Chapter 4: Four

I found out pretty fast that Glim was a big talker. An irritatingly big talker. He talked like a dog-kissing chit who’s had much to drink, the only difference was that he didn’t giggle so much.

Finally—after getting my good ear talked off about the best stones to suck on for moisture—I said politely, “Glim, don’t you ever shut your rat-hole?”

He stopped walking abruptly, and jerked his arms with all the unnaturalness of a bug gone blark. I didn’t notice it then, but he must have lowered his torch, so as to give his face that shadow-mask look, as if maggots were chomping holes through it. I didn’t notice the trick then, but I sure noticed the maggot freaking mask. I hadn’t thought he could get uglier. I was wrong.

“No, I don’t,” he said, in a voice like a bed of nails. “You got a problem with that? Y’gonna make me shut up? A shit-mouthed runt like you, I could grab you in one hand and crush your brains out on the wall right here, right now.” Then he jerked his arm again—like a grasshopper sticking out a leg—and punched the side of the cave. There was a loud bang, and little bits of rocks skittered onto the ground.

He was trying to put on the tough-guy front, trying to be a macho dwarf. ‘Course I didn’t fall for it and go yellow. What do you think I am, a chit-heart? Idiot! Of course, I amn’t! What could a footless freak do to me, anyhow?

But I’m a diplomatic person. I have the soul of an ambassador, have had it since I was an eensy little kid. So said I, all fancy, “I was just asking a question, friend. You got no sense of humor.”

He didn’t say anything. Just grunted and started walking again. I thought I’d won that round, so I followed him smirking, not knowing he was plotting to dump all-sewercrap down on my head later on.

We walked on and the journey seemed to stretch into years. It was like we were going down and down, deeper and deeper world without end, like a coupla saints on the happyshiny pilgrim’s road to the Incinerators. It was like one of those religious parodies—the ones in the circuses—only it wasn’t funny and there were no puppet-gods beating each other up with spoons. There was nothing but cave roof and cave floor. And a helluva lot of cave wall.

Then faster than you can say corpse-sucking son of a roach-chomping whore, the light was gone and Glim had gone with it. I looked to the left and right, searching for any sign of his torchlight. I busted up running when I thought I saw something flickering in the far right. And I could have caught up to it too. Only I tripped on something and I fell against the wall.

Then I heard it: a low, rumbling growl. It ran up my spine then burrowed its way into my nape, like a rat made of ice. Fucking hurt. And the cold—! The hair on my arms stood up and quivered like grass in a howling wind.

But I was brave. (I wasn’t shaking and near-pissing my pants, Birdshit, don’t smirk at me that way! I said don’t smirk at me that way!) I didn’t start running again. Well, yeah, so I had my back against the wall and I couldn’t have gone anywhere in any case, but that’s not the point. The point is I held my ground and didn’t piss on myself, even though I really, really needed to go bad. Especially when my eyes got used to the dim light and I saw it. Because it was the most hideous son-of-a-stiff I ever did see in my life. Glim had nothing on it.

It was my father. He was on his hands and knees, and his robe was dirty and ragged, like he’d been trying to trim his sleeves using the sharp edges of rocks. And when I yelled “Parting?!” (so my dad’s name is Parting, a shit-name, I know) he looked up and snorted at me.

So my father has many flaws. Deadskies, he’s all flaws. You can’t get flaweder than the bastard. But one thing that could be said about him is that he never snorts. He makes “hmm”-ming noises when he’s crasking down a client; makes bullish, growling sounds when he gets angry; does all kinds of strange crap down inside his throat when he listens to you. I mean, the man has thirteen kinds of laugh (all of them as fake as a third tit). He never snorts.

This wasn’t my dad. This was something unreal. A parody. My ear, the one with my father’s spy-mite in it, flared up with absolute hurt.

I was getting ready to shout, “What in shit are you?” when the thing leapt at me, fingers curled up into claw-shapes. We tumbled on the ground, snarling like two demons in a pit.

This wasn’t exactly a dream come true for me. Now don’t get me wrong. All my life, I’ve dreamed of dragging my dad down onto the dirt. Socking it to him just this once (or twenty times), and maybe kicking his balls straight up into his stomach. But in my dreams, I never thought he’d be punching and biting me too. My dreams had been more something like: me, with a big stick, and him, tied to a tree, with a gag stuffed in his mouth. Hey, I’m just being honest.

So there we were, rolling around in the dark, kicking and jabbing. Ever been in a real fight? Of course, you have, you’re one of the mindless masses after all, and we all know you get into fights like that. When drunk maybe—tired in that jumpingburning way—and just plain filled with world-hate. Or when you messed up a job and some kid starts laughing at you about it, or when the moneylender takes the damn shirt off your back to pay for your debts, or maybe when all of that happens, everything, all at the same blarking time. Well damn me to a liff’s life, but that gets the blood boiling. You see red and just lay into the first idiot who crosses your path.

You’d know this, get it, how these fights are so ugly and senseless and hateful and fucking fun. It’s being alive and crap like that. It’s getting even with the world that made it that you’re born like piss with piss for piss and dungmud.

That’s how it was with this thing that was my father. We fought like that, eyes bulging, muscles beating with the evil pulse. His fingers would get into my nose and wriggle around until I felt like sneezing blood; then I’d try to jab him in the eyes, or stick my pinkies into his ears, and knee him in the groin whenever I could. But he was slick, a kind of jelly with bones. I couldn’t hurt him, but he sure as s’no-gods hurt me.

At first, I tried not to bite, but then it got so that my right arm was all wrinkled up from the marks of his teeth. When dozens of those ugly wounds tore open all at once and began to itch from the dirt and sweat, I just got so mad. I got killing-mad the way they did, those hopeless, world-hating liffs, when they just snap and kill everyone they can.

Just like that, all my hate just rose up in my throat like puke. This is my father, I was thinking, the one with all the other sons and other lives, and he has nothing better to do then bite me, damn him alive to the Incinerators!

It was still dark, but that dark became all hot and red. I got an opening at his throat and I bit and bit so hard. And when I let go with my jaw, I got my hands around his neck somehow and I squeezed. I squeezed until forever. I did it so hard, it was like a prayer. Now I’ve never known any gods—except those googly-eyed ones in the circuses—but let me tell you, when I had my hands around my dad’s neck it was the closest thing I ever came to religion.

I was laughing, shouting, gargling warm, salty stuff in my mouth. I felt like a real kid, instead of a traitorboy who spied and scammed and stole for a sniveling coward of a father. It was the best feeling in the world. It was absolute freedom.

The next thing I remember is a sudden light and Glim’s twisted nose poking at me. I sat up blinking because the light hurt, and then I shoved him away, shouting, “Get off-a me! Or I’ll kill you like I killed him!” I bared my teeth.

He looked scared for maybe a second—I don’t know what he saw in my face—but then he laughed. Laughed! It still annoys me now, that stupid dwarf-laugh.

“How old are you, Tukeli-eli-anandoros?”

I didn’t answer him. It was a dumb liff who went about asking Slum-boys their ages. Until we get our first kill, we’re all the same age—kids. Then we kill someone and we become old. That’s how it was.

And I was old now. I was his equal and he had no right to ask me any questions. So I just glowered at him sullenly. Heh. So my head just got a bit too big—I was a little stupid and touchy back then.

“You look about five,” he said between chuckles. “I couldn’ve killed a cueksaa when I was five. Bare-handed too.”

I had no idea what he was talking about, but his mistake irritated me. “I’m six,” I snarled. “And I bet you couldn’t kill your father either.”

He went right on laughing. “Look at it. That ain’t your father.”

I looked. Glim obligingly held the torch out so I could see better. And behold! It wasn’t. It was some shiny, baldpink thing, a demon if I’d ever seen one. It looked something like a leggy dog that had scratched out all its fur, if a dog could have ears at the sides of its head and eyes that took up the entire front part of its face. Its tongue was lolling out of a mouth full of blunt square teeth; it had no nose. I felt strange. Where did my father go? Hadn’t I killed him? Wasn’t he dead? Or did I have to do it all over again?

“What in the Attic is that?” I asked.

“That, comrade, is a cueksaa. Food. Didn’t you listen to the Madman?” Glim handed me the torch, and through some complicated maneuverings of his legs, knelt down by the corpse and started worrying at it, pressing it at places like a housewife poking at plucked chickens to check freshness.

“I was nearly its food,” I said, getting angry. “I need an explanation, Glim! Why did you leave me just ‘afore a cueksaa turned up? Because if you led me to this thing just ‘cause I told you to shut up, well I’d have to say you’re a dog-ass-licking lowlife and I don’t care if you beat up on me, that would just make you even lower.”

That wiped the smile off his face. His expression became gentle and serious, the kind of face old people get when they’re thinking about how nice it was back in the days when they still had teeth. Shit-steaks, I wanted to knock out his teeth. He had no right to look like a gods’-saint after grumping at me and then leaving me all by myself in the dark.

“You’re a suspicious one,” he said. “I was just like you, long time ago. Pure rage trapped in a puny, little nutsack.”

I jumped up and swung at him, but he caught my fist and twisted hard. Imp-crap, he was strong. He stood up from the cueksaa’s corpse, pulling me right up against him so he could talk straight into my ear.

“Now you listen up, comrade-runt. I joined the tunnel-bonded two years ago, and the escort who came to fetch me did the same thing to me like I did to you. You got no call to be all righteous. This place? This is cueksaa forage-ground—they come here to chew at rocks and anything that passes by. They’re always up and jumping around, only they get real sluggish when there’s a light. Now what my escort did—the same I did to you—he turned a corner, hid his torchlight against a crack in the wall. A coupla cueksaa came awake and together they made me think they was my wife and kid. My wife and kid. I hugged them and they started biting at me with their teeth. I couldn’t stop them. I couldn’t lift a dog-damned finger, I just kept saying their names. My escort, he had to come and saved me.” He stopped talking and swallowed, a great big gulp that made his Adam’s apple bulge. I could still remember that gulp, could even hear it sometimes. Glulgk. That’s how it was.

He’d let go of my wrist long before he stopped, but I hadn’t noticed. I couldn’t think of anything to say. I mean, he didn’t have to tell me all that! He could have just said: “Oh, I did it to you ‘cause it’s part of our stupid welcome ritual. Yay!” I would have understood that. As it was, my throat hurt and I was embarrassed out of my head. So when a thought came to me, I just burst out with it, without thinking. “So you hated your wife and kid or something?” I figured the cueksaa came at you in the form of the people you hated most in the world. Fucking demons.

He made several dry “ha ha”s. He sounded tired instead of pissed off or anything, so I relaxed. “You hate your father, don’t you?” he asked. When I nodded curtly, he continued, “You’re lucky. That happens too. See, cueksaa can’t tell the difference. It’s all the same to them. They dig in your mind, find out the people you think the most about, then they take that shape. Hate, love, it don’t matter as long as the feeling’s strong.”

I nodded. Nodded. Now in the gutter where I crawled out from, nodding means “I get the point, you could shut up now!” but Glim took it as a sign to blabber on.

“They try to mess you up with feelings, y’see,” he lectured. If he started waggling his pointer-finger, he could have looked like someone’s idea of a mother. I decided if there were any intelligent people down here, I already had a joke for them. I could imitate Glim going all momma-dwarf and make ‘em all laugh.

Oblivious, he went on, “These cueksaa, they make it so that you can’t act because you’re too busy thinking and feeling. And that’s why we have this test. It’s a fucking nasty trick, but it’s to save your life. It’s to scare you. It’s to get it into your brain—into the brain of everyone who gets tunnel-bonded—that this is serious. This place is just one step away from the Incinerators. It’s stuffed with demons. You can go mad. So you gotta be careful. Don’t go out without your partner. Don’t let your heart get in the way of your head. And don’t ever lose sight of the torch. Anyone who can’t get that deserves to get eaten.”

“Sounds good to me,” I said, even though I thought the rules were stupid. I killed my cueksaa, didn’t I? Using the power of my hate, I killed it with my bare hands and I was just six. And he couldn’t. I felt sorry for him, but of course, I couldn’t tell him that. He’d just go grumpy-dwarf-dash-your-brains-out on me again.

“Then you’ll do fine,” he said. I think he might have tried to pat me on the head, but I snapped at his fingers and that was the end of that. “I give you a four,” he said.

“What?”

“A four out of five. You’re a good kid to have at someone’s back, Tukeli-eli-anandoros, even if you like to think you’re more badass than you are.”

Which just shows how innocent the poor liff was. “Hey, thanks,” I replied insincerely. “I’d take you at my back anytime.” It was only when we reached the underground village of the tunnel-bonded that I realized that that was exactly what my father would have said.

-----

Note: A few days after I wrote this chapter, my father died. Now I’m not superstitious. But now that I’ve remembered it, I feel like getting rid of this chapter and moving on at once.

For the people who’ve read this and reviewed, thank you so much. I’ll be finishing typing out my return reviews in a week. Please be patient, though, as my normally messed up mind is even more messed up right now…