Cold Hell - 13. Chapter 12

For the umpteenth time, Calvin fell on the makeshift mats Danni had made from pads of foam. He cursed, rolled onto his feet, and turned to face Danni who stood at the other end of the room. Calvin yanked off his shirt. The thin grey fabric was covered in sweat. More sweat covered his forehead, his chest, his back. Danni on the other hand seemed to not have broken a sweat at all.

Calvin didn't know which hurt worse: his body or his pride. "I don't know how much longer I can do this," he said. "I thought you were going to teach me how to defend myself."

"I am." Danni spoke with that same infuriating calm. He held a metal canteen up to his lips and took a long drink.

What does it take to break your perfect fucking composure? Calvin thought angrily. "So far it seems like you're just throwing me around, giving me aches and bruises. You're not really teaching me anything."

"That's not true. And you're doing very well...better than you think. Your only problem is your predictableness. I know what you're going to do before you even do it. Mix it up. Don't just use your upper body, use your lower body as well." He handed Calvin his canteen. "It's almost time for our shift at the plant. We have just enough time to take a shower. I don't want to hear Murtagh's bitching if we're late."

Thirty minutes later they trudged their way through the cold, dressed in their protective layers. Calvin's whole body felt bruised. Danni had been true to his word in teaching Calvin how to defend himself but he was also relentless; training with Danni was more than just fighting. It was dieting and physical endurance; it was a painful journey of knuckles on flesh and being flipped on the ground.

Calvin was still having nightmares on most nights. When he woke up he was always drenched in sweat, his body racked with shakes. His eyes darted about the dark, looking for the ghosts of Mikael and his friends. His only anchor, the only person who made him feel safe was Danni. For the past several weeks Calvin had stayed at Danni's. To Calvin's relief, Danni didn't complain or criticize or make Calvin feel as if his pain was an inconvenience the way Anastasia had; if anything Calvin's presence seemed to bring Danni out of his shell the same way Danni was bringing him out of his.

As soon as Danni and Calvin reached the processing plant, Murtagh was already barking orders at them. "I need you two to get your asses to the meat department. One of my men, Rhys is dealing with a cow in labor, but she won't hold still long enough for him to get the fucking calf out! Help him out!"

Calvin and Danni hurried into the slaughterhouse area of the plant. They found Rhys in the stall with the cow. The animal was backed up in the corner of the stall, its sides heaving. The legs of the yet to be born calf dangled from the opening near the cow’s rear.

"What's wrong with her?" Danni asked the man in the stall.

Rhys was a medium sized man with bright hair. He looked at Danni with widened blue eyes.

"Fuck if I know! She won't let me go anywhere near her! I've never seen a cow act this way!"

Danni was giving the cow a strange, knowing look. "Let me try something."

Rhys snorted scornfully. "I don't know what you think you're going to do that I haven't already tried - we don't even have a tranquilizer to put her down with."

Danni stood his ground, watching the cow. Calvin had the feeling Danni's mind was somewhere in the past, in a place where only he himself could enter. "We have to do something now or else the calf will die. We can't afford to lose it - losing it might not hurt us now but it will in the future."

Rhys sighed, exhausted. He wiped at his face with the hem of his apron. "Knock yourself out."

Danni nodded.

"What are you going to do?" Calvin hissed. He'd never seen Danni act this way before.

Danni smiled back at him. "Just watch and see." He put on an apron and entered the stall. Calvin watched as he slowly approached the cow, hands held up in a gesture of surrender. "It's okay," he whispered. He watched the cow, slowly stepping towards her, across the straw strewn floor. Calvin could only watch the spectacle in fascination, unsure of what else to do.

The cow snorted, watching Danni wearily.

How can a cow act so human? Calvin thought. It's almost like she knows what we're doing, what the calf is going to be used for in the end.

Danni slowly reached out and touched the spot above the cow's muzzle. The cow slowly snorted but then laid down on the ground, on its side. "Alright, Rhys. Do your thing."

"Wanna help me?" Rhys asked Calvin with a grin. "Just doing it once is the experience of a lifetime. There's nothing like helping something give birth."

Calvin hesitated. He couldn't believe he was being asked to do such a thing. "I've never done it before!" he uttered stupidly.

Rhys winked. "It's simple. All you have to do is help me pull; the cow will do the rest of the work."

Calvin felt he had no choice but to agree, so he pulled on an apron and gloves - the thought of making skin contact with the cow's innards made him want to gag - and joined Danni and Rhys in the stall. Rhys showed him how to grip the calf's legs while the cow heaved.

The cow had gone completely calm, seeming to be in no pain. Calvin suspected Danni was doing something with his psychic powers to keep the laboring animal relaxed. At last the calf was freed from the cow's womb. Rhys immediately began wiping the newborn creature down with rags. When he was done and they were away from the stalls, Rhys gave Danni a look that was a mixture of amazement and suspicion.

"How the fuck did you do that? I've never seen anyone do anything like that before."

Danni smiled. "Magic."

                                                     …

Murtagh was so pleased with Danni, Calvin, and Rhy's combined efforts in the cow's labor that he awarded them an extra day's worth of rations. Rhys kept giving Danni strange looks, which made Calvin nervous. What if Rhys tried to do something while Danni wasn't looking? He felt relieved when Rhys hung up his apron and told them he was off to a different department of the plant.

Calvin and Danni continued with cleaning out the rest of the stalls. "What do you think was wrong with the cow?" he asked Danni.

"You mean other than being in the middle of labor? She was afraid."

"Of what?"

Danni looked up from the sprayer he held in his hands. "Because she knows what's happening and why. She knows her only purpose is to breed for food, and when she can no longer produce offspring they'll kill her."

Calvin scoffed. “Are you fucking with me Danni?"

The corner of Danni's lip twitched. "When have you known me to fuck around? Bovines are more closely related to humans than you think. They share eighty percent of our genes. And they are smarter than they're given credit for."

Calvin was silent for a moment, trying to contemplate what Danni was telling him; many times it blew his mind, the things Danni said. Sometimes I can't tell if he's just really smart or really crazy. Maybe it's both.

"And you got this just from touching it?"

"Yes. I'm not saying the cow knew things the same way we do; human beings as a species are far too complex. But it knew it on an instinctual level...and it was afraid."

"What did you do to make it calm down?"

Danni shrugged, moving onto the next stall. "I don't know exactly. I call it transference. My mother did the same to me right before she died. She was...like me. In fact I think I inherited it from her.”

“That’s the first time I think I’ve heard you mention your mother,” said Calvin. “Is it a sore subject?”

“One of many. Everyone thought she was mentally ill because she secluded herself and wouldn’t come out the house, but really she couldn’t bear her psychic abilities...they drove her mad until finally she died. I think she just gave out.” To Calvin’s surprise, Danni’s eyes glistened with tears. “I feel so guilty about her death because I wasn’t there. I was out partying...getting high and getting fucked. It was my eighteenth birthday.”

“You guys were close?”

Danni nodded. “Very close. I loved and admired her greatly.”

“You know, you don’t talk about your past much.”

“Because I did a lot of awful things in my past. Things you couldn’t imagine. Things I’m not proud of.”

Calvin chuckled. “Well, take a look around you, mate - look at where you’re at. We’ve all done things we’re not proud of. And I don’t care what you’ve done. You’re my friend and I care about you.”

Danni smiled. A tear rolled down his cheek. “I care about you too, Calvin.”

                        …

The next day Danni and Calvin continued their training session.

Calvin lashed out at Danni with a roundhouse kick, swiveling around on the ball of his feet. Danni ducked and landed a blow to Calvin’s stomach hard enough to knock him onto the mat. Calvin gasped, fighting to catch his breath.

“Remember what I told you about mixing up your attacks,” Danni said. “Mix them up. Catch me by surprise. Remember, you’re not just fighting to defend yourself. You’re fighting to kill your opponent.”

Okay, Calvin thought, getting to his feet. Catch your teacher off guard. But how do you catch the teacher off guard when you’re the student? “I’m ready to go again.”

Danni cracked his neck. “Then let’s go.”

They circled around each other, staying in the center of the one room apartment. The air was pungent with the combined smell of their sweat. Both men remained tense, waiting for the other to attack. Let go of your thoughts and feelings, Calvin thought. Don’t think about what you’re doing, just do it. He forced himself to take deep breaths, to keep his muscles and nerves relaxed. Tension was the enemy.

Danni made the first move, his fist shooting towards Calvin’s face. Calvin sidestepped the blow, followed by an upper kick towards Danni’s head. The blow struck Danni’s face and sent him stumbling back towards the mat. Before he could recover his balance, Calvin took the second he’d bought himself and lashed out with another kick that connected with Danni’s stomach. This time it was Danni’s turn to fall back on the mat.

He looked up at Calvin with a smile. “You did it,” he said. “Finally.”

“Are you okay?” Calvin asked, panting harshly. “I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

“Not in the least - believe me, I’ve taken worse. But that’s not the point.” Danni climbed to his feet. “Before you can incapacitate your enemy you have to be able to hit them in the first place. Fortunately for you, not many people can fight the way I can.”

Calvin wiggled a finger at him. “No one likes someone who boasts all the time.”

“I’m not boasting. Believe it or not I started where you are now. I couldn’t fight to save my life...until someone taught me. It took a lot of time and a lot of pain.”

Calvin asked the question that had been on his mind for a while. “Who taught you?”

“His name was Juan. Cookie taught me some things too.”

“Who is Juan and Cookie?”

“Remember when I said there are a lot of things I feel guilty about? Juan and Cookie were one of them. They were a group of people I ran with - a terrorist group trying to bring down my father’s company. There was another person in the group we called Tink.” Danni chuckled. “As in Tinkerbell.”

Calvin’s eyebrows knitted together. “Tinkerbell?”

“It’s from a story called Peter Pan. You’ve never heard of it.”

Calvin shook his head.

“It’s a classic. I’ll have to see if I can find a copy so I can read it to you sometime. Maybe there’s a downloaded copy of it in the archives.” Danni wiped the sweat from his forehead before sitting on the edge of the bed. “I miss them so much sometimes. There are nights when they feel so far away from me it’s like I never knew them - like they never existed. I try so hard not to think of them. But in the end I can’t forget them even though I wish I could. But the truth is even when you’re exiled to another planet, it doesn’t change the things you’ve done or the person you’ve become. And the worst part is I don’t know what’s happened to them. I don’t know if they’re sick or well, dead or alive. And they were the first people who truly made me feel like I truly belonged, like I was truly human.”

“That has to suck ass,” Calvin said sympathetically.

“It does,” Danni said, looking out the window at the snowy landscape beyond the glass. “Royally.”

                    …

Calvin wasn’t aware he was screaming or awake until Danni shook him.

He was lying on the pallet Danni had made with the foam, drenched in a pool of his own sweat. His heart galloped in his chest and his breath burned in his lungs. He couldn’t understand where he was or how he’d gotten here. In his mind he was still in the alley with Mikael and his men, being raped and humiliated.

Danni was by his side. Holding him. Telling him it was going to be okay.

It won’t, he thought. It won’t be okay.

“I don’t think I can live like this any longer,” Calvin croaked. His throat was raw. “I just can’t. Being afraid all the time. It’s exhausting. It’s not living.”

“You can keep living,” said Danni. “You will.”

“How? Please tell me how?” Calvin pleaded.

“Because you only have two options: Give up and die or keep fighting and live.”

Calvin chuckled. “You sure know how to give a pep talk. Have you ever felt the way I felt?”

“Not quite,” Danni said. “But there was a time when I didn’t think my life could ever get any lower - other than being on this planet I mean.”

Calvin curled up against Danni’s body. Though he would never say it out loud due to respect for their friendship, he loved the hard, warm feeling of Danni’s body, the smooth milky color of his flesh. I wonder if you know how beautiful you are, Calvin thought. How flawlessly beautiful. Then he remembered Danni could probably tell what Calvin was thinking, what he was feeling - and probably wasn’t saying anything out of mutual respect.

I can’t help what I think or what I feel. You’re the only person who makes me feel safe - the only person who makes me feel like I’m worth anything.

“Tell me,” Calvin said. “Tell me about this time.”

Danni cleared his throat. “After my mother died I was in the worst emotional pain you could imagine. I felt like a black hole. Between that and my abilities it seemed there was nothing I could do to escape my emotions. The only thing I could do to cope was to get high, party, and have anonymous sex. Finally my father got sick of it. He forced me into going to rehab. Blackmailed me into going. The whole time I was there I was so angry. When I started going through withdrawals I was in the worst physical pain I’d ever experienced - I don’t think I’ve experienced anything like it since.”

“No wonder you wanted to kill him,” Calvin said.