1

It must have been very late, or very early, he couldn’t tell. Kael woke up with half of his face covered in thick layer of wet mud. The ice-cold stone he was resting his head on was vibrating so forcefully he thought that he must have slipped off his wet algae pillow and fallen into the dirt. It was a confusing way to wake up, but not the worst that week.

Kael’s eyes were red-raw. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d got a decent amount of sleep. He was blinded by the brown waste occupying one side of his face and the pitch black of the witching hours, and it left him disoriented for far too long. Frustrated, he went to wipe his face with his sleeve. His arm didn’t move. He shifted his body a little and felt a very warm little heap lying spread eagled over the top of him. Rose may have been small, but her weight had made his arm go limp and lifeless.

Kael pushed himself up, and laid her down on the old carrot-sack that she was supposed to be using as a bed, instead of laying on him. He wiped away the mud from his right eye with his fingers and tried to focus his vision. All he saw was complete darkness. He looked up and saw a long, thin strip of night sky, impossibly far away. Starlight glittered down the slimy walls of the Hold, rippling the stones and illuminating the black.

The howls from the Goners were louder than usual tonight. Kael wondered what could be going on behind those walls. Blackwater was a rough city, especially down here in Backwash. What could the people in the Hold be like if they were ‘too bad for Backwash’? Kael’s body shuddered and the hairs on his neck stood on end. He didn’t like thinking about that.

He pulled from his pocket a half-burnt matchstick and held it in front of his face.
“Burn,” he whispered, so not to wake the sleeping Rose. The match ignited. At last, light shone through the bottom of the chasm. He quickly lit the inch-long candle he had stuck to the wall the night before and extinguished the match between his fingers. He placed the match back in his pocket, very carefully, and surveyed his surroundings.

The Hold was enormous; it boasted the tallest walls in the whole city, though it was hard to tell. Above ground, the Hold wasn’t that impressive; true, it was the tallest building in Backwash, but it was easily overshadowed by some of the grander buildings in Topside. The real size of it was below the earth. All around the Hold was a fifty-foot chasm; it spanned fifteen-feet across and the walls inside were jagged with sharp flint. It was set up presumably to ensure any escaping inmates would die should they manage to jump the wall. Kael had spent the last month panning through the silt and debris at the bottom of the chasm, hoping to find something of value. A few pennies, the occasional shoe, never did he find anything to make him feel like he wasn’t completely wasting his time.

Kael and Rose had been stuck down there for the past three days. Before, there were three different routes to the bottom of the chasm and it was easy to get up and down without being noticed, but two days before, Kael found the old rope ladder at the back of the Hold hanging from a protruding blade of jagged rock with the rungs shattered and the rope frayed. Unfortunately, the Guards seemed to be able to handle two entrances much better than they could three.

As Kael started formulating a plan for that day’s escape, he heard voices approaching the chasm from above. They were too far away for him to make out what they were saying, but he was certain he could hear at least two male voices. He wanted to let Rose sleep for a while longer, but she had much better hearing than he did.
“Rose!” he whispered as he prodded her back. “Rose, wake up!”
“K?” She sleepily rolled over, eyes still half shut, “Is everyth…”
“Shh! Can you hear what they’re saying?” She went silent and listened. Kael licked his index finger, put out the candle and waited in the darkness.
“They’re coming this way,” Rose whispered nervously, “They’re talking about the Guards.”

The pair waited, listening. Kael noticed that Rose had moved in much closer to him now, he found her tiny hand with his and held it tight. The voices stopped for a while and all Kael could hear was grunting and heavy breathing. The grunting stopped right above them, the breath of the men above them now echoed down the walls of the Hold, it felt as if they were just metres away from Kael and his quivering sister.

“Well tha’ was fun!” boomed a rough, heavily-Northern accent. Kael felt Rose stifle a yelp.
“Fun?” said a younger, local sounding voice from above, “You nearly got us all caught, you f****r! You and your f*****g prick!”
“Well it ain’t my fault his missus thought we was roleplaying.”
“You should’a just gutted her like you were supposed to, you f****n’ idiot,” The younger man’s voice grew louder. “What does it matter to you, eh? As long as you get your happy ending!”
“Look, I got the job done, didn’t I, lad? Nearly dragged this fat b*****d the whole way by m’self too, so I suggest you shut yer trap; it’s you that’s gonna get us caught this time.” After he said that, Kael thought the younger man had obviously given in, because he went deathly silent.

Suddenly Rose grabbed hold of Kael’s fingers so tight that it hurt. She started breathing frantically and Kael felt beads of sweat dripping against his hand. He had no idea what had gotten her so scared, but he held her close and stroked her greasy blonde hair. She was shaking in his arms. Kael heard a terrified, mouse-like whisper crack out from her,
“There’s something else up there, K.”

Kael looked up to the stripe of stars above him and he heard the two men make one final grunt in unison. Then from the heavens fell a very heavy black blob. It plummeted down the chasm, tearing into pieces as it hit the rocks on the way down. Kael and Rose were coated in a gloss of dark red and the heap of meat and innards landed on top of the very spot they were standing. Completely blinded, the last thing Kael felt was a hollow dome bouncing off his skull.

*          *          *

Rose’s legs were trapped underneath one of someone else’s. She felt a boot as big as her arm uncomfortably lodged in her armpit. Confused and still terrified, she tried to pull herself out from under it but the floor was so slippery that she couldn’t manage it. She realised that she, and everything around her, was drenched in a lumpy, viscous liquid along with a myriad of other disgusting, squishy things.

Rose was thankful that the men above weren’t there when she woke up. Kael was slumped, leaning away from her. Rose didn’t want to say anything, in case those men were still nearby, so she punched Kael as hard she could in his thigh. There was no response. Rose was alone.

She felt vulnerable. She didn’t know how long Kael was going to be out for and she didn’t want to be trapped underneath that old, hairy leg anymore. She squirmed in the filth and tried to kick the leg off hers once more. It was still too heavy to lift it off, but she realised that she could move one arm freely. If she could get that foot out of her other armpit then she could probably roll the rest of the leg off of her.

Rose felt around the front of the boot. Great, she thought, laces. Rose had never tied laces on a shoe before, nor had she ever untied them. But with one incredibly sticky hand, she decided that now was a good time to learn. The first loop she pulled on only made the knot tighter, so did the other one. She decided to stop pulling and feel around the knot, to see if she can work out how it works. It was no real use of course, but she eventually found a string that seemed to come loose when she pulled on it. She pulled it out and the knot became loose enough that she just shook the rest undone.

Rose felt triumphant; she managed to do something without help or instruction from her big brother and now she felt like the one on top. This didn’t last long. She remembered that she was still trapped under dead human flesh, and the boot was still wedged in her armpit. She wiggled the leather down the lifeless ankle as far as she could but it was too difficult to get it past the heel from that angle. Rose awkwardly slid her hand into the shoe to try to pull the foot out.

The drying blood along her arm turned wet and slippery again when it touched the cold, clammy foot and she felt her little fingers slide all the way down to the hard, calloused toes at the end of their leathery casket. Her whole hand was the size of the biggest toe; whoever this leg belonged to must have been enormous.

Then she felt something metallic and cold against her skin. Wrapped around the second digit was a jewelled ring. It was thick, and felt ornamental. Rose’s heart started beating faster, she was excited and terrified at the same time. She felt the air get sucked out of her lungs and she suddenly felt very dizzy. It was all so confusing. It took her a minute to catch her breath and stop her head spinning.

Deciding to ignore the ring, she tugged the foot hard, pulling it out of the boot and onto her chest. She could smell the rotten skin on the putrid foot. Her nostrils felt as if they were on fire and the action filled her lungs with the smell of cheese and dog mess. Both arms weak but free, she struggled to roll the leg off of her completely.

Rose was exhausted and everything around her felt disgusting. She finally could pay attention to her surroundings. It was grim. She assumed that she and everything else around her, was covered in blood. It smelt like rusty fences and was sticking her hair to her face where it dried. She felt for Kael’s wrist and pulled it. It was strange for him to not wake up, Rose didn’t like it.

“Please wake up, K, I’m scared,” she said. Kael didn’t wake up. Rose was sure the men from before were gone, but she still didn’t feel alright about being alone with bits of corpse surrounding her in a filthy chasm.

Rose decided to wait. She leaned back against the wall of the Hold and tried to remember everything that had happened before the body fell on them. One of the men cussed a lot, which meant he must have been from Blackwater, probably from Backwash. The other man had an accent she didn’t recognise. She remembered feeling the presence of another person up there, someone who spoke very quietly in a language she didn’t understand. She remembered feeling the fear coursing through the other men’s bodies when he had spoken. It had felt like needles surging through her body from her toes to her head, and a great weight pressing down on her shoulders. The experience had shocked her so much she nearly screamed and given them away to those men.

Rose wanted to do something to keep her mind occupied. She searched around for the dismembered foot and found the ring on the floor next to it. It was heavy, heavier than she had expected. She rubbed her fingers around the band of the ring. It was embossed with a delicate design that met a large gemstone at the front. The gemstone resonated when she touched it. This was a special ring, one that somebody loved very much and it was probably worth a lot of money. She tucked it into her pocket.

She didn’t know what else she could do while she waited for Kael, but she didn’t just want to sit alone with her thoughts. She thought about what he would be doing, which was searching this body for anything else of value. The idea made her feel ill; she had no idea what other disgusting body parts she would find in that filthy, wet hole. However, she had a duty to her brother. Rose got on her hands and knees and began the search.

Reviews

[Kelsey Schadt]

I can sense that you are working to vividly describe the Hold and Kael and Rose's predicament but I struggle with all book specific words like, "Goners" "The Rats." etc. I felt confused. Perhaps give a little background, enough to help the reader understand what each element is before moving on to the next. This doesn't need to be a long winded explanation. Just enough so the reader can be confident in their understanding of what is happening. You are developing interesting characters and Kael's responsibility to Rose is clear in your Prologue. Keep writing!