Chain Gang All Stars

You might be owned by a man, like I been. You might be owned by the state, like I was. Maybe the holding is your own voice taken and stripped from you. Your own body living under the eye of electric sizzle. Maybe that’s what owns you. Not wanting to be more owned. When I went in, the killing games was debated, they were not to happen. Too cruel, too mean, too everything bad. They said. Then they said less. Now the killing games the new football. They’ll say that what owns me now. My chains made of far freedom. I been silent. I ain’t ever been blind. What owns me is my own wrong and nothing else.

No more, my lord

No more, my lord

“That singing thing you do, keep doing it, they freaking love it,” Sawyer says. Sawyer my CO. Slick-smile man. Liar in a suit that sometimes tells the truth. He tells me people like how I been surviving. How I been killing. How I been using my voice since I got it back. My voice keeps me company.

“Scorpion Singer,” that’s what they calling me. I win, Auburn, whole system wins. They happy all the time I’m breathing. We sit in a room, before I leave to go in front of the cheering people. “You know you’ve already revolutionized the culture for the limb-different. You’re an icon in that community. You’re an icon before your sixth match, and that means you can keep on building up. We need to get you some better armor. It was nice at first, this free, open look, but it’s gonna get you killed.”

He been saying this a month now.

Lord I’ll never, turn back

No more.

“But this singing shit. Keep that shit. People love it. Scorpion Singer. Excellent. You gonna have a real chance.”

I’m missing my spear. I like it in my hands, I admit. It wasn’t an accident. Hard to say anything an accident if it happens. A spear. I had it a few months and know it well. The spear opens me up just like it opens up the others. It chose me. I admit that too. Didn’t even have to earn. God, Higher Power, whoever, put it right in my hands. Spin the wheel, get a chance at life. Spin the wheel and eat of the tree. Spin the wheel. Spinifer. Two months back I spun it free.

—

At the show a man spins the wheel with fear in his heart. He gets a wrench, black with oil like it came from the shop just before. He’ll take it gladly. Holy, how he feels. Forgive me for I have.

Woman spins next. Gets a pair of scissors. Two sharp ones that might be kept in a kitchen. She jumps up in the air, excited, happy for herself. Happy for her chances. The crowd claps and cheers for her. Happy for scissor’s chances, happy, she happy like they all on the same team.

Then a man come up to the wheel. Excited. Like the goodwill the gods just blessed the woman before him with is still in the air for him.

“You ready?” blond host man says. We, those who chose death over confinement, sit on a wooden bench off stage left.

“Fuck yeah,” he says, shaking.

No more, my lord

Whole body shaking. Excited. The crowd feels it too. The crowd wild for him. “Born ready, Micky!”

This part a game show. It’s all a game show. Chain-Gang Initiation Special: Wonder Wheel. Mean show. Same thing behind doors one, two, and three.

“Spin away.”

Clickety, clickety, clickety, click, click, cli—and the crowd gasps. The man stares. Makes to spin again.

“Wouldn’t that be nice? One spin per Link, unfortunately,” host says.

A spoon. Shining silver spoon.

This one the joke of the group. The wheel got pictures all flavors of silliness. No help in a fight at all. But the spoon we all see is cruelest. The spoon is so people can remember what this all is. But the crowd doesn’t see it that way. They gasp, then boo. Like they all on the same team. Like they shocked.

Door number two slides away, then the man sees his own dead body. Jackpot, triple seven, somebody wins, just definitely not him. He stops shaking. I watch him close. Workers hand him a purple pillow with a spoon resting on top of it. More salt for new wounds. He holds the spoon in his hand. Looks at it. Sees himself stretched against the curve. I watch him close. It’s a show I’ve seen before. When a man sees he has been forsaken. Discovers he might be unblessed. Thinking he understood. All at once he see the gods he kept don’t keep him the same way. Not how he hoped. He see he had it all wrong the whole time.

Can you tell me where he’s gone?

Go down, go down

Next man spins a bowling ball.

Then I walk forward. Singing, humming, making my own noise, even though they gasp at the sight of me. They feel sorry. They paid to be here. They didn’t know there would be a man with just the one arm vying for a life. I walk up. Sometimes I feel my left though ain’t a trace of it left. Shoulder, then air. I can feel the space in that air, sometime better than when there was flesh. Here in the spinning room, it’s hot. Still got goose bumps on an arm that ain’t there.

“Name?”

I look at the host and the crowd. Spoon is somewhere in the back, I can hear him hollering. Screaming his good heart out. We all hear it. Door one has opened in front of Spoon and he don’t like that one either. He hanging from a tree in that one.

And perhaps you may find

Find him there

“That’s a very nice voice you got there, what shall we call you then? Elvis maybe?” I stare at him, a blond Elvis himself. “It looks like you’ve already had a couple of tough matches.” I make to choke him with the arm I don’t got. The arm that’s gone finds his neck and squeezes.

He pauses, seeing his funny ain’t land. He clears his throat. “All right, all right, that was insensitive. What’s your name, sir?”

“Hendrix Young,” I say. I grab a handle on a purple slice of wheel and pull down. Fate spins. It spins and spins and spins and spins. I hear spoon man screaming. Fate spins us all. He don’t stop crying out.

Behind door number three it’s just a mirror.

And my arm that ain’t touches the wheel, slows it just enough. And when the spinning stops, the arrow pointing to the one golden panel. For me the people scream. They party in the small studio. It’s something I can use. The opposite of a spoon. A jackpot.

Door four. There is no door four. But I see it in front of me.

A long black rod with a black blade at the tip. The rod is strong and ridged with dark gold. It is a precious thing. The people screaming. They happy. Same team. Well look at this.

—

I use it to kill, my spear. Called Spinifer Black, named after the scorpion. The scorpion.