TWO

Blood dripped from the wound above his brow bone, skin glistening in hot sweat. It burned; saltiness evident on the bleeding lesion only though stinging pain. His head was covered by a blurry heat, his vision out of focus for seconds each time he parted his lips to take in a weak, shallow breath. The saltiness was the worst on his lips, forced into a straight line exposing no hint of his turmoil, his eyes displaying his sheer willpower blazing like a wildfire. Piercing through with no focus on a particular object, staring into nothingness.

Mao Xiu could taste the saltiness on his tongue, his throat aching with a lingering, metallic savor. The acidic taste in his mouth must've prevailed death, ironic really considering his history. Was this his punishment or relief? He'd been cut by the sinner's blade, painting his body in his own blood, covering the sins and suffering staining his skin. Small scars of scratches, nail and teeth marks, irritation from washing away another's blood. Mao Xiu was facing the bitter end, the very last of his glorious downfall. He remained honorable, even in the moment of truth.

Each time he breathed, the raw flavor of metal pervaded every cell on his mucous membrane like a parasite, intensifying as he tried to ignore his body's warning signs desperately alarming him of nearing its expiry. If he'd known three years ago, he would be drowned in his own blood, sweat and tears, he would've never crossed the line separating life and death. He was walking along it as if it were a tightrope, pushing himself from side to side all for his opponent's cheap thrill.

The audience was noisy. So noisy it screeched his ears, tearing his head apart. He was played for a fool on the court, the dark side of honor unveiling vulnerability leaving him to the ruins shamefully enough to bring his blood to a boiling point. His opponent was a monster, finding extreme pleasure in Xiu's suffering as if it was his only source of endorphins. A forbidden, sadistic lust for humiliation.

It was disturbing, yet Xiu felt more disgusted at himself, his weakness and stupid ego forcing him to cool his blood. To stay good. Was that who he was: someone good? He had never considered such worthless things, yet right now, when his life was bet against an obstacle greater than death, he wanted to stay good? More than winning? More than anything?

No. It wasn't about keeping his principles anymore, not to him necessarily. Only he knew why he made the conscious choice to sacrifice everything that could be stripped away from him, merely to avoid becoming like the person -monster- standing across him.

Human lives, at some point their value was lost. Money, sex, fame, nothing satisfied people like them after that. They desired the thrill they'd engulfed like drug addicts, devouring any source of sick pleasure, wringing it dry until there wasn't a sign of life left. They'd crossed the line between humanity and monstrosity, enjoying the nightmare his sanity was battling against.

But Mao Xiu was stubbornly holding onto his twisted sense of honor. He would never lower himself; he would never sacrifice his humanity and sanity for something as insignificant as his own, sick desires. He wanted to win, at one point he did, but now, he only wanted to survive.

Mao Xiu had lost his mind, now, there was nothing else to lose but his life. His opponent, a man he once believed would change the world, had waited for this day. He was a monster and Mao Xiu was his prey. Like a starved apex predator, he was eying Xiu, who refused to give into his animalistic instincts for survival. He would rather die than stray further away from humanity. He was beyond redemption, not because he wasn't honorable, he was, but because he was weak.

Faced with crude brutality, he was a stray cat getting ripped apart by a jaguar. Mao Xiu was in its den, forced to gamble.

The lights of the arena were blinding, blurring into indecipherable lines as far as his eyes could see. Xiu's legs felt numb, each muscle shaking as he forced himself to remain on his two feet, ignoring the pain from his divaricating lungs. His pain threshold was destroyed by the crushing pressure ripping him apart as he continued standing.

He would not survive the next hit. But he was determined to end this. Determined to drag the man standing across him to the very same flames he was ablaze with, to burn him and torture him in front of the ten thousand people screaming his name through the humiliation of losing.

His animalistic nature wanted him to jump across the net and shred him to pieces, but Xiu used every last bit of control he had to suppress his violent urges, his trembling hands gripping the racket tight enough to divert his attention, his hunger for revenge. Xiu was disgusted in himself. The minute felt as if it would never pass, but he didn't notice it going by. He couldn't have, not in his wrecked state.

89 seconds until his time ran out. The digits approached zero dangerously fast, Mao Xiu trapped in his broken body separated from time and place in a limbo. He was not there, not anymore. He had already lost, the minute his ribcage pierced through his lung he knew it was the end of not only his final victory, but his life.

But for the one person looking at him from the audience, his eyes filled with determination and he swung his racket with no restraints. For this one person, he was ready to sacrifice everything. Xiu knew it was foolish, but his body reacted on his own, no logic sounding rational to his crippling need to win. He would win. No matter what happened, he would defy his odds and leave as the final winner.

The person looking at him from the audience was sitting still at the edge of his seat, far in the upper rows. A face in the crowd. Tears were shed, everyone realizing this was the true human nature. The raw strength of a human being under threat. Invincible.

They screamed at him to stop, their cries muffling into the noise of spectators praising a hymn of death, every noise in the arena seconds away from disaster. They screamed at him, riled him on without knowing they were humming for a crippling demise.

Xiu loved such pieces, they drove him into a timeless and placeless dimension. The extravagant music echoed in his ears, filling his head with an intoxicating symphony with such glorious, saturnine edge it brought him to tears. All emotions pounding in unison with the somber ensemble. It was blissful, his soul entering an ecstatic state of blessedness as the last of his sanity felt the embrace of melodies he alone could hear.

Euphoric shivers rushed through his nervous system, the electrifying pulses sending the command to keep his body and soul together. Xiu took in a deep breath.

The person watching him could feel their heart thumping violently, watching the fifth set approaching a tie-break. It was inevitable. Xiu would drive his body past its limits and burn brighter than the fire consuming him by throwing gasoline at the flames within him. He would destroy himself to finally be freed of this torment. His Averno, his salvation. He fell to his knees, triumphant.

Fu Dashan was soaked in cold sweat. His body was raging furiously in a daze, concern clouding his head in a thick smoke, the thumping of his heart echoing through his drained body like the adrenalin rushing in his circulatory system. He was awake now.

It was the ninth time he saw a nightmare this month. During the deepest cycle of sleep, the horror devoured his paralyzed body like a predator, slowly filling him in complete terror as his skin crawled on his flesh and bones, coldness rushing through him until there was nothing but a soulless corpse. His body was ripped in shreds, broken beyond redemption.

He couldn't escape, he couldn't move. Not until he woke up.

It was a new nightmare this time. He wasn't laying on the hard, cold ground screaming for help when no one heard. He was somewhere else, in the audience of an arena. Everything was hazy and unclear, but the pain, the noise, the emotions, he could feel them all too realistically. But he didn't remember, no matter how hard he tried to think of the nightmare, he didn't recall the context of those feelings. Only the sensation sending shivers down his spine, as if to remind him he was no longer asleep. No longer paralyzed.

But he wasn't paralyzed at all this time.

In the nightmare, he had watched someone. He couldn't bring himself to remember who, when or where, his body trying to recover from the shock of waking up in a jolt. He felt as if he'd fallen through his bed, everything having a surreal shape in the blue night.

After waking up, Fu Dashan didn't have the strength to move a single muscle, laying down as tears fell down his face, dropping on the pillow and his tangled black hair. The tears left streaks running from the corner of his eyes down to his ears, gravity pulling them down the side of his face instead of his pale white cheeks.

"It's over now."

Dashan felt exhausted. It was two in the morning, his breathing alone sounding loud to his ears in the absolute silence. His bedsheets were soaked in sweat, as they always were when he woke up, but the difference was, he was not there this time. He wasn't hanging onto his final breath, tears falling down his fragile face as he so desperately wished to survive. This time, he wasn't begging to be salvaged and saved from an endless nightmare. It was someone else. Someone else felt the desperation to end their suffering. The man he cried for, a man who was dying. It was someone else's nightmare. The first of its kind.

Dashan saw all kinds of visions during sleep, mostly indecipherable nightmares of pain, but never had he seen another person's suffering. He couldn't forget the nightmare, but he only had a vague idea to hold onto. His subconsciousness had concealed his memories away, locking them in the deep.

He found the absence of pain draining after waking up. As if his body wasn't his, only an empty shell left to imprison him. The night terrors were psychologically speaking horrifying too. It took him a long time before he could return to normal, usually falling asleep again to forget it.

Tonight, Dashan was curious, not tired. He kept thinking about the strange feelings he felt while watching the man in his nightmare. By the time he recalled a single coherent thought, he had forgotten the rest of the nightmare. He only had a strange afterthought of what he'd seen, his own interpretations changing his shattered memory he tried holding onto for a more in-depth analysis. He kept trying to recall names, faces, sounds, feelings, anything. But the more he thought about it, the more he was convinced he was creating the scenes to fill in the blanks, his brain deranged from the nightmare.

He fell asleep again, or so it felt. Dashan opened his eyes and laid in the brutal darkness, alone against the shadows filling the eerie blue room like monsters, who would satisfy their endless hunger on his limp, blood-soaked body. He could smell the tangent, sticky blood gushing out of his bedsheets, causing him to feel nauseated. Another nightmare. Sleep paralysis perhaps.

Familiar horror filled his eyes as the shadows razed his body and tore it apart, shattering him, painting the room in his filthy, metallic scent as they were torturing him without mercy.

Dashan screamed. He screamed so desperately to be released of his h*ll but it didn't end. The shadows gripped his ice-cold body ruthlessly, but he could only scream, choking on his tears as he pleaded for it to end. He screamed until he was shaken awake from his subconsciousness, into an eerie silence where only his racing heartbeat and shallow breaths were heard. No matter how loud he screamed, the minute he woke up, he was met by a complete silence.

"Two nightmares," he said weakly, waiting for the clock to ring the alarm set in two hours.

The morning light filled his room in its cold brightness, the color of the sky transforming into a pale blue, shrouded by clouds. Dashan had laid awake on his bed for hours, staring into the ceiling in complete numbness. After the nightmares, his body felt foreign and empty. He could't feel anything, he couldn't think about anything as his pulse pounded on his ears so powerfully it made him lose his mind. It kept repeating, last night. Everything from the reactions of his body to the imagery in his mind.

His heartbeat sickened him. The loud rhythmic thumping in his hollow body echoed through every part of his numb corpse, keeping him awake in fear of it all stopping. He kept counting his heartbeat, he kept listening. It was overwhelming, torturous, but Dashan had to listen. His body refused to let him forget his heart was beating, that he was alive.

It had happened again, another paralyzing nightmare, two of them, followed by Dashan trembling in fear, waken up to a brutal silence in his cold room painted in grey blue hues of dawn.

It was impossible to forget his vulnerability as he cried in terror, unable to escape his nightmare, unable to breathe as his body deceived him he was torn apart from his ligaments in utter, inescapable torment. The petrifying terror made his blood run cold, indecipherable ghost pain aching through his entire body so badly he couldn't free himself from the noise and chaos inside of his head, so loud and painful it felt as if his skull would explode.

He felt nothing, at least when he tried locating the pain, nothing was there. His body was sunken to the bed, damp sheets sticking to his skin.

Dashan breathed routinely to calm himself down, to clear his thoughts from the night. He couldn't get the imagery out of his mind. Imagery he created based on incomplete, shattered fragments of what was, and could no longer be accurately recalled. Dashan felt as if he'd experienced it all. But these visions he saw weren't real. None of it was.

Dashan got up before the alarm clock rang, moving across the room to see if his roommates were still sleeping. He sat beside the bed next to his, wooden floor creaking as he arranged his bodyweight on the cold surface to watch a black-haired boy from closer. Dashan felt at peace knowing others weren't tormented like he was.

It wasn't even that he had anything to fear. None of the things he saw were connected to him, in any way. Car accidents, violence, suicide. Only the people in his nightmares were realistic, yet nothing like their real-life counterparts.

The breathing of the other boy became more irregular when he moved his body on the bed, exposing the skin on his neck and collarbones under the blanket. Dashan put to the blanket back to its original place, tucking and rearranging it as gently as he could.

Dashan got up and left the room, carefully closing the door behind him in a cautious effort to avoid disturbing his roommates' sleep, aware it was five in the morning, Tuesday. No one was awake during this hour, or so he expected before hearing footsteps behind his back, causing his body to stiffen.

Sleepy Mao Xiu got out of the room, rubbing his eyes with a gruntled expression. "Where the f*ck are you going this early?"

Dashan whispered, "Practice. Did I wake you up? Sorry." This answer seemed to bore the half-asleep boy standing in the doorframe, finally opening his eyes better. "No, you didn't. Actually, I saw a really weird dream."

"Oh," Dashan said, his voice sounding too dull to represent his mental state. Mao Xiu yawned, before crossing his arms and leaning against the doorframe, noticeably struggling to keep himself awake. "You were in it too."

"Oh."

Mao Xiu ruffled his hair, half asleep. "You know those powders. . . like the ones that make cement and stuff? I saw a dream I was forced to drink that and then do backflips and stuff to make concrete blocks-"

Dashan let out an incredulous breath. "Sorry, you had to what?" His voice came out a little breathlessly, sounding quite weak. Xiu was on a different wavelength, trying to turn his thoughts into coherent, verbal sentences instead of the mess in his head, behind those deep eyes of his concentrated on his own voice.

Xiu was evidently confused, searching for words escaping his mouth before he could speak them out loud. "You know, like spinning. . . so the cement gets mixed up and all that. I became a ball mill and then to avoid turning into stone I had to throw up-"

Dashan held his hand up, looking away. "You don't have to go into detail." His eyes returned to Xiu, giving him a weak smile. Xiu just shrugged. "Anyways, my point is, do you want to practice backflips with me?"

"W-wait, why? So you can make cement?" Dashan asked, the visibly disturbed tone in his voice causing Xiu to sigh. "Are you f*cking dumb? No. I just want to see if I can do backflips like I did in that dream."

"Oh, so no cement?" Dashan confirmed, and Xiu bit his lip to refrain from saying what came to his mind. He cracked his knuckles and gave Dashan a glare, not bothering to hide his annoyance. Dashan couldn't hide the worry behind his eyes, maybe struggling to understand where Xiu was coming from. "I won't have to drink cement either, do I?"

"I will punch you," Xiu threatened and Dashan raised his hands defensively, hiding the lingering unease he felt behind a foolish smile. "It was just a joke."

Xiu let out a huff, trying to hide the smile creeping to the corners of his lips by biting on his cheek. Knowing the boy wasn't really sulking, Dashan wrapped his hand around Xiu's shoulder and leaned on him. "So, we're still going for backflips?"

"Yeah, but be careful not to break my ribs. Last time really f*cking hurt just so you know."