His thoughts multiply and divide like a hundred cells in the span of a single door opening.
It is a quiet affair – both the door opening and thinking - and he realizes then why he’s never been terribly fond of the endeavor. There is nothing he can do, though. He cannot leap for the only way out he’s found in all his restless pacing. He cannot charge the man whose shadow makes an ominous path between them (a path he knows he will soon be taking; he can feel the crystallization of certainty like ice in his limbs). All he can do is stand and watch, helpless, as his captor steps further into the stall.
The little man’s footsteps are even, measured. He takes his time reaching Vidar’s frozen body, counting off the steps like a metronome to a funeral march. When he does stop just in front of him, it seems like time stops with him. Man and beast access each other in the span of a single heartbeat. Vidar sees the hard steel in the other’s eyes, the gritty determination that allows the once-normal to do the unspeakable, the unimaginable. As he sees himself reflected in those forward-facing eyes, the stallion wonders what conclusions the man comes to about him.
It isn’t enough information, whatever boxes the man mentally checks (or leaves blank) on first impression. Because quickly, Grumbles flicks a single finger and he is forced into another level of submission. Magic, Vidar knows, finally. He is the predator and I am his prey. And though he hasn’t known violence (despite his body’s obvious inclination towards inflicting it) he suddenly pictures all the ways he would hurt this grinning, evil man that marks him as his own. He grimaces at the alien feel of hairless skin against his own, stroking, prodding, examining. It is worse, in so many ways, than the death that he knows he will face. The taking of his will and collection of his freedoms makes him want the end to come sooner. But some glimmer of hope lingers within his stilled, violated body; the firsthand knowledge that the predator doesn’t always win – that the prey could outsmart them (if they only think) and get away – is in the back of his mind.
He steals the steel from Grumbles eyes and puts it in his own.
As long as he has breath in his lungs, there is a way out. As long as his heart beats (however frantically it rages inside his chained chest), he has a future. But his hope comes at a good time. The little man comes up from his inspection of Vidar’s hooves, makes a noncommittal sound, and slips a halter over his head. Immediately, his heart slows until he wonders if it will stop all-together. Perhaps it will be a quick and painless death for him after all. He sees the short human watching him succumb to the effects of the braided rope around his face; he hates the look of eager readiness he wears. But try as he might, he is useless to fight the content weariness that settles in his bones. The blue roan follows Grumbles out of the stall when he clicks his tongue. Worst of anything so far, he is almost happy to do it.
He is led down a hallway, past dozens of other stalls. In a few of them, Vidar can see the flash of frightened eyes or hear the plaintive cries of the captured prey. In one, a horse mutters softly but incessantly, its lips pressed to the doorway just inches from where his ear passes it. It doesn’t bother him, but it should (he shivers inside, in his head – the only place he still commands). He can’t call out to any of the others, and even if he could, the stallion isn’t sure he would. What would he tell them? What words could possibly prepare them for their own deaths and the agonizing cruelty of surrendering their own bodies beforehand?
At the end of the hall, a vast chamber yawns open like a whale’s mouth. When his feet forcibly cross the threshold, he knows it is over. He’s been swallowed by the circle of life (circling, circling; he’s spiraled too close to the drain this time). For his part, the predator is all smiles. And why wouldn’t he be? He has him right where he wants him. Grumbles spares Vidar a quick wink before dashing behind a sheet of fabric off to the side. In his last seconds, the horse can only take in the place of his final stand. The ceiling rises somewhere above, a sheer curtain that reveals the stars above. A nice touch, he muses, sure it is only magic. Still, he misses the Jungle immensely in that moment, says goodbye to it, just in case. He notices that the ground below his feet is solid, red. Blood red. There is little doubt in his head as to why.
“Like it?” Grumbles pops out again, his eyes scrutinizing and hands empty. This surprises Vidar; he imagined he’d be weighed down with implements of torture by now. The man is still wearing his shit-eating smile as he looks around the chamber himself. But he drops it immediately when he turns his gaze back to the horse. Instead, he takes on a look of pity. The jaguar does not pity the tapir, Vidar thinks. Maybe I’m not meant to die after all. “My sense of style extends beyond the merely physical. You won’t like the rest of it, I’m afraid.” He snaps his fingers.
And he is right.
Suddenly, the ground drops out from under the stallion. He falls, and unable to stop himself for the halter still on his head, hits hard a dozen or so feet below. He hears a SNAP, and the bolt of white-hot fire that shoots up his front right leg is enough evidence to know he’s shattered the leg. Vidar holds in a whimper, leaning heavily on his left side to stave off as much as the pain as he can. It’s difficult, though, because the floor here is less sturdy. His feet slide on a transparent surface that shows the world just on the other side of it. A fish darts between his legs, beyond the shell of glass that encases him. The ocean surrounds him on all sides but up. Up, where Grumbles peers down in haunting anticipation. The horse’s whole and fractured legs alike all tremble.
“See? Much less homey. Much more dramatic.” Vidar can feel the fear rising like a tide within him again. Part of him is glad he cannot move; he can picture how his hooves would scramble to climb up the sides, trapped, futile, caught. He isn’t surprised when holes appear in the glass and the water instantly pours in.
The sea splashes at his feet first, swirling little eddies around unmovable pillars. He feels the sting of salt in his broken skin but that is tolerable compared to what awaits him. The fish come as the water races along the floor and splashes up the sides of his underwater container. He can feel them bumping against his sides, his shoulders, as the water continues to rise. The tangy, ripe smell of the sea fills his nostrils; he becomes buoyant as his legs are lifted from the ground. Vidar’s eyes travel northward where Grumbles stands overhead. He does not panic at first (surely the man will stop it now that he’s got him beyond the point of worry - what use is he drowned?). But when he sees another sheet of glass sliding over the place he once stood, completing the cube he is now submerged in, the worry-plus evolves into sheer panic. The water rises nine feet, ten feet.
Somehow, he manages to keep his head above it. Not somehow, he thinks, gulping at the small space of air remaining. Magic. The answer and cause for all of this, coupled with the madness of his captor. He flails (in his head because his legs don’t work) as he begins to sink under, as the water blots out the last of his air pocket. Vidar is just underneath Grumbles when he takes his last breath, can see the satisfaction in the crinkles of the man’s eyes through the glass as he holds onto the air expanding his lungs as long as he can. It isn’t long.
Time feels wonky again as he clings to the spark of life in his breast, but eventually his body fails him. Saltwater floods his trachea and it is almost amusing how his lungs are a microcosm of his death cube, both taking on water to terminal volume. He laughs and kills himself a little faster, because he won’t give the sadistic man any more satisfaction. A bubble trail marks his downward descent to the bottom of his cube. His eyes are wide, unfocused when he hits the floor of his watery tomb. The light goes dim. A pressure starts in his stomach and it doesn’t make sense, because he is dead. Or should be. It reverberates through his spleen, rips down his intestines until he is sure he’ll implode. “End me,” he says, but it comes out as a watery Emmie instead. Bubbles press all throughout him, popping and forming dozens more in their wake. The pressure builds and builds and he doubles over, screams in soundless agony.
With a whoosh that shatters his eardrums, it ends.
But not him, not the blue roan stallion who remains at the bottom of the cube. He is very much alive and surrounded by nothing. The water is gone, and as he looks about him, he sees that the holes in the glass have closed. The fish hadn’t been lucky enough to escape. Mounds of fish every shape and size flop on the drying ground, their mouths gaping for a breath they cannot catch. One flops against his injured leg, its beady eye desperate and wide. He is repulsed by its obvious need, disgusted that he can’t stop its piteous suffering with one squishy stomp of his hoof. Movement above him catches his attention. Grumbles waves his gnarled hands and the glass door opens to reveal the star-strewn sky far above. Vidar can barely make out the big dipper. Ursa major, he remembers, swaying on his three good feet. Major like the trouble I’m in.
The human raises his hand again and brings it down sharply. A single lightning bolt races down from the ceiling, arcing and branching into smaller bolts as it reaches its victims below. The light blinds the horse, but it is the fire it causes on him, in him, that really matters. Every nerve sings in the highest soprano its pain; every hair rises to meet the bolt that strikes him. He remembers the water beneath his feet, the conduction assisted by Grumble’s complementing torture. The fire is over quickly, but the pain and the stench continue on. He shakes and shakes and cannot stop.
When he can see again past the blindness from the lightning, Vidar notices the grey mist rising around him. He sees the door sliding closed again, too, the shit-eating grin plastered on the man’s face (a promise that it isn’t over). The mist thickens, particles coalescing into a cloud that fills the underwater box to the bursting point once more. The cloud lowers and he knows he will have to breath it in, knows that breathing it in will hurt him in altogether new ways. “No,” he takes in the last bit of clean air. “No. No. Nnnn--- “ he says as he pulls grey air into his lungs anyway.
Mercury leeched and enhanced from the bodies of the vaporized fish floods his system like the water had before. But this time, there is no possible mechanical avoidance. He cannot dodge this threat, cannot hope to siphon fresh air from congested air. It collects in his mouth, slips down his airways and into his lungs, spreads outward throughout his body from there. The maniacal man laces it with a hallucinogen from the Sarpa salpa fish – the dreamfish – might as well make it as interesting as he can. Vidar doesn’t know this, of course. He only knows that he begins to lose himself in no time at all, both physically and mentally…
A hill rises in front of him, sloping up to the dark jungle beyond. “How nice to be home,” he says to the alligator that appears out of nowhere and walks upright beside him. In response, it cracks him a toothy grin and a million macaws shoot out of his mouth. The birds are a dazzling display that stops him for minutes, hours. Even he's not sure how long he stands there staring. They whizz as one by his head finally, splatting against the plastic sky with a sickening crunch and painting it all the reds, golds, and blues of their wings. The roan makes to take a step on the path, but his whole body rises without effort. Something carries him, something glides effortlessly towards the jungle to deposit him at the border. “Onward!” He laughs, and it is a hearty sound that he cannot stop, that splits his ribs (literally). His chortles descend into cries of pain, then, because his skin begins to peel away like an accordion. The edges curl and crisp as the mercury destroys him at the cellular level. His shaking starts again, tremors that threaten to topple him from his perfect ascension. Just as the trees begin to drip in his vision, his head pounds as if struck by second lightning.
“I am…” he starts, but he can’t remember who he is. The jungle is there for a split second, melting, but there. And then it disappears. And then he appears - the man behind the curtain. The horse finds himself level with Grumbles again, the glass once more beneath his hooves. He is broken, peeled, trembling, confused. He cannot do or think, only submit. “I am…” he tries again. The man snaps his fingers. “Healed.
Prey, Vidar corrects, silently.
Vidar