Waste Deep

Waste Deep Chapter 1: Bad Air

Harvel Gillis stared at the bottom of Lindons bunk, counting the spots of rust that were working their way through the thin sheet steel. Everything rusted down here. He suspected it had something to do with the air, and the millions of gallons of raw sewage flowing around them as they slept.

Even the hinges of his glasses were starting to rust. He gave up on the spots for now. They'd have to wait until he could get some sort of chart going.

He turned his head to stare out of one of the numerous tiny portholes that dotted the sides of the submerged pod. He didn't know why he bothered. All you could ever see was a mixture of brown and green, with maybe a dash of yellow here and there. He'd have to chalk it up to boredom, with maybe a hint of escapism.

He often imagined he was on board one of the many capital ships that lazily floated above the massive city of Boris-Valka. He'd never been aboard an airship of any kind so he wasn't quite sure what he'd be looking at. The important bit was that he wouldn't be three miles away from the stars in a ten by fifteen metal box.

As on many occasions his imagination stopped there, a crumpled diaper bumping up against the plexiglass, throwing him back into sober reality. He shot a glance at Dibbuk sleeping in her oversized steel cot. She was listening to rain sounds so loudly that he could actually make out each time the simulated thunder broke out.

He could never understand how she could sleep that much. Somehow, he could spend fourteen hours slogging through shit, and still only catch five hours or so of real sleep. Bukky on the other hand, could get 8 hours of solid rest, wake up for 20 minutes and like clockwork get in another 8, no problem.

He was nearly as green as the sewage around them with envy. Nearly being the operative word here. He couldn't imagine anything quite that green.

If sleep were a commodity, Dibbuk would have been a millionaire. Meanwhile Harvel was nearly bankrupt. He often justified said poverty by blaming it on the quality of the air. By the time it was pumped down from the surface it was nearly as greasy and thick as good soup. He liked to imagine it would be served as a bisque, or maybe a chowder.

Truth be told, he was shit at the whole sleeping thing to begin with. He had started having the horrifying nightmares when he was about seven. Once he'd started getting used to them, he'd never quite gone back to normal.

They weren't the clearest nightmares. Mostly shifting lights and glimpses of unfamiliar flesh. If he got far enough into them, he would occasionally see a great monolith made up of some substance he couldn't quite place. Honestly, they had stopped terrifying him years ago. Now, he just got annoyed whenever he sweat through his sheets.

He shifted his gaze over to the trio in the corner. He watched as Lindon, Merel, and Wicksomme passed around a bottle of Bullrutters Thiskey, a type of thickened whiskey primarily drank by waste-walkers. He'd never been much of a fan himself. It reminded him of the cough syrup his dad made him take when he was a kid. In a rather odd turn of events, he'd heard that it was popular among the wealthy elite of central, as a sort of novelty. He couldn't quite put his finger on it but something about that bothered him a little.

A little too late, he realized he'd been staring for just a bit too long. He turned over and tried to make himself comfortable. They must have realized it too as he felt a slight nudge on the back of his shoulder. He turned over again to see Lindon holding out the bottle as an offer for him to take a drink himself.

"Figured you might want a swig of the old bullfuckers Harv." Don Lindon said, jovially unscrewing the top of the bottle.

Don Lindon was a stocky, older man with a short gray beard, stained yellow around his mouth from decades of chain smoking. Harvel suspected he might have been in his late fifties, but with the stress of this job he could've easily been in his early forties. He had a face like an aging alcoholic horse, with the personality of a negligent landlord.