Lost in the Sewer

[BookKnight]

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.

 

[illirica]

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."