6
Buck's gaze locked on the black-and-white clock, her hazel eyes unyielding. She brushed aside a wisp of blonde hair and watched as the red second hand ticked in a direction that was, of course, clockwise. Most modern clocks had adopted the more aesthetically pleasing silent and smooth moving second hand, a technology the manufacturer of this clock hadn’t seen fit to implement. The maddening click from the tick of the hand was just louder than someone snapping their finger right behind your ear.
The guy dressed as a janitor in her dream had said it was important to get in The Pit. Interrupting class and exposing a scandal as big as rigged clocks was sure to get her tossed in.
Buck narrowed her eyes. She wouldn't let it go unobserved, undocumented, unchallenged. She had long harbored suspicions about the clock’s movements and was going to witness it firsthand if it strained her ocular nerves to their snapping point. Like holding your breath to get rid of hiccups, she told herself, the second you try to breathe in, that's when the hiccup strikes. Just a little longer . . .
Then it happened.
The red arm froze, tocked a hash mark backwards, and resumed its forward march.
"Bullshit!” she cried out, jumping to her feet. “I call bullshit! I knew it!"
A yardstick swung wide and delivered a flat smack to Buck's right temple. She dropped like a tiny ton of bricks. A gnarled and liver-spotted hand clutched Buck’s uniform collar and dragged her into the hallway.
The other students crowded the door in totem pole fashion to watch the drama.
“It went backwards!” Buck shouted. “The clock ticked backwards!”
"The Pit,” Ms. Ankor said sternly.
"No, c’mon,” Buck mumbled, rubbing her head as the dragging continued through the halls of Asphyxia House School for Miscreants.
Asphyxia House operated under a bastardized version of the law of conservation of mass, asserting evil could be created from nothing. Unkindness and heartache were the principles it held dear.
The entire layout of the school was oriented around a stone well that reached deep into the earth, referred to as The Pit—loudly as a warning by the teachers or whispered in reverent fear by the students. Absent from The Pit was any sort of bucket and pulley system for water retrieval. This was a well of a different purpose.
Ms. Ankor dropped Buck at The Pit’s edge. "Beg. Beg and I'll consider it."
Buck’s eyes went hot and her lips pursed.
"Right then, watch out for dinner in a few hours." With that, Ms. Ankor hurled Buck into The Pit.
Buck braced herself for the two crashes that always came. First into the side of the well, then onto the ground far below, covered with layers of cardboard boxes and newspapers. Between each of the layers was human waste acting like mortar, left behind by previous occupants of The Pit, creating a layer cake of excrement.
Buck landed with reasonable grace. She'd been tossed into The Pit a decent number of times before, and sticking the landing from the initial toss was the difference between a few days isolation and a few days isolation with a sore tailbone.
"Sons a bitches," Buck grumbled. She was eleven, with a biting vocabulary impressive for someone twice her age and a gumption rare at any age. The prisoner straightened her mussed up collared shirt and smoothed out a plaid skirt comprised of colors found exclusively in cat puke: standard uniform for the girls at Asphyxia House (the boys had dull but less offensive cat-poo brown pants).
The school’s history was based mostly on rumors among the students, but it was generally believed to have been founded sometime in the 1800’s by a witch. Course subjects included Identity Theft, Concentrated Bureaucracy, Pickpocketing, Natal Sabotage, Encouraging Traffic, Ensuring Scarring, Organization and Exploitation of Dullards (unofficially referred to as Cult 101), and Bind Torture Kill Through the Ages (a perennial favorite of the Headmistress). Buck had been in Concentrated Bureaucracy when she saw the clock tick back, just as Ms. Ankor had begun a lecture on Lost Paperwork and the hallowed practice of Circular Rerouting.
Like most other children at the school, Buck had been taken at age seven. She herself was an orphan but had heard stories of students vaguely remembering having a real family before their capture, though it was hard to know if these were actual memories or simply desperate daydreams molded by time into unintentional lies.
The Headmistress, a thing called Ms. Deng, had a past as mysterious as the school itself. Students could only guess at her age, which they estimated to be in the hundreds of years, a common assumption made by kids about their teachers the world round.
Asphyxia House had no visitors, staff turnover was nonexistent, and news from the outside world was limited to what Ms. Deng saw fit to relay. The isolation was complete and brutal, enforced by the staff and hundreds of miles of undisturbed forest.
Students were beaten by brow or by yardstick into total compliance in action and thought. There had never been a discipline issue until two years ago. The same time Buck arrived.
The girl’s rejections of policy had started small but were amplified by the total compliance from other students. She rejected most labels the staff and school psychiatrist placed on her, like anarchist. According to Buck, anarchism was overly dramatic and almost impossible to follow without hypocrisy ("They stop at red lights, don't they?" was her common argument). The “rabble rouser” had no end goal, no desire to start an uprising and "break the machine" as she was often accused of.
Buck just didn't like to be told what to do. Maybe she had whatever gene made POW’s smile at firing squads, the type of thing that could get you into real trouble if you weren’t careful. And people with the gene were never careful.
Her enrollment at Asphyxia House was a real powder keg of avoidable drama as the staff regularly pointed out to Ms. Deng, but the Headmistress insisted there hadn't yet been created a brat she couldn't kick into line.
"The little agitator will lick my boot or die by it in time," she could be heard mumbling after the countless run-ins Buck had with policy.
A bell preceded a stampede of footsteps as students shuffled off to the dining hall for dinner. Since The Pit was at the nexus of all the classroom hallways, there was no shortage of heads peeking over the edge of the well, most snickering, but some offering a hushed “Good luck, Buck.” Someone even dropped her a peppermint, part of a shipment of candy Buck herself had smuggled into the school.
Sometime after the second bell had rung and the students were all obediently piled into the dining hall, Ms. Ankor dropped a mushy apple and a bottle of orange juice down the well. Buck shielded her head from the projectiles as she had learned to do while being served dinner in The Pit.
The additional trauma of bouncing off The Pit’s walls didn’t help the fruit’s already lacking appeal. Buck ate it nonetheless. Food was scarce in The Pit, and it was pointless to show defiance though hunger (the staff simply didn't care). She cracked open the orange juice and immediately recoiled. The Pit and the room above were now entirely dark, but by smell alone Buck knew the liquid was undoubtedly of a brownish-orange shade. Waiting wouldn't make the juice any less spoiled, so she exhaled with bravery and emptied the container down her throat.
After tossing the spent bottle aside, Buck lay down and enjoyed one of her few good memories at Asphyxia House: the time she’d orchestrated an illegal trading ring. The other students normally abhorred unsanctioned activity but couldn’t resist the urge to profit by swindling their classmates. At the official school tribunal, Buck was convicted of being the intermediary in all of but not limited to the following trades: four fresh rabbit’s feet for a bottle rocket, a two pound bag of Domino sugar for a handful of X-rated bottle caps, a switchblade for eleven brand new pantyhose, and finally, one shoe horn for a pair of x-ray specs, six dollars in change, a watch that was right twice a day, and a mouse trained to dance for breadcrumbs. That last trade may seem lopsided at first until one remembers the value of a good shoehorn.
Buck got a taste of every trade in exchange for keeping everything quiet and ensuring both sides anted up. She’d made a few trades herself but lost interest when it became too easy, noting the other students would trade things of real value for anything shiny. At a certain point it just became sad.
She huddled under the warmth of a few unstained newspapers and pulled a sealed pack of playing cards from her pocket. “Damn janitor better know what he’s doing,” she said to herself, shuffling the Cryptofauna-brand cards for a nice game of solitaire.
* * *
JRN transcript from Rivalry Recap, originally aired April 2, 1847:
JRN: Welcome, friends, bipedal and otherwise, to Rivalry Recap. Today we feature the conclusion of the Deng/Patel Rivalry, which may have come to an end earlier this spring.
Patel: It did come to an end.
JRN: Yes, well, we’ll come to that. You’ve just heard the voice of our guest, Mr. Patel.
Patel: Yes, thank you.
JRN: Let’s give you a little color for our listeners who are unfamiliar. When were you Certified, how many in your Combo, Asset, Companion, etcetera.
Patel: Yes, I am from Tamil Nadu, hello to all my friends there.
JRN: No humans or Operators can hear this program.
Patel: I am proud nonetheless. I was Certified in the year 1700, which is easy to remember, which is nice. Three others are in my Combo, my Asset is a book of poetry, and my Companion is Vesuvius here.
JRN: Listeners, Mr. Patel is in possession of a small tank of water wherein resides a bespectacled seahorse several inches in size.
Patel: Yes.
JRN: And your Rival? Tell us about her.
Patel: Ms. Deng. She did not get Certified until she was well into her seventies. I don’t know if it would be in good taste to refer to her as ugly, but . . .
JRN: By one account, her appearance . . . [shuffling of papers] . . . “sends boomerangs on one-way trips.” Would you say this is accurate?
Patel: Yes, she was very ugly. I will confirm it.
JRN: Now you use the article was, Mr. Patel, but of course there has been some controversy, idle chatter at least, about the possibility that Ms. Deng is not dead, as you claim, but in fact, contrived the entire ruse in order to go into hiding.
Patel: No, she is dead.
JRN: Why don’t you give us your side of things.
Patel: Yes, we had been bouncing around Germany for a few years. Ms. Deng was very much enjoying the starting of her own newspaper. I was busy trying to encourage the migration pattern of a species of Black Forest Wolf so they would be at right angles to a river at the middle of every month. Then we . . . oh, do I need to explain that?
JRN: Of course not. The purpose is quite clear. Please continue.
Patel: Well, Ms. Deng and I had quite a nasty run in about twenty years ago. I’d lost a finger, she’d lost a member of her Combo. So I was trying my best to let her be for a time. But her paper gained respectable circulation numbers, and the Germans were following her horrid advice. Cobblers sewed tacks into the insides of shoes, water supplies were poisoned, infant mortality rates went up. People were being cruel without provocation!
JRN: Listeners, Mr. Patel is becoming visibly distressed by the memory. Please continue when ready, Mr. Patel.
Patel: Ms. Deng liked to measure achievement in dominos. This is important. How big of an impact one could make compared to how small of an initial effort. Passive destruction, she called it in her diary. She liked to annoy and molest people in the nastiest ways. An evil meddler. I’m surprised she wasn’t born a jinn! Oh. My apologies for any offense. But to conclude this account, she wanted to expand circulation of her paper to Ireland. The idea was to drop a poison egg there before continuing on to the Americas.
JRN: And Ms. Deng did make trouble in Ireland.
Patel: Yes, she caused trouble in Ireland for a time before I finally caught up with her. She’d done great, terrible damage. Everyone was hungry. She’d tinkered with the biology of their prized crop and also with the trade policies with England. A hearty one-two punch. Then came death by a thousand potatoes.
JRN: You mean death by a thousand cuts?
Patel: I mean exactly what I said thank you. With me on her trail, she made a hasty departure for the Americas. But she’d grown fond of potatoes during her stay and loaded her ship with half of a town’s entire crop. The Irish hated her. Especially the villagers of this particular town. I don’t recall the exact name, but it will live in infamy, I am sure. Signing their own death warrants the people of the town loaded the rest of their potatoes into several boats. They sailed after Ms. Deng and launched their spud missiles onto her ship. Ms. Deng couldn’t unload them fast enough, and her ship sank into the icy water.
JRN: You witnessed these events.
Patel: Yes, for the most part. I sent Vesuvius to inspect the wreckage.
JRN: Mr. Patel, I must again point out your seahorse is wearing glasses.
Patel: Yes, well he suffers from cataracts I’m afraid.
JRN: Mr. Patel, would it not then be reasonable to hold your Companion’s observations up to scrutiny? Those lenses are quite thick. Perhaps half an inch by my rough estimate.
Patel: Vesuvius described to me what he saw. He witnessed a drowned scorpion, Deng’s Companion. And he also witnessed something ugly sink to the ocean floor. Based on that description, I judged that it must have been Ms. Deng.
JRN: Perhaps, but was it not also previously said of Ms. Deng’s appearance that her face was reminiscent of “a sack of rotten potatoes spoiling on the floor of the ocean”?
Patel: Yes, this is true, but it is merely a coincidence.
JRN: In either case, congratulations on an interesting Rivalry, Mr. Patel. Thank you for your time today on the JRN.
Patel: Yes, thank you. It was a pleasure.
* * *
Two days, four soft apples, and one stick of rancid beef jerky later, Buck awoke to a sneer on the hideous face of Ms. Deng.
Ms. Deng smiling was rare and never a good thing. Buck checked her situation to see how it had worsened. Sure enough, metal clamps were locked around each of her ankles, chains anchored in the stone.
Morning light illuminated Ms. Deng’s absurdly unflattering features as she leaned over the top of the well. "Hello, Buck," she said softly.
Buck didn’t stand, choosing instead to crane her head back to meet Ms. Deng's gaze.
"We’re at an impasse,” Ms. Deng said. “Defeat is bitter, but exercise of power has a way of washing that away. If we do not reach an agreement here, right now, you will die. Do you understand?"
Buck said nothing.
“We've had our differences over the years, Buck, but nothing is beyond repair. If you agree to do as you're told and behave like all the other students, I'm willing to start anew. Not only that, you will be given extra rations twice a week, and I will personally see to it you are given a seat in Ensuring Scarring next semester. That is a popular course, as you know. I think this offer is more than reasonable, especially considering the alternative of slow death. All you have to do is recant your story.”
Buck stared at Ms. Deng for a long time before allowing a smile to appear on her face.
“Recant!” the Headmistress screamed.
Buck smiled even wider.
“I’ll hear you recant, you little bitch,” Ms. Deng said through grinding teeth.
Buck shook her head with a laugh, reveling in the victory of refused compromise she had won over her enemy. “See you around, Deng,” Buck said, executing a tiny salute.
“As you like it,” Ms. Deng hissed in a sputtering of rage-induced coughs. She waved to an unseen individual.
Ms. Ankor appeared with a funnel attached to a gargantuan burlap sack. “Buh-bye, brat.”
“Sayonara,” Buck shouted with a grandiose and even more assured salute. She had no wish to die anytime soon, but if the situation was headed in that direction, and it certainly seemed to be, then best to go out by her own compass.
Ms. Ankor broke the seal on the funnel and sand began to spill down the well in a deluge of busy pebbles.
Buck didn’t react. She kept Ms. Deng's gaze, calmly stepping up on each layer of accumulating sand.
Ms. Deng watched with silent amusement.
After thirty seconds, Buck was getting close to the top of the well—almost close enough to reach up and grab the witch at the top. Now it was Ms. Deng’s turn to smile as the chains around Buck’s ankles reached their length and snapped taut.
Buck made no outward reaction to the development. She didn’t fight it, but again, matched Ms. Deng’s gaze, even as the sand accumulated around her ankles, her knees, her waist, and finally her mouth. Buck took in one last nose-full of air just before it too was submerged.
She’d done what she’d told herself she’d never do. She’d trusted someone. She’d listened to a janitor in a dream and now it was going to cost her her life.
Sand shifted by her feet.
Pulses of movement and heat ascended parallel to her body.
The blackness in front of her crystallized as the sand resolved into glass. A distorted purple flame danced behind the barrier.
"Close your eyes," a muffled voice cracked from behind the transparent barrier.
Buck did, and an instant later the glass shattered. Sand rushed into the void, but the man’s hand of purple flame forced it back and raked across the sand above, creating a glass ceiling (as men are known to do).
Buck looked into the blue eyes of the man in the glass hole. His skin was dark, much encouraged by the fact he was covered head to toe in shit. He scooped some dust from a smiley face bag and smeared it on her shackles. They melted and gave way at once.
“Buck,” he smiled.
“Jim,” she smiled back.
* * *
Jim slid down the glass tunnel he’d forged with his dusted fire hand, Buck close behind. “It gets bad now,” he called up.
This proved to be something of an understatement. While the glass barrier prevented contact with the surrounding layers of charred human waste and cardboard, it did little to contain the putrid odors that came from them.
“The smell’s not any better the second time through,” Jim choked, trying to make a heavy situation lighter.
The girl let out a few coughs, but offered no complaint as they dropped deeper and deeper into the bowels of The Pit.
They passed a thick layer of stone, a layer of hard packed dirt, and then fell several feet to the bottom of a horizontal tunnel ripe with pick gashes.
Jim got to his feet but rested his hands on his knees. “Got a minute?” he said, panting.
Buck nodded, also catching her breath.
There in the freshly dug sub-Pit tunnel, Jim laid out a truncated version of the events in his life following the root beer incident.
“I wasn’t sure what was here, I just knew I had to find you and quick. So we came.” He nodded behind Buck, where Mars, previously keeping in the shadows, emerged with tail wagging. Buck scratched his belly, and the dog rolled onto his back, rendered helpless by casual fits of ecstasy. Instant buds.
“We had to ditch the bus when the forest got too thick a few days ago,” Jim said. “I’ve never run so much in all my life, but I knew it would be a photo finish.”
“Thank god you’re not fat,” Buck said, still scratching Mars.
“So what do you think? Will you come with us?”
Similar to the other members of the Combo, Buck didn’t seem overwhelmed by the overwhelming tale Jim had delivered. It seemed Brother Graisse was right about lost souls being more easily bound.
Buck gave a deep, “Hmm,” then said, “I have a condition.”
Jim didn’t just assume everyone would automatically say yes, but he hadn’t anticipated a bargain either. “I’m listening.”
Buck pointed up. “This place. Asphyxia House. We burn it down.”
Jim looked up as if he might be able to see something besides the earthen ceiling. “What is it?”
“What is it!?” Buck launched into a tirade about Asphyxia House almost as long as Jim’s account of Cryptofauna. “In the best cases,” she said, holding out a hand as if to weigh the school’s qualities, “it’s a school for assholes. In most cases, it’s much worse.” Buck dropped her other hand to the ground to dramatize the point. “They teach how to steal, cheat, aggravate, torture, terrorize, and generally make life tough in places it doesn’t have to be. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn Ms. Deng is an Operator like this Oz guy. I think she’s an evil Operator, and this place is concentrated evil.”
“I told you, Cryptofauna isn’t good and evil exactly. Least that’s what I was told,” Jim said, finding it hard not to agree with Buck.
“Right, fine, well, this school does the kind of stuff bad guys do, so if you have no problem with that maybe I’m talking to the wrong side.”
“She does kinda sound like an Operator actually. You don’t mean burn it down with everyone inside, do you?”
“No, you psycho, I just want the place gone. I don’t know what we’d do with the kids but—“
“I’ve got an idea for that,” Jim said, stroking his chin. “Okay, I’ll destroy it without killing anyone. Anything else?”
Buck mulled it over. “Don’t treat me bad.”
Jim smiled and held out his hand.
Buck lunged forward instead, giving and receiving a hug for the first time in her life. Jim was getting good at this hug racket, and made sure the girl’s inaugural embrace was a good one.
* * *
The Battle of Asphyxia House was really something. Two of Max’s pencils actually caught fire from the friction of documenting it, and it was the lead story on JRN for three days straight.
Jim confronted Ms. Deng and forced a confession that proved she was indeed a long-forgotten Operator who’d faked her own death and gone into hiding in the Appalachian Mountains where she’d founded Asphyxia House as an indirect way to keep her influence on the world. The teachers at the school were the five remaining members of her Combo. The school mascot, a scorpion, was modeled after her long-departed Companion.
Mars had led the charge with a really clever and cool move that temporarily incapacitated the aged Headmistress/Operator.
Zoë did something amazingly unique that allowed Panzer to neutralize half the teachers in one crazy awesome motion.
Barney and Buck evacuated the students using an incredibly smart system that allowed them to do everything unnoticed.
Whip declined to get involved, instead watching the battle from a safe height as a butterfly.
With some well-placed Asset as accelerant, Jim burned the joint to the ground, the resulting plumes of purple flame nearly reaching the clouds above (which were just some low-level stratus, but still).
All the students (save Buck) were shipped off to St. Militrude’s where Nurse Gail and her new official beau, Ada Baulhayr, accommodated them, adding an orphanage wing to the already hyphenated retirement home-nut house.
Obligation of arson fulfilled, Jim earned Buck’s enlistment. He had his full Combo, and they were finally ready to engage the dog killer known as Boyd, in the game known as Cryptofauna.