The island had always been the same, from the worms under the earth to the Roman ruins covered in moss. The fragmented stone, the marble columns and arches, the deserted shore, the empty woods, the arena. It might have been all the world ever was, frozen in time, but tonight Three wanted to think there was more out there than a dot in an endless sea.
A voice answered his thoughts, whispering directly inside his ear:
“Soon you’ll be mine again. Ready, Three?”
In a few hours, night would fall, and the animals would be released. In a few hours, they would drag him by the legs toward the coliseum, and Tarautas would be there, waiting for his prey. In a few hours, he would know if all there was to life was running and hiding, or if the world would unfold like an onion peeling its layers, revealing a secret core.
“Three,” the voice called him again. It invaded him like fingers, pushing and breaking skin, filling his ear canal with liquid, stuffing his mouth with sand. “Tonight is the real deal. You know that, right?”
Three touched his neck, the steel collar constricting him. He had lost the jacket, the boots, and the pants along the way, and all he had were the collar, the shirt, and underwear.
“Tonight we won’t be playing cat and rat anymore. Tonight, I’ll kill you.”
Before, when he wasn’t Three, when he was something else he could no longer remember, he applied to a show in hopes he would get the grand prize. Then, he had been peaceful, in a state of almost confidence, like a cow believing only other cattle end up in the slaughterhouse. He received the notice the following day, saying his application had been accepted, and his episodes were scheduled for the following week.
“I see you have already signed all the terms, Mr. R,” said the lawyer of the network. There were all sorts of contracts in front of him: one to release the company from any responsibility, one to prove he was in all his mental capacities, one to inform his family and employers, one that would release him from his debts in case of obit, and finally a will, which he mostly left blank. “After this, you will stay in the accommodations until the recording date.”
“Sure,” answered R. He wasn’t too worried about the result; it was true that most people didn’t make it, but part of him still wanted to believe it was not a real thing. Or that it was, and if he died, his problems would die with him: his dad, his feelings, his bills. “It’s easier than I thought it’d be.”
“Yes, our method is very quick.” The lawyer shook his hand. “If you win, we’ll talk again.”
The accommodations consisted of a minuscule room with a bunk bed, a military locker, a table for one, and a bathroom that barely fit one person standing. It was just a little smaller than his own apartment, and he moved inside it gracefully, crouching when he needed to crouch. There was also a gym downstairs, in case he wanted to prepare, but R slept most of the time.
The day before the new season started, an officer knocked on his door for the final step.
“It only takes a few minutes.”
The device she installed was made of black stainless steel, simple and thin, with an O-ring made of the same material, but it was for all purposes a collar. A collar connected to the user’s neural implant to send information, track their positions in the island, and make sure they were following the rules.
“Which are very simple,” said the officer adjusting the collar to R’s neck. It beeped with a green light when it connected, but he felt nothing with it. “You can’t swim out of the island. You can’t use excessive violence, unless inevitable. You can only be hunted at night.”
“I watch the show.” R played with the ring with his index finger. There was only a vague burning sensation in his upper stomach, a brewing storm that could come at any moment or leave without a notice. “How can I remember the rules if I’m going to forget everything?”
“Everyone always remembers.” The officer smiled. “You only forget why you’re there, who you were, where you lived. You don’t forget you want to win.”
The statement echoed against the metal of the bunk bed, a ghost of her the last words inside his head: win, win. The crew left everything he could need there—a change of clothes for the next day, a hygiene pack, the collar connected to his brain—but there was nothing in the room that belonged to R, only his body, his thoughts, himself.
Two human heads lie by his side. Tarautas feel safer when he looks at them, even when a hint of disgust creeps in the back of his throat. He cleans the machete and braids the rope, tying knots and leaving enough space to fit the skulls: one above, the other below, and space for a third one. He carries them around the island like they’re no more than coconuts.
“To remind myself,” he tells the boars.
In the first few hours, R still remembered most things. Others, like the name of the show, had blurred away, but he knew what mattered: he was prey number three, the island had cameras everywhere, and he was there for the reward. If he stayed alive for a week, he would be out, and with the money he could pay for his father’s nursing home for the following years, and maybe even afford a good health insurance plan.
The hunter chose the name Tarautas for the game, said the officer before they dropped him off on the island. If you survive, he will still have to go through his fourth hunt if he wants to win.
He left the shore to enter the woods, and the sun disappeared behind the canopies of trees. The humidity clung to his skin, unpleasant and moist, and he removed the jacket, folding it over his arm. There were no animals in sight, only wild vines covering broken white stones, and a shallow creek. The water was quiet and green, but a swarm of flies buzzed near the rocks, above a bloated headless body stuck under a fallen trunk.
For the first time since he sent his application, R felt like giving up. You can’t, you have to win, his mind remembered. You’re number three.
If he wasn’t wearing the collar, he would know that being number three meant that the hunter had gone through at least one killing; unlike the preys, who only needed to survive for seven days or kill the hunter, they had to win three out of four attempts. To make things fair, they said. If it wasn’t for the collar attached so tightly around his neck, he would also know that there was a fair chance that the hunter had a few items to help him hunt; in other seasons, hunters on a streak had access to cameras, night vision goggles, several types of knives, or face masks that allowed them to speak directly to the prey’s brain through their neck device.
If it wasn’t for the steel choking him when he breathed too fast, he would be worried, above all, about the pack of hound dogs that could either find prey or maul it to death.
But the collar functioned normally, so he kept exploring the woods, careful not to make any sound. Three didn’t know who or where he was anymore, but he remembered one thing: he had to avoid Tarautas at all costs.
“Hello, R! Ready to fight for your life?”
R smiled at the camera. “I guess that’s the kind of thing no one’s really ready for, but yeah, you can say I am.”
“Then tell us three things about you.”
“Let’s see! I work with graphic design, my favorite food is anything strawberry-flavored, and…” His index finger poked his lip, and he stared at the blinking lights above their heads. Maybe he should keep his mouth shut. “And I have just been through, like, the worst breakup ever.”
“A breakup, huh. Is this why you decided to apply to The Most Dangerous Game?”
R blinked. “No, not at all. Although maybe, if I was… Never mind, cut that.”
“Can you tell us why you’re here?”
“My dad has late-stage dementia. I was taking care of him, but it was unmanageable, and he’s been in a nursing home for the past year. My ex used to help me with the bills, but it’s just too expensive. So here I am.”
“That’s R for everyone! Thank you and good luck!”
He smiled at the camera one more time before the interview ended.
After night fell, he knew it had started. The first proof was the sounds: high-pitched squeals from the distance, like a sounder of pigs struggling inside a sty, dry leaves cracking under the weight of worn combat boots, rope scraping against human hair, and cheerful whistling coming from afar. Three hid behind a shrub, watching the robotic boars sniffing the air, his cheek against a cracked stone arch.
Pigs, he thought, feeling like throwing up. They’re not supposed to be pigs.
The song reminded him of something, but he couldn’t make out what. Three was born on that island, and he knew nothing outside of it. He had only lived in the woods and the shore, he had spied the coliseum from the trees, he had followed the moving stream. There was nothing else about him. Still, the melody caught his attention and, in another life, he would have known the lyrics to it. He touched a lock of hair and closed his eyes, pressing the strands with his fingers.
As if hearing his mental prayers, the boars left.
Three released the breath he had been holding, and when he opened his eyes, there was a man squatting in front of him.
“Found you,” said Tarautas, flipping his forehead with a finger. Three screeched, trying to run, but the man knocked him to the ground with a single movement. “Now, let me take a good look at you.”
Three glanced at him, his heart drilling holes through his rib cage, trying to leave him as hollow as the trunk holding the body in the creek. Tarautas was bull-like, broad in width and tall in height, with a sturdy neck, thick arms, and muscular thighs. His hands were the size of Three’s head, there was dried blood under his bitten nails, and his face was covered with a black half-mask made of leather and steel D-rings. His dark hair was disheveled and his blood-shot eyes were sharp, but there was nothing else to see of him besides the muzzle.
In one of his hands, he held a macrame hanger, but instead of flowerpots, it displayed two heads in different states of decomposition. He had tied and braided the rope with care, but the last row was empty. In the other hand, he held a small knife, its drop point aiming at Three’s throat.
“Please,” Three croaked. “Please, one more chance.”
Tarautas pulled him by the ring of his collar, lifting him from the ground. Even standing they were wildly different: where one was strong, the other was weak, where one was massive, the other was scrawny, where one was confident, the other cowered in fear.
“Say it again.”
“Please,” he begged. His life was the island, so he no longer felt shame. Only Tarautas could hear him, Tarautas and his heads. “Please.”
The hunter smiled, a white cuspid appearing under his curled lip.
“I’ll count to ten. Make it fun.”
Three slipped from his grasp and darted far from there.
One, announced Tarautas, his deep voice booming in the silence of the island. Two, Three pushed branches aside, their thorns scratching his arms. Three, the whistling continued inside his head. Four, the boars squealed from the distance. Five, he crossed the creek, water soaking his boots. Six, his body felt light and swift, and his legs ran on their own accord. Seven, he could see the shadow of the coliseum at the end of the forest. Eight, the cameras captured his expression of terror, sweat gluing his hair to his forehead. Nine, he looked inside the coliseum, and there was nothing besides a sleeping bag and boxes of food.
Ten.
Three fell to his knees. He searched for a weapon in the grass, and he only found small rocks. In the middle of the hunt, he had not noticed how fast time had passed, and there was only an hour or two before the first rays of sunlight.
“Time’s up!”
The whistling resumed, and Three hummed the melody to himself. He could run, or he could wait for him there. If they fought, maybe he could hit his head with the stone, but the image of Tarautas returned to his brain, powerful and immense, and he knew it was the end.
“I thought you wanted another chance,” said Tarautas, but he wasn’t there.
Three scratched his own ear, trying to remove him from his skin, but his voice glued to him like wet bubblegum under the sole of a shoe. Almost there, Tarautas whispered, and Three stumbled across the clearing. Almost…
This time, Tarautas didn’t announce his presence. He bent forward like a beast about to strike, rubbing the handle of his knife, and the heads fell softly on the grass. Three threw a stone at his face, then another, and another, but only one of them hit the other man’s temple. Tarautas laughed, touching the cut on his forehead with his hand and smearing drops of blood against his own skin.
“You’ve got guts, waiting for me like this.”
“I’m not waiting for you,” Three muttered, walking around the coliseum in circles. They were on opposite sides, but Tarautas didn’t seem to be in a hurry. “Stop playing with me.”
“I like that face,” the hunter taunted. “Let’s make a deal.”
“Which deal?”
“You don’t go to the woods. You stay here. If I catch you before morning, you’re dead. No whining. If I don’t, we can eat together. I have food.”
Three looked at the small rock in his trembling hand. If he ran faster than Tarautas, he would buy himself another day. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t have survived anyway. Somewhere, in his mind, he remembered: A rabbit can outrun a bear.
“Deal.”
“Good morning, Tarautas—what a strange choice for your game name! Mind telling us what’s the meaning of it?”
He looks at the camera with a deadpan face; smiling at strangers never comes easy to him. “It’s a gladiator’s name.”
“Fitting for a hunter! Excited about your month on the island?”
“Excited for the prize.”
“Spoken like a champion—so, Tarautas, the audience wants to know: what’s your biggest nightmare?”
He thinks for a moment. “I’m living it.”
“The island?” asks the interviewer. “It’s a little scary, we’ll admit.”
“I’m not scared of a fucking island.”
“Last question! What brings you to The Most Dangerous Game?”
His first smile looks like a snarl.
“Why does anyone ever apply, if not debt?”
With a headbutt, Tarautas knocked him to the ground, and Three rolled down the steps of the coliseum. Before he fell, a large hand grasped his shirt, fingers sinking into his skin through the fabric and leaving red marks. He closed his eyes, and his body relaxed, announcing his imminent loss.
“It’s morning.” Tarautas’ voice was distorted by the muzzle. “You did it.”
Three stared at the sky. Behind Tarautas, the orange glow of the sun appeared slowly, dispersing the thick grey clouds. He can only hunt you at night, a voice he didn’t recognize reminded him. A wave of relief filled his chest, and he almost laughed at the absurdity of it.
“Stop smiling, you’re freaking me out.” Tarautas let go of him and began walking down the stairs toward the middle of the coliseum. “Aren’t you coming?”
In silence, both of them sat in the arena, one in front of the other. Three touched his own chest, air returning to his lungs and his heart readjusting to its normal speed. Tarautas opened two plastic boxes with jerky, flat bread, and tangerines, and gave one to him.
“Eat. It won’t be any fun if you pass out before the night.”
Tarautas unbuckled the muzzle, and the device fell between his crossed legs, revealing the wires inside and the rest of his face. Red lines crisscrossed his skin where the muzzle had touched, his large nose was crooked to the right, his lower lip had a purple cut, and his jaw seemed carved in steel.
For a moment, Three thought he would pass out. His face, had it been any other face, would be easy to ignore, but not that close. There was something in the dark circles under his eyes, in the way his mouth moved, how his nostrils were broader when he breathed, how his prominent Adam’s apple went up and down, up and down.
“How did you find this?” Three touched the trimmed beef, rubbing a layer of salt from it.
“They leave some for me every day.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.” Tarautas wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “What are you looking at?”
Three lowered his head. He had to stop looking at the darkened knuckles, at the green veins popping in his arms, at the cuts in his skin. It reminded him of alcohol, strawberry, and condensed milk, but the thought made his head throb. The more he insisted, the more it hurt, cracking his skull from the inside, turning his mind into no more than the lifeless heads displayed in the ropes.
During the day, Tarautas slept in the coliseum, and Three slept in the woods. They didn’t speak again in the afternoon, but at night the same harsh whisper caressed his ear: Put on a show tonight, and I’ll help you again.
It felt like Tarautas was making it easy for him. He stalked after him between the trees, he made his boars drag him through the mud toward the middle of the island, he punched him whenever he tried to fight back, but the pain was never too much, the risk never too great. Every time the blade was near his face, he had a second or two to roll away, jump back to his feet and start another race. When morning came, they sat down in silence and ate.
“You weren’t that bad today,” said Tarautas on the second day.
Three smiled. Smiling was his second nature, the kind of clothes he could slip into with ease, to anger or to please.
“You’re just being nice now.”
Tarautas’ eyes fell on his upturned lips and he clicked his tongue.
“Never mind.”
R and C knew each other from work, but they only talked at a party held by the company after the end of a particularly successful project. Their boss rented the largest karaoke box of the establishment next door and paid the first round of beers, the sales director paid the second, and by the third round, half of the table was lining up to sing a song. Everyone’s getting drunk tonight, announced the art director, as she bought cocktails for the trainees. That’s a promise!
Months later, when they were already dating, C admitted that had been the first time that he noticed R. It was right in the beginning of your song, he said, one finger twirling a dark wave falling on R’s face. You played with your hair like this, and that was it for me.
R couldn’t say the same. He remembered being half drunk when he sang, but he couldn’t tell which song it was. He remembered asking C if he minded him sitting next to him. You’re not going? R asked, pointing at the microphone. C shook his head. I don’t sing. The conversation flowed naturally, making three hours pass like thirty minutes, but he wasn’t sure which was the first thing he noticed about C.
Maybe it had been the width of his chest, or the size of his neck, or the way he chuckled and just one side of his lip curled, showing only a fragment of white teeth. Maybe it had been his protruding knuckles or his thick fingers, the way his hands looked like they were made to choke and kill. Or maybe it was his eyes; he had that kind of don’t fuck with me look, or the look that dared others to, and R did, he looked a little too long, an insect landing on the water before being drowned by it.
They closed the subway again, R sighed when they left the karaoke. C walked him to the station, not because he asked, but because they agreed in silence that they wanted to keep talking. Clouds covered the sky, moving slowly in a stew of purple and charcoal, and a thunder made him jump to his feet.
Well, C said, taking his own jacket and covering R’s head with it. I live ten minutes from here.
R woke up the next day with the dumbest smile on his face, and a little voice whispering, warning: You just met. You shouldn’t be so happy. You just met.
Like always, he waved the warning away.
On the third day, Three slept in the coliseum. At first, the light and the heat upset him, but he curled under the battered jacket, and hid his face with an arm, falling asleep in less than an hour. Tarautas laid motionless on the other side, his sleeping bag looking like a narrow mattress, like the bunk bed he had slept on before… The collar around Three’s neck tightened, and he focused instead on his own breathing, burning his throat and lungs after hours of effort.
In his dreams, he was somewhere far away, in a full bed with four pillows, under an old checkered duvet. Two arms grasped him from behind in a strong grip, enveloping his body to keep him close. Three kicked the duvet, a surge of heat spreading through his chest, but the person behind brought him closer, interlocking their legs. C, he called, tapping his hand. It’s too hot to cuddle. C growled something in his sleep but didn’t move an inch.
Three woke up late in the afternoon, sticky with sweat. His jacket was far away, and his stomach roared, begging for another slice of bread. After eating, he limped up the stairs and walked to the creek, removing his clothes with a heavy sigh.
“Soap would be nice,” he said out loud, but he didn’t know where he had ever used something like that. “Soap, towel, shampoo…”
He walked to the deepest part of the creek and washed away the dried blood, the sand, the grass in his pants. The corpse from the first day had disappeared, and all he could see were the fireflies flying near the surface of the stream. He sat on the bottom, half submerged, and admired the faded blue of the sky, the agitated leaves in their branches, closing his eyes to enjoy the breeze.
Then he noticed he was humming the same tune from the first day, and someone took a strand of wet hair from his cheek.
Tarautas was there, with a familiar look on his harsh face. If Three didn’t know better, he would think it was anger, but then again, desire and anger often looked the same in men like him.
Three shuddered when Tarautas dropped to his knees, water soaking his black boots and pants. He took another strand of hair off Three’s face, and went over Three, covering his body with his on the shallowest part of the creek.
“Wait,” Three tried to say, but Tarautas held his wrists over his head against the grass. Three watched him unzip his pants with his free hand but didn’t consider fighting back. It wasn’t that Tarautas was too large, or that he was scared; in the haze caused by the collar, he felt it would be right to allow him to continue, like his body knew something his mind had forgotten, and all he had to do was spread his legs and watch.
“Look at me,” Tarautas said. He buried his nails inside his cheeks, and Three opened his eyes again. “Look at me.”
And he saw him, wearing his favorite dress shirt, hair disheveled, smelling like coffee before they left to work. Thrusting, kissing his head, holding his neck. The thought was gone as soon as it appeared, and Three scratched Tarautas’ back, gasping in pain.
It was dark outside of the woods when Tarautas stood up. He didn’t look at the prey. Instead, he took off his shirt, left his damp boots over a rock, and buckled the muzzle behind his head. Three was lying on the grass, limp as a rag doll, eyes unfocused somewhere far.
“I’ll give you ten minutes.”
There were people in worse situations than them. One of the girls at work lived in a capsule with a single bed and had to share a bathroom with twenty other residents. A childhood friend had to move to the back of her employer’s house with her kid, in a tiny room in the kitchen they used as a storage, and worked from the moment she woke up to when she fell asleep.
We’re doing pretty damn well, R reminded himself.
They weren’t even thirty yet, and they lived in an apartment with a bathroom of their own, a living room with only a wall of separation from the kitchen, and a bedroom that fit both their bed and a clothes rack. They had an oven, a microwave, a ceiling fan, the building had a laundry room in the basement, and C had just bought a car.
“I’m afraid for my dad,” R admitted, lying on C’s lap. “Maybe if we bring him back home…”
“No fucking way,” said C. He was still looking at his phone, but his other hand played with R’s hair. “You visited him on Saturday, and you still have bruises on your arms.”
Sometimes, R wished the nurses would call him to say that his father had died peacefully in his sleep. It was selfish, yes, but then he wouldn’t have to see him like that, and he wouldn’t be spat on, clawed, bitten, and offended every time he tried to enter the room. He didn’t try arguing that the other bruises had been done by C: sometimes he held R too hard, or he left a trail of painful hickeys across his neck.
There was also the medication for dementia, hypertension, and diabetes, the gastrostomy they had to perform a few months ago after his father refused to keep eating, the medical food…
“I can only afford the nursing home until next year. Then, I don’t know what we’re supposed to do.”
“I’ll sell the car,” said C in a mocking tone. “If that doesn’t work, I’ll apply to MDG.”
“Come on!” R got to his knees on the couch, and C sniggered. “I’m serious!”
“You know I’ll kill all of them for you, babe.”
On the fourth day, Three woke up before Tarautas, and left the coliseum step by step. The boars were still while their owner slept, and he was able to escape to the woods before night fell. He spent the following hours comfortably hidden in a grave hidden by sticks and leaves, and he rubbed as much mud as he could on his arms to keep the boars away.
“Where the fuck are you now?” Tarautas asked through the collar after the first two hours. His voice made Three flinch; the tone was too different from earlier in the day, when he heard nothing but incoherent grunts moaned against his nape.
Three sighed, touching his hair where he had pulled to the point of tearing strands. He still had a ghost pain in his scalp, and if he had a mirror, he would find a reddish bite mark in his shoulder blades.
Somehow, the bruises didn’t scare him. They felt homely, like a cup of tea after a tiring day, like being screamed at for anything he did wrong, like being mocked for his stupidity, like warm kisses and the salty taste of tears. The collar tightened.
“I’ve been through every inch of this island, and there’s no sign of you,” whispered Tarautas, wherever he might have been. Then, he let out a breathy laugh: “You’re the one making me run today.
In the past, when he wasn’t a creature of the island, Three had also liked to hide in dark places when he felt too threatened or upset. He had memories of a father who drank all the time when he was a child, and of hiding inside a tiny wardrobe until his father stopped insulting the woman cooking his meal. In others, the father was older, sitting on a wheelchair because he refused to walk, talk, eat. Whenever he came near, saying, Hi dad! You’re looking very handsome today, the old man would grasp his arms, scratch his skin, show the few teeth he had left, and spit in his face. Son of a whore, go fuck yourself, he would mutter, and a nurse would laugh apologetically: He only talks to insult us, nowadays.
Then, Three would hide in one of the stalls of the restroom and cry for thirty minutes before taking the subway back home. The same happened when another man, younger and scarier, mocked him whenever he complained. I don’t get why you don’t just let him fucking die, this same man said. He never loved you anyway. Why would you accept him treating you like this?
Three didn’t know the man’s name or where they were in those days, but he remembered crawling to the bathroom when their fights got too ugly. The man would slam his fists against the door, making both him and the wood tremble with it. Part of him still wanted to defend this man: there was a reason, it was money, C was always terrible with money… First, the car that the man insisted to buy broke in less than a month, then a visit to the doctor to see why his blood pressure was so high, then the nursing home’s bills, a speeding ticket, the microwave that stopped working…
He never hit Three, not when they were fighting, but he screamed, broke things, and saved all that fury for when they were in bed. Then, he choked, slapped, and humiliated, but Three never complained. He had told the man since the start he liked his roughness, hadn’t he? But in those days, it seemed that was all they did, and he didn’t feel so different from when he was visiting his father, or after long hours of work, tired and battered, with no feeling left to spill…
The collar burned his neck.
Despite the headache, images flashed in front of his eyes. Hop in, C said, in a black car releasing a trail of smoke. There was a small fire in the back, and the entire vehicle stank like spilled oil. That shit’s burning, he tried to tell him, but C opened the door. Just hop in, you get used to the smell. Sometimes, they were happy in their own way, but even those moments were tainted—the fear of not making it in the following month, the bills piling up in his email, taking additional work to keep up, the exhaustion and the irritation that came from it…
Three clawed at the collar, trying to remove the steel from his skin to no avail. The throbbing in the middle of his head spread to the forehead and behind the eyes, drawing invisible lines of pain across his skull.
It’s because we’re still wasting money on your fucking dad, C had said. No, it’s because of your goddamn car! he answered back. C slammed him against the wall, one closed fist against the door, way too close to his face. Then wallow in self-pity, you pathetic little bitch, he said, then took his credit card from his wallet and threw it in R’s face.
You’re a pig! R hated him, he hated him, he would always hate him, and only despair stopped him from stomping on the card that lay on the floor. You’re a fucking pig! R opened the drawers and pulled out all the clothes he could find: dress shirts, pants, boots, underwear. C watched in horror as he threw his clothes from the twelfth floor, too stunned to react, and R smiled. I don’t ever want to see your fucking face again!
It didn’t cross his mind that C had nowhere to go. Fuck him and fuck his problems, he told himself. That pig never cared about me.
A hoarse voice brought him back to reality: “If I don’t find you in one hour, meet me in the arena.”
And, quick as a charm, the pain was gone, and with it the memories. All that ever existed was Tarautas and the island, nothing before and nothing after, and he would always be Three.
After every victory, Tarautas can choose an item to help him in the hunts. There are ten possibilities, ranging from cameras scattered across the island to tranquilizer darts, but his eyes fall on a pack of quadrupedal robots. His finger presses the screen, choosing the hound dogs, uncertain why he asks them to make them pigs instead.
The island was silent on the seventh day. Three wandered through the woods, half undressed and unsure where his pants had gone. His hair was dripping with water, and he shivered when a blow of wind brushed his skin. It was almost over, he realized, not knowing what would happen next. He only knew he had to be alive until then. He could kill Tarautas, if he had the chance, but if he stayed alive, he wouldn’t need to go as far.
Instead of hiding, he returned to the coliseum, where the other man was. The hound boars had been deactivated and lay on the sand, nothing more than mechanical carcasses. Tarautas was already awake.
I’ll kill you, he had promised hours before, but the excitement seemed to have died off.
“You’re not gonna run and hide again?”
“Not tonight,” said Three. “Tonight, we fight.”
“There’s no way she’s gonna survive,” said R, pointing at the computer screen. “I’m cheering for her, but there’s no way.”
The logo of The Most Dangerous Game appeared, and the camera cut back to the host:
“Last week, Orion killed his first prey, and chose the bear traps as his reward. Will he be able to kill his second?”
C leaned on his shoulder, his large head against his narrow frame, and R bent down to kiss his cheekbones, nose, and lips.
“The guy’s a monster, yeah,” agreed C. He rarely smiled this much, but the more kisses R planted on his skin, the more he grinned. “But I think she’ll do it.”
“She’s too weak, C. Too small.”
“She’s fast, she’s smart. It can happen.”
Most of the time, R was inclined to believe that the content of the show wasn’t real, and they were all paid actors behind the cameras. Who would accept putting their lives at stake like that? Who would be okay with having their deaths recorded, or murdering someone else?
“If we were too broke, I’d do it for us.” C flipped R’s forehead with a finger, a shadow of a smile playing on his lips. “I’d never let you go through that.”
“I don’t know what you’d do best: survive for a week or kill three in a month,” said R, pensive. “You’re big enough for either.”
“I’d be a hunter and I’d bring you back their heads.” C glanced at the screen when the prey gasped at a startling sound, but the hunter was nowhere near her. Then, he pointed at a spot close to the window where they hung the flowerpots. “We could hang them there.”
R laughed.
“You’re freaking me out.”
“Now you, you might be weak, but you could be a great prey. Remember: a rabbit can outrun a bear.”
The moon seems closer tonight than it has seemed in any of the other days. The coliseum is empty except for Three and Tarautas, each standing on a different side of the arena. Both of them find it strange how, despite the desire to win whatever they have to win, none has moved for the past hours. Soon, Tarautas knows, it will be morning, and if that happens, another prey will appear, and this time he might not be as lucky. He leaves the ropes with the heads on the sand and walks toward Three.
Three flinches, but Tarautas only throws a pocketknife at the other man’s feet and unbuckles the muzzle, revealing a tired face.
“Take that,” he says. “Or it won’t be fair.”
Three kneels down, one trembling hand touching the handle of the knife.
“In the end, we turned out like this.”
“In the end, we play the game,” Tarautas agrees. The disgust still boils inside his chest. “We chose it.”
Three wants to ask if they really did, but he has no time; Tarautas has changed his posture to attack. He is, as Three imagined, more bear than man in battle, and he has no chance to win against him. When Tarautas throws a punch, Three can only dodge. When he kicks, Three rolls on the floor. He thinks of running away, but he won’t. There are wounds scattered across his arms and legs, and they are smeared with sand; his face has purple bruises; his chin drips with sweat.
When Tarautas grabs his forearm, the hand holding the knife reacts like a startled cat. Three hears a muffled shriek, and warm blood drips on his feet. Three stares at it, head spinning, and the first rays of color appear in the sky. Tarautas throws him to the ground. Fuck, he grunts, his good arm holding Three by the neck. They look at each other, black eye against black eye, and his grip softens.
The knife falls.
Tarautas plummets heavily over him and rolls to his side.
“I can’t.” Three’s voice is but a rough whisper, his throat dry and sore. “But if you do it, I won’t fight back.”
The knife is untouched until the sun rises, and the collar beeps, announcing the winner. The device unlocks, two half-moons of steel falling down on the sand.
R gets up and looks at C one more time.
“See you outside, if you win.”
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H. Pueyo (@hachepueyo on Twitter and Instagram) is an Argentine-Brazilian writer of speculative fiction. She’s an Otherwise Fellow, and her work has appeared before in F&SF, The Dark Magazine, Strange Horizons, and The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror, among others. Her bilingual debut collection A Study in Ugliness & Outras Histórias (Lethe, 2022) can be found at hachepueyo.com. |
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