Two.

Tez and the Cage.

Everyone knew who he was. He had a name. He called himself Tez.

He didn’t find that unusual at all.

In a wasteland like Core, who wouldn’t want to create a new name, a new identity for themselves?

Tez, he even helped people convince the authorities that they had always existed in the system.

For a good amount of sweet dough.

The young man had his hair shaven close to his skull, white strands sticking out like a prickly plant. He told every person who would listen that it kept his head cool, to solve digital encryptions in Atmos human registrations and create new identities or change old ones. He knew the passcodes to every Ologist that dared venture into the Cage, and all the secrets they would not want exposed.

Tez, he could even enter values into the biochips of Corers, with a little zap or two.

No one cared how he did it though; they just wanted to know that they were in the system, that their biochips worked and nobody would deny them access. That’s all that mattered.

More’s the bore. His thin lips twisted in amusement.

 

If only pre-War mirrors were more resilient. 

Tez carefully folded the sleeves of his soft green shirt, looking at the dim reflection from a polished metal ellipse. He had tried painting one side of glass once, but that hadn’t gone too well.

Nothing in Core was as beautiful to him as the things he had bought, bargained and traded for in Zone: Cluster-Tri. The old things from a time before the Nuclear Winter, from before humans had hidden deep in the caves, before Corers even existed. Cluster-Tri had exits �" or entries, depending on how you saw things �" closest to what could be called the cities of the past, and dwellers there risked their lives to bring back items from the Above.

He enjoyed figuring out what the old objects were once used for, and his one-hall apartment was crammed with things people said were made of s**t. S**t is made between their ears.

He touched his jawline, chin and upper lip. It was as prickly as his head, but he didn’t feel like shaving. If the room were lit any better, he could enjoy the bright green colour that glowed within his deep sunken eyes. His thin nostrils flared with irritation; the spritz wasn’t spritzing anymore.

He shrugged his coat on and tapped his biochip against a post on the way out, locking down the flat.

 

To him Cage was where all the life was.

People were already roaming the dank streets, tiny balls of light hanging from roofs with a few tall lamps occasionally lighting perimeters between buildings, draining energy from a ‘lost’ grid in Atmos that primarily diverted geothermal energy towards Cluster-Novem.

Authorities did not make an effort to bring in papers and chains to stop the illegal usage �" that would change the Cage as everyone knew it, a questionable ward known for its oddities and quirks.

Tez walked very carefully. The streets were full of uneven bumps and potholes, not a hint of what strange things often turned up there. He lived close to cave-hunters; their footpath perpetually stank of congealed blood from their game, of rotting cleaved stray flesh, and of skeins hanging out to dry. They were a rough lot, but knew how to live well. To him, that meant living lawlessly.

A huntress sat on a high stool, meticulously cutting neat squares off the delicate flesh of a decapitated Ghostfish that lay on a metallic table. Its skin pasted the cave floor, a gargantuan head that appeared shocked to have been killed by such smaller beings. Sharp spiny teeth adorned its open mouth, the top half-retracted by gravity. If he changed the angle where he stood, it was as if the Ghostfish were preparing to shred the woman that had the nerve to saw it so cleanly in half.  

Heavy scales entirely covered its square head, useful for protecting itself against more agile creatures of the cave-lakes, with nostrils the size of a grown man’s fist. It was blind and pale like most game in the Abyss. A silky membrane swathed its body, smooth to the touch.

Its tail lay skeletal, longer than Tez as he stood there, admiring the hunter and the hunted.

The woman looked up suddenly. “Freshly caught,” She puffed, patting the white flesh that lay in front of her, standing in anticipation.

“Not today,” He told her, deciding he had spent far too much time there.

She shrugged and went back to work.

 

Bawdy men and women called out to him as he strolled long past his home, hands in his pockets.

He nodded to a few in greeting. Some faces he couldn’t recognise, but he was sure they had come to him one time or the other in the distant past. After all there was no one here who didn’t know him.

One-story buildings built into the cave walls were at either side, just enough space to squeeze in alleys. Lights sizzled and died, overheating from occasional surges of energy.

A group of young people fell out of an open door, looking as if they had sniffed the wrong end of a cave-fern, shooting florescence right up their sinuses, a sharp icy hit to their brains.

Tez wrinkled his nose at the humid smell of semen and sweat that wafted out.

A virginal young man �" surely out of Metro Zone, come to test Cage waters �" looked stoned with his pants tied around his head. The girls of Cage and another man laughed endlessly as the young man’s penis flopped around wildly as he attempted to hop into pants which was really a shirt. He keeled over onto the cave floor, rubbing his a*s cheeks as he wobbled up. The man gave him a nice spank.

Tez shook his head at the sight. Such idiots.

He tried not to collide into one of the lamps, avoiding them with vengeance.

Other more Cage-mature people ambled unwaveringly. Curious, he looked past his shoulder.

Ah yes �" Madame Fly’s. One of those places where the girls dressed up in creamy, lavish spider-silk and danced with the audience, even sitting on their laps. They also served a milder form of cave-fern florescence there, mixed in clear water, chugged down burning throats and inducing euphoria.

The hall looked very different after some of that Firestarter, with colours whirling and turning psychedelic. Even the speech of surrounding people turned alien and slurred.

He’d been there before. But after a while of watching three male customers and a female dancer in ‘heat’ onstage, he had grown bored, shocking other customers when he stood up to leave at the moment of climax. People would forever curse him for making them miss it. Entrance wasn’t cheap.

 

The establishment Tez was heading to lay concealed in a subterranean cave underneath the main level of all Core. A few years back, an innovative person had decided to make use of that cavity, and built an obscure club that took people deeper underground via a spiral staircase.

It was at the very edge of the Cage, where only a single spotlight stood, shedding enough light to show the way to Oblivion. Everywhere else lay in darkness.

There was no point in installing more lanterns as no other building existed at the edges.

Tez smiled when he spotted a tongue-kissing couple, jostling the embarrassed duo and chiding that it wasn’t good ethics to block the only entrance. They left in a hurry, making him laugh. Children.

Once Tez was at the foot of the long stairway, two burly men nodded and swung the heavy pig-iron doors open for him. Immediately he was bombarded with kaleidoscopic lights and loud percussive music that echoed all the way into his sweet bones.

The cavities in the walls of the cavern were pulsating with globules of lava encased in indestructible glass, moving back and forth organically. Two long cages hung by the sides of Oblivion �" one with three curvaceous naked girls smearing vivid paints over each other’s bodies, and the other with a nude man performing acrobatic acts with a long pole built into the cage.

Tez saw a few people standing underneath him, unable to look away as his muscles rippled and relishing the sweat that dropped onto them, patiently waiting for their Firestarters. Their tongues darted out of their mouths, panting, arms stretching to touch the cage where he pirouetted.

Tez saw the artiste smile at him, so he waved back. He paused for a while to watch Stag.                      

 

The Painkillers were busy tonight, the queue of customers lining to order drinks longer than he had expected. Tez made a mental note to himself to talk to them if he needed to hire more people, and if they could develop more potions. Firestarters were getting outdated.

At the centre of Oblivion was the raised glass Platform that was his brainchild.

He looked on proudly as the hexagon tilted every time people climbed atop or off it, swaying with the weight. A tightly knitted crowd danced, squealing at the oscillation, thrilled by the vibrating thuds of an insatiable Kringr ramming its huge jaws against the hard platform from underneath where the cave-lake ran. More milled around the Platform, and in the corners of Oblivion where he had placed long lines of seats and tables. Somewhere, a woman screamed with pleasure.  

Tez walked lateral to the sides, ignoring some men who stroked his head and thigh, pushing on. They glanced at him in disappointment, but he was sure they would find somebody else to play with.

He bumped into someone, making their tumbler shatter onto the floor.

He signalled another person as the girl began picking up the pieces. He sighed, bending his knees to speak to her over the noise, watching the florescent drink trickling everywhere.

There will soon be glowing footsteps all over Oblivion if it isn’t wiped soon.

“Someone else will clean this up. Not worth getting your fingers cut,” He told her.

She glanced at him from underneath her white fringe, making him falter.

He knew those mismatched eyes and that narrow face anywhere. “Crier?”

“Seeing ghosts?” She laughed. Tez smirked.

“I left you in gaol,” He said as she rose to her full height with a grunt, a good head taller than the average Corer. Crier shrugged back as he stood as well.

“Long story.”

Author's Note

I really like Tez. Any ideas on how I can more strongly allow his character to come across?