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  “No missing person report was filed on you,” Reed says as if the confirmation is necessary. The news is hard for me to swallow.

  Wallace and Reed are standing next to each other. They’re close enough to hold hands, but they don’t. Reed looks made from army stock. The top of his groomed hair is neat with no cut designs or faddish styles. He scratches a slight beard. Facial hair is a civilian luxury. It irritates his face. How long past a standard five o’clock shadow is he? He isn’t used to his basic necessities. “Why didn’t anyone report you?” He asks like his follow up question holds relevancy to everyone else’s missing persons status. He turns to Wallace. Surely, Wallace finds Reed relevant.

  Wallace nods his head but doesn’t reiterate Reed. He’s not the puppet, Reed is.

  I make a mental note and turn my attention to Wallace. “Who did you kill to get here?” Each of us was complicit in entering the Arena. We are all either accessory to murder or are bona fide murderers, this fact I recall like a flashing neon sign. The Beast isn’t burned. You won’t be able to enter unless you murder the Beast by your own hands. Don’t give him the satisfaction of entering the Arena by your death.

  “Why would you think I killed someone? Why would you ask someone that?” Reed asks backpeddling. My mouth opens to respond that nobody asked him when my inner adult tells me to grow up and shut up. I’ll learn more if I listen. Plus, the ashen girl from the lunchroom, Stephanie, pipes up before I can, “Yeah, why would you ask him that?” She adds her two cents as if it’s worth a dime. Her eyes are on Reed. She thinks he’s alpha. She’s an idiot.

  Ruby snickers and braids her hair into a Lara Croft French-braid. Her fingers are fast, like she’s playing the guitar through her hair. She picks and pulls each strand like she’s playing a lick on the neck of a guitar. Her hands spill back to her sides when she’s done. “Because we all did.” The last couple inches of her hair slip out of the braid, she has no tie to hold the strands together.

  “Who’d-you-kill?” Wallace asks Ruby without bothering to allow breath between his syllables. If I were deaf, I’d miss every word. His lips barely moved. Did he just ask for the moving bill?

  “My sister Opal.”

  “How’d you-do’t?”

  Wallace’s question is met with distasteful glares. It’s not respectful, similar to performing a suicide skit, most are offended—instantly taken aback and would consider the joke crude and insensitive. Considering suicide shouldn’t be bonding or spoken of with levity. Shhhhh… Hush, don’t you know better?

  When in reality, it may be the most relatable moment a suicidal person may be exposed to. They may feel connected to the joke in a way they wouldn’t normally. They may even laugh. It’s their sad reality, but it’s theirs.

  Just like those who are in a marriage enjoy marital jokes. Like likes like. And Wallace likes murder; he’s connecting with Ruby, they’re a part of the same tribe. His words jump out excited and quick. Lost in the rush, he walks into Ruby’s and my inner circle.

  “I was holding her. The coroner reported her death as SIDS. There was no autopsy. She was just a baby.”

  Stephanie gasps and looks to Reed for support and finds his eyes emotionally vacant. He is collecting facts and awaiting direction. The death of a baby does not require action from him. This fact is irrelevant. He is already moving on mentally. Physically, he is moving closer to Wallace.

  The open landscape is overwhelming, like staring out into the open sea with no compass. My focus is random and scattered, never stopping on anyone or their eyes for too long. My eyes slide past the door when I notice the hobbit door and hill seeming further away. Not too much further, about an extra hundred yards. Possibly less. Though now that I’m concentrating, it may be more than a couple hundred yards. Is the hobbit door moving?

  I pull a handful of grass on either side of my feet to mark my spot.

  “How’d-you know you’d did-it and-it wasn’t SIDS?”

  Ruby presses her hands together. Then she drags them apart. Electricity arcs and stretches out. She plays the electrical arcs as if it is string from the Cat’s Cradle. Her hands close after a minute of demonstration. She’s acting like she’s done this before, but with an entirely different crowd. Like she’s a teacher, and it’s the start of a new school year and this is her good and trusty icebreaker. She announced her name, she said who she killed, and she showed how she did it. Who’s next? Do I need to stand if it’s my turn?

  Allan claps. Fierce, heavy claps that turn his fingers white. His electrical sparks don’t form strings, rather plasma-like filaments extend off his fingertips like he is a plasma globe.

  His power isn’t immediate like Ruby’s. Her electrical arcs were pure white. Allan’s electrical arcs spark in and out of power, therefore in and out of colors. The arcs tangle and war between his fingertips. He holds his hands like a mad scientist, palms facing the other. His abilities are still experimental.

  Allan moves his fingers to create and spend more energy. While he does so, he tells us he killed a stranger. The stranger tried to mug him, but Allan performed a chokeslam and got his opponent flat on the alley concrete. With the stranger on the ground, they made eye contact, and the stranger screamed. The scream caught Allan off guard allowing the stranger to escape and try to run away. Allan hastily pinned the stranger to an electrical pole. That the pole was an electrical pole was coincidental. It was the closest upright thing to them. Allan was leaning against the pole when he was initially attacked. His pink bic wasn’t lighting. He wasn’t paying attention. He was a slave to his addiction. He couldn’t light his cigarette.

  As Allan tells his story, he produces more and more energy between his palms. The more amped he becomes, the more energy he generates, the closer he becomes to reaching a true white arc.

  “The guy’s entire body locked up when I had him pinned against the pole. Then I felt it. The current from the pole passed through the guy to reach out to me. I connected with the energy. Sparks flew everywhere. Lights went out for miles. The newspapers likely reported the guy as dying from cardiac arrest.” Allan’s hands clap closed. His energy retreats to his body.

  He doesn’t like the fact that he killed someone.

  But he does abuse the ability to recharge at electrical poles. He never has to purchase an energy drink. He simply needs to lean against an electrical pole or puts his finger in a socket (and not touch anyone or hold electronics).

  He’s only killed one person. He doesn’t have to announce it; it’s written all over his face. Allan is a blue-collar mechanic that didn’t know his electrical skills grew beyond jump-starting vehicles. He confessed he messed around with mad scientist hands, but never anything else. He kept to himself. The murder was self-defense, a serendipitous killing.

  He ran from the scene, dropping his pink bic in his haste.

  The group discusses that the police may be investigating a double homicide. His disappearance may work in his favor if they believe there is a third party involved.

  I try to produce my light. My fingers snap. A spark emits. Then poof—Gone. I can’t produce any fire. I try and try again. My continued efforts happen in the backdrop as each individual attempts their gift. Without intention, we’ve made a twelve-step program. My companions in so many words announce they were powerless to stop their abilities from murdering. Natural forces overcame them to manipulate visualizations, wind, electricity, water or the ground.

  They agree there is a greater power at work.

  As they unknowingly discuss the twelve steps, my beliefs diverge from the common core. I look to Ruby and she’s not even paying attention. Her attention focuses on the rolling hills. She is expecting something or someone to run towards her.

  I stop snapping and look down.

  The patches of grass that I yanked out have regrown. I don’t have a marker and the hobbit door looks even further away.

  The archaic, megalithic stones that once used to be miraculous and spiritual now appear as conspiratorial a
lien structures.

  People pair off and form groups to search the hills.

  They all eventually return, tired and thirsty from having to walk a desert of plush grass. There is no watering hole or mirage, just fourteen stones, and one hobbit door.

  Jasmine and Wallace can manipulate water. When Jasmine cups her hands together, a small pool of water forms between her palms. She finds purpose in providing hydration. She is the bearer of water.

  Wallace requires Jasmine to provide him water, he can only manipulate, not generate. For his demonstration, he asked Jasmine to cup her hands and produce a small pool of water. Once the water was cupped in her hands, it rapidly spilled over her fingertips like an infinity pool and gathered in the air like a wave that crashed and settled into Wallace’s palm.

  No one asks me to show and tell. I already burned myself.

  5

  Blood from the fallen

  It feels like hour thirty. I haven’t moved. I’ve become my own marker.

  The sun is still high in the sky. The fiery ordinary star causes doubt in my time management, shouldn’t the sun be lower? The actions of the sun and ground are flipped. With the progression of time, the ground moves further along an x-axis while the sun remains constant on the y-axis.

  I may be digging my grave by not moving, but neither is Ruby. Her attention is still on the horizon and a possible sunset breeze. My attention wanders; I don’t want to play this game anymore. Hide and seek, where might I be? And who might be coming for me?

  Dahlia is at the hobbit door. She walks from the door to the closest megalithic stone in relation to the door. She walks this path multiple times before stopping about ninety-seven percent short of making it to the stone. “The ground is moving.”

  My head falls between my shoulders and I laugh, the wayward has come undone.

  “Are you moving it?” Shiloh asks. Only he and Dahlia can shift the earth. During the earlier icebreaker, Shiloh created a small sinkhole in the grass before it swiftly crumbled, refilled and sodded itself. Shiloh’s demonstration was like a shooting star. If you weren’t watching, you’d miss it.

  Shiloh is a sheepherder. He also works at a bakery. His crime happened before his seven am shift at the bakery; he was in the fields checking on the sheep. He had a warm mug of coffee between his palms when he saw someone walking towards him.

  Shiloh stood uphill from the stranger and had the advantage.

  The stranger began to run. Fast.

  Blue, Shiloh’s Border collie, barked from the farmhouse. Blue took off at a full sprint towards the stranger. From Shiloh’s point of view, he could watch both Blue and the stranger as they ran. The stranger that once seemed miles away was catching ground.

  The stranger pulled and opened a pocketknife.

  Blue had a chance to catch the stranger before the stranger reached Shiloh.

  It was minuscule, a once in a lifetime catch, but there was a chance. Blue could get hurt.

  Shiloh panicked—and as in his demonstration—the ground opened, absorbed the stranger, and refilled itself.

  Blue sniffed and tried to dig the stranger out. But the hole was too deep.

  The other ground shifter, Dahlia, lives in Colorado and was recently in a car accident. The sedan behind her had road rage and drove aggressively through the mountains. The roads were hazardous; Dahlia was a slow, cautious driver. If she thought she could make the turn, she wouldn’t. She only made maneuvers when she knew she was safe.

  It was dark and the sedan behind her flashed their lights and honked their horn. Dahlia told us that most accidents happen within five miles of your final destination. Her house was at least twenty minutes away, probably an hour with the hazardous roads. But she didn’t know about the sedan behind her—they may be closer to the sedan’s final destination, therefore making the vehicle behind her more accident-prone. Her recent collision repair fee receipts were crumpled on the passenger floorboards. As well as un-opened water bottles and a snow brush and ice scraper.

  Dahlia had a panic attack in her incredibly safe Volvo. She wasn’t able to pull over due to the snow conditions.

  She had to cross the never-ending pass that continued to get thinner and thinner. The driver of the sedan behind her turned their BRIGHTS ON.

  Dahlia told us she remembered repeating over and over, back up, back up, back up—it became a mantra that kept her focused until she saw the end of the pass. Her excitement at finally being through the worst of it triggered a small avalanche that pushed the sedan behind her to back up. The sedan backed up and off the mountain pass.

  “No, I can’t move the ground without it feeling like an earthquake,” Dahlia says returning to walking back and forth. Her icebreaker demonstration comprised of her using her hands like a shovel. She can easily shift the dirt like sand on a beach.

  Neither one of them, Shiloh or Dahlia, could move the earth to this extent. I’ve been watching the gradual transition of the ground for hours. This is naturally fucked up, not the work of us humans.

  Now Shiloh walks with Dahlia. Side by side they walk and count the steps to the hobbit door back to the closest megalithic stone. Their faces scrunch and their steps hesitate each time they near the stone circle. Shiloh appears the most dumbfounded. He was prepared to blame Dahlia’s math skills. Yet when her numbers match his numbers…

  “Wait, that can’t be right. We’re only differing by one of two from the last time,” Shiloh says. He takes a few steps back. His lips mumble like he’s going back through time.

  “The grounds moving,” Dahlia says again.

  Shiloh cover’s his face with his palms and walks back to the hobbit door. “The ground can’t be moving.”

  Wallace looks like he wants to inspire a mutiny against the ground-shifters. He sticks close to Ruby and I.

  Stephanie and Reed are behind him. Willow and Rose are three stones back behind Stephanie and Reed. Willow and Rose are the closest stationary individuals to the hobbit door. Bethann is parallel to them. Bud, Allan, Liam, and Jasmine remain inside the stone ring. We’ve all become nearly quiescent.

  Quickly, like a dimmer sliding, the sun lowers down the sky. Ruby kicks off the stone and smiles like a goddess at the horizon.

  It only takes a second.

  The transition from not hearing the stampeding to having the stampeding be EVERYTHING THAT I HEAR happens within an instant.

  Strangers dressed in our black uniform charge us.

  Ruby lashes out a white arc whip from her palm. Allan claps in earnest. I stumble to my feet and back up behind Ruby and a stone. I’m closer to Bud and Bethann than I’d prefer.

  Dahlia and Shiloh were on their way towards the hobbit door when the sun descended.

  Light in the hobbit door window illuminates—the only light provided outside of the electrical mayhem happening around Ruby and Allan.

  The ground cracks and reseals around Dahlia and Shiloh—they race side by side to the door. Their arms crank, the ground shifts and quakes in their wake. The megalithic stones remain unmoved. Dahlia and Shiloh’s destruction is centralized. No one chases them. No one chooses to temporarily cliff jump to then be spontaneously pancaked.

  Yet Dahlia and Shiloh still run like criminals during a pursuit.

  The hobbit door swings wide and a huge sinkhole opens up and remains open as a Welcome mat. Light shines from within the hill, brilliant like a lighthouse beacon before being framed by the window of a shut door once again.

  A megalithic stone has my back. No one can see me except Bud and Bethann.

  Stephanie doesn’t have time to impose a horrific visualization or scream. Her neck is snapped like a carrot—crisp, quick, and a Beast tosses her like rubbish to compost. Because that who these stranger are—the released Beasts.

  Reed speedily terminates Stephanie’s murderer and steps over dead bodies to be closer to Wallace.

  Rose remains unprotected on Reed’s left. He whistles when three Beasts run towards them.

  In short ord
er, Rose falls under the same demise as Stephanie. Both weren’t strong enough in their ability to craft a hallucination on demand.

  Between the fingers of the Beast that killed Rose, blood drips, vibrant and thick. The Beast wipes a scarlet line beneath their eyes, presses a red hand against a megalithic stone and disappears in a flash.

  The remaining two attackers go after Reed, who continues to whistle like he’s calling Shiloh’s dog Blue home.

  Reed’s whistle reaches a frequency that causes Wallace to twitch. For Wallace’s sake, Reed darts off to the left of everyone and into no-man’s-land. No one can see what he’s doing. All we hear is his strong and true whistle.

  Willow survives the onslaught by pushing through the dispute like a running back. Wind shoots out in her wake and she’s gone and through the hobbit door in seconds.

  Most of the attack focuses on Ruby, Allan, Wallace, and Jasmine. They swarm together and move on the offensive. The four of them position themselves left of center, which leaves the right side weak.

  Bud, Liam, and Bethann are segregated on the right side—the weak side. I’m somewhat in the middle, but closer to Ruby and the pack.

  Bud stirs up the wind. The tornado spins and spits out our opponents at rapid-fire. Liam is beside him making a vibrational noise that causes some of our attackers to become nauseated. Beasts hurl, and with the windstorm generated by Bud, the stomach contents spray on us as if from a sprinkler. Fluid and chunks land warm, ickish and slimy on our skin.

  A Beast takes a fallen, sick comrade and chucks them at Liam.

  Earlier while we were sharing and caring, Liam said he had to focus and be still to hold the frequency. When the human missile crashes into his side, they both topple over. The vibrational noise stops. The Beast takes their opportunity to break Liam’s neck. The Beast then rips off Liam’s right ear like he’s tearing a sheet out of a notebook paper and walks to the closest megalithic stone and smears the bloodied ear across its gray slate surface. In a flash, Liam’s murderer disappears.