Today was no different. By the time their sodden, exhausted procession finally reached the main drainage junction for the aristocratic Highrise district, Gunter had already sustained a dozen fresh nicks, lacerations and bruises from a multitude of stray strikes. Pockmarks adorned his gaunt features from having his face ground repeatedly into the soiled brickwork while Byrne or Calley used his skull for footing as they clambered deeper into the muck-choked chambers.Not that any of it truly registered anymore. Gunter's entire world had shrunk inward, growing numb to all but the basest instincts for survival and the single minded drive of completing his labors. He plodded along in a skin-toughened trance, scarcely flinching as his battered hands and bare feet slipped across the moss-slick stonework and jagged metal castoffs littering the drainage pits.Around him, the other emaciated urchins droned half-heartedly at their tasks, long since cowed into obedient misery by the overt savagery of their keepers. It became their own distorted form of childhood game – seeing who could wallow longest in the fetid effluvium before some fresh injury or exhaustion overtook them.
Needless to say, Byrne and Calley won every time. The two hulking sub humans appeared to derive sadistic gratification from bullying and beating the already-shattered spirits into total submission.
"Buck up, cull trash!" Byrne's raucous bark echoed metallically through the domed vaults as his whale-like form hoved into view. He glared down his flat, snout-like nose at Gunter and the other vacantly-staring urchins from his perch atop the central cistern. "You lot scurry any slower and I'll be usin' yer bones to ream these drains next!"The massive foreman punctuated his threat by hawking up a giant gob of phlegmy spittle to splatter across the back of a nearby boy's skull. The poor lad jolted in alarm, but remained frozen in place as the viscous load ran in greasy rivulets down over his spindly shoulders."Few smart raps'll get yer engines stokin' right as rain," Byrne sneered, unhooking a length of knotted lash from his belt with obvious relish.Gunter knew better than to even flinch as the cruel taskmaster aimed a few cursing blows his way. They were just part of the routine, after all. To show any sign of reaction would only prolong the misery down here.
"This'un's down near the junction..." Calley's nasal bray echoed from deeper within the feculence-lined vaults just as Byrne drew back for another swing. "Think it's gonna need live'uns to slither on in!"At those words, Gunter felt his pulse quicken despite his trance-like ennui. Not again...not this quickly after suffering through that harrowing "pipe-scrape" last week. An icy frisson plucked at his innards at the prospect.Pipe-scraping – the cruel practice of sending one or more of the urchin sewer workers into the tighter, debris-clogged piping with merely a length of guide rope secured round their scrawny middles. It was the most feared and despised of all their duties, forcing them to wriggle blind and immersed in the perpetual flows of putrid, body-fouled sewage and drainage. All while trying to locate and clear obstructions impeding the pipes from within the jagged and hazardous interior channels.More than once, Gunter had returned from such ordeals raw and bleeding from scalding pipe shards and bile-scalded skin. Racked from interminable hours contorting his undernourished frame through claustrophobic corridors of filth with nothing but the fraying ropes anchored round his waist to drag himself along.
And yet, such were the routines he was expected to suffer through without complaint. All in exchange for a starvation wage from Byrne that could at least provide a meagre amount of food for his mother and sisters. Consequences and degradations be damned, that pittance kept his little family alive – at least for whatever hellish future lay in store for them all.He watched in silence as Calley quickly set about unfurling a long hempen line from a nearby spool, the barbed metal hook at the end clinking ominously against the stained stone floor. It seemed the cruelties of the day had only just begun."That's our boy!" Byrne swung his arm in Gunter's direction, knotted whip leading the way. "Littlest scrap of all, so you gets to go first!"Gunter knew better than to protest as the thorny barb was tossed to his feet, along with the wrist-thick coil of grimy rope intended to be lashed around his middle. One meager glance around at the other hunched, fearful figures confirmed none would offer to take his place in the breach. It was a wretched inevitability of existence down here.With leaden limbs, Gunter bent to encircle his narrow waist as best he could with the looped rope. He tried not to dwell on the lancing stabs of terror uncoiling within him at the thought of being sealed away in those utterly lightless, dank tunnels. At the mercy of whatever hazards might lurk within the perpetual flows of sewage-tainted runoff.Once properly trussed up, the young sewer-rat shuffled towards the periphery access pipe as directed by Calley's rude gestures. He tried to calm his mind and not focus too intently on the cramped diameter barely wide enough for his slip of a body to wriggle through. Don't think about the choking crush of the confined spaces or being enveloped in total, suffocating darkness...That familiar churning rose within his chest as Gunter approached the yawning maw of the culvert entrance. He gingerly positioned himself at the edge of the slick stone intake, taking several steadying breaths before daring to look back over his bony shoulder.Byrne loomed nearby, chewing on an unlit stub of pipe and leering cruelly. His meaty mitt knotted around the trailing end of Gunter's lifeline, impatience etched across his blotchy features."Just like afore, gully-grunt" the lout barked around his cheroot. "You snag whatever's cloggin' 'er up and we'll haul ye back out. Take too long or get yerself wedged and..." He thumped the knuckles of his free hand against his bullish neck, leaving the rest of the threat mercifully unspoken.Forcing himself not to contemplate whatever dire fates might await his failure, Gunter took one final breath before plunging headlong into the claustrophobic blackness.Almost immediately his world became consumed with a viscous, stifling miasma. The sludge flowed deep enough that he had to propel himself forward awkwardly by elbows and knees, every inch of exposed flesh soon coated in the foul muck. Though he was submerged from the chest down, the fumes remained thick and choking enough to induce wheezing panic before he fought down the childish dread of being entombed alive down here.Blind but for those initial glimpses snatched at the entrance, Gunter used his free hand to feel out ahead while the other maintained his faltering grip on the lifeline tether. Cold, slimy masonry walling pressed in suffocatingly close on either side, the tunnel scarcely wider than his emaciated frame.He could only hope the blackened mire he was swimming through consisted solely of raw sewage and not some fresh agglomeration of dumped corpses intermingling with the muck.Every few meters he paused to investigate some ragged snag along the piping, sliding questing fingers over the jagged metal joints and crusted accumulations. Whenever he encountered a promising solid mass, Gunter tugged on the rope to signal his would-be "rescuers" to begin hauling him back toward the central junction.But invariably, no matter how tremendous the obstruction seemed to his groping hands, the lifeline would simply slip free within a few feet. Whatever was clogging the arterial flow, it was lodged depressingly further down. With a fatalistic sigh misting foulness across his lips, Gunter would then slacken the hemp and let it play back out so that he could press onward into the unending bowels of the drainage system.