Sashi and I had not returned in one week. Our worthlessness made it so that we often went unnoticed for days on end. Occasionally, when jostled by the courage that comes with adventure and the thrill of experience, we'd stay out a day or two or three, but by any and all standards, one week was pushing it. We were steeped in indifference; time was a lie, and nothing mattered. We were begging to be caught.
Of course, I'm lethargic; I'm high. Sashi and I had spent the last week at the pit. When we left the farm, we went to the market first. We met with Reni and Mite, and together, the four of us gathered our money and selves to take the last bus going out of our destitute town for the week. The bus left Monday through Thursday, our sole link to the world. The bus had had the same driver for as long as it had existed, and it plied the same route, multiple times a day, without fail, every time it was caused to move.
Rich drove the bus, and we all knew the only reason why he worked those four days of the week was so he'd have enough money to die in the pit Friday through Sunday. On Sunday night, he'd be lucid, having spent the weekend attaining clarity. They already knew when to herd him out so he would return to work and continue the tired cycle that his life had become. He would leave the pit, his vision crystal clear, his mind still. He'd take a long walk; from Arex central, he'd walk back to town, over one hour on foot. By the time he got to town, his shoulders would hang a little lower, the signature haze hovering slightly over his eyes. By Thursday, his eyes would be practically shut until they opened again, anew like they'd never seen light before, and so on, and so on.
I am a bundle of bad habits, Sashi is reckless, Reni is dishonest and has an inflated sense of self, Mite is his willing doormat, and sometimes, his services are extended to the rest of the group. Since Sashi and I had met the pair a few months ago and found them to be of an equivalent level of worthlessness, we merged our two-person group with theirs, and it worked.
While we waited for Rich to arrive in his rickety bus with his eyes mostly clouded over (with just enough clarity left to get from the same point A to point B that he'd been commuting for years), a slack jaw with drool running down his face, as he always did, we sat in silence. We thought of the time between our last tryst and that moment, happy to be en route to escape again.
Sashi and I had been working on the farms. Mite used to work with Reni until he started to get sick, and his father, with his little influence as the town chief, begged that he be moved elsewhere. So now, he worked at the clinic, doing whatever needed doing, and there was always a lot to be done.
At every given time, at least half the town was riddled with illness—strange coughs, skin conditions etc. Those who weren't actively staring death in the face, digging coal in the mines, died at a slower pace but death lurked nonetheless. The water was undrinkable, murky, ruined by acid mine drainage. The air choked you as you breathed so that we all lived with logs in our throats that sometimes materialised as phlegm, other times as a cough, chest ache or death.
Reni had the worst luck of the lot. He'd worked at the mines since he was 12 years old and would likely be dead before 30.
2 out of 3 people who lived in our town, so affectionately named Jettison city zone II(and the city in the name is facetious), were miners. We mined coal that powered half a country we’d only ever seen on badly drawn maps. Jettison city zone I, our sister town in purpose, produced the other half. If you were not a miner, you worked on the farms or at some other mundane job powering our limited, circular system. At least you breathed in the fumes indirectly and died at a more leisurely pace. You also did not stare death directly in the face every day. So it was no wonder Reni was the way he was, he had seen many die, and there he was, still alive to visit the pit multiple days a week. He was untouchable.
The dreariness of our existence is further emphasised by the fact that our town of 120 people (and the numbers deplete at a higher rate than they rise) has a sole bus that only goes to one place and back, Arex central.
The 'central' in the name, like the 'city' in jettison city, is a joke, maybe a deliberate ploy to further mock us by our betters. Arex central was at the edge of the world; the only town worse off was ours, but at least Arex central had life, a pulse. For one, it was not a place where people lived. We were all just passing through, looking for something, finding something. For most of us, the 'something' was The Pit. There were side attractions, pain hubs and brothels where your wildest dreams could come true, but ultimately, we all came for the drugs, so we went to the pit.
The town, like ours, was cut off from the rest of civilisation. Even our sister mining town had more merit on account of being home to the bourgeois family that owns the mine, worthy of the name city in many ways. Jettison city zone II is a collapsing metropolis where the rich have the poor lick the shit off their shoes when they have the misfortune of stepping into the street. They oversaw the mines detachedly from their part of town while the people, like us, truly lived Jettison city.
We got into the bus with half-dead Rich, unbothered about our safety. Danger did not occur to us, we had all resolved we would live short, mostly miserable lives, and so we did not spend much time thinking about how it would end. We needed only to know that it would ultimately end.
The skies were grey; they were always grey, tainted by ash when we drove into the town in our rickety bus. We were all buzzing with excitement, shaking with longing. We walked in a horde to the pit, a hive mind. We paid at the entrance to the faces we did not see, not until they came to forcefully evict us if we did not walk out ourselves when the time our money paid for elapsed.
They gave us wristbands with a clock counting down our time. When our time was up, the wristband would lightly shock us, attempting to jostle us from our reverie. If you did not leave after an hour from the first warning (with reminding shocks every 15 mins), they would come and drag you out. In those dying moments, we'd drink as much as we could, desperate to hold on to the feeling as we rode into town. We never succeeded; it faded too fast.
I often wondered if "they" partook.
We would separate and scatter when we were inside, each person on a personal journey, in a cocoon, falling through space, transcending. Sometimes, as we wandered the pit, we'd bump into one another. Sometimes recognition would cross our eyes, and other times we were strangers until we reconvened at the bus on Monday to somberly unpause life.
The dreary hum of existence is everywhere you go, no matter what you do, so we escape it whenever possible. The pit was the perfect place for escaping, our one reprieve. It was a cave that spanned nearly half the small town— a series of connected tunnels and caverns leading into caverns, a maze of sorts, a place to get lost. Where the walls of the cave bled blue, we called it rem. Where it bled purple, it was asmir.
I don't know how it was discovered, when, by who, or when they decided to monetise its use, and I do not care. The pit got me through life. There was no joy, no light in my eyes until I sank to my knees in the cave at the end of the week, a weariness of body, soul and spirit anchoring me to the ground. I would lick the walls as we all did, taking in my weekly allotment of the seemingly unending supply, and there would be lifting.
The cave was enormous; the tunnels were endless. You could pick your spot and burrow in it all week, seeing no one else, as long as you could afford it.
I laced my tongue and my spirit with it. I took big gulps, drinking till the blue covered my hands, clothes, face. Rem hit instantly, and it hit like a punch in the face. You felt everything, the friction of your skin against your bones, the air in your lungs, the hard floor against your body. Asmir hit without warning, transporting and transposing you. You fell through the floor, through space, through time.
If you indulged in too much purple, you'd wake to see that you were being lifted out after having essentially ceased to exist in your mind for the time spent under. Worst still, you woke up trapped in your mind, floating, locked out of your body. If excess blue were your poison, you'd lose your mind. You'd see everything too clearly and run into a wall. Balance was key because even though we died a little every day and might as well get it over with, we subconsciously clung to life in the ways that mattered. We dragged ourselves back to jettison city, the mines or the farms or whatever and continued to work at our mundane jobs in our mundane lives week after week, month after month.
Time faded in the pit. Nights blended, and day did not come. The wristband and time counting down on our wrists were the only tethers to reality.
At some point in the week, I decided to roam and to watch other cave-goers. There were bodies littered on the floor in large caverns silently assigned to communal tripping. If you did not want to be alone, you went to one of those—piles and stacks of flesh. There was always the odd dead body here or there, not yet discovered, mixed in the pile.
I do not know how long I wandered or where I met Mite, but soon we were together, trudging along, occasionally pausing to lick the walls. After what I assume was a few days of roaming from unoccupied caves to caves that held a hundred, we found Reni and Sashi wrapped around one another.
We never spoke about it, but Mite and I knew that for a while now, they hadn't been separating when we got to the pit. They'd stay together, usually alone, and as we entered the bus, they acted like they were not one, like we could not see and smell it on them.
Their interactions in town were cordial and distant, like polite acquaintances and, on rare days, friends. I felt sorry for my brother as I felt sorry for the rest of us.
Our presence roused them, and soon we were sitting, standing, lying down and floating in our profound joint revelations. Speaking was complicated but much needed to be said, and we never really talked anyway, so we talked then. We talked about anything, and we understood everything.
"The way I see it, every day I live, I'm surviving the apocalypse. Best I can do is try to make the passing of time less torturous, less defined, more pliable, more... meldable. If I could, I would lay for hours on end in the pit, dying over and over, transfixed, staring at the walls, living in the ultimate reality."
Sashi's impassioned speech took all of us by surprise. We were not talkers, but of all of us, he was the least likely to speak, especially in this state.
Sashi, my brother, was my sole constant. My earliest memories are of him. He appeared subdued; he was quiet and passive. Yet, he also had a fiery temper and reckless abandon so reckless that it was like he lived daring death to take him. Reni squeezed his shoulder, the first show of anything between them, a vocal display.
Reni also had a lot to say. He told us we were lucky we did not work in the mines like he did, and he was right. He said he'd had an exceptional idea, that he wanted to drive the bus. I asked him what Rich would do then, and he stared blankly at me. He didn't even know how to drive.
Soon, we separated again. Even Reni and Sashi parted. I looked at my wristband for the first time since it had been strapped onto me and saw that we had been in the caves for four days. It might as well have been four minutes or years. Before we parted, I nudged Sashi, attempting to re-sync my brother and me to communicate that we needed to leave. I did not think of work then, but we had already missed three days, and we tried not to miss more than three at a time. Work was scarce, and positions at the farms were coveted. We could afford to disappear because we weren't very needed, but soon our disappearance would create a hitch in the system; they could not tolerate that.
I could see that Sashi was not ready, so I decided we could wait. One day more would not hurt. We would indicate that we wanted to buy more time.
The pit was not cheap, but it wasn't very costly either. The pricing was designed so that if you slaved away and earned a steady wage, it'd be enough to afford the weekly dip in the pit and nothing more. You had no belongings or home, but at least you had the pit.
When we'd managed to save money, that is, rub our two coins together until Thursday, we could extend our stay. There was an unspoken agreement between the four of us. We opted to stay.
I roamed alone, taking in the sights, slurping on the foul liquid. It tasted horrible, but who cared? Is life itself not bitter? If the gateway to escape is unpleasant, it's a worthy price to pay, soon forgotten as our tongues numb and tear.
I found a small crawl space that led to a hole in the floor and climbed through it into a cavern untouched. The rem and asmir flowed into one another in this particular room, mixing at a perfect consistency. The pit was the only gift life had given my people, but this room seemed specially intended for me.
I revelled in it, rubbing my body against the walls and dragging it across the floor, drinking and bathing in it. I uncovered entire civilisations in that room; I travelled and saw the world. I was on my thousandth lifetime when my wrist began to tingle; the shock. To my knowledge, I had paid for an extra day, but my band indicated that I had been there for one week. It would not be the first time that I or somebody else had subconsciously continued to renew, even into ruin.
I remembered work then, and panic gripped my chest. I had to find Sashi and the others, and we had to leave. As I frenetically searched the pit, they came and dragged me out into the scorching Thursday afternoon sun. I could not find any member of my party, and I feared they had left me.
I headed toward the designated spot for the bus, hoping to find my people there. I was lucid, the high required constant ingestion to live, and my lips had been dry for hours. I found no bus; instead, I saw a small crowd of evidently displaced individuals, all of whom I recognised (we were a small population). I asked someone what the matter was; he'd told me they found Rich's corpse outside the pit the day before, bludgeoned to death. Someone had bashed his head in with a rock, sat the body up ramrod straight and abandoned it on his neck in the mangled flesh. The bus, of course, had not left since. Only Rich could drive the bus.
They said Reni did it. That he'd left the cave in a bad way, as many do and that he'd stalked and attacked Rich with purpose and then fled into the night afterwards.
I had to find Sashi.
We were all stuck, and some had begun to make the walk back to their dreary lives, taking the path Rich used to take on his walks. I stayed back, roaming Arex central one day more, looking for my brother. Our jobs were definitely gone; we would have to go to the mines where there was always room for more.
Blood flooded my head and filled my eyes when I saw his body. They were clearing lifeless bodies out of the pit as they did every other day, and as they lifted him into the cart onto the pile of bodies, his eyes lay wide open, his body stiff. I stood there frozen in time in sorrow and madness. The world spun, and this time I spun with it.
I walked because there was nothing else to do, but I did not walk home. I walked where no one walked, searching for those who leeched off us, profited off our deaths, and lived off the sweat on our backs. It was all there was left to do.
I never saw Reni or Mite again. I will see Sashi soon.
beautifully written. sad that the ending is indeed reality
“There is always more misery among the lower classes than there is humanity in the higher.“