Writing Peers: 2nd Place

DARK WORK

They whispered his name as if it were a secret. Like if it were said too loudly  he’d appear, summoned like the great clicking mechanical beasts that rose from  the sand if they heard you running in the dark.  

I just called him The Tuna Man.  

Biggs said he was probably dead. That it had been too many weeks since  he’d been back. That one of the beasts must have gotten him.  

I knew better.  

He slipped amongst the stone-walled tunnels like wind, disappearing into  crevices in the rock as if he weren’t made of flesh and bone. Sometimes I  followed him into the secret places, untainted by raw sewage and rotting bones,  and watched him press his cheek to the weeping walls. He whispered to the  dark as if it were a lover.  

It loved him back. 

They said he didn’t even have eyes, just holes where the beasts had  caught him once and plucked them out. But I watched a moonbeam caress his  face, and couldn’t help but wonder if they hadn’t been a gift to the pitch we  lived in. He gave it his eyes, and it gave him its sight.

I tried to imagine what it would be like, to see what darkness sees, but I couldn’t. The moonbeam  skittered away, the laws of physics bending their own rules, keen to avoid him.  

Darkness was a jealous lover.  

They said he was a wet worker. They said he was the one who had killed  Alina Amren. They said he was the one who everyone was looking for.  

I laughed.  

They could look all they want.  

I’d stolen a sardine from him, once. I’d watched him tuck it into the pocket  of his leather coat, a patchwork homage to his skill with a knife, hiding in the  dark until he fell asleep. When I’d finished it he flashed his blade, nicking me  with the tip.  

He told me to ask first, next time. That the darkness had given me away.  We shared a tin of tuna.  

I didn’t tell Biggs.  

The Tuna Man showed me a path through the dunes, a place the beasts  didn’t go. He said there was too much dead metal, there. That the beasts didn’t  like it. 

The metal corpses were shaped like giant serpents, enormous ladders in  the sky with loops the size of baby beasts. The Tuna Man said they were called  roller coasters. He said people used to ride them like dragons.  

I called them Sky Snakes.  

We’d scavenge in silence, on the prowl for weapons and supplies. We  rarely found any, but if there was a knife to be found he’d find it. I was better at  catching rodents. He’d skin them quickly, efficiently, tucking the pelts into his  satchel and picking his teeth with their bones. He said he was making a bed  from their skin, something soft for his aching back, but I never saw it.  

I lived for those secret nights in the dunes, for the wind on my cheeks and  the sting of sand in my eyes, the feeling of the dirt beneath my feet instead of  me beneath the dirt. But they were rare; wet work was in demand, it seemed, as  he was away more often than not and I didn’t have the courage to go without  him.  

Sometimes the beasts would swarm the caverns that were big enough to  hold them. It was for show, as we all knew they didn’t fit into the tunnels, but it  was effective. The night after a swarming, dozens of families would pack up  their sewage-infested things, wait until the cover of darkness, and run.  

We’d listen to the mechanical clicking all night long, the crunch of their  bones a symphony that haunted our dreams for days. 

It had been months when I felt a shift. The darkness began to stir,  thickening in anticipation, as we heard the muted steps of his boots and smelled  the fresh air on his coat.  

He slumped against the wall.  

I offered to carry him to his pile of furs.  

He laughed. I was too small.  

He asked me if I’d gone out to see the Sky Snakes. I told him that I  wouldn’t go to the dunes without him.  

He told me I’d have to.  

Biggs came looking for me, his calls echoing off the walls, but he didn’t  know our secret places. He didn’t see us. Nobody did.  

The darkness raged that night, a tempest that shook the foundation of the  rock, sand seeping between the cracks above and raining down on us like tears.  

I offered it my eyes.  

I climbed to the top of the tallest Sky Snake. I could see what the darkness  saw now, and no longer feared the dunes. Not when the beasts had made a bed  of our skins and called it a city.  

We were the rats, to them. We were the vermin. 

I became the wet worker. I began to hunt.  

Soon, my name was the secret said in a whisper.