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Blood pooled in the empty air, dripping through drains that were stained a dirty red. The body was roughly lifted by its shoulders, gripped by practised hands, as it was pulled from the stage. Two broken souls sat hopeless on the cool metal floor, the other half of them gone forever.
A gentle knock on the door caused Ivan to jump. His hands, which had been shaking for the last day, tightly gripped the piece of paper until it threatened to fall apart. He cleared his throat, speaking, though he knew he wouldn’t be understood by his alien captors.
“Yes, Sir?”
“No need to be so formal, Mister,” a familiar, human voice responded, muffled through the heavy door.
Ivan could feel his heart, which had been lodged in his throat by the same forces that had caused his hands to shake, gently settle back into his chest with a happy warmth. “Mizi?” Smoothing out the sheet music in his hand, he raced over to the door, unlatching it. He opened his mouth in excitement to see one of his kind, a lively contrast to his last memory of a human, which was his competitor falling dead to the ground.
Mizi looked uncharacteristically horrible. Her usually lush, pink hair was tangled in a knot at the back of her head, her sparkling eyes seemed dulled by the bags underneath them, and worst of all, she smelled like she hadn’t seen a shower in weeks. He had never seen her such a mess, but Ivan supposed it was fair considering what had happened to Sua. He felt a pang in his chest when he remembered the sound her body made when it fell lifeless to the stage.
“What can I do for you?” he asked, concern furrowing his brow. Historically, he wasn’t the type to forget himself as soon as an emotion passed by, but his largest concern at the moment was to hide his own eye bags and trembling limbs. She clearly needed help, so he could wait, and so could his feelings.
“I need to tell you something,” Mizi said quietly, giving him a sad smile as she passed by him into the room. Confused, Ivan stood silently by the door and watched as she crouched down and picked up one of the discarded papers on the floor.
“Wait, I-” he protested once he registered what she was reading, blushing furiously despite the supposed gravity of the situation. He took a few steps forward to stop her, but there was no judgement in her eyes, just pure sorrow.
“You love him, right?” Mizi asked suddenly, giving the paper a shake.
She couldn’t-
She knew?
Ivan considered spitting off a rushed lie, but bit it back when he saw that her question wasn’t a guess; it was a confrontation.
“Sorta, yeah,” he muttered, dropping his gaze to her white shoes. He fidgeted on the spot for a moment, his mind whirling. Am I that obvious? If Mizi knows, then does everyone? Does Till know?
“Why are you asking?” he said after he had collected enough thoughts to do so, attempting to regain some dignity.
“Because you can finally stop writing this damn suicide note you’re calling a song. He’s not going to die,” Mizi said simply, as though the sentence would bring Ivan any comfort. He already knew in his heart that Till was not going to die next round, because the next to drop lifeless on the stage with bullets in their chest would be him. Apparently Mizi had figured that out too. In a sense, it was almost a relief to go up against Till so that Ivan could ensure his absolute safety. Yet somehow, the panic that had a steadfast grip on his heart hadn’t faded in the slightest.
Ivan puzzled through what she had said. “What do you mean?”
“I’ll be performing this song for you, and you won’t have to choose between losing him and killing yourself. He’s not going to know either, so it doesn’t have to be harder on him.” Mizi’s voice wavered a bit as she said this, and she ducked her head to scrutinise the song in her hand. “So, show me how it goes.”
“No!” Ivan blurted, unable to think of anything better to say. What was she thinking, signing herself up to die for the entertainment of their captors? Ivan’s reason was clear, logical, but where was the sense in her dying instead? “Till loves you, Mizi! He doesn’t need me, he needs you!”
Mizi sniffed, tears dancing on her eyelashes. “I need Sua,” she whispered.
With a mournful clarity, Ivan understood. Mizi wasn’t doing this to fall in a blaze of glory to protect Ivan’s childish love, but so that she didn’t have to live another day without her own. This whole time, he had somehow overlooked her darker character in the midst of his pining jealousy of her. She didn’t even have to do anything to get Till’s attention; no matter how hard Ivan teased, bullied, entertained the grey eyed boy, his gaze was always fixed on Mizi as though she were his sun. She had everything that Ivan had ever wanted, and she was hurling herself to her own death to chase someone else.
Instead of voicing this, Ivan drew a pained expression and said, “Sua will be waiting for you when you die, after you’ve won the Alien Stage and lived a good life. You don’t need to run to find her now.”
As though completely disregarding what he had said, her eyes were still fixed on Ivan’s song, his confession and his suicide note. “It’s just not fair that God created love only to split it apart by death. By doing this, I can be with my universe and you can be with yours.”
Ivan’s frown deepened. “God doesn’t exist. All that’s out there are these hellspawn pieces of shit who pretend they are God by controlling our love and our deaths.”
Mizi hurriedly wiped a tear from her eyes as one quivered on her eyelid. “They’ve taken so much from us, Ivan. If I can keep anything in my life, it is what I believe comes after death. I know that Sua is waiting for me on the other side, and this is how our God wants it to be.”
Ivan pinched his lips shut, finding himself unable to reach out to comfort her, but still uncomfortable enough to realise that he probably should. He had dropped the idea of some omnipotent deity watching over and protecting them long ago, as soon as he’d begun to lash out and fear no consequence. He had dropped it when he saw Till, his face a mess of blues and purples that obscured his regular pale white complexion; when he felt the burn of electricity run down his spine, and felt the blood of another human cool against his face. If there was a god, it was a cruel, unforgiving owner, just like the things that forced them to witness trauma after trauma with no reprise. If Mizi wanted to believe that she could finally be at peace after her death, then he should very well let her.
He let out a low sigh, as though attempting to push the anxiety latched around his ribs out with the force. “Okay, Mizi. Here’s the song.” Numbly, he handed her the last piece of paper still scrunched in his hand. The lyrics floated off the page, as though the words still belonged to him.
In your gaze where I’m seen, consume me.
It felt like a violation to have his feelings, his last words, handed to someone else to die.
Ivan wasn’t even sure how Mizi had done it, but sure enough, the next round was changed.
Instead of his sullen, dark eyed expression glaring back at him from the leaderboard, an old photo of Mizi with wistful eyes and a gentle smile on her face beamed back, alongside Till’s brooding, furious portrait. Even though the photo was blurred, likely due to a fit of rage, and his face was smeared with injury concealing makeup, Till was the epitome of beauty in Ivan’s eyes. If what Mizi said was true about keeping this last minute switch a secret Till would be the only one unaware.
Ivan wandered his way through the sterile, glaring white lights of the Anakt Garden hallways, his never ceasing anxiety throbbing in his chest. After days of alien-only interaction aside from his conversation with Mizi, he felt both excited and nervous to be surrounded by his kind again. It had always been this way; it seemed that the faded pastel memories of warmth and human faces were far drowned out by feelings of isolation and sadness that came with it. Perhaps if he had been raised in a human society with human laws and interactions, maybe he wouldn’t have turned out to be such a miserable loner. However, he often believed that he would be just as he was now, anxious and watching only from the shadows of any real experience.
Ivan entered the pathetic excuse for a communal dining room, his heart frantically pounding like he was about to be eaten. With four simple white walls, a blocky white table, and no windows, the place constantly reminded him that his home was a glorified jail. Thankfully, it seemed that his fellow cellmates had made themselves at home amongst the room’s stale comfortlessness.
Every time he walked into the room, their numbers dwindled. All that was left now was sweet Mizi, smug Luka, and his universe, Till. Ivan ducked his head to control the hot blush creeping up his neck, and took his place beside Till.
Ivan spent too much of his time worrying about Till, and with good reason. A large contributor to the ugly knot in his stomach was what he had witnessed in Till’s last performance, when his guitar had messily smashed in the head of his opponent, their skull bursting open like an overripe watermelon dropped on concrete. The shocked, angry, and wildly amused expression he had watched ripple through the watching crowd showed that what Till had done was inexcusably preposterous. Now, though, instead of a series of bruises or dried up blood, a dead giveaway that he had done something reckless again, the mild and sorrowful expression resting on Till’s face caused Ivan greater fear. It was as though someone had taken the Till he so dearly loved and wrung him out, shaking him until his drooping posture mirrored his crumpled soul. He didn’t dare ask what had happened, he never did. He had seen enough to know that Till’s owners were merciless, power hungry bastards who would do everything in their power to break his rebellious spirit.
“Are you ready for tomorrow?” Luka spoke up, twirling his blue tipped fingers in the stale, reedy soup infront of him. His slitted yellow eyes were looking straight at Mizi though, causing Ivan’s heart to pound wildly.
He’s not going to say it, is he? Ivan worried. Undoubtedly, Luka must be pissed that his match against Mizi had been cancelled, and judging by his playfully malicious smile, he had had something planned in order to win.
Ivan glanced over to Till, expecting him to respond, but he was absentmindedly picking at his nails with unfocused eyes. Ivan felt a lump rise in his throat, and in order to clear up suspicion for staring, he responded: “Yeah, we’re ready.”
His words hung in the empty air, the only sounds breaking the silence being the gentle scraping of spoons against bowls. Ivan found his eyes kept darting to Till, as though trying to consume as much of him as he could with his eyes. He kept having to remind himself that Till wasn’t going to die, but that always brought on the thought that Mizi was going to instead. Though Ivan had no moral sense of religion or God, he still caught himself thinking, I should be the one to die, we shouldn’t have messed with fate.
Maybe fate did exist to some extent, because after the meal had finished Ivan had a new conviction. He was going to set things right again, and he would perform his song for Till just as planned by the cruel hands that controlled them. Something in him had changed, as he observed Till through the corner of his eye with his head resting on his hand. A sick feeling in his stomach persistently reminded him that Mizi was the one Till loved, as seen clearly through his longing glances and when he mumbled her name in his sleep. Ivan had always felt worthless when he compared himself to Mizi, and now that she finally was going to die and he could finally feel lovable, he was having heroic regrets? Deep down, though, he knew that Till could not survive without Mizi, similar to the way she couldn’t survive without Sua and he couldn’t survive without Till. It was a messed up, dependent link of chains tying the group together, not friendship. Ivan doubted he would ever experience a true human connection in his short life.
That was why he now stood in the administrative office desperately trying to communicate with the bored-looking bright purple alien that ran the place. They used a small earpiece to communicate with their captors, a small chip that translated their wretched language in one they could understand, but the largest catch was that the aliens had complete control over whether the communication went two ways. Currently, Ivan’s had been set to the one way communication, and had been this way for most of his life. Having a voice didn’t matter if the words you spoke sounded like the mewling of a cat or barking of a dog. He tapped his earpiece, earnestly staring into the alien’s beady white eyes.
Please, he mouthed, still attempting to be understood despite the intentional language barrier.
It seemed to understand the urgency in his expression, and it summoned a hologram of Ivan’s owner with a bored flick of its spindly finger. Though he was used to the feeling, the iron fist of fear slammed into Ivan’s chest at the sight of his captor, and it took him a moment to clear screaming memories of pain, bruises, and ugly touches from his mind. He reminded himself that if his plan worked, he’d never have to experience this feeling again. His owner vaguely waved a webbed hand, and Ivan heard a beep in his ear. A rush of excitement and absolute terror enveloped him for a moment, as he suddenly felt like a deer caught in the headlights.
“Quickly, I have thing to doing”, the grating, poorly translated voice sounded in his ear. Ivan had to steady himself in order not to flinch away from the sound, and pushed past the lump in his throat.
“Alien stage?” He spoke finally, his voice coming out uncharacteristically shaky. “I want to perform. Let me play, please.”
The pale white alien snorted, saliva dribbling from its swollen lips. “I cannot change.”
“I’ll do anything,” Ivan pleaded, feeling a burning warmth starting to gather behind his eyes. He felt like he couldn’t breathe. “I’ll do anything you want. Anything you want.” Throughout his whole life, he’d thought and spoken and screamed all the words he’d wanted to say given this very opportunity, but now all he could stutter out was pleading. It was humiliating.
“I cannot change,” the alien voice droned in his ear again, and a beep sounded in Ivan’s ear once again. The hologram flickered, then vanished.
Out of fearful, forced respect, Ivan gave a slight bow to the purple alien, before rushing out the door. His heart pounded in his throat, and his breaths wheezed through his mouth. Turns out he was going to be a failure right to the end, and Till was going to die on that damn stage, hating him forever for what had happened to Mizi. Ivan buried his head in his hands.
The Alien Stage was ready to take its next innocent victim.
Endless rows upon rows of flesh and moving bodies stretched towards a dark, star spotted sky, the scraping, monotone barks of the aliens culminating in a cacophonous roar. The stage was a glowing silver, grated in a delicate pattern to hide the drain's true intentions: an easy way to clean up blood.
Ivan sat in his assigned shell, a translucent, egg-like prison that slightly distorted his vision, created by a field of electricity. The suffocating cold of his electroshock collar pressed against his throat, making it difficult to focus. Beside him, Luka was stretched out like a cat in a far more luxurious seat, flexing his bare and uncollared neck. The anxiety that had been building in his chest the last week or so reached its crescendo, forcing Ivan’s breaths to come faster and faster, and his mind to sickly whirl with spinning thoughts.
I don’t want to see anyone else die. Is Till going to hate me for this? What if Till dies? I don’t want to see any more death. I can’t be here.
But as always, he didn’t exactly have the option to leave, and if he did, he certainly wasn’t going to do it without Till. He couldn’t help but further prod his torment by imagining that fateful night dazzled by meteor showers, freedom glowing in the distance. Imagining that Till’s beautiful eyes had stayed trained on him, just once, as he led the both of them to safety. He had to sit this one through, and then maybe he could convince Till to try to escape with him again. Mizi couldn’t hold him back this time.
What a horrible thought to be daydreaming about.
He hadn’t realised how aggressively his jaw was clenched until his prosthetic fanged tooth bit deep into his lip, enough for him to taste a hint of blood, painting his tongue with a warm, iron flavour.
Ivan held his breath as the lights began to dim, drawing attention to an empty white space in the middle of the stage, a place where maybe thousands had drawn their last breaths, their final moments exhaled in song. The crowd let out their ugly, nightmarish screams, shrill and harsh to Ivan’s ears, as gentle lights began to sparkle in the masses.
However, everything went deathly silent as a lone person wandered his way to the spotlight. Ivan’s heart seemed to stop completely as he observed Till take his place beside the mic.
Even from this large distance, Ivan could see the man’s shoulders trembling and his white knuckles clenching the mic stand. Clad in an elegant black shirt, his collar flashing silver and grey eyes accented by smoky eyeliner, Till was just as beautiful as when Ivan had first met him as a child, just a scrawny thing in tattered clothes.
Artificial rain began to fall, hissing and spitting against the metal floor.
Seeing Till’s broken and shaky posture, his downcast eyes, the mournful shape of his lips, Ivan’s heart ached to reach through the electric barrier in front of him and pull Till away from that damn execution block of a stage. But as always, he could do nothing but watch, waiting for him to notice that Ivan sat in Mizi’s place.
Till finally seemed to collect himself and began to sing softly to the crowd, still staring straight ahead. Hearing Ivan’s words come from Till’s mouth was a gift that Ivan had assumed he’d only hear right before his death. Till’s own written songs had always been abrupt, angry, and just a few degrees below boiling over into a complete rebellion, so hearing the pained tune from Ivan’s heart was both strange and comforting.
"Please, leave me scars. Please, hurt me so that not a single drop of me remains. Let me drown in you."
Without really realising it, Ivan found himself flitting through memories of the nights he’d cried alone, his mind consumed by Till’s scent, his voice, his movements. He would painfully twist his memories so that a platonic interaction of boys playing together would become his love-struck daydream. He remembered being so helpless to his dizzy feelings that were further suppressed with every time Till glanced at Mizi, that his fists seemed to make the connection first.
When he couldn’t remember Till’s smile, he remembered the smooth blood on his hands and it comforted him.
"Until these falling stars are buried in the blur of time, read my soul."
It was too late. It was the second verse and Till still expected that Ivan would walk from the side stage and take his place next to the second mic. Ivan didn't want to watch, but he felt he didn’t have much of a choice as his eyes felt peeled to the stage, to Till.
Mizi confidently walked onto the stage, seeming to have made an alarming recovery from when Ivan had seen her last. Her pink hair was bouncy and full again, combed back into a neat braid. She almost seemed to be glowing like a dying star, dressed in a tidy white suit. Based on her composure, and a strange glimmering in her eyes, Mizi was not only ready to face death but to welcome it with open arms.
Ivan couldn’t help but think that both Till and Mizi seemed more than willing to die, one too tired of life to continue, and the other excited to leave it behind.
Till’s eyes widened with shock as Mizi began to sing, her songbird voice rising above the cheering crowd. Suddenly, he seemed alive again, eyes darting around the stage in a panic, his breaths so fast Ivan could see them from his vantage point. Please don’t look at me, Ivan thought for once in his life, but sure enough, Till’s accusatory gaze fixed right on Ivan. He didn’t need words to understand what they meant.
Why did you do this to me?
Ivan had always understood that Till cared about Mizi far more than him, but the pain and hopelessness in his eyes forced out the denial in his soul.
"To this everlasting memory, face to face, we dance. With our story lost in forever’s embrace."
The song was almost over. Ivan’s hands started to shake, and he clenched them into his lap to try to control it. He could feel the pressure rising in his chest, threatening to burst him apart. He braced himself for blood to spray from Mizi’s head, her chest, as he had seen happen so many times that it haunted his every dream. Somehow, he’d never been able to suppress the jolt of terror that coursed through him every time. He’d learned the hard way that seeing death never got easier.
Mizi stopped singing. Ivan prepared himself to say goodbye to yet another friend.
Ivan could almost feel the rapt attention of the crowd hone in in anticipation. Till continued singing for a moment, but seemed to quickly notice that his voice was alone. Before Ivan could do as much as process what had happened, he was startled by the sound of a loud crash.
Till had let his mic fall from his hands and had raced across the stage towards Mizi, enveloping her in a crushing hug.
No, this isn’t supposed to happen! A true terror began to paralyse Ivan’s limbs, freezing his breath in his lungs. He felt trapped in his own body, as though a nightmare had laid hold on his reality and forced him to stay asleep. Feeling his whole body trembling in his seat, Ivan leaned forward, careful not to touch the electric egg he was trapped in. In his mind, he begged Till to release Mizi and start singing again.
Anxiously, he watched the leaderboard and saw their scores wildly changing by the second. But Till did no such thing.
Instead, he wrapped his fingers around her neck, squeezing tightly.
Anyone else, including the aliens in the crowd, would have been utterly confused at this display, but Ivan knew exactly what was happening. It was something he had planned to do himself. To attack one's opponent was an instant loss, and therefore an instant death.
It was all too cruel: Till was going to kill himself using Ivan's suicide note.
Thankfully, Mizi seemed to be horrified by the action as well, and desperately tried to shove Till off of her, her nails scraping against his skin hard enough to draw blood. Ivan had stood up on his seat, feeling an expression of agony draw itself across his face as all he could do was watch. The two struggled on the stage for a moment, their hands slipping against skin in the rain, make-up trailing down their faces. Ivan glanced up at the score.
87-87.
With a final shove, Till raised a fist to Mizi’s jaw and sent her sprawling to the ground. Gently, he kicked her so that it looked like a mere shove of his foot. He clearly didn’t have the resolve to actually harm her. The scores blazed their rigid numbers:
86-87
And-
Blood sprayed from Till’s chest like a macabre water hose, falling with the rain onto Mizi’s collapsed form. Ivan hadn’t even heard the gunshot, just felt a terrible pain split itself across his chest as a scream of terror was torn from his lips. Till rocked on his heels for a moment, blood drooling from his mouth. A brief expression of pain overcame his tortured features and he keeled forward onto the Alien Stage.
“No, stop!” Ivan screamed, having completely lost himself to a tsunami of emotions crashing down on his chest. He couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe, nor was he truly aware of his surroundings anymore. Just enough to know that his soul had been split apart. “Someone help him!”
When all he saw were leering, alien faces and the roaring crowd became senseless noise to his ears, Ivan barely steeled himself before hurling himself bodily through the electric container that held him. An agony so intense that it turned his vision white gripped him, and Ivan lost all control of his limbs as he lay helpless on the Alien Stage, tremors seizing his body. In that moment, he forgot what had just happened, and he lay aimlessly with his cheek pressed against the cool metal, drool pooling in the corner of his mouth. ‘Why is no one stopping me?’ he thought vaguely, gritting his teeth against the invisible fire coursing through his veins. He had regained enough control to rigidly move his muscles just enough so that he could crawl his way across the stage. The distance between him and Till had never felt so cavernous.
Though he could barely see, and his fingers jittered with a mind of their own, Ivan finally felt his hand wrap around Till’s ankle. Glancing sideways, he saw through blurry eyes that Mizi was sitting serenely on her rear, eyes wandering with no particular focus.
With a pained gasp, Ivan placed his palms with all their strength onto the bloody hole that had torn through Till’s chest. Till’s chest spasmed under the pressure, and an agonised gurgle rose from his throat. Ivan felt the sticky warmth of tears sliding down his cheeks when he realised it was his love’s last breath. His only hope of feeling like a human being was dying in his arms.
I need to tell him-
He doesn’t know-
He can’t leave me!
Ivan cupped his shaking hands around Till’s pale face and pressed their lips together. He had spent most of his waking hours and too many of his sleeping ones imaging this very moment, but it soured pitifully as he was met with the taste of blood and cool flesh. If only Ivan had never hurt Till in awful selfishness, so maybe he would choose Ivan over gentle Mizi. Ivan recalled his pudgy, child hand holding Till’s shaking one, leading him into their freedom on the night he thought would be their future. He remembered even clearer the shining tears in Till’s eyes as he tore his grip away from Ivan’s and chose his grisly fate in the name of sakeless love. And now, just as Ivan had chosen to follow Till back to captivity rather than obtain freedom, Till had chosen to leap into the internal darkness of death for someone who would never love him back.
“No…” Ivan moaned, choking as a sob bubbled up in his throat. “You need to know, please wake up!”
A rough set of hands harshly grabbed him under the armpits, and he didn’t resist as he was slowly dragged away. He knew now why they had waited so long before finally restraining him. Because this whole thing, Ivan’s whole life was a show, and he had just performed the final act. Just as he had written, he had died with his song. In that moment, Ivan hoped that God did exist, because if he did, Ivan would finally have someone to pay for his suffering.
Blood pooled in the empty air, dripping through drains that were stained a dirty red. The body was roughly lifted by the shoulders, gripped by practised hands, as it was pulled from the stage. Two broken souls sat hopeless on the cool metal floor, the other half of them gone forever.