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“I was here first,” snarls Ashley June.
“Well, I’m already strapped in,” Abs hisses back. She snaps shut a latch in the strap around her ankles. “There. Locked in. Can’t get out now even if I wanted to. And I don’t.”
Across from me, Crimson Lips and Phys Ed are bickering over a post in front of some ears of corn. My attention shifts over to Gaunt Man, whose eyes are glowing at me like a bat’s. I can’t read his expression, but I sense confusion. He’s still trying to figure me out, questioning if he really did smell heper odour coming off me.
I ignore him, busy myself with the straps. There are four metallic cuffs that lock around our wrists and ankles. Each cuff is tethered to the post by thick leather straps. Even strapped in, we have quite a lot of room to range: about a body length from the post. As long as the heper doesn’t stray past the perimeter delineated by the morsels, it’ll be safely out of our reach.
An escort walks in, stoic faced, and hands each of us a pair of shades. “Lights will be turned up in a moment,” he murmurs, “so the heper can see.” He checks each of our straps, spending the most time on Gaunt Man, whose straps are way too loose. Gaunt Man objects, raising his arm; as he does so, his shirt becomes untucked and he quickly reaches down to tuck it back in.
But not before I see it. A dull glint coming from his belt, curved and long like a dagger’s blade.
An uneasy feeling touches the back of my neck. When the escort checks on my straps, it’s on the tip of my tongue to say something. But the escort walks off before I can speak. He stops at the very centre of the arena and says, “Welcome to the Introduction, ladies and gentlemen.” Before walking out, he stamps his boot heavily on the circular door three times, a deep boom sounding. The lights inside the arena turn brighter. We throw on our shades.
And wait.
A mechanical whirring sounds from the circular door in the ground, followed by a series of robotic beeps. The door opens, just a crack. And then, just as swiftly, it drops shut, coughing up a puff of dust. Heads cock to the side. Then the door opens not a second later, a little wider this time. Enough to see the outline of a head. The twin dots of eyes peering out.
All the hunters explode towards the heper. Almost in unison, bodies snap against the restraints, flip in the air, and fall to the ground.
The door, again, falls shut.
In a blink, everyone is upright and lurching against the restraints. I pull against my mine, frothing at the mouth as I swing my head wildly to and fro. My shades fly off.
I blink at the sudden brightness of the arena, now awash in vivid, keen colours. I see the hunters with a clarity that seems to enliven them. They are animals, bestial and overtaken with heper lust. Phys Ed and Crimson Lips have given to scratching their necks, leaving long white etches where their nails rake into skin. Their mouths gape wide, then snap shut like a steel trap, the harsh, rocky sound of teeth gnashing against teeth filling the fetid air.
The trapdoor opens again; a fully extended arm holds up the door. A head emerges from underneath, peering around like a periscope. Apparently assured, it steps out, leaving the door opened, all the better for a quick escape.
For a moment, all is quiet. The sloshing of saliva ceases; the crack of necks and knuckles and spines stop. We study the heper with an almost innocent curiosity, as if we don’t mean to pillage its intestines and suck its blood and gorge on it at the drop of a hat. It is the same heper as the one on TV, frail and wispy. It blinks, surveys the piles of morsels distributed around it.
Then Ashley June lets loose a horrific scream of desire into the air. Within seconds, we’re all yowling and mewling.
The heper is unmoved by the cacophony as it walks to the first pile of food. Two loaves of bread, placed in front of Crimson Lips’ post. The heper picks up a loaf, rams it into its mouth, and tears off a mouthful. It moves efficiently, businesslike, as it grabs the other loaf and tosses it into the open door without so much as a glance at the hissing Crimson Lips. It’s done this before. It shuffles over to the next pile, bottles of water. It twists open a cap, hoists the bottle upside down, and guzzles down water. Doesn’t linger. Cradling the remaining bottles in the crook of its arm, it carries them over to the open door and drops them in. Then it is up and moving to another pile, the candy. All the while, even with snarls and screams about it, the heper never looks up. It is coolly minding its own business.
The heper moves past a stack of notebooks in front of Gaunt Man and towards the candy. My eyes catch a glimmer of stale light from Gaunt Man’s waist. The dagger; Gaunt Man is taking it out now. White veins in his bony hand bulge out like sickly squirming worms as he grips the dagger and starts filing away at the leather strap. He knows he has to move fast: the heper isn’t exactly laying out a picnic mat to dine in our midst. It’s simply going to throw all the food and drinks and notebooks into its chamber and then disappear. It’ll be gone in less than a minute. A rage fills the arena, an explosion of frustration at the feeling of being cheated. Ashley June gives another bloodcurdling scream. She strains against the straps, a desperation attending her desire.
Gaunt Man attacks the straps with extra fervour. He pulls taut the strap tethered to his left wrist while his right arm pistons back and forth, sawing away.
And just like that, the strap falls in two. He stares stupidly at it dangling in half. Then it hits him; I see his body go erect. Fantasy is now a dusking reality. And he’s hunched over again, filing away at the straps tied to his legs, his right arm a blizzard of speed.
The heper has no idea. It is standing over the pile of candy. It’s unwrapping a candy, sucking on it, oblivious to what’s going on behind it.
Gaunt Man has sliced through the two leg straps. He switches hands, starts sawing away at the final strap on his right wrist.
The heper pauses, lifting its head into the air like a dog catching a scent.
Then it bends down and picks up another piece of candy.
The last strap is giving Gaunt Man some trouble. Perhaps in his excitement he’s not focusing, or perhaps it’s on account of having to use his left arm. But he’s slower, and it’s frustrating him. He lets out a scream of frustration that knifes into my eardrums.
The heper winces, then spins around. It sees Gaunt Man, the sliced straps dangling from his left arm and ankles, and it understands the situation immediately. In a blink, it spins, dropping the candy, its legs already pumping to the door in the ground. Just five paces to get there.
At that very moment, Gaunt Man slices through the final strap. He spins around. He is twenty paces from the trapdoor. The heper is flying towards it, now only three paces away.
Before the heper takes another step, it is tackled by Gaunt Man.
They roll in the dirt, Gaunt Man’s tackle carrying them ten yards. They separate briefly: the heper leaps to its feet, lunges for the trapdoor.
Gaunt Man sideswipes it, sends it back down to the dirt. The heper scrabbles against the ground like a rabid crab; Gaunt Man leaps atop it. They’re about the same size, but it’s no match. Not even close. Gaunt Man’s fingers sink sickeningly into the heper’s back; blood quickly spreads on its shirt.
The sight of heper blood so close, the smell of it rushing into the air, sends the other hunters into hyperdelirium. The screams rip into my eardrums, threatening to shatter them. Don’t cover your ears! Don’t cover your ears! I do the only thing I can: I raise my head, look to the rafters, and scream. At the pain, at the horror I know is taking place. My scream joins the others around me. For a few moments, it is my scream that fills my ears, covers over all the jackal-and hyena-like howls around me. That is all I want. For just a few moments to be free of their screams.
Then, for the first time, the heper makes a sound. A scream, so different from the screams of desire and hunger around it. This is a cry of horror and a burrowed resignation. It haunts me. It is the amplification of what has lived in my own bones for years.
I hear the sound of bone crunched and then snapp
ed. Gaunt Man has broken one of the heper’s legs. He’s toying with it, like a cat with an injured mouse, biding his time. And he’s doing it to nettle the other hunters as well, teasing us with the prize that is so out of reach for us but so inevitable for him. The heper crawls now on its two arms and one leg, its left leg dragging in the dirt, its eyes delirious with unimaginable pain.
“Throw me the knife!” Abs shouts. She is looking at Crimson Lips, who has recovered the knife that Gaunt Man tossed away. Crimson Lips is a blur; nobody’s noticed until now that she’s been sawing away at the straps.
“Throw me the knife!”
