Retainers

Chapter One

What is this!?

A woman slams a piece of paper on the table in front of a teenager having breakfast.

She repeats “What is this!?”

The boy snatches the paper up and leans back to stuff the paper in his pouch and quickly retorts “you shouldn’t go around opening other people’s mail, it’s bad luck!”

“Why didn’t you tell me you were going to apply to be a retainer, Nero?”

Nero stuffs his face with a bite of toast and some eggs.

“It’s no big deal, Criselda. I’ve wanted to become a retainer. You knew that.” he says through a stuffed face.

“I knew that but I didn’t know if you still did. After your excursions on the coast, you seemed like you had a change of heart.” She points out.

“Well, that should answer that. I can’t live in this house, you know, this forest forever... I don’t know about you?”

He gestures to the note in his pocket.

Criselda takes a seat across from Nero. She looks at him with a slight look of sadness and he averts his eyes back at the food and keeps eating.

“When are you leaving?”

“I didn’t really have a plan. I didn’t know if they would even reply!”

Nero snaps at her out of frustration because she opened his letter.

“You’re going to go out there by yourself?”

“You don’t need partners. There are tons of people who work alone.”

“Yeah, but they’re much stronger than you. The jobs they take on are dangerous, more dangerous than anything or anyone you’ve ever encountered.”

Nero finishes his food and gets up.

“So?”

“Wait, listen to me. You should just join the Peace Corp. They’ll train you and you can help people that way. Don’t become a criminal.”

“I don’t want anything to do with them and it’s obvious they feel the same way about me. People like me are born criminals.”

“I don’t know why you would still send out a letter knowing you could be thrown in jail just for trying to become a retainer. Now that you are a retainer, they could kill you and anyone in your home on sight. That means me.”

“And these are the people I should join? I’ve already made you a criminal once.”

He pauses and looks down.

“Yes, I know...that’s why we have to stay in this forest. It just means I can’t stay here.”

“No, that means you can’t stay anywhere. I’m not asking you to do this for me. I’m talking about you. Nero, what are you so afraid of that you’re willing to kill yourself instead of facing it?”

She says implying the obvious implications of becoming a retainer.

“I’m not the only one. Tons of people are fed up with the Peace Corps. This is the only thing we can do to stop them and actually help people.

“We? Who is this we? Is stopping the Peace Corps the reason why? You have only met them one time. Those people don’t represent the entire corps. I was once a member, remember?”

“Yeah and that was enough. They tried to arrest me... a child! I read the news. They’ve done worse and it’s not in the papers that you read where they control the reporters. If the entire body, all but one finger, is stricken with a sickness, is the person sick or well? I’m doing this.”

Nero storms towards the door and slams it behind him.

Criselda bursts through the door.

“Nero, where do you think you’re going?! We’re not done talking and clean up this mess!”

A blonde woman with her hair pulled up into a bun yells out of the front door of a small, lonely cottage. The cottage resides on a small patch of grass next to a stream in the woods. The trees had been uprooted to make a plot for the home, that same wood utilized to build the cottage itself. Everything in the home had been fashioned from something nearby. But not in that ‘oh, you live in the woods way’ but more of in a way where you have to be smart and figure out how to make your environment work for you.

Nero steps out of the cottage. He has a small, flat-top afro with a parting line going through the right half, but only halfway through, and the type of complexion that doesn’t worry about getting sun burned. He has an expression of indifference as if he doesn’t care about anything or... even hear the woman yelling at him.

There have been very few times in his life when she was not yelling at him and it has come to the point that the quieter she gets, the more he ironically hear. He finds himself listening more intently, but now she’s screaming at the top of her lungs, so of course, he doesn’t hear shit.

As he finally walks out of reach of the woman’s ear-bleeding voice he makes it to his destination. He has spent most of his life in the wilder wilderness, where around every corner there was a deep something to fall into that was sticky at the bottom and full of the bones and carcasses of larger beasts just as unlucky as yourself if you’ve got yourself stuck. Ten paces in every direction, a new dangerous beast never recorded in history for a discoverer never getting more than the opportunity to discover the inside of the beasts mouth or to sample a large dose of its exceptionally potent venom or poisonous miasma. So, aware of all of these dangers, he’s charted and re-charted the furthest edge to the center. Here, a large mountain jets up to the side creating a cliff that over looks one of the giant lakes.

Nero approaches the base and brushes his hands on his pants and starts to climb the humongous rough, rocky crag in front of him. His eyes glazed over as if he was getting ready to brush his teeth after rolling out of bed, and all of the disinterest was clear on his face. His eyelids almost closed from boredom. He gets to the top of the cliff, climbing without using his legs to give himself some sort of challenge, which stopped being challenging halfway up (as usual). He walks over to the opposite edge that looks out over the large lake, so large that the curve of the planet prevents him from seeing the other side. He jumps off the cliff with his expression still unchanged and ambivalent to whether or not this is dangerous anymore. The fear that led to the thrill was stripped away by his accomplishments. He was now comfortable, as well as aware of his limits and what he is capable of. He glides through the water, each stroke from his arms and kick of his legs slicing his body through the choppy water until the water creates almost no resistance, propelling his body through the water like a blade.

He dives down under the surface and jets upwards, bursting out and landing onto the edge of the shore. With a roll, he comes to his feet and takes off running deep into the forest. Swapping out the bicycling for rock climbing, he created his own triathlon. He finally dries himself off and continues until he gets to a point where he began to break a sweat. He comes across a stream where there is make-shift workout equipment made up of boulders that are ties to ropes and hanging from the low and high branches of trees. He works out by hopping from one workout station to the next. The process is engrained in his system and comes as second nature now. After awhile, he works up a sweat again, so he calms down and does some light stretches similar to yoga. As he is stretching, the animals in the forest begin to gather.They are watching him from a safe distance but slowly closing in on him, all collectively noticing a presence in the forest. Staying low to the ground and remaining stealthy, still slowly getting closer some small and poisonous, some larger and ferocious.

Nero begins to feel the atmosphere changing. Between stretches, he glances up towards the surrounding trees from one tree to the next. He looks back down and continues stretching, then notices an odor in the air.

A squirrel flys between the trees and runs smack into Nero’s face.

“Oh hey, you could have said something. Oh yeah, you don’t talk.”

More of the animals start to emerge from the forest. Although they were once a part of the effort to make him another victim of the extra cruel nature of the forrest, now they are fully indoctrinated into his club, his only friends.

“I was just going to go for another run. Wanna come?” Nero asks rhetorically. They couldn’t possibly respond, so they just look blankly at him and wait for him to do something because that’s the only thing that they do understand.

Then he breaks off into a full sprint, leaving them behind and obtaining speeds of 60 miles per hour. A moment later, the animals catch up to his speed in full chase-mode. Some animals are swinging through trees, some on the floor of the forest. Some catch up and launch themselves towards Nero and at the very last moment, he narrowly and effortlessly dodges. One of the cat creatures with the muscle definition of a tiger and floppy ears like a dog runs past him, hooks and cuts him off, now heading straight for him. He jumps over and onto the beast’s back and propels himself upward and grabs onto a branch, tactfully missing some of the apes that launch themselves at him. He swings forward, lets go, spins and grabs back onto the branch. Then, he swings himself back in the opposite direction, confusing some of the animals. He launches himself towards a tree trunk, then lands on it, kicks off, and springs himself through the air. While in mid-air, he gets tagged on his foot by an animal while reaching for the next branch and spins out of control. He tumbles through the air and rolls on the ground.

Then, the animals run over and climb on top of him

While underneath the rubble of forest animals he ponders,“What am I really doing here? It’s so exhausting living a purposeless life.”

“Okay, you got me. Now get your shitty asses off of me... the only friends I have, so dirty. They say the company you keep says a lot about you. Well, at least that’s what I read. It isn’t loose, you guys are quotable.”

A roar vibrates through the forest that gets all of the animals’ attention. They all look but don’t get off of Nero though.

He gets up and sends them sprawling in different directions.

“That didn’t sound good” he says.