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."

 

[BookKnight]

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.

 

[illirica]

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.

 

[BookKnight]

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.