Published at the Treasures of Thundera Group April 2, 2002
:taken from my original author's notes:
I've been unusually creative lately (or is it destructive?) and so here's the latest product of my unadulterated insanity. Once again it's horror. This one's set a few years after the last episode and centers on Pumyra and Mandora. the two are having a little talk about what's happened with poor, old Bengali and his unstable personality.
This one's dedicated to Fianna - so, not enough dialogue in my fics, eh?
"Alone" by RD Rivero (2002-04-02)
"From childhood's hour I have not been as others were –" EA Poe
"Yeah, we could've ignored RD's stories, that would've been easy enough. But – (we were trolls and got off on starting shit)" Fluffy/Mittens/whatever….
"I've been gone so long, it's like everything's changed."
"Not so much changed, more like developed."
Pumyra handed the officer a mug of steaming coffee.
The pair was seated in a public courtyard, on ancient furnishings. The slate, sandstone chairs were snug and cozy – almost intimate – despite the rough mineral textures and the open-air environs. It was a cool, sunny morning and from all around them came the din of villagers, the scurry of animals in the underbrush and the symphony of birds on the treetops that filled the air with timeless songs of spring.
"But the Tower?" Mandora asked, sipping the bitter drink. "And Bengali?"
"What about him?" she retorted.
"I've asked the others, but I got no answers. No real answers. I know something's wrong and since you were the closest to him –"
"I," she sighed and put her cup down in her lap, "I knew him, but I wasn't close to him. No one was close to him."
"Pumyra," the officer laid a friendly hand up on the cat's shoulder, "Whatever's happened, you can tell me."
She smiled: "You wouldn't believe it."
"Try me," she gave the shoulder a gentle squeeze.
The puma drank a taste of the heady, black brew, her eyes unfocused, her mind thinking and forming the words. "The reasons why he's gone and why the outpost's abandoned," she said, changing her expression from its natural, dignified quality to a twisted, tortured grimace. She shook her head: "This'll be a long one, but if you want to know." She reclined and rubbed her eyes. "You have to understand that Bengali always had problems. He had complexes and paranoia. He was never comfortable around others and he was never comfortable unless he thought others were – let's just say – against him.
"He was born under the sign of the crab. Now, I know what you're going to say and yes, I know better than to believe such silly superstitions, but damn! Cancers are loners and he was alone, always alone. Lynxo and I, you'd think we would've been close – after what we went through with the death of Old Thundera – but no, there were things about him that he told no one, things that no one ever knew."
"Curious fellow," the CONTROL woman interjected.
"So he was eccentric, but he was predictable – even controllable – and, more or less, we tolerated him. Exactly when he changed from worse to worse, I can't say, but I do believe certain things, events, were what triggered him. Traumatized him. Does it make any sense? I don't know. When we think about things deeply – too deeply – does anything ever really make sense? I shouldn't get ahead of myself.
"I'd say it started with the wedding of Tygra and Cheetara. They knew each other for a long time – oh, back when New Thundera was Old Thundera – but you'd have never thought there was anything, romantic, between them. I always thought Cheetara and Liono would couple. Anyway, it was a bit of a shock when they announced their engagement. It was during a council meeting, actually, now that I remember. The ceremony itself was three months to the day later."
"And that bothered him, why? I had heard rumors about his relationship with –"
"No, no, those were just rumors. It affected him because it reminded him he was alone. See, that's all that makes sense. It reminded him he had no one. Liono, as it turned out, was bethrowed to WileyKit. WileyKat and Panthro had significant others in the Treetop Kingdom. I, well – so, suddenly, out of nowhere, it struck him.
"For months he languished about the Tower, mumbling and brooding in a stormy mood. We all knew he wanted none of us around – and, truth be told, when he was that testy and irritable, it was just better to stay away. You could always tell he was unapproachable when all his activities revolved around his smithing. Those hammer blows! I swear it was like when everything else was denied him, when he had nothing else to turn to, he'd go for the hammer and bang away as if –"
"He was violent?"
"To an extent – he had a temper, but it needed a good push to set it off. He was gruff and feral, but – aside from the battles – the violence he did, he did on himself.
"He had begun to come out of that rut that autumn and then WileyKit announced she was pregnant."
"Wow! But that was six years ago, she must've been, what?"
"Sixteen," she stirred her mug, "barely old enough to graduate secondary back on Old Thundera. Of course there was an elopement and I had the luck to be a witness. You should've been there; you should've seen that trash, strutting through the isle with that bloating stomach of liter. God, at least in the olden days they'd wait until after they birthed to do that, you know? But what's self-respect to that reject from the gutter? AlleyKit."
"Yeah," Mandora rolled her eyes and shrugged. "I can't stand her much myself. Shame how she turned into a really spoiled and whiney brat."
"And she talks like this all the time!" Pumyra added with spiteful gusto.
"People surprise you –"
"Yeah, WileyKat is so sweet; you'd never think they shared the same genes."
"I hear she's into art now."
The cat sighed: "She's gone devote now, that puritanical hypocrite –"
"Guess that explains my icy reception."
"And one of the reasons why I'm not a Thundercat anymore. To be looked down upon as scum by that tuna-breathed, back-street cat."
The officer smiled and sipped the warm coffee.
She sighed: "Leave it to Bengali to fall apart after Princess Kit's 'crowning' like it was the last straw or something. I caught him crying one late night – I tried to console him. He kissed me – he got strangely tender. I was willing to let him go further, lord knows I felt sorry for him, but I knew we'd just hate each other in the morning. So I walked him to his room instead.
"That's when he opened up to me – and that alone was the weirdest thing. We talked, heart to heart. We talked about, oh, stupid things. At least at the time I thought they were stupid things. Now – well – it wasn't anything new. As kids we'd have the same conversations, we'd say how we wished we had siblings or cub mates, but I thought he'd matured, as I had. Apparently, the obsession only worsened with time, not abated.
"There he was, a grown cat, weeping about the sister he had always wanted.
"And then he told me something that even then had me wondering. He told me he'd often fantasize about actually having a sister. That she lived with him in the building and worked with him in the shop. He confessed that he'd talk to her aloud as if she really did exist."
"That's – that's just – my god –"
Pumyra led her guest from the courtyard to a trail that cut through the rear of the Maiden's village.
"Anyway, yeah, it was stupid. It made me uncomfortable and as soon as he fell asleep I left. But before, just before I walked out of his room, I noticed a pile of papers on his desk. Drawings of white tigresses: sitting, standing, posing, smiling, frowning, with clothes like his or naked. Technical drafts of objects that resembled arms and legs – innards – but I thought nothing of it. I dismissed it – it must have been a sculpture he was planning or working on. I didn't put it together, but I thought he needed a friend, not a psychotherapist."
"Did you ask him about it? What it meant?"
"God no! We never asked him, it just wasn't done. It was part of his secretive isolation, another of his curious oddities we learned to live with. We'd have to wait until he was done, only then would he show us what it was – and sometimes he'd never reveal it, ever. Like the horseshoes he'd make for the Unicorn Keepers, if by chance you caught a look of one before he finished it, he'd throw the iron into the fire, wait for you to leave, then start it again from scratch.
"He grew detached that winter. He'd take longer and longer trips to collect rocks and ores that we thought he wouldn't return. But he'd always come back – to work on his project. Like I said, as long as he was useful and able to keep up with his Thundercat duties we didn't mind. But now it had begun to interfere with his chores – so Liono decided he'd need a change. Immediately.
"Spring – Liono relocated him to New Thundera along with the Twins and Tygra. He remained away for two whole years and in all that time he never set foot back on Third Earth. The others would take breaks and come back for a day or two, but not him. He was turning around – again – you could say we were proud of him. He was regaining his discipline and had even made a friend with young Malcar.
"He was like a big brother to the boy."
"He was sane for all that time? But, while he was gone, didn't you guys bother to go down to the workroom to see what he had been up to?"
Pumyra interrupted her with a smile: "I was nosy, yes, but either he took his papers with him when he left, or he stashed them in the shop – along with whatever he'd been working on. He kept that area locked with a system that proved to be pickproof – even QuickPick was baffled." Mandora raised an eyebrow. "Well, we cats are curious, no?
"For two whole years we were happy and then he came back."
She drank the last drop of the coffee and placed her empty vessel on the open windowsill of a hut she was, apparently, familiar with. Mandora followed suit, although her mug was only half empty. A burly, well built Amazonian emerged from within and greeted the cat with a hug.
"Mandora, this is Cassandra," she introduced the woman to the officer.
The two shook hands and smiled.
"Will you be joining our hunt tonight?" the brunette asked Pumyra.
"Yes," she answered, adjusting the lotus blossom twined amidst the woman's bushy hair. "Tell Nayda I'll have my spear ready this afternoon."
She nodded, waved at Mandora and, as quickly as she had appeared, vanished into the dewy, hazy thicket of trees that surrounded the outskirts of town.
"It's official, you know –"
"You told me about that. Lovely pictures!"
"Oh, yes, when Nayda and WileyKat wed tomorrow, you'll get a good taste of what it was like. You want to join us tonight? We're going to catch the meal for the feast."
"I'll see if I can – but first –"
The puma laughed.
"Bengali came back, reinvigorated but, unfortunately, his attention was detached, his energy was not focused on his responsibilities. It was as if those two years he had spent away from his work needed to be made-up-for and so his nightly labors intensified. It was a fury of hammering and welding – the Tower smelled like the inside of a furnace.
"Lynxo moved into a room at the top of the building. I thought it was obvious why he'd done it, until I happened to ask him about it one day. It hadn't been the jarring sounds that bothered him – it was what he'd heard Bengali saying. Chanting, like praying, like the sorts of things a sorcerer might incant."
"Malcar?"
"Yes, but the picture's always clearer at the end.
"If a cat like Lynxo – well, Liono was not amused and you can image how upset we'd become. We had to know just what the tiger was doing, so Tygra and I concocted a plan.
"We waited for him to finish, shut the workroom and retire to bed. Tygra – who'd been patiently holed up in his room, invisible – paused until he was soundly asleep and snatched the key out of its hiding spot. Together we explored the shop, terrified that at any moment he'd awaken and find us.
"The workroom was huge, covering most of the Tower's basement. It was desolate, like a wasteland, but at first, you know, nothing seemed to be amiss. Closets along the back walls held his tools and materials. Tables around the support columns were covered with ores and powdery chemicals. Vials contained multicolored liquids that Tygra and I had never seen before.
"All around us were the tiny bits and pieces of a mind gone mad but we didn't find anything – important – until we were about to quit. A single table kept in a dark corner – we turned on the lights – it was covered by a thick tarp. We were very careful, exceedingly careful about how we pulled the covers off. We peeled it back only so far –
"Beneath the folds we found two arms, like mine, but metal. One was fully constructed. It had skin with raised metal plates that resembled stripes. Bones stuck out of its ends. And in between were what appeared to be flesh, muscles, ligaments and blood vessels. All of it built of iron, all of it.
"The other one, that wasn't finished, flaunted just how agile and limber he had constructed the limbs. Except for the bones, the pieces weren't solid metal but slices of super-fine chain meal. I held it and if it wasn't for the coldness of its material it had the sensation of flesh. The effect of the illusion was profound. The detail was beyond meticulous.
"We found internal organs. A heart. A liver. Segments of intestines and frameworks of capillary membranes whose gold foil was almost see-through thin. I discovered two eyes he had painted blue – I almost screamed when I noticed its pupils reacting to the light.
"And then the drawings. He was building a female – whose name was, in fact, Bengali, whose version number was twenty-five – he had titled it 'sister.' Every single part of its body was refined and reduced to geometry. Every segment was exquisitely itemized and crafted on paper in the vantages of different angles. But it was its reproductive organs, the ovaries and uterus in particular, that he had keened on and had devoted the bulk of the pages to – its design, its functionality, engineered, as it were, to the millimeter."
Mandora swore under her breath. "What the hell did you guys do?"
"We tried discussing the matter during a council meeting – it wasn't as if he was showing up to them anymore. He was onto us, or so he thought, he believed we had ganged up on him. He was getting stranger and more paranoid. He was getting testy at Liono, too, openly defying him. And to top it off he was deliberately slacking at his job.
"He complained that he needed his space – but it was that metal woman he needed. It had become his sole obsession. It was the only reason why he awoke in the morning, the only reason why he bothered to do his work. In his own perverted mind, it was his way of sticking it to us."
"What drives a man to that?" Mandora asked as she and Pumyra trekked through a well-beaten path.
"Loneliness, I suppose. I never knew – or suspected – how desperately he wanted companionship. He was clingy, you know, but when I found those drawings I understood, right then and there, that he was yearning for far more than just a sibling or a lover. Call it a lucky guess; call it female intuition –" she shrugged, "who knows how the depraved mind works.
"Well – maybe Lynxo knew, he could hear him, it, the chanting, the everything. When he failed to come to breakfast, I searched for him in his room. I found him on the floor, in the cover of blankets, half-on and half-off the bed. He was dead – his eyes were wide open and I'll never forget the look on his face that rigor mortis had made absolutely permanent.
"The fear. The fear of it had killed him.
"And to add insult to injury, Bengali didn't even show up at the funeral. Well," she wiped a tear, "after that it went down hill. He sent Liono his insignia that he had powdered with his hammer and dropped out completely from the day to day running of the Tower. Cassandra and I took turns watching and keeping the outpost, making sure it was in working order while he toiled day-in and day-out through the shop like a crazed image of Vulcan.
"Tygra – his one, last supporter – realized that the only way to help Bengali, to find out what he was doing – and I mean really doing – was to spy in on him as he worked. While invisible, he entered the shop. He left, silently, about a half-hour later, mumbling and drooling, his face looking pale like death, his mane bleeding white like a ghost. Whatever he had seen, he didn't talk about it – not to everyone, anyway, not to me, certainly – but whatever it was, it had scared him so bad that he moved himself and Cheetara to New Thundera, indefinitely and against Liono's objections. But it was either let them leave Third Earth or lose them as Thundercats, so, at the end – "
"Weren't you terrified to be living in that place with him?" Mandora asked, unaware of the vine-covered tower that loomed out in the distance.
The cat paused and sighed. "To be honest, I'm not sure if by that time he'd ever hurt me. Although the separation, the gulf between us, had widened, maybe in his mind were still close, maybe, despite it all, he thought we were still friends. But to me he had become an alien. And in those last, few weeks I didn't see him once, I only heard him walk through the halls or work.
"Work –
"That last day was the strangest. I was passing the workshop and heard the groaning sounds of pain and two voices. Him – he was chanting – and, intermittently, a female. But I never heard the two together. And then there was that sound of shattering – something in the vast chamber had fallen and cracked. He cursed and screamed – I ran out of there like a bat out of hell.
"Thankfully, Cassandra comforted me – damn it, I was terrified.
"He had gone to Liono, begging to be sent back to New Thundera, saying he'd need three days but not explaining for what or why. And Liono wasn't about to do him any favors, either, so he kicked him out of the Lair and our circle. He gave him until sun down to get his stuff out of the Tower of Omens," she said, pointing to the cracked and withered pillar.
The officer looked to spire and studied it up and down – she had seen it yesterday but from afar, only. "He's an exile?"
"Oh, that's when it goes from making sense to – a story so horrid it'll haunt you for all eternity.
"He didn't pack his stuff, he moved it into the workroom and left. Left, we thought, forever and we were grateful. Everyone and everything had returned to normal – but not me. I couldn't help but feel that the building was haunted, that there was someone else, literally someone else in that place with me. I couldn't explain it, but I heard it. Day by day, week after week, it got louder and louder. It became pronounced enough that I identified it – it was the sound of breathing and it was coming from the shop.
"I don't know how – so don't ask – but I gathered the courage to go down there and see.
"Once again, the solitude and desolation, it was like a whole separate reality come to life. He was in the air, under the cabinets, behind the doors. I could feel his brooding eyes staring at me from the walls, following me table to table.
"A stain of orange powder on the floor, its patterns indicating it had been on fire, bits of glass outlining the vessel that had contained it.
"The breathing – it came from the area around that table, that very same table Tygra and I had explored years ago. Its top was bare, though, the thick tarp draped a stand next to it. I pulled it up and screamed. Beneath the dusty cover was the metal woman, a female tiger – skin painted black and white. He had finished her and, fully assembled, he kept her on that platform.
"Her blue eyes focused in on me. She breathed, lungs expanding and contracting. Her stomach – my god, her stomach –
"Was it alive?"
"I don't know. I almost reacted as Tygra had.
"The breathing turned into a wailing. I heard her walk within the room. I heard her pound on the door. Trying to escape, speaking again and again and again, the name Bengali."
The front steps of the main entrance had collapsed – the concrete had snapped like twigs and scattered across the unkempt lawn like windswept rubble. The doors, too, had succumbed to the erosive powers of the weather. The puma pushed one of the gates aside – its hinges groaned – and unveiled a narrow corridor of cobwebs and darkness. The officer removed her helmet and carried it cradled under her arm.
"I told the others what I had found and we agreed that the thing, whether it was alive or not, was a product of evil magic and wizardry and had to be destroyed. The day was set for the operation and we assaulted the workshop. We cornered the unearthly contraption, whose stomach had grown larger, but right at the inevitable moment to strike; the sword flew out of Liono's hand and imbedded itself into a wall of rock. It wouldn't work – it wouldn't let him do it.
"That's when we abandoned the outpost for good, for the most part and left it to languish in the elements. Sure, we'd come by every so often, when the Lunatics or Mutants were up to something, but never for more than a few hours and never at night. Things settled into a new normal: normal because the constant fright wasn't there anymore, normal because I had started to spend more and more of my time with the Maidens. My fallout with the Thundercats – or should I say, with the Princes – had begun. Without Lynxo, without the Tower, I had no ties to connect me with them and – with the attitude of their spoilt and bratty queen – I wanted nothing to do with them anymore.
"Nine months to the day after Bengali left, an alarm was set off in the building. Liono and I rushed to the site at once to see what was amiss. We followed a trail of mud from the front doors to the basement. We paused for a moment and heard him – he had returned. He was screaming and yelling his own name along with the words 'it'll live, it'll live.'
"We stormed into shop, whose entrance was wide open, our ears assaulted by shrieks of terror that were clearly not his. We found him nude and her – the tiger-robot – next to each other on the ground. Her lips were tainted with an orange residue, his hand held a vile half-full of that same powdery substance. He was dead, but she wasn't yet – if dead, indeed, was the word – her stomach. We could see something, something large, moving around in her stomach, trying to break out.
"She spread her legs and raised her lower body inches above the floor. Screaming and heaving, she uttered her last gasp and dropped her abdomen back. Slick and oily, an object slowly and steadily emerged – she, it, had given birth.
"Terrified beyond imagination, we stormed out of the shop and locked the door. We fled out of the Tower and shut the gates. What can I say? He had built himself a sister and infused it with life through the secret arts Malcar had taught him. His wish had been granted at last, he had corrected the lonesomeness fate had dealt him. But he wanted more, it wasn't enough that he had a companion – he wanted someone who could truly carry on his name. A cub.
"Having broken the flask of that powdery potion, he couldn't give it a will of its own. I suspect he searched the countryside for months, looking for and gathering the ingredients. I don't think he found it all, not all of it – so he had to do the next best thing.
"He waited until the very moment it was due and gave up his life so that it might live."
"But, Pumyra, that's – unreal!"
"Said you wouldn't believe me." She showed the woman into what had once been the outpost's kitchen – noonday sun filtered through the encrusted windows. "This is where we keep it," she pointed to a hole carved from the floor to the ceiling of the workshop beneath – the woman squinted her eyes. "I'm not sure if you can see it, but it's from here that we feed and monitor it."
A slight wail echoed up from opening.
"Time for its feeding," the cat explained. She poured a concoction of iron fillings, mercury and various, multicolored vitamins into a bucket. "Food," she said, lowering the bucket into the hole with a rope. "Panthro invented it and the cub seems to like it. It's actually growing, odd, it doesn't appear to be robotic but then he only examined it for a few minutes and Tygra wouldn't get anywhere near it."
Mandora gasped: when the bucket landed on the floor beneath, a figure, about two feet long, emerged amidst the shadows and rubble. It, whatever it was, dunked its head into bucket and fed noisily, sloppily.
"It's a black and while tiger, like its parents, I suppose. Cassandra and I volunteered to raise it once it got old enough but Princes Kit wasn't too hot about the idea."
The officer shook her head and shrugged. "What did Liono ever see in her?"
"Nothing. It was an arranged marriage." Pumyra raised the bucket – it was empty.
"How medieval."
"Sorry to have depressed you –"
"No, no," she smiled, "I've heard worse stories."
"Yeah."
"Maybe one day I'll tell you a couple!"
They laughed and left the spire. It was late and they had many things to prepare for on that very busy day – tomorrow would be a time for celebration and afterward there would be enough time to continue the get-together.