Living as he did, with the world as it was, Job spent a whole lot of time going various degrees of crazy, or thinking he was going crazy, wondering just how crazy he actually was, or so on. Poetsfetch was getting a bit too much for him.
He sat in his borrowed room, back against the wall, breathing slowly and fiddling with a loose thread from his coat and watching the pale light deepen and darken outside. He needed a massage, or something. He was unbelievably tired. The jaunt down to the old office tired him out at once faster than his entire trip to Poetsfetch itself.
In spite of it all, too, Linda’s house was comfortable. Job had not been familiar with comfort in a while. It was warm, from the walls, the carpet and bricks. Cool air poured through the open door, yet it was remained warm. The lights were dull yellow, thrumming gently. It reminded Job of the lights on his old ship, of the lamppost he had met in the Ocean of Cars. It reminded him, dimly, of the lights in the houses dwelt in by the human whose brain his own was patterned after. Proximal zones, unmoving. No spirits, in those places, at that time. Or, at least, the spirits were quiet then. And the streets were clean and straight. And you breathed the cool air in the early mornings, felt the heat spread under your bones, in your meat.
So Job felt a restful tiredness sink over him. It was tinged with a heavy paranoia, but it was there, all the same.
He would rest, for the night. And he would wake up early, before anyone else would be up. He’d steal away and nobody would know he had even ever been there except Linda, who would be approximately forty dollars richer (this was a little more than half the contents of his wallet. He was not in a good financial state with which to repay kindness.)
Not that he particularly trusted Linda. He didn’t trust people. He couldn’t remember ever trusting anybody. He measured people by how easily he might, if necessary, escape from them or kill them. He was only somewhat certain that she wouldn’t, herself, murder him in the night.
He was glad to not be resting in the house next to Elder Nettle, whose grinning, winking presence made Job feel ice under his skin. But he wasn’t, either, convinced that whatever had smashed that door in had been ‘local kids.’ Unless the kids around that place had motorcycles, or bulls to ride on, or so on.
Everything had hastily spiderwebbed into a tangled mess of traitors and people who might be traitors, things that might kill Job and might not. He almost preferred the empty loneliness, to this. Almost.
He would be back to it soon, anyhow. It was healthy, to have variety. And Job supposed it had been a fairly long time since his last backstabbing.
A child walked into the room, then. He gazed at Job, in shock. Job gazed back at him, in shock. He was in that thin-limbed, too-big shirted interstitial stage between boy and teenager. He would have barely reached Job’s chest (and Job was hardly the tallest person around), and yet still looked too tall for the rest of his body. Short straight black hair, a squat nose, a small frowning mouth. Job knew he was Linda’s son, immediately. His eyes cut into him in the exact same way. It was uncanny, on a child like that. He was wearing a sort of reconstituted school uniform, miscoloured patches running down sides, dusty with sand on the sides. A small bag hung off his back and a plastic bag rustled in his hands, smelling faintly of sauces and salt. He was, Job supposed, Anh.
‘Uh,’ said Job. Anh clearly had difficulties deciding what part of Job to stare at. He ran down Job’s metal skin, plated face, the joints in his hands–the thick-barreled gun Job was fiddling with. ‘Hello,’ Job said, finally.
Anh did not say anything. He frowned, more, at Job, dropped his backpack to the floor and walked to the stairs. He paused, there. ‘Is that a gun?’
‘Kind of,’ said Job.
Anh’s face was flat. It was a stoicism that advanced him in many years. ‘Kind of?’
‘Well. It does sort of gun stuff,’ said Job, gesticulating. ‘Kind of.’
‘Ok. I don’t think mum’ll like you playing with it like that.’ He paused for a bit, looked at Job blankly. ‘You might shoot your hand off.’
‘What’s that you’re holding?’ asked Job, searching for smalltalk.
‘Food,’ said Anh. He shrugged. ‘Mum’s working. I don’t like cooking.’ With that, then, he continued past Job, bag rustling, and stepped down the stairs.
Charisma did not, Job figured, run much in Linda’s family.
The scent of curry rose from downstairs. Job hadn’t smelled it in a while, and he smiled at it, laying his sleeping bag out along the floor, to the side of the table, away from the door. He sat there for a few more moments, spice smell rising, quiet mutterings and movements from downstairs. He shut the lights off. It was dark, then, but for the buzzing light that rose gently from the stairs.
So Job tried to sleep. He had dreams about that pit. And about the legs, the tatters and figures that darted outside his vision in that catacomb. And the loneliness down there. The far off ringing footsteps and chattering voices that made it lonelier still. He dreamt of clattering. Clattering in the walls, and heavy breathing. And the glint of moonlight on weaponry.
Job’s eyes snapped open. Buzzing and chirping zig-zagged in the air. And the night breeze, flapping fabric, some loose sheet metal. And clattering, footsteps. In the walls. Job heard them in the walls. He pulled himself out of the sleeping bag, tapped the ground until he found the tunnelgun. He turned, glared at the wall next to the staircase. A line of silvery moonlight streaked down it through the door. Clattering, footsteps.
Sleep hung over Job. It crouched on his brain, pressed down on his eyes. He pressed the wall. He tapped it. He smacked it.
It rang. Hollow. He knew it. His heart dropped. Clattering, footsteps. Job glanced behind himself. The wind swirled, muttered to itself. It reminded him of the wind in that catacomb. He felt a shadowy–something–around him. Why were the walls hollow? Who was walking in there? He ought to leave, he realised. He ought to leave now.
He grumbled to himself, pressed the tunnelgun to the wall, and
CRACK CRACK CRACK
Moonlight flushed in, in perfectly round beams, over Job, over the edges of the table, his bag. He saw, through the holes, rooftops shining, and rows of streets and dark cars stretching far out in an endless desert. The chirping, buzzing, roared through. Midnight winds assailed Job. And yet–the clattering, the footsteps, grew louder. Job grumbled further to himself. He had a headache. He looked at the holes, again. He looked at their edges, at the space between the inner and outer walls.
He saw endless curvatures. Curves surmounting curves and twisting into further curves. He saw tiny spots of light, curving, bent and twisted. His head hurt.
‘Job… What the hell are you doing?’
Linda’s voice rattled through the holes.
‘What is this,’ Job hissed at the air, clasping his gun. Something grasped his shoulder. A great tug, Job’s foot banging against the edge of the wall, scraping. And falling, twisting, lights and darkness and moonlight bending. Job saw curvature, felt curvature, parabolas spinning and twisting.
He was in a tunnel that stunk of oil and smoke. Lamplight danced in the darkness. Moonlight flooded in, over Job’s shoulders, casting strange shadows. Three silhouetted figures were looking at Job. One of them, hand still on his shoulder, was Linda.
‘What’d I tell you about the gun…’ Linda muttered, shaking her head. ‘Punch holes in my wall…’
Job shook out of her grasp, held the gun up once more. The two other silhouettes stepped slightly forwards, hands on their belts on something Job couldn’t see in the darkness. They were, he realised, more guardsmen, of the group he had met earlier. Linda held them back with an upheld arm.
‘I know you meddled it all to get me into your house,’ Job said.
‘It was kids broke that door. Honest.’ Linda glanced back at the other guardsmen for backup.
‘Fuck’s sake!’ Job hissed. ‘What is this? Who–are you? What is happening? What am I, inside your wall? How’d kids break a whole door down?!’ All the built up anxiety was spiralling out of Job, now. He was shaking, nearly. He wasn’t sure where up or down was, he had a headache, and he wanted to go back to sleep.
‘Alright. It wasn’t kids,’ Linda admitted.
‘And the rest of it?!’ Job yowled.
‘Put your gun down.’
‘Why?!’
Linda’s face twisted. ‘So you don’t shoot us.’
Job thought on that for a moment, while the adrenaline spun down. ‘Fair enough.’
‘Ok…’ Linda looked to her fellow guardsmen, at Job, at the holes in the tunnel, waved her arm towards the opposite direction, and began walking down. So they all followed. Job kept far to the side, away from the guardsmen. They were fine with that setup. ‘Just move deeper in, for a bit… The big cracking sounds probably drew some attention.’
For being in a strangely curved slip within the walls of the houses, it was spacious. Job noticed that the walls and floor were of the same bricks as the outsides of the houses but twisted so as to form the roof and the floor, like an awkwardly stretched out photograph. He already had a headache, and attempting to consider the science of this made it thrum even worse.
‘We’ve been having small… wars, the last few nights,’ said Linda. ‘If you’ve been hearing those noises, it was probably that.’
‘Wars?’ Job said.
‘I don’t know… skirmishes. Gangfights. Whatever you call it.’ She glanced back down the corridor, then suddenly disappeared into the wall. Job started, then saw the other guardsmen casually follow. He approached, realised that the wall, in fact, curved into itself. He turned back, to see where the corridor split, and saw only where they had just been, the moonlight all the way back at the start, in a straight line.
He had a headache.
‘And Anh? Your son?’
‘Yeah…’ said Linda, mournfully. ‘You definitely woke him, like that.’
‘But–is he safe?’ Job tilted his head, raised his voice. ‘From the–war?’
‘Oh, yeah. He’s probably in the walls already… This shit always happens.’
Job could only frown, at that.
‘It’s inter-cult stuff. It happens…’ The guardsmen were now chattering amongst each other. Job was rubbing his head. ‘Arguing about, y’know, interpretations, or some act of some elder, or how the world was made, or the apocalypse… That’s a big one, apocalypse. Always starts arguments.’ She turned down another curve.
‘I’m a Growthist, myself. I always figured the pit’d just… grow big, eat everything up, and remake it. Cycle and all.’
One of the guardsmen spoke up – ‘If you would actually read the interp-’ and was hushed immediately by Linda.
‘Irrelevant. Sorry. Anyway, yeah…’ She gesticulated meaninglessly. ‘We do it in the walls cos, y’know. Keeps things clean. Keeps the visitors and the civvies out.’
‘What’s this have to do with me?’ Job finally asked, when his brain had stopped swimming enough.
‘Oh. Well.’ Linda walked, quiet, thinking of a way to put it. ‘Nettle’s group – Tatterists – are more… conservative. Older interpretations of things. He’s probably gonna feed you to Who Eats Poems.’
Job wasn’t in a position, really, to grasp this. It slipped into his consciousness. He acknowledged it, tiredly, as fact. He rubbed his face. ‘I’m not a poem.’
‘Yeah,’ said Linda. ‘Well…’ She scratched her nose, pondering this. ‘That’s the philosop, ic, erm… Philosopholical backbone of it.’
‘What?’
‘Do you… consider yourself human?’
They spun another corner which was also travelling straight forwards when, finally, Linda sat, leaned against a stretched wall. The other guardsmen, quietly chatting to themselves, sat. Job did not.
‘Not this again,’ he groaned.
‘Its okay, your answer,’ said Linda. ‘I really don’t care.’
Job sat down, opposite to Linda. He looked at the ceiling a bit. Bricks curved into round corners, up there, elongated. It was not a topic he was fond of. A certain mental health strategy, in the wake of the spearing of the sun and the outpouring of gods and cults and general madness that followed, was the NF approach, or Never Fathom, as invented by the new-formed Europan Admiralty.
Fathoming things was dangerous. There were angles out there of such impossibilities that to even look vaguely sidelong at them would drive you to the brink of madness. Some of these angles were possessed of sentient wills, with thoughts so strange and inhuman that to interact with one would, also, drive you to the brink of madness. They lived in the strange dark places, the depths of the solar system where ships returned empty, or with the skins of their passengers filled with strange spirits, or under the mountains or in the curled roots of trees. Places of such uncanniness, such unfamiliarity and loneliness that they would also drive you to the brink of madness. The brink of madness had been a crowded place ever since that thing with the sun.
So, Never Fathom. Job was an expert at it. He loved it. It was his safety net. He didn’t appreciate being forced to fathom his own relationship to humanity, even for a brief moment.
‘Nah,’ he said. It was through teeth he imagined gritted. He laid his head dully back and looked at the roof. He didn’t really believe it. It was a disconnected phrase. Not a white lie but a cousin to one. He felt like he was some faraway observer, audience member, talking about someone, something other than himself. Job? Not human?
Yes. It was fact.
But he didn’t believe it.
‘That’s fine. Honest. I don’t think we’re all we’re cracked up to be anyway.’
One of the guardsmen spoke up, then. He had been shuffling and glancing the whole time, even as the other guardsman tried distracting him. He was bulky and round, made of as much fat as muscle, with a nose almost resembling a bicep. He looked like he could kill an elephant by flexing, and then eat the whole thing afterwards.
‘Who the hell is this, Linda?’ His goggles were hanging over his thick neck. He had a rust-coloured eyebrow raised.
‘Shush, we’re being… phisological.’
‘I’m Job,’ said Job, tilting his head at the guardsman.
The guardsman frowned at that, for a moment. ‘Riley.’
‘You done?’ asked Linda.
‘I’m Nathan Wong,’ said the other guardsman, who promptly went silent again.
‘OK,’ said Linda. ‘Where were we?’
‘I’m not human,’ Job grumbled.
‘Yes. Of course. At least, lacking the basic defining factors of a human, being human flesh and a human soul. And yet, retaining a fundamental poetic consciousness…’
‘Do we know that?’ piped up Nathan, suddenly. Riley was glaring at him sidelong, leaning against the wall, wanting to sleep. ‘Isn’t it a whole field of philosophical questioning, in itself, whether or not someone else is really conscious? Especially a ro-’
‘Irrelevant,’ said Linda. ‘Anyway. The Tatterists think God eats Fundamental Poetic Intent. The sacred part of the consciousness. But God won’t eat people. It’s not cruel, like that. The closest it can get is the FPI in poetry. But that FPI isn’t perfect. That’s the idea. It’s just a translation.’
Job leant his head against the wall. He had to nod, at that. ‘I’ve got pure FPI in me but I’m not a human.’
‘No offence,’ said Linda, ‘But, to the Tatterists, you’re the best sacrifice we might ever get.’
‘None taken,’ said Job, who was, really, a little flattered.
A tap tap tap tapping rang, spun around the curves, down the hall. Footsteps, wandering, ringing around corners.
‘Probly at the holes, now,’ said Riley. Job saw, glowing orange in lamplight, a sword hanging from his belt. It had been fashioned from car metal, like many things in the town. Flecks of red paint still hung onto it in parts. Yet it was clean and slim. It glinted.
They moved steadily along, and the footsteps passed in and out, incredibly distant at some points and then terrifyingly nearby at others. The place, Linda explained in low tones, had been designed for kids, by Who Eats Poems. To play in. Who Eats Poems loved kids, all the exuberance, the novelty, their little souls unstained. They oozed Fundamental Poetic Intent. Everything was still amazing to them.
The irony of waging guerilla warfare in such an environment was completely lost on everybody except for Job, who didn’t find it very funny at all, in the end.
The kids had an uncanny affinity for the tunnels in the walls that faded steadily with age until they were like Linda and the guardsmen, who felt their way clumsily around and hoped a whole lot that they’d end up where they needed. Even as they walked, tiny footsteps rattled ahead of them, a little girl fled across the corridor, and vanished.
The local kids made for very handy, if easily distracted, spies.
They went up slopes that seemed to take them down, turned around corners that spun into diagonal corkscrews that twisted steadily inwards to themselves. They walked outwards, slid up cliffs. They came to a loop. The footsteps returned. The hefty ones from before. Linda was glancing around, frowning. Riley was grimacing, grunting to himself. Nathan was sweating, feeling walls. Job decided he, too, would feel panicked.
It was fairly easy, given the surroundings. Stretched brickwork and lamplight elongated every corridor, every room, so no matter every turn they took, every corner they passed, it was like they had never moved from the start. The stink of oil, the shadows, the heat of the fires in the lamps were all getting on his nerves, choking him up. There was no exit in sight. No moonlight.
The footsteps grew louder.
‘Shit…’ mumbled Linda.
‘Maybe it’s just more kids,’ said Nathan, sweat drops coagulating the neck of his shirt. ‘Maybe it’s Rana’s group.’
Job heard a low wind swirl. He saw the flames in the lamps dance, curl. Shadows hopped and leapt. He saw tatters, shreds in the sides of his vision. He gulped. His head hurt. He felt suddenly cold. He saw a jumping leg, the side of a flapping arm. The swirling wind said:
My name… My name?
And, from the wall, emerged a guardsman Job didn’t recognise. On his neck, on a chain: the necklace Job had seen on Nettle. Two spheres, metal, perfectly round, uncannily so. Light dancing off perfect curves, one small sphere atop the other. His eyes widened, looking at them, and he unsheathed his sword. And so did Linda and Riley and Nathan. So did the other guardsmen following him. So did Nettle, emerging last. All with their necklaces. Tatterists, Job supposed.
‘Job?’ said Nettle, wading through his group of guardsmen. ‘Now, now, what is happening here?’
Job felt a hand draw him back, saw Riley holding his sword in front of him.
Elder Nettle was disgusted by what he saw. It ran down his face, wrinkling his features. His eyes narrowed. ‘He is our visitor, Linda. And here you are–embroiling him into our politics?’
‘You’re an arsehole, Nettle,’ Linda replied, voice dull.
‘What have they been telling you, Job?’ he tilted his head, and his smile returned almost instantly.
‘You’re gonna throw me into your big hole,’ Job said, hand on the tunnelgun. Everybody flinched. He found it in himself, still, to feel somewhat guilty at his casual blasphemy. ‘I’ll leave, if no-one minds.’
‘Don’t! Leave,’ said Nettle.
‘So you do want to throw me into your big hole?’ Job said.
Nettle was silent, for a moment. He swaggered around, tilted his head left, right. ‘Yeah. You got me, there. No offence, of course-’
‘You’re an arsehole.’
‘Ahem. It’s, really, Poetsfetch hasn’t had an opportunity like this in quite a while. You’ve seen it, even the one day you’ve been here.’ His grin had returned, now. It was wider than before. Fake, ironical. It looked like he didn’t know how to get rid of it. Sorrow lined the rest of his face. He slouched. ‘This town is rotting. And you-’ He was looking, now, to Linda. ‘You’ve seen it. You know. Far back. You’ve seen what it was like. In those days, we even had time to move the damn cars out of the streets.’
‘It was okay,’ said Linda. ‘Probably not worth killing people over.’
‘You people,’ grumbled Nettle. He toyed with his sword, sauntered left, right, grin fading once more. ‘I must be the only one here who cares about our future. It’s like you want us to keep fighting. Running around in the walls like rats, stabbing each other.’ His frown was deeply curled. ‘I am not a violent man. This, all this blood, all this fratricide. It’s been making me sick. It’s just one man. One. To get us–back on our feet. It’s horrible. I know. But–some things are.’ He flipped his own sword around, held it tight in a hand. He glanced over his own guardsmen, and they all straightened, clasped their own weapons.
‘Shoot him, Job,’ said Linda. ‘And then run.’
‘Ehm?’ said Job.
‘Wh-excuse me?’ said Elder Nettle.
‘Hrm?’ said Riley.
The guardsmen came together and drew their blades, clanked and rattled.
CRACK CRACK CRACK, said the tunnelgun, blowing Elder Nettle’s leg off, eating a guardsman’s chestpiece.
‘Run now,’ Linda grunted, and Job felt something pull his collar, and it all descended in adrenaline and sweat and elbows jutting sides and armour and swords clinking. They all turned around and in a great awkward mass, fled. People swore. Epithets were flung. Somebody knocked a lamp over and it went out immediately, shattering, and they stumbled in a splotchy blackness.
‘What the hell is happening?’ Riley hissed.
‘What is that gun?!’ Nathan asked.
‘Job shot him and now we’re running,’ answered Linda.
‘It’s my tunnelgun,’ answered Job helpfully.
And on they went, panting and huffing and clanking. The footsteps behind them remained constant. Their panicked sprint had slowed to a distressed jog. And Job heard, he swore, a tapping approaching. Tiny footsteps, right inside that wall-
‘Mum?’ said Anh. The curves, the lights toyed strangely with him. He appeared stretched with the wall, angled over them in a long thin parabola, except his head, which jutted cleanly from the wall.
‘Took long enough,’ grunted Linda.
‘Sorry mum. It’s been more war-ey, tonight.’ His eyes seemed wider, more active. His frown was deeper. And yet, he remained thoroughly stoic.
Linda nodded. ‘Take Job. Out.’
‘What?’ said Job.
‘What?’ said Riley.
‘OK,’ said Anh, and a thin arm emerged from the wall, grasping Job’s wrist. ‘Just follow.’
‘Hang on–’ was all Job could say, before dark brickwork ate it all up. And he was all alone except the cool dull unmoving air and the faint wispy stinks of oil and a panting and a clattering. His eyes were filled with bricks. They swam past him like fish, and they swirled and danced. They stretched, folded, parabolas, hyperbolas. Anh’s grasp on his wrist like a tiny clamp.
‘Please,’ Job whimpered. He was being torn apart. Flung in a windy tunnel of lights. Bricks, wallwork, long shadows. Stains. Little holes, places where ants left footsteps. And he felt something else, pulling at him. Like slivers of torn fabrics, clasping at him. A gentle wind swirled in his ears. ‘Just let me get a-’
Job was face to face with the ground, once more. Or, what he was now using as the ground. Maybe it was a wall elsewhere, or a roof. It was identical, mostly, to the one he had just been pulled from. Anh was crouched opposite to Job. He tilted his head, face still uncaring.
‘Can you puke?’ he asked.
Job made a very good effort, then clasped his neck, stood straight, huffing. The gentle swirling of wind. The silent words inside of it.
Anh looked at him scientifically. ‘There’s something… pulling on you. Or–you’re heavy. Really heavy.’
‘I’m made of plastic and rubber,’ said Job. ‘I’m lighter than someone my size.’
Anh’s mouth tilted, slightly, into a frown. ‘Are you haunted?’
Job looked suddenly up at him. Wind, swirling. A muttering down the far halls, outside the lamplight, where the darkness rumbled, wobbled. And footsteps, again.
‘Hold onto me,’ said Anh. He was going slightly pale. ‘Don’t let go. Ok?’
Job was not able to say ‘sure’, when he was pulled, once more, into the wall. Flooding down the strange curve, stretched across brickwork. And Job wondered, in his rushing mind, behind all the panic, barely registering the patterns gliding by, where they were. Under what street, in whose house? Who was hearing their clattering? Or perhaps they had gone far beyond that town, had surpassed it long ago. That this place inside walls was limited to only a certain set of walls, Job found this hard to believe. They could have been on Mars, right now.
Curvature assailed Job. He felt swung, torn in all directions. Anh’s hand was the single solidity. He could not see Anh. He had been eaten by brickwork. He stretched in strange ways and it hurt Job to look at him, even moreso than anywhere else. Except his hands. One unmoving spot in space. Like a dot on an empty page. A swirling wind, gentle, caressed the back of Job’s head. Like loving hands, silken fabrics tapping at him.
‘Not my name, not my name.’ The words slipped from Job’s mouth. He barely felt them pass, barely realised it was him–his mouth, that his body had been their vessel of delivery. And they swept down with the parabolas.
Job saw tiny limbs. Flicking shadows in the plasterwork of the bricks, in the sides of his eyes. He saw tatters, torn fabric, ripped edges. The ends of something broken and forgotten, muttering in a swirling breeze.
‘Not my name?’ asked Job, to nobody.
And the hand opened. Anh snapped away, spaghettified. His face, stretched high into the air. Shocked. His mouth formed a bending black line stretching higher and higher and higher and higher.
Luis. Luis. Luis. sung the swirling wind.
Job was in the walls of the old office. He knew this with complete certainty. He did not know how he knew. Nobody had told him. There was no sign of it. It was mustier, somewhat. The light of the oil lamps, somehow, seemed weaker. The corridors stretched out like the arms of a star around him. He was laying on the floor gazing into the ceiling and every time he glanced around new corridors sprouted up, growing from the earth.
The swirling wind was there, once more. A gentle, lapping breeze, flicking over Job’s coat. He sat up, head swimming. He had a headache. The corridors directly ahead of him perambulated gently aside, like a trick of perspective. He heard a flapping of fabrics. Something tattered, folding in the shadows.
And he was looking into a great pit.
Luis. Luis.
The air sung it. It was whispered from the plaster in the brickwork. Wind sucked down into the pit, into a blackness darker than dark.
Job tapped himself all over. He tapped the floor. He tapped his face. He ran his fingers over his tunnelgun, ran them over his relics in his pockets. Felt the edges of his crucifix. His head was still rolling. He was fairly sure where up went, and where down went.
‘Don’t call me that,’ he moaned. ‘My name’s Job.’
The pit swirled mournfully. There was a single lamp, spitting, flickering. Stinking like oil. Little tongues of smoke twiddling uselessly. And the shadows swept long spiky arms at him. Limbs, disappearing, at the corners of his eyes.
Mercy.
‘What?’
Mercy. For the dying and abandoned. The wind whipped, picked up motes of dust, spinning in the orange lamplight.
My name has been taken. I have been left here. Mercy. Mercy.
Job stood, and began to back away. The shadows fell on him like liquid. It was the same sentience floating in the air as in the old office. Pressing on his skull, drawing him in. A faint pull. And the swirling wind, flapping against his back, towards the pit. The pit, wide as the eye could see. Extending as far as he could look.
One man. To be back on my feet.
Crumbling, creaking. The pit extended.
Job gasped, spun around, and ran.
It grew like a puddle of water. It ate away at the brickwork. Job felt the air dragging at him. Whipping at his eyes. He sprinted and it was all mush, just him and the plaster in the walls, racing aside. Darkness and wind patting at his back, and all the air muttering to him about names and mercy. The corridor extended. Lamplight erupted, rose up to Job, slid past and back. Curvature, parabolas, slinging past Job. And it was approaching him. He felt the wind hasten. He heard it whistle down the pit. It neared, steadier, steadier, closer.
Job threw himself into a wall.
It scraped at his arm. A rip, the sleeve of his coat opening. The bite of bricks on his side.
Job’s eyes snapped open. A cheap carpet scratched the back of his head. Lumpy knots of fabric, sand and dust in the pores. He looked up, saw a boot. He looked up further and came eye to eye with Elder Nettle, patting down a chrome leg, looking back down at him.
‘A divine intervention,’ he muttered.
Meat Girls Dot Org 