Evil Is Pink (bxb)

Chapter 5

Have you ever put on a pair of clean socks and dragged them across a carpet to give someone a static shock? Well, imagine that, and then imagine the pain being two— no, four times worse. And then imagine it going all over your body like a biting virus surging through every vein in an instant, starting from your neck.

Yup. That's what Sticks felt as he toppled over like a frozen mannequin, his muscles turning to stone. Sticks couldn't see him, but he could hear Mr. Quinn chuckling pleasantly to himself, as though he had stumbled across a mildly humorous picture on his phone.

His collar sizzled, and then came a pain so sudden and so shocking that it knocked Sticks out entirely. Sticks wouldn't even realize he was knocked out until he opened his eyes weakly again and found himself surrounded in complete darkness, gasping air that was somehow both humid and moist, but scratchy and dry.

Like wet smoke.

He coughed, and then something clubbed against his head.

"Get up. It's time to work."

Even before getting clubbed in the head, Sticks felt like he had just been clubbed in the head. Now, he felt like someone had driven a fork through his brain. A desperate grogginess slurred his every thought and movement. He attempted to push himself up from off the ground, but every movement felt like he was wading through jelly. Then he realized was in manacles. Strung and chained with the other punished prisoners, though nothing could have prepared him for the sight of them. They were black and yellow skeletons, black from the soot and coal and yellow from their leaking scabs. All of them, heaving and dying with pickaxes in their hands.

One of them, his nearest neighbor, looked at him with glowing, fearful blue eyes. "Hurry—! Pick up the ax and work or else you'll die—!" He whisper-shouted at him.

That's when Sticks learned that it was either work or die.

And so he picked up the mattock in front of him and began chipping away at the stone, following everyone else's lead. By the end of that first day, his hands felt like they had been swinging a handle made out of sandpaper nonstop for years. And he was thirsty. Oh, he had never been thirstier in that moment than in all his life. The only other time that came close was when Sticks forgot to get the newspaper for his dad, and so he was locked up inside a closet and was forgotten there for a few days. But he supposed he shouldn't complain. His fellow miners looked worse. They looked like they hadn't sipped a bowl of soup in years.

The next day was the same.

Sticks hammered away, mindlessly, until at one point he found a shiny worm crawling through the rocks. He blinked at it, and when it squiggled, Sticks imagined that it was saying 'hello' to him.

Sticks pressed his lips together, wiping the sweat from his forehead and neck. His hands were black with muck and shiny from sweat, which made his black pinky resemble a worm itself. So he wiggled his pinky at the worm.

"H-Hello..." His voice was scratchy from the dust. To his surprise, it seemed like the worm wiggled back, dancing to him in response. It was kinda cute. Sticks felt himself smiling, until a sudden clench of his gut disturbed his train of thought. Sticks didn't understand where it came from, but he had a vague, prickly notion that something terrible was about to happen. A shiver went up his spine as he looked around, and then desperately began waving the worm away.

"Go—! Shoo—!" He whispered at the worm, right as one of his mining neighbors accidentally bumped into him.

The emaciated, bearded miner snapped his head towards him, fear rippling through his eyes. "What are you doing?! Don't stop working—don't stop..." He eyed the worm in front of them. "...Is that a snake...?"

The word sent a ripple of curiosity through the chains that bound Sticks and all the other miners together. With just that one word, chaos was born. Sticks was knocked away, watching as the miners grabbed and ripped the shiny worm apart, but not before ripping each other apart, just for the chance of being able to take a bite out of it.

Have you ever seen anything as bad as that? Sticks sure hadn't.

And so he screamed. And cried. And sobbed. It was undoubtedly the worst thing he had ever seen, and seeing it made Sticks's stomach pang with a physical, twisting ache.

It was his fault. Just like his father, he had ruined the innocent worm, who just wanted to say hello to him. He couldn't understand how anyone could watch something like that and not want to cry.

The guards laughed as though they were paid to—like a studio audience in a sitcom. It was a loud, boisterous sound and yet strangely devoid of life and pleasure, like they were actors bouncing the cruelty off of one another. They watched the bony prisoners fight each other to the death for the worm, and when they were done, they came and took all those miners away anyway, clubbing them into submission. Because Sticks wasn't involved in the chaos, he was spared from the beatings that followed. He never saw those miners again. But he could hear their screams echoing through the cave. The next hour, other prisoners, some as fresh and new as Sticks and others as old as night, came to replace them...

Sticks couldn't tell when it was morning or night, and depended solely on the times when the officers and guards shoved them deeper into the caves to let them sleep and drink black water. And because, if they were 'good' and had filled their quota, they were given a chicken leg that smelled suspiciously sour to eat. To share. A single leg between twenty.

The cave was fetid. The ground was rock hard, yet squishy and wet all at once. If given a choice, Sticks would have preferred to sleep in a sewer instead. He had done that before, and it certainly wasn't as bad as you'd think. He had made his first friend there: a rat who was kind of balding but a little chunky. Sticks remembered him fondly...He never named him because Sticks thought it would be rude to name a rat who probably already had a name that he didn't know, but in his head, Sticks remembered him as Chunky. Anyways, Chunky always came by when Sticks was alone and preparing to sleep. The both of them would always stare at each other in the darkness, a silent brewing of understanding forming between the two of them. Sticks had always eaten right before he slept, and he would always share a piece of his bread with the rat. And in return, the rat would sleep on his head. One day, his father found the rat snuggling on his red hair and his father was not happy.

"No son of mine will embarrass himself by hugging a STINKIN' RAT covered in poo—!" And so, despite Sticks's protests, his father, picked up Chunky by the tail and threw him into the swirling river of green, poopy water. And Sticks never saw Chunky again. And when he cried, his father patted him on the head. "Shush now—When you get older, I will get you a minion that is more befitting of a villain of your station. Now go eat your breakfast and get to work."

There was little to no time to talk in all the 24 hours one would spend inside the darkness. Because if the quota was not met, it meant no food or water for the miners.

Here, he and the other mining prisoners had no names. There was no point in learning them.

Instead of talking, they chanted:

"Just keep going..." as though it was some kind of magical prayer that protected them from the falling rocks, the hidden slopes, the barely supported shafts and galleries that sometimes people tripped and fell over, never to be seen again. If it weren't for Sticks' special pink skin and blue blood, the week he spent collecting scrapes, bruises, and cuts might have killed him. People collapsed all around him. It happened all the time. And when it did, the guards came to take them away. They were never seen again, the only remnants of their existence fading into a scream that echoed through the cavern walls every few minutes. They were like ghosts. Or maybe they were ghosts. Their wailing came from somewhere above, beyond and all around them. Their screams were sometimes as loud as though they were screaming into his ear, even though Sticks knew they were far, far away. Sometimes, because the cave was so large, he wondered how long and how far it took for the screams to travel through the caverns in order to reach him. Maybe he was hearing the screams and voices of those who were long dead already. So, in a way, maybe he really was listening to a ghost.

Wasn't that neat?

And if he did not stop, he'd become one too...