“The Games" by Kali Norris

"The Games"

It’s Friday, so Lyla and I are going to the games. She wears cutoffs and her most intimidating smile.

It’s a reaction to the city, to the world. When I was young and furious, I guess that made sense to me. We leave the apartment, Lyla waiting impatiently as I turn the deadbolts. I wear a summer dress like maybe this isn’t happening.

We started going to the games in high schoolwhen we were just two shitty kids near dropping out. It was something to do. A reason to

sneak out, a way to feel as wild and violent as our lives, a way to feel like monsters or survivors. And then it just never really stopped. We went while Lyla was pretending she was going to make something of community college, and when my parents got divorced, and her brother died. She cried for three days, and then, after the games, she was better.

It is a twenty-minute walk in the baking heat. It has to be pushing a hundred degrees, but what else is new? Old men on stoops whistle at us, and I start to be ready for violence, the heat and the rage boiling my blood. I hate this goddamn city.

Everything is worn pale grey, sun-bleached like Lyla’s hair, the light off chainlink blinding, but Lyla is always losing my sunglasses.

I hear the arena before I see it. It’s broad daylight, but people are hot and furious, and it’s not like we have anything better to do anymore. I nearly stop at the door, but the thought of what Lyla would say about me getting squeamish after all these years drives me forward. This is who

I chose to be.

Inside it’s baking, but downstairs it’s even worse, the sun kilning the packed bodies so it’s hotter than hell. Maybe it is hell, I think, lightheaded, following Lyla to the bar.

She passes over a steel wire and gets us two draughts of rotgut in her flask, to be passed back and forth, as though any sort of communion is situationally appropriate. She slides to the front, dodging elbows and bodies. It’s mostly men here, but there are enough women I never worry too much about being killed. At the front there’s a man with a broken nose, just letting it bleed, and it’s sending the creatures in the pit into a frenzy. The first is small and sleek, almost like an ermine, but wider, serpentine, covered in brilliantly green feathers. The second is stocky and could have once been some sort of bulldog. The lizard is leaving bleeding streaks down the dog’s side, but as I watch, the dog gets hold of its neck, shaking, and I hear a snap. The crowd loses it, and Lyla hands me the flask, and it doesn’t matter if it tastes like crude oil, I take a generous swig. She’s looking at me.

“Something wrong?” She asks.

“Somehow that shit tastes worse than usual,” I say. I look back at the pit, even though it’s the last thing I want to see, besides Lyla’s expression.

“I don’t know what’s gotten into you.” She says, but I hazard a look, and she’s smiling. I wish I ever knew what in the hell she was thinking.

“I’m getting in there.” She says.

“You’re what?” I ask, but it’s too late. She shoves the flask into my hands and vaults over the chain rail. For a moment it seems it will collapse under her weight, and then she lands in the pit, pretty well for how light the flask is in my hand. It’s about a hundred and fifteen degrees in here, but I’m cold. Her legs are very bare, and the dog didn’t look big before but it comes up almost to the hem of her shorts, and she probably has only fifty pounds on it, if that, and no teeth. She doesn’t look like she has any regrets. She snarls, and the crowd is going wild, and I think, this is how Lyla dies, and I’m standing here holding shitty liquor, and when we met, in the first grade, she was the only one with piercings, three up her left ear she’d done herself with sewing needles heated red with her stepdad’s lighter, and one day she’d found a broken piece of bracelet or necklace, fine chain of tarnished base metal, and she’d threaded it in and out of the holes, dripping like a snake from her ear, like a monster or a sorceress. In the pit, the dog is growling, but Lyla is drunk, furious, fearless. It rushes her, all at once, and my heart tries to escape my throat before I stomp it back down.

She kicks, her boot heavy, the steel toe meeting the dog’s jaw with an awful thunk. And then I almost feel bad for the dog, even though it’s a killer because it didn’t stand a chance. She’s standing over it, kicking it to death, and I wonder if this is really my life, if I’m really watching a girl I’ve known for decades kick the shit out of a dog, even if it has teeth the size of a fist. And I think, she’s really going to kill it.

But this is a business, and that’s their prize fighter. Two women come in and haul Lyla out, and she doesn’t struggle. They give her her winnings and another shot and leave her at the bar. There’s blood on her bare legs, and she looks out of breath and wild. She takes a moment to notice me.

“Can you believe they fucking stopped me? Can you fucking believe it, Marcelene? If I was an animal they’d let me kill whatever the fuck I want.” She takes the shot. She looks flushed, feverish, and it is really too hot in here to be beating anything to death. I sort of wish I hadn’t come, but I’m also sort of suspended the kind of stasis where whatever the hell is going on might as well just happen.

“Let’s get out of here,” I say, because another fight’s started, and between the rotgut and the smell of blood if I have to hear anything else die I might heave.

She follows me, for once, near stumbling but defiant, and when a man in the crowd reaches for her, I hear the crack of his fingers snapping.

Outside in the sun, the blood on her skin is unbelievably stark, not even beginning to dry. She’s still coiled, posture violent, looking around like she wants another fight, and I think, I don’t know her at all.

“Jack and I broke up.” She says, looking out over the used car lot, gaze steely.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I say, even though I can’t remember which of the dirtbags Jack was.

“I fucking hate being single.” She says, starting furiously for home.

I want to tell her I’m right here, but what the hell good would that do? I follow her. She’s wearing real earrings, just fake diamonds from the dollar store, but they make her look like an empress or an enchantress. “I fucking hate everything,” I say, and she laughs, and I do too, maybe just because it’s true.

"Galaxy" by Samatha Cotler