Excerpt from To Remember Their Names (in progress)

“What are they doing with Dobo?”

“Testing the new apparatus.”

The two men hauled him out of the cage. He did not fight until they got close to one of the standing frames. It took two more big people to hold his arms while the first two tied his wrists to the rings in the corners of the frame. They all stepped away, leaving Dobo hanging there with his arms high and his feet not quite touching the ground.

“Good so far,” Rogene said. “Now pay attention, boy. That wolf has eaten nothing for three days.”

Everyone cleared the arena floor and shut all the doors behind them. Only Rogene, Gareth and Dobo were up here now. Even the lifts lowered into the floor, leaving little evidence of their existence. Only one lift remained.

The door opened.

The wolf sidled out, panting. It glanced at Rogene and Gareth. Gareth thought he could hear it thinking, evaluating, assessing its chances. Rogene stood tall and crossed her arms. The wolf stepped forward one pace and so did she, hands lowering to her sides, glaring.

The animal thought better of coming any closer. It turned around, tail low, trotting away. Then it saw Dobo.

It whined deep in its throat. Stopped. Tasted the air. Went closer.

Dobo muttered. Gareth could not understand him now. But he knew what Dobo would be saying: variations of “No, no, don’t let this happen. Call it off. Go away!”

The wolf might have understood, but it ignored Dobo’s words and padded closer. Closer. It stopped two paces away and flared its nostrils. Gareth flared his own in sympathy, mesmerized. He felt sympathy for the animal. Empathy. Starved, caged, isolated. Then suddenly released to do what it was natural for a wolf to do.

Eat.

Survive.

I am the wolf.

A dangerous thought for someone with a god inside him that liked to mash things together into single forms. The god, though, was quiet for now.

Or was that a wisp of smoky smell?

The wolf turned back to make eye contact with Gareth. It was fleeting, momentary. But his heart tripped and danced. Then it turned back to the man hanging from the wooden frame.

Dobo kicked and thrashed. He shouted, cursed, spat. The wolf watched for a moment. Then she sprang off her haunches into Dobo’s guts like a spear.

He screamed. His insides tumbled out. The wolf sat back again and watched. The more he thrashed, the more black innards tumbled out. Gareth was grateful for the darkness of the arena. His mind supplied all the color he needed.

Red. Everything red.

The screaming echoed around the empty building. Soon it resolved into a gargling, choking cough. Before he was done, the wolf stepped forward and snapped up the spilled entrails in three bites. She had to tug to pull the ropy innards away from the body.

Dobo was not yet dead. There was no way he could live, not now, but his eyes still glinted with life, intelligence. His head sagged. Blood flowed from his opened midsection. Life fled by the cup, by the bucket. Gareth had sympathy for him, too. Mired in pain, the pain fading as reality slipped away, as fog set in. Real life became a dream: quickly forgotten. Then he was gone.

Gareth realized he had taken a number of steps forward, toward the wolf. She turned to face him again, a big smile on her crooked face. Tongue lolled and sides heaved.

He felt a tickle of power. He loved the wolf. The blue god loved her. He could make something new of her. Except she was perfect.

“Eat,” he said. “I know you aren’t full.”

She growled. It sounded like sand in advance of an avalanche, then like pebbles. Gareth smiled, keeping his lips carefully over his teeth, and back away. The wolf snapped her mouth shut and set about dismembering her kill.

Gareth watched with a mix of horror and elation. Soon only Dobo’s arms remained hanging from the brass rings. Gore dripped from the torn ends.

Rogene, behind him. “We should be going now. The handlers will have some labor putting that thing back in the cage. It has tasted more than flesh today.”

“Freedom,” Gareth said.

“Yes.”

The wolf trotted suddenly behind the kill. The sound of retching was clear. When she was done, she came back to crunch on the bones piled up under the frame.

“She was full after all.” Gareth backed away further. There were stories of Hitaian orgies and feasts so decadent that The Blood would eat all they could and then vomit so they could eat more. As a boy from a small village such an act seemed aggressive, hostile. But he worried about the wolf again. “In Starfall, we say that an animal that has tasted human meat has to be killed. It has learned we are food and will persist until there are none of us left.”

“The man-eater, yes.”

Rogene edged toward the stairway. A watcher behind the door opened it a crack. Gareth slipped in ahead of her. “It’s true. I think it is.” He thought again of the tall man, of the arrow stuck through his eye. Townies had tried to move him but the arrow had gone through his head; when he fell it stuck into the ground, nailing his head down. “I was a man-eater.”

“No longer?”

He laughed without much feeling. “An armless killer? No. But maybe there is something even more dangerous to taste than the flesh of women and men.”

Rogene held his door open for him. “Freedom,” she said.

“Yeah. Freedom.”