Page 193 of Everything Under the Sun

Driggs ignored me and continued down the hall where he stopped in front of Peter Whitman’s cage.

“How’s that shoulder doing?” he asked Peter.

“Uh, it’s uh, still sore,” Peter answered, failing to hide the apprehension in his voice. “It’s uh…it’s still hard to move.”

I pressed my face to the door; I couldn’t see Peter inside the cage, but I glimpsed Driggs standing outside. His arms were crossed, his head cocked to one side as if he were contemplating. Then he snapped his fingers, pointed at Peter’s cage and said, “He’s fine. A week has been more than enough time to heal. Bring him.”

“No! I can’t fight! Look at me! I’ll be killed out there!”

“That’s the point!” Driggs laughed.

One of the armed men adjusted his gun strap over a shoulder and then he unlocked the cage. Peter’s shouts and pleading filled the room, and the sound of him struggling against the man, until he shoved Peter out of the cage and into the hall, hands bound. He fell forward against the cage across from his, and went to his knees, unable to break his fall.

The man I saw was a glaring difference from the one I once knew. Peter’s boyish-looking features were overrun by dirt and sweat and rampant facial hair; around his once playful eyes, dark circles had set in, making him appear tired and weak. And he was emaciated to the extent he hardly looked like the old Peter at all, but instead some wispy, frail, broken young man of twenty-four who could only be identified by his voice anymore.

“You were always a good friend, Atticus,” Peter said as he was being pushed in the back with the barrel of a gun. “If you love that girl, don’t ever stop looking for her.” Our eyes met as Peter was pushed past my cage. “If anybody can get out of this, it’s you, man!” The farther away he got, the louder he shouted. “Kill them, Atticus! Kill them all!” And then his voice was cut off as the heavy door groaned and closed behind him with a booming echo.

With my hands still clutching the chain-links, my head dropped between my rigid shoulders. Then I drew back my fist and slammed it into the flexible door. “Goddammit!” I roared, and then slapped the door with the palms of both hands.

I paced.

“Sorry, but your friend won’t last one fight,” the woman across from me said.

“She’s right,” the man with the stringy yellow hair added. “He held off for as long as he could. When they brought him in here a week ago he was hurt pretty bad; kept moaning about his shoulder. They won’t put a wounded guy in a first-fight; they let ‘em heal first.”

“Why just the first fight?” I asked.

“The first one is always to the death,” the man answered. “All the fights after that one are…well, basically whatever Ravinia wants. But first-timers are everybody’s favorite because somebody always dies.”

“Who’s Ravinia?”

The woman scoffed. “A sick, twisted bitch,” she said. “But I admit, I like her; got her man’s nuts crushed in her fist twenty-four-seven.”

“Lord Maxima,” the yellow-haired man put in. “He’s the leader of this place. But his wife, Ravinia, is who calls all the shots.”

The door opened again suddenly, and their voices fell silent. All eyes were on the unfamiliar man who stepped into the room at the end of the hall.

“Cages three, four, ten, eight, and fourteen,” he said to another man behind him. “All newcomers.”

“Driggs said cage eight is off-limits,” said the second man.

They went down the hallway, discussing the cages in question, and stopped in front of mine—apparently cage eight. They looked me over, nodded as if satisfied with Driggs’ choice for the main event, and then they proceeded onward to the fourteenth cage.

I pressed my face against the door again so I could see; the prisoners in my line of sight did the same.

“This one,” said the first man; he then raised a gun at the cage.

The second man slid a key into the padlock and opened the door.

“Turn around,” the man with the gun instructed the prisoner inside.

Seconds later, a gargantuan man the size of a bus stepped out and into the hall with his beefy hands bound behind his back.

My eyes grew in my head.

“You’ve got to be kidding me!” I shouted at the men. “That’s not a fair fight!” I assumed this was to be Peter’s opponent.

The man with gun grinned. “It’s not supposed to be fair”—he chuckled as they walked past—“It’s supposed to be entertaining.”

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