The G Game

by bluemicrocosm

-- Chapter 1, Part 2 --

“Even if I report you, you’ll be long gone. Therefore, I’m an empty threat to you,” Lediv tries to reason, while surreptitiously sizing up the space around Ferand. Perhaps if he feigns a rush to one side, forcing Ferand’s attention in that direction, he can slip through the other side.

“Ah, but no threat is better than an empty threat.” A wide grin swallows the man’s shadowed face. He twirls the knife expertly in his hand and steps closer. “Tell you what, if you don’t struggle, I’ll make this a painless death.”

Lediv’s foot hits the back of the wall in his retreat. Do I make a break for it now? I’ve nowhere else to go, but the knife… How easy it will be for that blade to cut swiftly through the air and into his back. Lediv shudders, sickening adrenaline shooting from his stomach to his head. Time. I need time!

“Roge Ferand.”

The man pauses. His grin twists as he regards Lediv in disconcerting amusement. “I seem to have built quite a reputation for myself if even a brat like you knows me. Then again, my handiworks certainly have earned the spotlight.”

Maintaining a reasonable tone has never been so hard. Lediv’s voice quivers from the cracks in his suppressed fear. “Exactly. You have a reputation to keep. People know you for killing girls. By deviating from your pattern, you won’t live up to your reputation.”

Lediv holds his breath as Ferand seems to seriously contemplate this point. He reframed the argument to sound like a drawback, but take it a step further and it turns into a tremendous benefit for Ferand.

At the sniggers, Lediv’s heart sinks.

“Nice try, kid. Except if I’m famed for killing pretty girls, then none will be the wiser when I kill you.” Ferand leers at him. “You might be pretty, but you sure ain’t a girl.”

The insult to his masculinity, as well as the knock on his pet peeve (no words express his abhorrence of being described by anything remotely effeminate, with “pretty” topping the blacklist of words), is swept to the side by the sudden surge of panic that galvanizes Lediv’s legs, defying the logical warning that restrained him.

Darting towards Ferand’s right, Lediv tries to squeeze between him and the wall, ducking to avoid decapitation by the suspended blade. As predicted, Ferand snaps his body to the right.

Swiftly, Lediv sidesteps to the left, nearly colliding into Ferand’s crooked elbow as he leaps past. The entrance into the alley seems unimaginably far, a velvet heaven that promises of safety. If only he can reach it!

Heart skipping at having overcome the first and most dangerous obstacle, Lediv breaks into a sprint, leg thrust out in the dash for freedom –

He chokes. The zipper’s metal slider digs painfully into his neck as his collar is snatched from behind. Struggling to wrestle out of his jacket, Lediv dimly realizes that death’s door has always existed, if not always visibly, between him and the gate of refuge.

Ferand grunts and jerks his arm.

Lediv stumbles backwards, metallic silver flashing in his peripheral vision, and for one calm, fleeting moment, he thinks that maybe this isn’t so bad. In a sense, it’s almost merciful, quicker than the protracted, crippling death by boredom. Besides, he knew the risk of embarking on this midnight promenade, so perhaps a subconscious desire for release –

Survival instincts kick in, shattering his morbid tranquility and far eclipsing his consolations of reason. He thrashes and kicks and screams to get away from that sharp, horrible thing diving towards him.

No, not yet!

Regret rends his heart before the blade. How can he just forfeit all of his genius, his brilliance, his potential without imprinting his mark in history? Will time scatter his existence from memory like ashes in the wind? Is he no better than the countless, nameless, faceless shadows that live and die soundlessly on this earth?

Lediv refuses to accept this death, and so in the piercing glare of the blade, he prays to gods and demons and all that will listen.

Help me, save me! Let me live through this! There too many things that I haven’t done. I…I can improve this world! I’ll put my talents to use! Just save me!

Scorching heat lances his chest, squeezing out a wretched cry that seems to originate from outside his body. White light unfurls before his eyes (Is this the threshold of death? Will he stand in judgment by some absolute divinity whose existence he has never accepted in life? And where is the pain, the bloodthirsty grin of the knife as it penetrates skin and muscles as surely as an oar through water?). For a moment, his consciousness is thrown from his body. Time ceases to flow; the world holds its breath in this static, white brilliance. Then an immeasurable voice pours through him like an artic wind.

“Will you kill to save yourself?”

In the haze of hysteria, Lediv wonders if god is speaking, and which god, and if this god is simply the constructions of faiths he knows of but never practiced.

Futilely, he tries to open his mouth and stretch his vocal chords. Yet even without a corporeal body, his answer travels clearly into the ubiquitous light.

Will my life be spared if I agree?

“I present the opportunity to elude death, but it is up to you to save yourself.”

The implication is obvious. Half in fear and half in wonder, Lediv asks, Who do I have to kill?

“That is for you to decide. For every life that you take, your lifespan will increase by one month. Should you accept, you will enter into an agreement with me and bear the mark of our contract that has made both legends and ghosts of men.”

Anyone. He can kill anyone to live. The idea repulses him, terrifies him, yet possibilities race through his mind in perverse fascination.

“What is your decision?”

As much as he wants to clarify the dramatic ambiguity of the deal, pick through the fine print, and perhaps question his own morals, his human nature answers readily.

I agree.

“Very well. Then you, Lediv Lex-lux, have entered into a contract with me. Let it be sealed by the Alef.”

Before Lediv can fully comprehend the declaration, his consciousness is propelled back into his body. The first thing he feels is the wind upon his naked neck. The first thing he sees is Ferand’s vicious snarl behind the soaring blade.

The first thing from his mouth is an involuntary cry that should never have saved him.

“Stop!”

But it did.

His eyes drift down to where the tip of the blade touches his blazer, to where spidery veins gleam dully of blood not his (but will have overflowed, a second later, with hot sputtering life that drowns the street in a great flood).

Staggering backwards, Lediv hits the brick wall. His legs give out. He collapses to his knees before the mortal man that stained his soul with blood.

Ferand stands perfectly still, a wax statue poised for the night’s second murder. The violence distorting his face unwinds into a flaccid slab of flesh, eerily incongruous to the weapon in his hand.

“H-hey,” whispers Lediv, floundering to explain Ferand’s paralyzed state. Is it damage to the nervous system? An attack of catalepsy? The timing is too coincidental, too convenient. It’s nothing that Lediv has ever seen.

The darkness speaks, low and husky: “Kill him.”

Lediv stares as a – a girl? – descends from the brick enclosed passage. Muted light bounces off the white of her cassock, highlighting the scarlet trim. Silver-spun hair brushes just past the ears to follow the curve of her jaw line, a cut as androgynous as her voice and body movement.

“Kill him,” she repeats.

The enormity of the bargain for his life knocks the breath out of him. It’s one thing to agree to a hypothetical question conceived from the realm of imagination, especially under the threat of death; it’s entirely another to execute the deal.

“Are you…” he whispers.

“Am I the one you formed a contract with? Yes. And now I am advising you to meet the provision if you want to live past tonight.”

Lediv pushes himself up and edges cagily to Ferand’s motionless body. His hand trembles as he reaches for the knife in Ferand’s grip. Horrific revulsion drains his face of color, the cold blooded murder he is soon to commit spawning glum uncertainties and their host of repercussions.

Can he truly take another life? Although Ferand indeed tried to kill him, the man is currently incapacitated. Lediv’s action hardly qualifies as self-defense. So what does that make him? A murderer?

The last thought nauseates him more than the act of killing.

“What are you doing?”

The low voice drags him out of the dark abyss swallowing his mind.

Lediv gestures to the knife. He can’t bear to speak of his intentions, so he says instead, “What you said to do.”

The corners of her mouth lift slightly, as if in amusement. Lediv can’t pinpoint why the image unsettles him – there is nothing ugly or bizarre about it – except it just does.

“Ah, there appears to be a misunderstanding. Let me clarify: For every life that you take through our contract, your life will lengthen by one month.”

“And how exactly do I exercise this contract?” Lediv asks suspiciously. While it sounds like he will be spared from the physical act of killing (a staggering relief that reinstates some of his levelheadedness), there is no guarantee that the requisite method is any better.

“Easy. Command him.”

“He’ll commit suicide if I tell him to?” Lediv says skeptically.

“Yes.”

“That sounds very unbelievable.”

“Your current situation is unbelievable to most humans.”

The odd phrasing has to be deliberate, except after a glance at that startlingly pale face, Lediv isn’t so sure. He has always excelled at reading people, and this uncertainty perturbs him.

“I suppose,” he admits.

Even though he doesn’t believe that Ferand will passively obey (because what kind of notorious criminal listens to the victim?), the vehemence of his own words surprises him. Pointing fiercely at Ferand, Lediv hisses, “You! Get lost! Go die in a ditch somewhere!”

A long second ticks by, and before the smugness of being right claims Lediv, the weirdest, most mind-boggling thing happens.

Expression blank, Ferand straps the knife to his belt and walks calmly out of the alley. Three seconds. Four. Five. Ferand does not return with murderous intent blazing in his eyes and sneering, “Ha! Gotcha good, didn’t I?” and Lediv is still breathing.

“You’re kidding.”

His mouth twitches. Suddenly, he’s laughing, shaky puffs of air leaving his lungs and turning into mad little chuckles. He doesn’t know what’s so funny, or where he’s finding the ability to laugh at all. Maybe everything is just damned hilarious because he has no idea what or why or how it happened.

Incredible! What a night! Has boredom finally driven him off the brink of sanity?

Lediv chokes on his hysteria, gasping for breath and finding that funny. By the time his fits of disturbed giggles subside, he feels lightheaded and a mile above the ground.

“Are you quite done?” the girl asks placidly, as if seeing people lose their mind is a daily occurrence.

Lediv straightens, donning a broad grin that his self-control will never have allowed before. He doesn’t know what he looks like, but imagines that it must be creepy. “Yes. Now who are you?”

Author's Note: Thanks for reading!