Monticello

Marlo woke up, and the first thing he noticed was the smell. It stank, an acrid mix of petrol fumes and rotting meat. The stench made his head swim, and if he wasn’t already lying down he would likely have collapsed from the putrescence. Try as he might though, he couldn’t tell where it was coming from. Everything was dark, very dark. He could hear liquid sloshing, and, far away, some strange rumbling. Struggling to remember what happened, he sat up. He was perched on something cold and hard, which felt a lot like metal. As he straightened his back, he felt the reassuring weight of the Armpak on his back, and a few arms came in, trying to wipe his face. He pushed them away and looked around.

“Unpleasant, ain’t it?” Monticello said, from behind him. Marlo jumped and turned. From one of the older man’s metal palms, a light shone, illuminating his face. “Have to say this is an astonishingly bad situation.”

“Where are we?”

“Terro throat.”

Marlo blinked “Huh?”

Monticello shined a light on him, and Marlo squinted in protest “You must have hit your head pretty hard while falling huh? Do you remember what happened?”

Marlo closed his eyes, thinking hard. After a little work, he remembered the teeth, the Amne, the ground closing around him, and him plummeting into the depths.

“Oh my God.” He sat down.

“Yep. We’re in the throat pouch of a thing called a Terro. Giant froggy-worm thing. Likes to burrow and eat anything on the surface. No clue why one was in the Scourgefields in this season, they shouldn’t be around for months, but that’s just our luck, isn’t it?”

“What… What do we do?”

“Not much we can. We’re floating on this metal door.” Monticello wrapped is knuckles on the platform below them. “Because otherwise, we’d be melting right now.”

“Melting?”

Monticello shined his light out into the darkness. Marlo looked out into a sea of greenish grey liquid, with several mounds of earth protruding from it at random points. Yellowish fumes rose off the gunk, swirling in the light before spiralling up out of sight. Far off in the distance, Marlo could see the outline of a large wall, curving inwards towards the top as if they were inside a giant egg. Floating on the top of the acid, face down, was the Amne.

Marlo looked at Monticello “Are they…”

Monticello raised the hand with a light over himself. His other hand moved strangely, the metallic fingers slotting into the palm and moving around off their knuckles. A hole opened in the middle, finishing the shadow of a snake on the door. It twitched, swelled, and Marlo stepped back as a long, thin black serpent emerged, peeling itself up off the floor, and diving into the gunk. It swam over to the Amne, wrapped around in, bit down on the back of its head, and hauled it up. Marlo took one look and immediately winced and closed his eyes. However, he image of a head without a face, all red, half melted muscle, with no eyes or nose, the teeth floating around in various states of calcium goo, stuck in his mind.

“Like I said.” Monticello said, watching the snake melt away too “Melted. This entire thing exists to break us down.”

“What can we do?” Marlo asked, chest feeling tight. He had never really struggled with claustrophobia, but this was worse than just a tight, stinking, black space.

“Not much we can do.” Monticello sat down. He gestured up “Do you hear that?”

Marlo listened. He heard that same rumbling sound he had heard earlier. It hadn’t stopped once, a continuous rushing, like harsh winds going past a fast car. “That’s it digging. It’ll carry us back to a nest, and then throw us up. if we haven’t somehow died by then, it’ll kill us, and then eat us proper.”

“Can your shadows not do anything?”

“They don’t work like that. They can’t go into big patches of shadow, or they get absorbed back into it. They need light to remain different from regular shadows. I brought my own light and rode an eagle up there earlier, but there just more wall.”

“Then… Then we break out. We steer this thing to a wall, and we break through it.”

“Yeah that was my idea. You wouldn’t wake up, so I just sat here and waited for you to get up so we can try. I ain’t too hopeful, these walls are stringer than concrete and metres thick, but its our best option. Only question is how do we get over there?”

Marlo looked at the acid on either side. The arms on his back twitched once, twice, then plunged in. Two arms, one on either side of the door, reached down, and down, further into the depths.

“Come on…” He grit his teeth. He trusted that the arms could take the acidic sludge, but the smell of older layers of goo being disturbed was dreadful. The arms reached their full length, and he knelt down, trying to give them as much extra reach as possible. Throw the connector in his brainstem, he felt metal fingers just scraping the bottom. “Almost…” he leant all the way down, lying flat on his front while Monticello stood over him. “There!” he felt the palms go flat against the bed of the poisonous lake. They pushed off gently, and the door started to scull forwards. It was slow, barely above a crawl, but they were moving, nonetheless.

“Thanks for this.” Monticello said, “it smells awful up here so right next to it must be foul.” He moulded a shadow into a gasmask and handed it down to Marlo who took it gratefully.

“How do you do that?” Marlo asked, from the floor.

“My shadow puppets? Just like Nessa ate the Adamantine Angel, I ate the Nyx demon. They were minor gods, and mine was already dead when I got it, but it gave me this. Very handy.”

“Looks it. So what, you make a shadow animal, and it comes to life?”

“That., and I can make basic objects from shadow like that mask. Though, those don’t last very long. If they did I’d have built us a boat. Or a ladder. Also, they can’t touch any shadow or patch of darkness bigger than them, or they just get absorbed. I got these hands to better make shapes that help us out.”

“Really? You swapped arms just for that?”

“Well, I mean there were both broken at the time.”

“Don’t get me wrong that’s just… wow. Dedication.”

“I mean, it’s helped me just as much as it’s helped the others. More actually. You’re never lonely with a power set like this.”

That sounded like a very lonely thing to say, Marlo thought. He just kept quietly sculling. After a few more minutes, they reached a wall. Two more arms from Marlo reached out and stopped them just before they hit the wall. He got up, hauling the arms out, and carefully had them shake themselves several metres away from him, losing the gunk. Monticello inspected the walls. They were slimy, bumpy, and a dark green. It was curved, stretching off to either side, and up away into the darkness. Through it, the sounds of crashing rocks and rumbling earth was louder than ever. Occasionally, it twitched.

“It’s probably already taken us miles and miles.” Monticello said, shining a light down on himself and stomping on his shadow. Long tendrils erupted, each spiked and spinning, winding themselves up to hit harder.

“Well, the longer we wait around the further it will take us.” Marlo spread out his arms, and the ten on his back followed suit, picking one lump in the wall to target first.

“Hopefully we make it throw us up with this.” Monticello’s hands shifted, the fingers moving to his wrists, and rotating. They span around, faster and faster, until he had two small circular saws attached to his wrists. He took a step forwards and plunged them into the wall of meat. The spiked tendrils did the same, stabbing in, their wound-up corkscrew lengths increasing the power of their first strikes. Marlo’s hands lashed, punching into the wall and sending dark red blood splashing everywhere.

Five minutes later they were still at it. They had cut out a space big enough for them to stand in, which was good because the recoil from their strikes was pushing the rapidly melting door away, so it had been a balancing act. Marlo had transitioned from punching to scraping, his ten arms shovelling out handfuls of green flesh and dumping the pieces behind them. It wasn’t that difficult; they were breaking the flesh easily. There was simply so much of it, it felt like they were making no progress.

Marlo panted “What do you think our chances are? Be honest with me.”

“I…” Monticello sighed “I have no clue. I don’t know our chances. It can’t be good for us to be breathing this stuff, so I don’t know how long we have.”

Marlo was feeling light-headed, that was true. He tried to ignore it and shovelled faster. The bumpy flesh was giving way to long, fleshy strings overlaid on thick muscle, which was a lot harder to tear through. Maybe it was his imagination, but he felt like it was regrowing before his eyes, the scoops he took out of the wall starting to bubble and reconnect, sometimes just erasing any progress he made.

“How’d you die again kid?” Monticello asked.

“What?”

“Sorry, it’s morbid, but figured talking was better than working in silence. Helps us not get too glum, and keeps you focused. Though, if we’re avoiding being glum, this is probably a bad subject for it. You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”

“No it’s fine. I was hit by a train.”

“Oof. Rough way to go.” Monticello looked uncomfortable “If you don’t mind me asking, did you mean to-”

“No! No, God no.”

“Oh good. You know, it’s just... hit by a train… statistically wise, it’s worth asking.”

“No I was trying to save someone. There was someone tied to the tracks, and I tried to get them out, and as far as I know, I did but…” Marlo went quiet.

“Still tying people to tracks? They were doing that back in my day.”

Marlo was silent, and Monticello looked at him. “Kid, you keep talking about not having a “rebellious soul” and all that-”

“Oh God you heard that?” Marlo’s face, already uncomfortably warm from the terrible humidity, reddened further.

“-But.” Monticello spoke over him firmly. “That sounds pretty heroic to me.”

“What? No way.” Marlo shook his head. His brain did not like the sensation, and he started to worry more about the fumes in here, so he tried to distract himself by shovelling more, and replied “anyone would have done that.”

“Not me kid.”

“What?”

“Not proud of it, but yeah. I wouldn’t sleep well after but… for someone I don’t know? I’m not that nice. And can you really see Nessa doing it? Or Wimund?”

“Really?”

“For someone they don’t know. Nessa would happily destroy the train and kill everyone in it if she took a liking to you but otherwise?”

Marlo remembered how apathetic she had been to him while he was in that cage, before he had promised her swords that weren’t actually his. “Okay yeah. But really, not Wimund?”

“You don’t know him well enough yet kid. Trust me. And none of the others would have. You’re unique in that regard. None of us are heroes. I hope you can hold onto that.”

Marlo didn’t believe him. Not one bit. Still, he wanted to keep the conversation going. It was dawning on both of them they were making increasingly little progress. The meat got thicker the further in they went, and it was now regrowing so fast they were barely moving forwards at all. Also, while it was hard to tell since Monticello’s lights were only shining forwards, Marlo thought that every time he looked back he was seeing less of the cavern they had come from, and more of the wall they had dug through to get here. Still, if they stopped now they were accepting defeat. So, he changed conversation topic, and asked the question that had been bugging him all day.

“What about you Monticello? How did you die?”

Monticello stopped mid-mining movement. For a second, Marlo did the same, ashamed and worried he had asked something too personal, until Monticello answered. “Do you know what makes an Amne an Amne, kid?”

“No.” Marlo said, cautiously.

“Of course you don’t, you’re new here. It’s more than just their looks, their strange proportions and weird fluffy colourless skin. The reason they look like that is their soul has forgotten what it used to be in, what a body is supposed to look at. An Amne is the opposite is a Hyakku. Their memory percentage is anywhere from zero to four. Can you imagine that kid? Seventy billion people, about three quarters of everyone ever, every person since we stopped hitting our neighbours with rocks and considered all the other thing we could take stones to. At max, remembering four percent of what made them human. I remember one more than that. Five percent.”

Marlo winced. He had suspected as much, but hearing it was so awful “I’m… I’m so-”

“Sorry? Kid, I can’t remember what I’m missing, so I can’t miss it. Don’t apologise that I’m the same as fifteen billion folks. My life, and whoever lived it? They’re strangers to me. I’ve got nothing more than flashes, little sensations. I can remember part of the language I spoke as a child, the sensation of rowing under beating sun, the backbreaking work of years upon years in the field, the feel of mud getting in my wounds, the crack of the whip. As for how I died… I remember running, in the dark, through a field. The fear I felt, looking aback, and seeing lanterns, coming after me, cutting through the dark. The baying of dogs made me so afraid I didn’t see the ditch in front of me. When I fell in, I broke a few bones and…” He clutched his head “sorry. People remember their death best, but for someone like me even that is too much. Last thing I remember is teeth. I think… the dogs caught me. I can occasionally remember an old fat white man. Often at the other end of the whip. Maybe he used to own me. I wonder if he had meant for me to die that night, or if he just hadn’t caught the dogs in time.”

“I’m… I’m so sorry.” Marlo said, without any idea what else to say.

Monticello shrugged “Again, I feel weirdly detached to most of it. Thinking about it like this is weird but its like… watching it happen to someone else, knowing it’s not real. I mean, it was but… it doesn’t feel real. Like, an empty world. All the locations have no names in my head, all the events have nothing that happened immediately before or after, and I can’t remember any of the people I see.”

“Oh.” Marlo was still shocked, but had to concede “Well, I guess that makes it better-”

“No.” Monticello closed his eyes “I can’t lie to you. Not now. You’ve earned the truth. I do remember someone. The most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. Her eyes, her hair, her body, her voice… I can’t remember any of it. not a thing. But yet, she never leaves my mind. Always just on the end of my consciousness. A soft, warm comforting feeling. Like my mind refuses to forget her. Like sunlight through cloud. A cool cloth on raw wounds. A brief moment of peace in this hellish world we live in. Hell, I don’t even remember her name. But I know that woman was my wife. Never been more sure of anything else, ever. And I need to find her.”

Marlo’s was shocked to hear this from the grumpy Monticello. “You think she’s here?”

“Kid, it was three hundred and fifty years ago. There’s no way she isn’t here. And that’s my problem. There’s a three in four chance she’s an Amne, and I’d never know.” Marlo’s heart dropped but Monticello continued, with the calm, low voice of someone who had considered the worst possible outcome countless times. “Banking on that one in four chance, its still very likely she doesn’t remember me. But let’s say she does. What if she meets me, and she doesn’t love me anymore? Memories are what make a personality, so if I don’t remember who I once was, then I’m probably not the man she loved. And what if she’s different to how I remember? Even if she looks the same, what if this horrific afterlife has broken her, twisted the woman, the gorgeous soul I’m certain I once knew and loved into someone else. The chances we meet at all are low enough. The chance either of us are the person we were last time we saw each other is… impossible.”

Marlo didn’t say anything. There was silence, apart from the bubbling the acid behind them. the rushing of earth outside, and the shifting of tendons all around them. The air was thick and felt toxic to breathe. If he turned around, he didn’t know how much of their original entrance would be left. He was afraid to check. It felt truly, utterly hopeless. Then, Monticello spoke, and the quiet determination in his voice made Marlo raise his head.

“But I’ll do it. I don’t care how long it takes, or what awaits me at the end. If she’s an Amne, I’ll know when I meet her that she’s different. I’ll steal some of that memory stuff from DVIN, and some for myself too, so we can both go back to the way we were. I’ll be here for millions of years if I must. I don’t care what gets in my way, who tries to stop me. I will do anything, and everything I must. I will find my wife. By Mother Olisabuluwa I swear it, and whoever tries to stop me, that’s their funeral.”

Marlo nodded “Yeah. I bet you will.”

“You do?” Monticello suddenly sounded hopeful, and a lot shakier. Marlo hesitated for one instant, then persevered.

“Absolutely. You’ll get her back. I’ll help you in any way I can.”

Monticello looked up at him for the first time in a few minutes. His eyes were red, though whether it was from fumes or tears Marlo couldn’t tell. “I… I was wrong about you. Hyakku or not… You’re a good man. You know how I can tell?”

“How?”

“Long after I gave up, and stopped digging, all this time while I’ve been trying to make myself keep cutting by reminding myself why I’m doing this, While I’ve been trying to do anything to even remotely forget our situation. You…” he pointed up at the wall in front of them. “You’ve not stopped digging once.”

Marlo blinked. He was right. While he had been talking, and lost in Monticello’s story, his hands had been scooping, clawing, hauling, cutting and punching, landing a ceaseless hail of blows to force open their path. Barely any progress had been made, but it was there, certainly.

“I didn’t even realise!”

“They’re controlled… subconsciously… you never gave up… like I did… You’re a good kid… Marlo… Sorry I couldn’t net you that… desk job…” Monticello wheezed. The sound of him falling broke Marlo out of his shock. He looked down, and his body went ice cold when he saw Monticello face down in the flesh.

“Monticello!” as his arms kept raining blow after blow, he scrambled to pull the man over. His breathing was ragged and irregular. Of course, he had never made a mask for himself! Maybe he could only have one pair at a time? But then…

“Why the hell did you give them to me?” Marlo yelled. He looked around, desperate to find some spot with cleaner air, as if he could just spot it. This made his gaze land on the way back, just as the flesh finished closing, locking them in this small pocket, surrounding on all sides, by pulsing meat.

“No!” He yelled, slamming his real hands on the newly remade wall that blocked their way back. He could hear it healing and knew if he broke his concentration off the wall he’d been hitting all this time, it would all have been in vain. It would regrow, and they’d either choke to death, or be crushed.

“Alright!” he yelled. He was wasting air, but he had to do everything he could, before he lost the strength. He staggered up, his legs worryingly shaky, but his Armpak didn’t falter. Again, again and again, the arms slammed into the flesh wall. They had to be close now, surely.

“Wake up Monticello!” Marlo yelled. He started swinging his real hands too, scraping and scratching, pulling off tiny scraps. They clung to him, sticking to his palms and getting under his nails. They had to get out soon. The dark red walls got closer and closer, the only light from the unconscious Monticello’s palm.

“Come on!” he roared, swinging with all of his might. Blood fountained into his face, but he swallowed the foul salty taste, and kept screaming “Come on!”

It had to work, he had to break through. Not just for him, but for Monticello. So that he could get out of here and see his wife again.

“I misjudged you too!” He yelled “I thought you were a horrid cruel person, who hated me for circumstances beyond my control, who hated Amnes because they look and acted strange. But I see now! You were jealous of me, and Amne’s remind you of yourself. I’m sorry Monticello, I don’t deserve this luck of mine. If I could, I’d trade places with you in an instant. But all I can do for you is get us out of here. and I can do that a hell of a lot easier if you get up. So get up! Monticello!”

All twelve of his fists pulled back until they touched the wall behind them, which was almost at his back, and slammed into the wall. Marlo screamed; his throat so raspy he felt like he was gargling battery acid. “Break damn you! BREAK!”

The wall didn’t break. The flesh simply gave way to more flesh. The blood didn’t stop, up to his ankles now. An arm was forced to break off of the assault, and lift Monticello out of it so he didn’t drown. Marlo tried to increase the frequency and ferocity of his attacks to make up for it but found he could do neither. He had reached his limit.

“No…” He gasped, swings slowing despite how hard he tried. He could hear the motors howling in the fists that kept flashing past him, and his own shoulders were burning. Every pained, frantic gasp fed his lungs more poisonous gas, and deprived this rapidly shrinking pocket of even more air. His light-headedness mixed with the thick liquid below him made he feel like he was floating, his only anchor to the world his punches. Some part of him realised in horror that his rage was starting to leave him, replaced with a kind of weak, fluffy apathy. The lack of oxygen was weakening him. He tried to fight it but found the part of him that had noted the change had just gone numb too.

“No… someone… please… help us…” His last blow hit the wall weakly, not even leaving a dent, and simply slithering down its wet flank, as he feel it his knees, head down in defeat. His eyes fluttered, and everything started to go dark.

He had heard that when you died, the last thing to go was your hearing. Of course, the first time he had died, he had gone so fast he hadn’t checked. But this time, it seemed to be true. He could hear his and Monticello’s pained wheezes, getting weaker with each sigh. He could hear the wet sloshing of the flesh all around them, closing in, trying to press them into skeletons trapped in stomach lining. He could hear the rocks breaking outside, so tantalisingly close, but unreachable. He could hear the strange restitching of the walls healing, so that even if he got up now, even if he could, it would already be too late. He had failed, and now they were doomed. And he could hear something else, something he didn’t quite understand. A series of loud booms. They sounded like… explosions?