A GATHERING OF MOONS — P01E10
That Bloody Day
When the going gets tough, the tough get going
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He just wanted to see the blood again. The look on that FREAKY FUCKER’s face when she’d gutted him. Pulled him apart. Torn him limb from limb.
She hadn’t known, in that minute, that he was there, but Tig was never far from where Tabetha might be. And, he’d heard the man’s words, felt the rush of fear and hopelessness run through his body at the thought of becoming one of the CHOSEN ONES, one of the FREAKS. And, eventually, one of BAD GUYS.
And it scared the living daylights out of him each time he found himself alone on one of the ladders leading from one level to another. He’d seen a man fall through a gap and he feared the same would happen to him someday. Afraid that if he ever had to stand up for himself, he’d be thrown down a 30-foot hole and his body crushed to SMITHEREENS.
And so, the sight of that FREAKY FUCK’s blood sprayed from here to tomorrow had made his heart sing. He’d almost peed himself with relief.
And, since that BLOODY DAY, he’d felt a lightness in his step and his legs had given him less grief. He’d felt like his body was his own, at least for a while, and that all the parts worked at the same time.
He had always sensed that Tabetha knew how much pain he was in. He could feel her mind in his, at times; especially when he slept. It was as though she inhabited his cells and could touch the pain in his heels and hands. How his fingers throbbed and wanted to curl in on themselves, how his toes, even now, at the age of 9, seemed to be pushed this way and that as though the bones inside didn’t know what to do with themselves and had decided to punch each other, RIGHT IN THE KISSER!
Tabetha laughed when he talked like this and at first, he was shy about his words, but they just came out like that.
“Easier said than done!”
“When the going gets tough, the tough get going!” and all that.
Tabetha had found an old tablet in one of the heists that still worked and had loads and loads of SHIT on it so he’d spend hours and hours each day in the sleeping shelf watching programs, hidden under the blanket Tabetha had given him one night when he’d been especially inconsolable and she’d finally turned toward him, pulled him close, and cocooned him in what was left of it.
Even now, on his worst days, Tabetha would bring him food and pile some extra burlap at the mouth of the shelf so that no one would see him:
Of course, he’d been safe enough since his arrival here six years before for that had been when she’d killed for the first time, and although that one hadn’t been as spectacular as the second YOU SLAYED HIM!, it was still pretty dope.
Tig’s mind was filled by a mishmash of cartoons and movies, some hundreds of years old, some less, so when he spoke, for some it seemed like gibberish.
But Tabetha, who was privy to blow by blow accounts of his favourites programs, was able to piece together what he meant.
That made him feel better too.
And, she was the MIND MASTER freakin ASSASSIN in at least a century. . .if that was even something that had ever existed in any time.
Tig had seen such things on the TABLET and so anything was possible, right?
If you think it, you can make it happen!
At least that’s what one of the movies had said. But he hated all that namby pamby stuff, because if that were true he wondered what kind of freaking psychopath had thought up this CLUSTER FUCK of a story because even at 9 Tig knew, and had always known, that he hadn’t made any of this happen.
He still had some memories of life before THE SHIP and it hadn’t been like this at all and now he’d watched enough movies to know that there were BAD GUYS and what the BAD GUYS did had nothing to do with anyone else except themselves and what they wanted.
And, if they happened to want you, for whatever reason, bad shit was going to happen to you no matter how bright eyed and bushy-tailed you might have been when you got up that day.
And so, the blood. The blood brought him relief. The blood made him feel safe. The blood made him believe that Tabetha was the SAVING GRACE that had saved his ass and he was OKIE DOKIE, POKIE!
See you later, alligator! After a while, crocodile! Toodle-loo, kangaroo.
And Tig had seen how the MEAN FUCKS had changed their tune and steered clear of him, and he thought he might have grown an inch or two. Gained a few pounds since the BLOODY DAY when Tabetha became his hero and he became UNTOUCHABLE and he saw fear in their eyes when they saw him and that made him glad too, almost as happy as the thought of the blood.
The fear in their eyes made him feel like laughing with joy.
NEVER HAVE I EVER! felt so happy, he thought.
As long as he stayed near her. As long as he was never LEFT BEHIND.
And suddenly, the joy drained away and the thought of blood scared him. Without Tabetha, he was nothing. Without Tabetha he was MEAT.
Without Tabetha, I will die, he thought.
And once again he was just 9.
A boy with a limp and useless hands.
A boy who was not good enough to be sold to the CITIES, and who would have died long ago, if it hadn’t been for Tabetha.
And Runkel. Maybe Runkel too.
And the boy’s spirits rose at the thought that maybe two people cared whether he lived or died. That two people, maybe, were in his CORNER.
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