up? How long before your battery gives up on you, and how long before you starve, or get bitten by a snake? How long, Decca? Be smart and give up. Every girl dies, Decca. You’re not that special.”
“I won’t,” I say firmly, feeling the pain from the cut in my arm. “I didn’t come this far to give up.”
“You know, this is exactly the problem with Monsters. No reason at all. All talk, talk, talk. But if you feel you have to keep on going, then I guess we’ll have to wait for you to give up,” says Faustina. “From now on, you’ll have to report that you’re alive every hour. There’ll be no game. No anything. Let’s see how a Monster can survive, being trapped in a cave with nowhere to go.”
“Every hour? Why?”
“We can’t send cameras to where you are. We can’t watch you with the Zeppelins, and we don’t trust your camera on the iAm. All that tells us that you’re alive is hearing your voice. Every hour, Decca, ‘I am alive,’ until midnight. Or until you can’t anymore.”