Apes had fangs. They could climb properly. They had fur to protect them.
Humans were built for endurance running, we evolved on the plains, chasing down our prey as pack hunters with improvised tools. There was nowhere to run here, no tools, and no guarantee that I had more stamina than whatever I was up against.
The ‘ground’ here shuddered with some great mechanism, an endless roar of pouring water with a grinding of machinery, like the endless crush of some great millstone.
I felt like the trembling of the ground might make me simply bounce off, lifting my feet clear of the ledge, letting them slide to one side and off into the depths to one side.
Bugs crawled on my hand as I gripped one stone. One, quite possibly a centipede, took a chunk out of the back of my hand. I hugged the wall with my body and shook my hand, letting them fall into the darkness.
But more were crawling on my stomach and chest now.
I brushed them off and got stung by something.
There was no relief here. No getting clean, no quiet, no comfort, no place where the smells weren’t vaguely offensive, no place where I was safe.
I approached a corner, and nearly jumped out of my skin as a massive figure loomed in front of me, at the corner’s edge. Not a gargoyle. An irregularly-shaped block of brickwork that had broken away from the wall. I got close enough to peer at it. The mortar had cracked, but only around one section, so the entire thing held together, jutting out from the corner, as though it was poised to simply break free and tumble to the ground below if I tried to hold onto it for leverage.
I looked up. The wall further above wasn’t much better, as far as I could make it out. I could easily imagine something breaking free and braining me.
A steady stream of water flowed down the wall’s surface, joining the constant shuddering in responsibility for the state of the wall. Thin trickles of water were pooling in the broken section of wall and draining off the edges of the block, onto my footpath and over area I’d have to squeeze through.
My plank scraped the areas I couldn’t see, a blind man’s groping in the dark.
Nothing offensive that I could tell.
I rounded the corner, edging along the ledge, while ducking below the giant hunk of brick.
The roaring, grinding sound got louder as I rounded the corner. The wall no longer blocked the sound.
I stood straighter, and I could make out what looked like some massive, haphazard dam-turned-watermill. A river of water flowed out of a tunnel and over the edge of an open-mouthed trough, dumping vast amounts of water and debris into the darkness.
The trough and the watermill were both put together with what looked like haphazard layers of metal, completely rusted, to the point of having cankerous boils on the surface. The mill itself was a long cylinder, with four large paddles to keep it turning. The turning wasn’t consistent, but when it did turn, nearby lightbulbs flickered on, or flickered brighter. I could hear a distorted radio buzz.
More metal and wood formed a broad, flat, somewhat uneven bridge over the rushing water. There were people gathered on and around it. Kids. Old people. Others. All together in clusters, or standing alone. They had to be deaf, with the sound of this water and the metal-on-metal creak of the mill itself.
Shacks had been erected with more debris and sheet metal, fallen signs and collected branches. When I’d been homeless, the accommodations I’d been able to manage had been better, on average, than what I saw here.
People were sitting on the ledge, and I wasn’t about to try going over them. No choice but to climb down.
The climb down was precarious, especially when the surface below me looked so flimsy I felt like I might simply punch through and drown. I could see the frothing water through the gaps in this makeshift bridge.
Metal sang with the impact of my landing. One or two heads turned. One man reached to his belt, where he had a makeshift skewer ready, deemed me no threat, and dropped his hand to his side.
I was careful with where I stepped, simultaneously watching the people around me. All were dirty, most wore rags, and all were beaded in droplets of moisture that had been flung up from the crash of water below the bridge.
The man with the skewer had a wound on the back of his head that had festered as it healed. It was mostly closed, helped by what might have been crude stitching with yarn of all things, but it was angry, puffy, with pus-like fluid in the recesses and cyst-like bulges straining against the skin around the site. Another similar wound marked his arm.
My eye was drawn to the insect bites on my own arms. My own arms were beaded with droplets, and the water-diluted blood was flowing freely. It was freezing. How could they even stand to be here, with the chill in the air making it worse?
One man was perched on the bridge, back to the railing, swaddled in rags. He had no legs- no, wait. Yeah, he had legs, but they belonged to an insect, not a person. His eyes glowed through the shadows in the rags.
My heart almost stopped as a group of children tromped across a flimsy section of rusted sheet metal, each footfall slamming it against the wood frame beneath, producing a sound that I could hear even over the roar.
I exhaled as they made their way to the far end, well behind me, no longer certain that they were about to doom me to a watery abyss. I watched them go. They weren’t wearing much. A little boy wore only a sash of cloth around his hips, more a skirt than anything else, and his back was riddled with ulcers. A girl had patchy fur in two colors, black and part white, and snaggle-teeth that looked like they’d make it impossible to open or close her mouth, one arm ending in a scarred stump at the shoulder. The biggest of the boys, who’d somehow managed to be overweight in a place like this, had bulges under the skin I could make out, like worms had nestled in deep. A goblin rode on his shoulders, pulling his hair, but he didn’t seem to mind.
When I got closer to the far end of the bridge, I could see that the larger group of adults was staring at me, giving me hard looks.
Because I’d been looking at the kids?
I raised my hands to either side in the universal gesture of peace. Maybe less effective when I had a plank in one hand, but if they were going to begrudge me a weapon in this place, they could get real.
They relaxed a bit.
It was eerie, getting the benefit of a doubt. Was it the lack of bad karma, or was it this place? Did they just not have the energy to spare to confront every threat?
The one or two of them that had weapons in hand didn’t drop what they had, I noticed.
I didn’t even try talking to them. The noise was too loud, the looks too hostile.
I moved on, leaving them behind, heading for the next ledge, this one a broad pipe that ran alongside the wall, bolted in at intervals.
A woman’s hand seized me by the upper arm. I whirled, plank readied-
And others had their makeshift weapons pointed at me.
For a moment, we were still. The kids on the bridge were staring, frozen.
I decided to lower my weapon first. No point – they could kill me here if they wanted to. It was hard to bring myself to do it. My heart still pounded from the momentary contact, and she’d done it hard enough to hurt.
The others didn’t do me the favor of lowering theirs.
The woman had a heavy net folded and thrown over one shoulder. She pointed.
The destination I’d been headed?
When I looked at her, she gestured, making a scary face, turning her one free hand into a claw with fingers and thumb hooked.
Monster that way?
She pointed that way, then drew a finger across her throat, and pointed at me.