Foundations
The grit stuck to her eyes, made them itch and burn, the humid heat pushed down crushing her lungs from the inside. Another brick was added to the load, her knees wobbled painfully. The smell of the flickering flame in the lamp, acrid and throat burning but it would not go out if it got wet. It cast an ugly yellowness to her already haggard features. She stumbled forward carrying the load away. The tunnel floor was slick with algae and bat feces. The sills on her boots were beginning to go, she would have to stay up and use pitch to seal them again tonight but weariness was already cutting into her deepest marrow, it was a leadened ache at her core.
The swinging rope ladder twisted as she tried to pull herself up. It was slow going the muscles in her arms sinuey and hard, popped out. It hurt – it was happening worse each day. Soon she would not be able to pull herself and her load up. Soon she would no longer be permitted to leave the mine.
She exited into the twilight. And deposited her bricks in a battered pull cart. She noted vaguely her son was tethered too it. He gave a vague nod and pulled it away. She clamped down on thought of others she had not seen for too long and staggered over to the clipped board welding man. ’24 loads today Usular, that is down they may dock your food ration for that.’ She stared at him with a numb bitterness. Then the laughter began to pull itself up ripping her stomach as it came. Less food, less strength, less work, meant less food. The laughter split the night and the foreman dropped his clip board. ‘You think that’s funny?’ he hissed.
She didn’t but she couldn’t stop laughing. A whole city lay covered in mud and ooze that they pumped out and she helped mine bricks for the new world, the glorious new world that her and her kind would never see. The foreman struck her to the ground, his clip board lay there, the stylis glinted in the last rays of the dying sun. Ursular wondered briefly if she would she another dawn, her sons solemn eyes haunted her. She picked the stylis up – the foreman wasn’t expecting an attack. He was felled and twitching and she was looking for the next one to kill before she was thrown in an airshaft to poison the deeper mines.
Posted: Thursday, July 1st, 2010 @ 3:24 pm
Categories: Flash Fiction, The Punks World.
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