Lost in the Sewer

BookKnight

BookKnight

Well-Known Member
It was quiet down here. Quiet and dark. He liked it that way. Above his head, the nightlife was full swing, and everyone was making the most of every second, for better and, mostly, worse. The occasional car rushed overhead, casting odd shadows and leaving behind the scent of gas and oil which quickly faded away. It was so much better to be here in the dark than being Up There. Up There used to be his home, but now it carried only bitterness and fear. He paused now and looked up through the holes in the lid of a manhole cover, staring up at mists and the glimpses of light above. He was feeling incredibly melancholic tonight. Perhaps it was soon to be the full moon? New moons made him feel aggressive, and full moons felt thoughtful and lugubrious.

He heaved a sigh and started walking once more. His scales rasped softly against the sides of the tunnel as he walked, and his tail hissed like the coils of a serpent as he made his way through the narrow passages. Lower down, the service tunnels were much larger and better suited to something his size, but he'd wanted to try to get a glimpse of the moonlight. Of course, it had to be a cloudy night. It seemed even nature was against him lately. Or perhaps always. If only he-

Noises above him stopped him. He angled his head to peer up through one of the tiny holes in the manhole cover. It was difficult to make out anything from this angle, but he could only just make out the blurred figures of four men fighting in the night street. He shrank back and watched. A few others passed by and only glanced over at the fighters in a bored manner. No one was going to get involved in something they saw every night. Even as he watched, the group broke up. Two of them staggered off in one direction, wobbling drunkenly as they went, the other two parting off on their own.

He gave a sigh. So much for that. He ducked his head and kept walking. What a quiet, dismal night made even more dismal by his own mood.
 
Jess clicked the button on the flashlight, shining it against the pavement. With as bright as the sun was this morning, it hardly made a difference, but the light was there and she knew she'd need it once she got underground. She had a second light at her belt and she tested that one too, because groping their way back in the dark wasn't something anyone did more than about once or twice. It wasn't the dark - or it wasn't for her, anyway. Some people got freaked by it. Jess just didn't like having to keep a hand on the walls. With the light on, it was always pretty obvious that there were places on the walls that you really didn't want your hand on. In the dark, her imagination was all too happy to suggest things she might be touching.

She didn't really mind the underground, though. The rest of the crew was usually happy to have someone else be the one going down there, and Jess was smaller than most of them. Smaller than all of them, actually, but she sometimes liked to pretend that there was at least some question on that front. She could still keep up with them well enough, but she'd never get quite the height on a sledgehammer that some of them could, unless she started swinging it from the top of a ladder, and Safety would probably have something to say about that.

From her perspective, Jess was just happy she wasn't the one stuck holding the damn sign. Sure, someone had to hold the sign and flip it back and forth between SLOW and STOP every now again to keep traffic from backing up too bad, but she'd always hated doing that, probably because she'd always gotten stuck doing it when she first started, because she was a delicate flower and therefore couldn't do anything more than hold signs. At least now she had the seniority to tell them where to stick that particular idea, but she still got offered the sign more often than not.

She usually pawned it off on Dave. He didn't mind, she knew, even if he'd never admit it. His leg was messed up after that incident with the backhoe and it still bothered him if he moved around on it too much. She knew about the pills he was using for it, too - they all did, but what could you do? He had a family. They kept him off driving the heavy stuff and didn't say anything, just like he wouldn't have said anything if it'd been one of them.

The guys had gotten the manhole cover levered up, so she turned the light back on, shining it around into the dark hole underneath in a practiced cursory motion, clipping the lead line to her belt and taking the ladder down into the dark, instantly relieved by the cooler air below.

"Intersection looks clear," she called back up, "I'm taking the south passage, I'll let you know when I find that blockage."
 
Noises up ahead. He froze in place. Voices echoed back to him, the words lost in the repeated echoes. Something. Someone. Someone was in the sewers. It happened sometimes. Sewers needed maintenance, but it caught him off guard every time. Why here? Why now? He could not turn around in this tunnel. It was not wide enough. Backing up was a difficult, slow procedure thanks to his tail. A circle of light illuminated the wall ahead. Whomever they were, they were directly ahead and around that bend. He needed to leave.

His long, tapered tail lifted as he started slowly and cautiously backing up. Perhaps this creature, this person, perhaps they would go in the opposite direction. Perhaps they would leave. Perhaps they would do anything but walk in his direction! His heart thudded in his chest as cold shivers ran from nose to tail. He could not be discovered. He could not let himself be found! He needed to escape faster! Yet all he could do was slowly, one clawed foot at a time, back up and twitch his tail out of the way. Anxiety and panic clawed at him, driven to a frenzy by this slow, trapped retreat, but he forced it down into a cage.
 
It was always an adventure down here, Jess thought. Sometimes, that wasn't so bad. It made her remember what it was like to be a little kid, crawling around wherever she could squeeze herself in, looking for dragons or treasure or hidden bandits or anything else that she could imagine. Sometimes she still imagined finding something like that down here, but felt childish doing it, and never would have admitted to it. Those things had been easier to find when she was a kid, anyway. A shiny rock was a treasure that kept her entertained for days, back then. Now - well, now she'd grown up and had to think about having a real job and paying rent and whether or not she needed to stop on the way home for eggs and all those things that hadn't occupied her mind so much, back then. It left less time for daydreams.

Every now and then, though, she'd still pick up a shiny rock, and stick it in her pocket.

It wasn't much, as far as adventures went. The storm drains had gotten backed up the last time they'd had a ton of rain, which meant that they weren't draining properly, which usually meant something had gotten stuck in there that was keeping them from doing their job. That meant Public Works had to send someone down to figure out what the problem was, and then fix it. Sometimes tree roots got in, or sometimes it was just a mess of leaves and other little bits that got washed down. Sometimes it was disgusting stuff. She'd seen plenty of dead animals down here, in varying states of decay or sogginess.

Hopefully it wasn't a dead skunk. Those were the worst sorts of adventure - unless it was a live skunk, which was generally worse because it was pissed off and neither one of them had anywhere to go. She kept walking, shining her light around. She'd heard something scuttling down there, maybe a rat or something. They were common enough. They'd creeped her right out the first few times, but by now Jess was used to it. Mostly, rats didn't bother people as long as they were left alone.

The shadow bounced wrong, under her electric beam. That'd be her blockage, then, probably. Jess moved a little more cautiously, just in case it was a pissed off skunk, bringing her light up to shine on-

-that.
 
The human was here! In his face! What was it doing here? Why was it here? In his face? What was he to do now? Panic filled his brain. Normally, he had more time to escape, more advanced notice, humans were normally noisy and slow. This human moved like a rodant! Quick, agile, and quiet. There was no time! He couldn't retreat fast enough!

He couldn't retreat. There was no going backward.

If there was no going backward, then he would go forward.

The small tunnel restricted his movements, but he raised his head until his horns scraped the cement and spread his wings to fill the entire tunnel in solid blackness. Then he roared. The harsh, guttural, shredded sound rebounded through the tunnel like a solid mass, knocking dust and droplets of water from the ceiling. Moving as quickly as he could, he tucked his wings as tightly against his body and lunged forward, bowling the human over and driving forward as fast as possible. He had to get out of here!

The light bounced around as he scrambled forward, leaving the human and the problems that surrounded her behind as he followed the tunnels down, down, down, following a map he'd long since memorized.
 
Jess yelped - a sudden, startled cry, truncated as the pounding of her heart overtook the need for any other sound. That, or maybe her brain caught up and decided that it would be a really good idea to be quiet. She probably should have thought about something like running, but she'd frozen instead, standing there immobile while the - gator? - roared. Was it a gator? Gators didn't sound like that, or at least they didn't in her mind. It wasn't like she'd spent a whole lot of time hanging out in the swamps or watching nature documentaries, not since she was a kid anyway - and gators didn't exactly live around here. You heard things about them getting into the sewers, but those were just urban legends, right?

By the time she'd gotten around these thoughts, the thing had rushed forward at her. It wasn't an alligator - or a crocodile. She could never remember how to tell the difference, but neither one of them had wings. She found herself on the ground on her backside, pondering this, as the thing bounced off her and ran down into the sewers, moving way faster than something that size had any right to.

For a moment she just sat, maybe catching the breath that had been knocked out of her, maybe just not sure what to do about that. It had had sharp bits, whatever it was. Teeth, claws, something like. She'd been close enough to see that, even if the light wasn't the best. It certainly could have killed her.

It hadn't.

It wasn't as if Jess could have stopped it - she wasn't armed, unless she wanted to bop it on the head with the flashlight, which probably wouldn't account for all that much even if she got lucky - but it hadn't killed her. It hadn't even tried. Whatever it was, it had just knocked her down and run away.

"Sweet baby Moses in a basket." It seemed like she ought to say something. Jess wiped her hands off on her pants, getting slowly back to her feet and taking stock to see if she'd injured anything. Other than maybe a little scrape on her palm where she'd caught herself, she was pretty much fine. She shook her head, peering off down the way it had gone. "What was that thing?"

There wasn't anyone here to answer her question - and even if there had been, she doubted that anyone could have. The light moved down, playing over the ground and the ceiling, looking for tracks or scratches or some sort of markings of wherever the thing had gone. The smart thing to do was to call it in, of course - some sort of wild animal down here, probably living in here. Get animal control in.

For something that size, though, with teeth... they'd be looking to put it down. She probably shouldn't mind. It looked dangerous, after all.

Jess rubbed her hand on her pants again, frowning a little, remembering how very convinced she'd been that the thing could have killed her, and how it definitely had... chosen... not to.

Maybe it wasn't that smart. Maybe it was just scared. Still, when she found her feet carrying her forward along what tracks she could find, she didn't stop herself.
 
He was hungry. So very hungry. The commotion up above had destroyed his plans to try to find food near the surface where it was more plentiful, but it had not destroyed his hunger. He slowed his frantic scramble away from the threat and started looking once again. Did he dare stay up here? Should he retreat down below where it was safer? The bigger tunnels in the lower levels were fewer, but they were easier to exist in. There was room to stretch without trying to squeeze himself through small pipes and hoping they did not get smaller. He had nearly gotten trapped more than once in these small pipes, and he had the scraped sides to show for it, but here there was food. Fat rats, opossums sometimes, dropped food from humans, and similar things. It was also more dangerous up here where the people could look down and see him. Only one ever had, a small child no one believed, but it was still a risk.

He chose to compromise between his fear and his belly. If he worked his way slowly toward the tunnels leading downward, he could retreat while searching for food. Surely no one was following him. If the human he'd scared told the others, and if they believed her, it would take time for them to mount an investigation. Surely she would not be foolish enough to chase a monster on her own.
 
Jess was fairly certain that she was an idiot.

That was the thing about doing stupid things, though. Sometimes you were fully aware that they were stupid, and you just didn't stop doing them. There was certainly a little voice in the back of her head telling her that this was an awful idea and was definitely going to get her killed. It was, in fact, telling her that repeatedly - and then getting suddenly quiet every time her light played over another marking or track.

She'd gotten to a point where it had stopped running, anyway. She could tell because the tracks got closer together, more even, less frantic. Maybe it was circling around and it would jump out and kill her from behind, who knew?

But it could have killed her, if it had wanted to.

Maybe it had babies.

She wasn't sure if that was a thought that was likely to be adorable or likely to be terrifying. For all she knew, that one was the baby. It wouldn't fit down here if it were much bigger, though, so maybe not. Or maybe it was like that one creepy story she'd read with the anglerfish.

She upgraded her thinking to definitely sure that she was an idiot.

"You down here somewhere?" A soft call, into the tunneling gloom. Absolutely an idiot. She might as well just go with it, at this point. "He~ere, kitty kitty."
 
The skittering of a rat had his absolute attention. Food! It was not something he enjoyed doing or eating, but food was food. He needed food. His belly ached at the thought, and even his mouth salivated. He moved slowly, head low to the ground, tracking the rat as it skittered one way and then another. That was his target! Slowly, carefully, patience... The rat paused and sniffed at something in the muck. He lunged. The rat didn't even have time to squeak.

"You down here somewhere?"

He jerked in shock, mind caught halfway between the enjoyment of a fresh, hard-to-catch meal and the fear of discovery. His tail flicked sideways. As his head came up and hit the ceiling, a wire fell loose from its precarious attachment on the ceiling and caught on one of the spikes near the tip of his tail. He growled, twisting around as he tried to free himself, but he could not properly turn in this narrow tunnel. He tugged, but his tail would not budge, and he could not tell for certain if that was an electrical wire. It probably was, and if it was live, he would be dead. Fried like a horrible roadside food attraction. How charming.

A low whine followed by a rumbling growl escaped him as he tried awkwardly to back up, but of course his tail had twisted oddly, preventing his back legs to step back. He had enough room a smaller human could fit between him and the wall, but that was it. He was stuck. Well and truly stuck. Another whine escaped. What a way to die after scraping together a reasonable facsimile of surviving for so long. He tried to look over his shoulder at where he'd heard the human and held still. Maybe they wouldn't have heard the sudden suffling and scratching and growling? Maybe they would go back! Then again, at least death by human would be faster and hopefully less painful than death by electric shock or starving to death.
 
It was definitely down here.

It was not, despite what Jess had said in some sort of whimsical manner hoping for a twist of irony, anything like a kitty. It was also currently not moving - or, not moving around, anyway - it was definitely squirming. Regardless, that meant that Jess had a really good look at it when her light hit its body, enough of one to make her freeze for another moment, watching it squiggle around and... do what?

Oh, it was stuck. It was trying to get loose. If it got loose it could definitely kill her, but if it didn't - well, if it didn't it was probably going to die. She probably shouldn't care about that, except she knew who was going to have to come in here and carve it up once it got bloated and started blocking the drainage flow.

It was big, whatever it was. Jess was still puzzling over that aspect - what was it? Nothing she'd ever seen or heard about. Nothing that ought to exist, anyway. It looked like something an artist might have drawn - one of those images by a really good artist with a great eye for detail and a nonexistent relationship with reality.

Standing here all day was not going to be an option, Jess was aware. She supposed that meant she had some choices - she could walk away, leave it there, let it die and come back later and get rid of what was left. That was probably the safest option. She could be a little more sympathetic and try to put it out of its misery before it died of hunger or thirst. That would probably have been the best option, except that her options were hitting it really hard with a flashlight or trying to bleed it out with a pocketknife, neither of which was really likely to work all that well - and both of which would probably get it killed if she tried doing them, just from it thrashing around even if it wasn't trying to kill her on purpose. Plenty of people got killed by panicked cattle and things like that, after all.

And, of course, there was the third option, which was by far the stupidest.

"Hey..." Low, soothing voice, because it worked on dogs and this thing was... certainly not a dog. It felt better than doing nothing, though. "Hey... calm down, it's all right. You gotta stop wiggling so much, you're making it worse. Easy, there. It's all right. Well, no, it isn't, but you don't know what I'm saying anyway, so I can pretty much say whatever as long as I keep talking in a soothing voice, right?"

She approached, carefully, keeping a little back from what she thought its range was likely to be.
 
He froze. The human was here. The human had followed him! He'd thought he had lost her. He tried to move forward but could not. As irrational as it was, fear spiked through him. This tiny human represented an unknown danger. The unknown was one of the most terrifying things in existence for any creature. Even a dragon like himself. Still... the sound of her voice almost soothing. He growled, low and deep, warning her, but he did hold still. He tried to look over his shoulder or around himself to see her, but he could only catch a glimpse of her despite having nearly 360 degrees of vision. His body was in his own way. He could smell the fear on her. She was almost as afraid as he was, yet she still approached him. He could not see any weapons or traps on her, but that didn't mean they weren't there and hidden. He shifted, claws scraping the stone with a metallic sound. His options of defense were limited trapped in this narrow tunnel, but defend himself he would. If he could.

From a distance, he was a mighty sight to behold! Black as the blackest pitch, covered in spikes, winged and scaled, and with claws and teeth made for rending and tearing. Up close? Up close, the years of living in cramped quarters scraping along the stone and metal walls told their story in the damage they'd left behind. Overall, he was very thin, not just slender. Many of his scales showed damage from scrapes, dents, or even small puncture marks from sharper implements. His spikes grew in haphazardly, most of them crooked, a couple of them even sideways, and a couple were broken. His wings... well, it took only a glance to see that they were nearly defunct. The leather between the bony ribbing was dry, flaky, patchy, and threatened to crack and split every time he dared move them. They were smaller than seemed right for the size of his body and kept plastered against him.
 
"You're in rough shape, huh?" Jess didn't change the tone of her voice, keeping it steady as it had been, but she couldn't help but notice the closer she got, the worse off this thing actually looked. It was still terrifying. It hadn't stopped being terrifying - but it also looked like it had been through some things, and certainly it had seen better days. Maybe it was weak - but maybe being in bad shape just made it stronger, angrier. Hurt animals were the most dangerous, often.

Most of the injuries looked old, though. She wondered how long it had been down here without being noticed, or if it had just come into the area recently - but from where. Slowly - no sudden movements - she crouched down, lowering her light a bit. "That's probably pretty hard on your eyes if you're used to the dark, huh? Well, I still need some, but we'll put it on the ground so it's not so bright." She'd turned it so the beam was against the wall - that made the shadows play over the creature in sort of a weird way that made it look even scarier, but they were... just shadows, right? Shadows never hurt anyone.

Not like this thing, which definitely had the potential to hurt someone. It hadn't hurt her before, though, something that she was keeping very close in mind, because it was probably the only think keeping her sane at this moment as she moved in closer. She was definitely in its range now, if it wanted to strike. Jess winced, thinking of it, tried to smooth out her expression. "Got your tail stuck, don't you? I wonder... if we could just ease that out. You think you'd let me?" Her hand moved foward, hesitating, not too close - just in case this creature was about to bite her arm off.

It didn't hurt me before. It didn't.
 
He flinched as the hand moved closer, and he growled deep in his throat. He didn't want this human near him. He didn't want her so close! Humans were dangerous. Humans represented danger. That was all he could remember. It was a sensation that reached back further than even his memories: Fear the Humans.

Yet, what options did he have? This one was clearly unarmed and unable to do much to hurt him. She only had her hands and that bright light she carried, but instead of trying to blind him with her light, she had set it down. She moved it so it would not shine on him quite so painfully. What human did that? Took that kind of consideration? It was un-humanlike behavior.

So. He held still. He dared not trust this creature. He dared not let down his guard even for a moment, but he did not try to attack her or drive her off. Maybe she would help. Maybe she would try to hurt him. He was prepared, watching her keenly, ready to react, but he would give her this tiny amount of leeway.
 
Jess stopped, when it growled. That had been a warning; she didn't need to know what sort of creature this was to be able to interpret that much. She took a step back, waiting for it to calm down again, giving it time. She could always run, she supposed - especially if it was stuck. She didn't really want to, though. It had become sort of a point of pride - like getting a stand-offish cat to sit on your lap. Not that she wanted this creature on her lap - it would probably crush her, even leaving out all the sharp parts that it had to skewer her with.

The creature had settled down again, after a few moments. Jess could tell it was watching her closely, and so when she approached again, it was just as slowly as it had been before, waiting to see if there would be another warning growl, if she'd need to back off and try again. She reached out once more, carefully, debating if she should crouch down - but that really only made sense for smaller animals, this thing was already definitely larger than her.

Not that this was a particular achievement, really, given the general size of Jess, but still. She closed in once more, murmuring nothing important - just words, "Easy, it's okay, I'm not trying to hurt you." It didn't really matter to the creature, she was sure; Jess probably could have recited atrocious poetry for all it would care, but maybe it mattered to her a little bit, as a reminder of what she was doing and why she was here.

She crept cautiously forward, easing a little closer, wondering if it would let her touch it this time - wondering what it would feel like, if she did.
 
She was still here. Still inching closer. Each bit she got closer, the more his skin seemed to crawl. It was like being faced with a creature you were deathly afraid of no matter how much you tried to convince yourself it was harmless and, perhaps, more afraid of you than you were of it. He growled quietly out of discomfort as she reached out to him, but each time he did, the growl was a little quieter. He was grumbling. He knew he was, but he couldn't help himself! Propriety be hanged, this was humiliating and terrifying! He would have to allow this small human to help him or die and even more humiliating and horrifying death, but he didn't have to like it. By the time her hand reached him, his growls were little more than soft mutterings.
 
It kept growling at her, but the growls lacked the intensity of the first one. She still gave it a moment or two, every time it made a sound, letting it quiet down again before she crept in further. The growls diminished, each one a little less ferocious than the one before. By the end of it, they seemed almost more... pathetic? Jess wasn't sure that was the right word. Perhaps it was merely "uncomfortable" rather than anything else, but the aggression had gone out of it. It was only a noise now, maybe the sound of a creature that knew it couldn't really do anything but complain about its situation.

She still hesitated a little before she actually touched it. The scales we hard, like they were meant to defend it against something, but they were chipped in places, scarred.

"Sorry," she said, softly, not sure what she was apologizing for. Maybe for touching it, maybe for the fact that it had been hurt, maybe just for noticing, if it hadn't wanted anyone to notice.

She was definitely thinking too much into this. Carefully, she shifted the pressure of her hand against the tail, trying to nudge it upwards out of the place it had gotten wedged, wondering how much time she was going to have to spring back once it was free before it came at her.

Not enough, she knew. She just had to hope that all it did was knock her down again.
 
He flinched when she put her hand on him. He had not been touched by a human since... No, he could not remember ever being touched by a human. This was not something he had ever allowed before. He'd never been in a situation like this. What was he supposed to do? He stood frozen and shivering from fear, indecision, and anger. Anger at this human. Anger at this situation. Anger at himself. How could he have been stupid enough to get stuck like this? Years he'd existed without getting trapped, not like this. Yet the one time a human chased after him, he was stupid enough to get himself stuck on a wire!

The hand was moving. He growled softly, trembling worse. Then, suddenly, the wire was gone. He felt it slip off the spike on his tail with a twang. It pinched a little as it got free, then it was gone. He lunged forward. He was free! Claws scraped against the stones as he scrambled toward freedom! He stopped for a moment and glanced back toward the human. She'd freed him. He still didn't trust her, but she'd freed him! He hesitated a moment. Then he bolted.

The long, circuitous route was a bit of a nuisance, but he took it just to be certain. Certain of what? Of that, he was not certain. All he knew was that Something or Someone could be tracking him. It was a certainty he'd lived with all his life. Or... he thought he had... Some things were so difficult to say for certain if it was real or imagined or true. He had been here for so long, surely by now even if anything had been hunting him, it or they should be long gone. Surely. Yet the human had seen him. Had followed him. Even that short of a distance, she had followed him. Maybe she was just curious. Just interested. What could she possibly do against him? Yet he still varied his routes as much as one could while following the carefully laid out grid of pipes.

Half an hour later, he pushed aside the heavy steel plate that had once sealed the new pipelines from the old subway tunnel, closing it firmly behind him. These tunnels had not been used in years, and most of them had collapsed in several places, but the original station still held. There was no way in or out except for the door he'd just used, and ordinary humans couldn't move that hunk of steel on their own. Here, in the arched emptiness of brick, mortar, and steel rail lines, he'd made his home. He made his way up to the old ticket stand where he'd shelled it out and created a nice, soft nest made up of old clothes, some wrappers, and a few mattresses. Everything was surprisingly clean in here. Then, tired, he curled up and slept.
 
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