Skin (15 page)

When
Imogen and Victoria had at last left, Victoria still not looking
overly impressed or fully understanding why she
’d been
brought there in the first place—which made two of us—I folded back
the blankets and looked at my legs.

Wrapped in
bandages from toe to just below my hips, they looked like two giant
white salamis. At least they were still the right size and shape.
From there I began to unfold the wrapping.

Everything
looked normal. My usual hairy thighs were stained a yellow from
iodine. A circle of neat black stitches on both knees. It surprised
me to see something so traditional as stitches come from a place
like this, thinking I might have imagined some kind of laser
re-joining flesh. I continued to unwrap my mummified legs.

From the knee
to the toe on both legs, I was completely hairless. The skin was a
dark red, the colour of wine, but otherwise, these were still human
legs. On the surface.

“
I
wondered how long it would take you look,” Sveta said.

I hadn’t heard
the door open.

She moved into
my room and stood beside the bed, both of us looking down at my
injured but otherwise normal legs.

“
They
look…”

“
Human?”

I nodded.

“
Of
course they look human. You think everyone who walks away from a
piscine transplant does it on trotters? The Animus culture is a
varied one. Not everyone does it for the aesthetic.”

“
So what
is it? Inside? How did you fix my legs?”

“
I don’t
know the full science. It’s an amalgam of tissues, some of them
yours. Your bones were not only shattered, but your flesh was
savaged. The muscles and bones all needed to be rebuilt. You will
walk again, don’t worry. And it will be soon.”

“
It’s
not walking I’m most concerned about,” I said.

“
You
will take your place on the cross again, Priest, but not for a
time.” She lowered to kiss me, but I stopped her with a hand to her
chest, her face inches from mine.

“
Why did
you call Victoria?” I said.

“
You
were upset, I thought you could use a confidant.”

“
My
ex-girlfriend?”

“
A
familiar face. From your time before, to remind you who you were,”
she said, pulling away from an undelivered kiss.

Or to show me
how far removed I was now.

Sveta had
forbidden me to lift anything heavier than a paper weight but at
least I was back in Sanctuary, moving around and feeling all the
better for getting out of that bed in Omega. Victoria disappeared
out of my life again and things felt almost alright.

I was
weaker. Those balms they
’d given me had taken care of
the bruising, the pain and most of the smaller cuts, but everything
from my hips down felt like it was starting from scratch. Which is
exactly what was happening.

“
Just
think yourself lucky you’ve even got legs,” Sveta said. She’d said
she was still trying to make Guessing General pay for the butchery
they’d done with their surgeries in the first place, and I was
happy to leave her to that while I got back to rebuilding my
strength.

I lay face up
on a mat, stretching out my hamstrings with a band when Darius
loomed over me like a planet blocking out the light from the
sun.

“
How’s
recovery?” he said.

I had
expected some kind of threat or derogatory remark so it took me a
few seconds to realise there wasn
’t any malice in his
tone and that he was, in his way, smiling at me.

“
Sveta
filled me in on what happened,” he continued without waiting for my
answer. “That was some crazy shit, stalking about the wharves like
that looking for trouble,” he laughed. It was a weird sound, too
high for a body that size. He was making me nervous.

“
Yeah, I
guess,” I said.

Darius
’ lack of love for me was no secret and
here he was, making small talk and being friendly. Something didn’t
fit and he must’ve seen my suspicion. He turned his mouth into that
strange, small toothed smile again.

“
Don’t
sweat it, Priest. I’m just trying to be your friend.”

“
That’s
what worries me,” I said and he laughed again.

“
Here,”
he said. He pushed his giant paw into his pocket and fished out a
small green capsule, offering it to me on an extended palm. It was
the same stuff I had found in his locker. “This will help with your
recovery.”

“
What is
it?”

“
A magic
pill. The vitamins will help you heal and there’s protein stuff in
there that’ll help with the muscle building.” My memory snapped
back to the little bottle of pills Victoria had thrown on my bed
that morning a lifetime ago with a promise they would do exactly
the same thing. I had tossed them straight in the bin and forgotten
everything about them until now. It was probably the same stuff I'd
found in his bag. Victoria's OE development fell into place. Darius
wasn’t on steroids, he was on Prime Life supplements and I’m not
sure that was any better.

“
You’re
going to need all the help you can get if you’re going to get back
to real weights instead of stuffing around with the sissy rubber
bands.”

I
plucked the tablet out of Darius
’ paw. It didn’t make
sense that I put it in my mouth and swallowed straight away. A
product of my enemy handed over by my enemy. Had it been handed to
me by anyone else, I would have refused. I had already refused.
Darius beamed at me, rubbing his hands together like a gleeful
child.

“
You
want to rack up some squats together?” he said. “I’ll give you a
hand until you’re back to your feet. So to speak”

When my
mother had first gotten sick, before they knew what it was, she
knew something was wrong. Her body didn
’t respond in
the way that it used to. She was weak. Her head cracked daily with
nightmare headaches that put her on the ground and the child me
thought were certain to kill her in an instant, like a gun
shot.

Dimie
had put her on light training, the same words Sveta used to
describe the measly weights I had to do while my legs healed. I had
watched her diminish, working less and less, getting weaker and
weaker until she couldn
’t lift anything heavier than a
can of beans and even that was a struggle. That was what drove me,
to increase and return in the way she couldn’t.

I racked
squats with just the bar and even Darius needed to spot me out on
those. A week later, I was able to use a single little one plate. A
week after that, I was onto tens and then twenties. In a month,
with Darius’ help, I was back to my old number. He kept on feeding
me those little green pills and I kept on taking them, secretly,
shamefully, feeling like I was shooting heroin or something equally
as despicable.

Sveta
saw none of it. Since I
’d come out of the clinic she’d
hardly left her office, even at home, she was holed up in the den,
hardly talking, barely even looking at me. I saw her every day in
Sanctuary and at home, but she wasn’t there. Always with her face
buried in a book or one of her beloved nature periodicals or I saw
her only with her face lit by a computer screen as she read in the
dark.

We
hadn
’t had sex since the night I had first seen her
snake skin.

It
needed to end. I hadn
’t come this far to be
ignored.

I pushed
into Sveta
’s office without knocking.

“
I want
to get back on the cross,” I said. Sveta folded the edge of the
magazine down just enough to peer at me over the corner.

“
You’re
not ready.” She said like it was the end of the conversation. I
took the magazine out of her hands and slapped it down on the desk
without meaning for it to seem as angry as it did.

“
Sorry
if you missed the training montage while you’ve been stuck up
inside your room reading for weeks, but I am ready. I’m squatting
my old weight and lifting everything else heavier than
ever.”

“
You
know as well as anyone that it takes more than weightlifting
strength to perform in the arena,” she said, reaching for her
magazine again. I pressed my finger onto it, holding it to the
table so she couldn’t move it.

“
So put
me on the cross,” I said.

A weighted
silence pressed the air between us.

“
Let me
have my magazine, Rev.” She was ice.

“
No.
Just listen. I went on a kayaking weekend once,” I continued.
“Never been in a kayak before then.” She frowned in confusion as to
the relevance and I went on. “Before I was going, I asked the guy
running the trip what the best exercise was to prepare for
kayaking. Kayaking, he told me.”

“
So
you’d like me to get you a canoe?” she said.

“
You
know what I’m saying Sveta. I am as ready as I’ll ever be and I
can't get more ready without getting back into the arena. My body
needs this. You should know better than anyone what it’s like to
have your body let you down. That I need to reassert
myself.”

Sveta
snatched the magazine, pulling it from where I still held my
finger.
“And what do you know of my body?” she
snapped.

“
Your
eyes,” I said. “You nearly lost your eyes and you fought to find a
way to get your sight back. That’s the story you told me.
Right?”

She
sighed and a slight slump to her shoulders revealed a relief. She
sat staring at the magazine, unopened for a long time. I
didn
’t know whether to keep talking or leave. Finally
she spoke.

“
OK,
Rev. I brought you here for a reason and you have fulfilled my
expectations, desires and then more. Life is fleeting. Strength
even more so. You may return to the cross tonight."

“
Thank
you,” I said.

I felt like
cheering. I wanted to hug her, to kiss her. I left the room without
a word, without a touch and gently closed the door.

I waited
alone in the pits as I
’d done a dozen times before.
The murmur and shuffle of the crowd filling the arena was
energising. I was strong and clear, my were springs ready to fire.
I was back, ready to put my body where it was born to
be.

The platform
clunked to life, lifting me to my waiting audience. Who would I
fight tonight, I wondered, expecting Sveta would have me listed
against another soft kid for my first night back. Maybe Paulie
again? The Guardians were in position, dressed in animal skins with
clubs, like primal caveman hunters. Cato stood at the opposite arm
of the cross.

Why was I
facing Cato? He was Natural, like me. The crowd began their chant
and Cato moved to the centre of the stage, smiling and waving at
the crowd like he was a little kid on a roller coaster, excited to
have his parents looking on. I stepped forward to my position, the
call of my name filling my ears. And then I realised. Cato was a
Natural. I no longer was.

I had only
seconds for my mind to catch up with what was lowered in the cage
between us. It was a man, no taller than my waist. I was
disappointed, hoping to see something resembling the red eyed
zombie ghoul or even a werewolf that had taken me out by the
wharves. This little monster would do just as well for my return to
glory.

He was
dressed like the Guardians, in animal skins, wielding a club that
in ratio to a full size man would
’ve been
enormous.

“
Fury
Dwarf!” Cato yelled at me over the roar of the crowd. “Just like my
first night! Welcome back, Priest. It’s good to see you up here
again. Honoured I'm your first opponent.”

My first
opponent? Had the months of previous victories not meant a thing?
These new legs rendered me to start right back at the beginning? I
felt like a child who had just been told I'd
been held
back a grade at school.

I
didn
’t have time to dwell in the insult before the
dwarf swung its club right for my knees. I jumped. It was
instinctual.

I sailed
right over the dwarf
’s head, flying higher than Cato
and landing lightly in a crouch on the opposite end of the cross.
The crowd gasped and then erupted into a flailing fury of
celebration. Cato looked at me with the same wonder, a disbelief I
shared.

These new
legs, they had given me the power to walk again when my old legs
had been destroyed. And this was not their only power. I flashed
back to the first fight I had seen in the arena, Darius versus the
leaping raccoon. What did that initial revulsion mean now that I
was in the same place?

The
dwarf raged, swiping blindly with its club, connecting once with
Cato
’s back. Cato swung his fist right down on top of
the little man’s head and he spun three times like a cartoon
creature and then set right back at me, running at full speed, hate
and death burning in his black eyes. I jumped again and sailed
across the little flight of fury. It bellowed, raging and flapping
its club like I was a pesky insect.