to wait long for my answer.
There is movement below us, around the sides of the cage. Men, completely bare apart from their tight-fitting shorts in various colors, enter through a small opening and arrange themselves in a circle around the edges.
I count them.
Seven.
Seven men, but eight corners.
One of them is empty?
I scan the room, looking for the eighth man.
That’s when I see her. Her.
She’s being dragged toward the cage by two large men. Crying. Feet chained together in heavy-looking manacles and arms secured behind her back, crossed over each other, elbows to wrists. She’s wearing some type of harness that is just black straps and leaves nothing to the imagination.
I look behind me at Baron, hoping he will explain, but he just points his head toward the ring—a silent reminder that I’m supposed to be watching.
I feel like I’ve swallowed a rock. I have never seen this girl in my life, and yet I feel her suffering as if it were my own.
She’s inside the cage now, being dragged to the last remaining unoccupied corner.
There, the men lift her and sit her up onto a piece of wood that juts out slightly before attaching her tied arms to the cage. Her legs dangle down, a foot from the floor. We’re too far away to see clearly, but I can hear her moans of discomfort clearly enough.
Baron leans in and nuzzles my ear with his cold face. “Her seat is pointed, like the roof of a building. Can’t imagine it’s very comfortable.”
I turn around to stare at him, feeling like I’m choking on that rock I swallowed. He is a monster.
He chuckles right in my face. “You’d have her standing the whole time? These fights can go on for hours. You’d make a cruel master.”
I shake my head at him, dumbfounded. “What is this?”
Baron traces circles around my hip, making me squirm on top of him. “Watch and you’ll see.”
“I don’t want to.”
He rests his mask against my forehead, the gesture so gentle that I forget to cower away. “Oh, my sweet girl. You must.”
The fingers circling my hip work their way up my body, and I squirm again as his rough fingers move up my arm. He takes hold of my chin and slides my head away from him, turning me back around to face the ring.
The men are moving now. Some are crouching low on the ground while others stalk them, as if ready to pounce.
A horn sounds loudly and with that—carnage.
There are bodies everywhere, moving so fast it’s impossible to keep track of who is where.
They are like savage animals.
Punching, kicking, stomping on limbs and heads with their bare feet.
Two men are bleeding heavily from various spots on their backs, arms, and chests.
“They have knives?” I have to shout to be heard over the crowd roaring.
Baron leans in close to me. “Chibs. They are like metal toothpicks, no bigger than the nail on my thumb, attached to a handle. Useless for killing, but they make one hell of a mess.”
He sounds so pleased with himself that it makes me shiver. I want to look away, close my eyes, pretend none of this is happening. But how can I do that when the other girl is stuck there, being forced to live through every second of it?
“When does it end?”
He leans back farther into the chair, pulling me with him and bringing his hand up to stroke my hair. He makes me feel like I’m an animal, a pet that offers a moment of amusement before being kicked away.
“They fight to the death,” he says. “Or at least until only one remains standing. And as long as they’re alive, they always seem to get back up. It’s as admirable as it is amusing.”
“Why? Why do they do it?”
“Because I offer the winner a handsome reward.”
I turn around to face him. “The woman?”
He nods once, and I feel bile rising in my throat. “Amongst other things. The winner receives a generous amount of money and a one-way ticket to Utopia.”
My body shakes as his chest rises and falls in a laugh.
“Utopia?”
With his hand in my hair, he pulls me in close to his mask. “They say Iceland is still free of the curse. Some have begun to call it Utopia. Me? I still call it Iceland. Utopia is just a room in my basement. The winner goes there, and I shoot him in the head.”
I feel weak. Dizzy. Nauseous. “I’m going to throw up.”
He laughs and shakes his head. “No,