kaolin fire presents :: writing :: fiction

"TheBallGame.0"

words

Srivan had slathered herself up with sunblock, just in case, but her brown skin was reveling in the warmth of the sun--she'd never been this near the equator before, and the life, the energy, the being that the sun filled her with made her feel as if her perspiration truly was a glowing. She hardly cared that the rumors she'd followed into the jungle had left her empty-handed--at least she wasn't lost, and it had been a beautiful walk.

A slight hum-uuuum-humming seemed to be following her, as well, and for some reason that was adding to her sense of ease--some primal comfort note, a purring drifting through the trees. She found herself hum-uuuum-humming along, drifting into and out of the shade of various vegetation.

Then just as suddenly, though hours had to have passed--her calves and thighs burned slightly from the exertion, and her breastbone hurt from the camera bouncing against it--she found herself stopped, with her fingers trailed part-way along a rock outcropping. Her fingers had registered an unnatural relief in the surface of the stone. Perhaps, she thought, the rumors would pay off after all.

A shadow passed over her, and she looked up just in time to catch a black tail with a horizontal white stripe shoot past; reorienting, she found herself looking at her first Horned Guan. It looked liked a squat, squished egret--only a hundred times more graceful than that could convey. It was black from head to tail with slight exception--a red crest fluorescing in the sun, pale blue eyes, orange feet, and a bushy white breast. And it was rolling around in the dirt like a chicken--if only chickens could look so graceful.

Srivan knelt slowly, and moved her hand to her belt-pouch to fetch some mulberries. The bird did not react to her movement, so she picked out three fruits and extended them to it in her open palm. As her hand's shadow hit the bird it leapt to its feet and moved several feet back, away from her.

She paused, afraid to startle it further, but it just returned to rolling in the dirt, ignoring her. Srivan adjusted her balance to move one leg closer to it, and reached out again with her hand--and again when her shadow landed on the bird it leapt to its feet and moved several more feet back. Startled with the the swiftness of its movement, she fell on the palm that had been holding the mulberries, squishing their red blood along her palm and forearm before she fully caught herself.

Taking a deep breath, she saw that the Horned Guan was again bathing itself in the dirt, just a bit further on. Realizing the rarity of her encounter, she took the camera now dangling on the ground and removed the cap from its lens; she centered the bird in her viewfinder and snapped a dozen shots in quick succession.

Recovering the lens cap to its proper place, she stood up and sought to approach the bird in a more roundabout manner. It, however, continued to retreat from her apace--and in a very decided direction, despite which angle she tried to come at it from.

Srivan knew that, while it was usual for them to come down to dirtbathe, Horned Guans were primarily not ground critters. But still, there were recorded cases of their having nests on the ground--she wondered if perhaps this was its attempt to lead her away from its nest. She had the strong suspicion, though, that it was more leading her towards something than away. Srivan had the strong suspicion that it had been guiding her here the whole way.

She stood up and walked slowly towards it; the bird stood up and walked directly away from her--and they kept pace with each other. Walking along she realized she was in a man-made valley, moss-covered rock sloping up evenly a dozen meters to either side of her. This had likely been an arena, a temple--

The bird took to the air, attracting her attention back, and glided up over a sudden drop; Srivan retreated a step, and knelt down to peer over the edge. The Horned Guan alighted on a scraggly, bone-white shrub sticking out from the cliff just a meter below her. No, not a bone-white shrub--bones, bleached-white bones collected messily in a mostly dried shrub growing out the wall. And collected in the mess was a perfectly preserved rubber ball maybe twenty-five centimeters in diameter.

She raised her camera to the sight and snapped off another dozen shots and a mini-movie in lower resolution to capture the depth and angles of the remains--document, document, document. She wondered if perhaps she should go back and get a crew, but despite the age of remains she was worried that the Horned Guan might disturb them past recovery--a small voice in her head counterpointed with a wondering whether this bird wasn't just a Mesoamerican will-o-wisp, how many souls it might have lured to their death. Pointedly ignoring that and the sheer distance between her position and the cloud-like canopy of trees below, Srivan took her rope out of her pack, made a catcher's-net with one end, and lowered it over the edge. The bird hopped back and forth on an arm bone, hum-uuuum-humming away.

She managed to get the net around the rubber ball and gently brought the rope taut; taking a deep breath to steady her nerves, then, she slowly reeled it up, hand-over-hand. It was heavy, for something that looked like a basketball dropped in tar--easily three, maybe four kilograms.

The bird took flight, again, then, making a ruckus that nearly caused her to lose the rope--or was she snagged on something? It looked like she'd caught the skeleton as well--which should have been bad, should have broken it apart--but the skeleton--

She shook her head, deciding the thin air was playing tricks on her, or perhaps the sun had been too much all at once. The skeleton was not climbing up her rope--perhaps it was just melded with the ball, and with the wind and the bird, it looked like it was moving. Perhaps that was it. She could let go of the rope and the problem would go away--but it was just a hallucination, nothing to worry about so long as a hallucination didn't convince her to step off the cliff. Nothing to worry about, but why was the rope so hard to pull up, now?

Srivan noticed she was biting her lip, and stopped--clenched her jaw and pulled with increasing force, attempting to dig her heels into the dusty, hard-packed dirt, walking backwards.

When a bone-white claw of a hand was the first thing over the edge, she nearly screamed, nearly dropped everything and ran--but she had to get the ball--the bone was just oddly placed, that was all, and to hell with it! She pulled hard, then, and fell backwards with the rope as the skeleton pulled itself up onto solid ground. Then she screamed, dropping the rope.

The skeleton was holding the ball in one hand and a curved dagger in the other. Srivan screamed again, scrambling backwards, trying to get her footing but not conscious enough to stop pushing herself over her hands.

A thick milky substance was pooling out of the ground, worming its way around the skeleton's bones, up its legs, around the hips, tickling its ribcage and gunning along its arm for the ball. Srivan turned, finding her hands under her, finally, pushing up to run--

Her face plowed a thin furrow in the dust, chin first; she heard her head bounce, and then something else--the ball; the skeleton had just pegged her in the back with the ball. Was it playing, or attacking? Could it even tell the difference? She gained her feet again, turned to see its intent--the now-white ball was arcing through the air back to the skeleton's waiting hands. She ran, angling for higher ground, taking the sloped stone walls that defined the arena.

Thirty meters up, the stone plateaued. The skeleton was climbing the incline slowly, ball held gently, swinging the dagger back and forth as it went. The trail of natural rubber followed it, coming out of the ground like blood from an ancient wound that had never truly healed.

Srivan cast around for inspiration--here, under thick canopy, was an intricately worked stone chair. Its patterns had faded, but she presumed the priest or king had sat there, presiding over the game, thousands of years ago. Or perhaps that chair had been reserved for the gods the game was played in honor of. She swept her hands over it, hoping for some sort of catch, some lever, something hidden that would save her--but she found nothing.

Walking around the throne, then, she examined the trees that sheltered it. They were rubber trees of varying age, untapped--but for one. Scars riddled one large rubber tree, older than any rubber tree had right to be; the scars walked from waist-height up for two meters, diagonally sliced upwards from where it was directly behind the throne, all the way around the meter and a half of each hemi-circumference where the cuts met again. Below this, then, just behind the throne, there had been buckets for catching the latex flowing out.

She heard the Horned Guan screech behind her, and jumped away, turning around--it was worrying the skeleton, swooping down and around it. The skeleton had the ball tucked under one arm and was swiping at the bird, in turn, with the dagger. But despite distraction, the skeleton was still advancing on her position.

Looking down for some sort of weapon, her camera caught her eye--she had to take some photos, if it wasn't just a hallucination. Raising the camera, though, she realized the skeleton had stopped paying attention to the bird; without letting go of the ball, it bounced it against her skull. Her camera flew around her neck, burning her neck with the friction, and nearly choking her. She flew a full meter in the air, landing awkwardly on a wrist, an elbow, and a fore-arm, tumbling from there onto her side and again trying to scramble away.

Her left eye didn't want to fully open, and there was a shrill-pitched noise dogging her consciousness. She wanted to just lay down, let her wounds sort themselves out. There wasn't any skeleton, after all. She'd just fallen down. Or maybe she'd just rested against a tree for a nap--perhaps this was just a nightmare, and maybe some rodent had thrown a nut at her, or maybe she was just getting cold from the sun going down--

Or maybe she really was being dragged down the stone by a remnant of a culture hundreds of years gone, thousands of years old. Was there really a Horned Guan sitting on her chest? A dagger at her neck?

Surely she had fallen, or pricked herself on an ancient poison--the Aztecs were infamous for their use of psychoactive substances. A Horned Guan couldn't possibly have a dagger at her neck.

She opened her eyes as wide as she could and craned her neck up to see--yes, she was being dragged down the slope, across the ground--sure enough, the skeleton seemed like it was going to take her back over the edge with it. That made enough sense, in the big scheme of things, if you started believing in walking skeletons and the like. But what was the deal with the bird?

She heard it humming again, hum-uuuum-humming, and she had the urge to close her eyes, to sleep, to dream. To dream its dream?

She closed her eyes.

The sun was shining brightly, no clouds in the sky. She could hear hundreds, maybe thousands, of people cheering from the stands. Heavy rhythmic beats were joined by ball-play; she flinched from a foot coming down on her face, but it went through her. Finally, something not real that remained not real!

The sun moved, the scene shifted; she was watching from above as the winners of the game climbed to the throne, to be awarded sacrifice to the gods. A priest dressed as Quetzalcoatl stood to welcome them, a priestess on either side holding fresh maize stalks. This was to be a birth, a rebirth--transcendence.

The lead player, with an orange helmet, black feathered arm-dressings, and a white leather breastplate took a vase in his hands and drank; milk drooled slowly down the sides of his lips, and as he handed the vase back to the priest he blinked, shook his head, and licked his lips as if he couldn't feel them.

Her flesh was melting in the sun, melting from inside, curling, twirling, twisting--she felt the beat of the tree, its blood and her blood and something else, blood of the gods, the sky, the sea; there was pressure at her neck and somehow she knew it was the dagger, the very dagger just now at her neck, and she opened her eyes. The bird was still riding her chest but the dagger had fallen so it was indeed pressed against her neck. She could still feel the liquid rubber swimming around in her belly.

Srivan closed her eyes again, trying to make sense of her sensations.

A crack of thunder broke the sky red, no clouds in sight but the ringing in her ears growing stronger. The priest, Quetzalcoatl, jerked sideways as if played by an epileptic puppeteer. Red, deep red, pooled out of a small crater in his side. There was shouting, clamoring, but her own flesh was still melting, perpetually melting and mixing, and the sacred vase was broken--its own blood melting and mixing with that of the priest. The priestesses were on their knees, wailing for mercy for whatever they'd done--she didn't know, they didn't know.

She turned around and the sky was orange, yellow, red, blue, green--it swam with life and texture. A pain was slowly burning its way up her back, along her shoulders, but that was the other world, the unreal world that shouldn't exist. Dreams were easier, they could mean anything, be explained by anything. She didn't want to think about the other world. Here, there were fierce metal men with pale faces riding large dogs, slashing down players and spectators alike with silvered weapons that sliced through wood as well as flesh, leather little obstacle.

She reached for her camera to record the absurdity but remembered it was in the other world; drawing back, she saw her hands, melting, melting but not falling off--infinitely pliable flesh around the static bones. A moment of disbelief, and then true fear, panic, and she'd taken flight--literally, the ground receded under her and then she was watching herself--her selves--watching the bones on the ground and watching the bird watching the bones. Watching the massacre unfold. Hundreds, thousands of bodies, bereft of souls, were taken by the armored invaders and tossed over the cliff. The bird just watched, gliding above, scared and confused. Winds for which it had no understanding tickled its feathers, but it flew on instinct, flew high and above.

Then the sun was gone, the hare on the moon completely eaten, the only light was pricks of orange and red like stars on the ground; she swooped lower, and lower still, and an anger like none she had known filled her, suffused her--then was gone, leaving her numb. She flew closer and closer and all was calm. Then a shout arose near the cliff, and she flew there, knowing what she would find--a skeleton, bone-white already, climbing up the cliff, throwing its rubber ball at the invaders and dragging them over the edge, one at a time.

The ground filled with latex so that none could escape--stuck in their tracks they were easy fodder for the skeleton's burning hatred.

And then she was again awake, staring again into the eyes of the bird, the dagger sawing gently against her already-raw neck.

And she took the dagger, presented it to the bird as she had with the mulberries. And it stood there, on her chest, calm, detached, as if nothing was happening. And she sliced the dagger, dull as it ought to be, across the neck of the Horned Guan, and the dagger sliced through like cheese; blood seeped gently out of the bird's neck, onto her arms, onto her chest, down her neck and into the latex that soaked the ground.

She was no longer moving. Her feet burned from a sudden fire and she tried to pull back but they were tangled in flesh, tangled in blood rising up from the ground; the skeleton was becoming whole, unmelting before her eyes in an orgy of biological goo. She kicked, and pulled, then slashed at it with the dagger still in her hand--at the touch of the dagger, the flesh withdrew. Her feet dropped, and she scampered back to standing, crouched against the monster with dagger at ready. And she took a step back, and another, but everywhere she stepped there was already flesh, amorphous, writhing, and she couldn't run far enough, fast enough, but she tried--she ran, and ran, and when she cleared the ball field the ground was dry, dusty dirt.

Srivan knelt on the ground, brought the dust to her lips, and kissed it. She spread out in the dust, and rolled in it, and the heat from the sun brought her comfort. A greater warmth blazed from behind her and she turned around to see the flesh combusting, writhing, drying, flaking--freed into the sky as ash and disappearing before it again touched the ground. The years had caught up with it, anger finally accepted, resolved, and released through the flesh--soul and body combined to wipe the massacre clean. Justice, as it were, was done.

Srivan lay back in the dust, thought of flying, and basked dreamlessly in the blessings of the sun.