The following is a work of fiction intended for adult entertainment. I steal from the great Mr. X all the time. I steal ideas, characters, dialogue, plots, cookies from the jar when he is not looking, everything, in fact I have his kitchen sink which I plan to put on e-bay latter today. Every now and then I try to steal from someone else. And when I do I call those ‘original’ stories. Yes, I am a very bad person. Hmmm, these cookies need milk.  Rook.

 

“MISS MERCURY”

‘Wow, look at all this… junk.’ Andrew stood in what he hoped was the center of the dimly lit piles of boxes and crates and trunks and clothes and books and furniture and… ugh! The single yellow bulb of the attic made only a slight pool of light in the clutter of towering shadowy shapes which soared in leaning henge canyons this way and that in twists and turns disappearing into the solid dark and ghostly ethereal cobwebs in just a few uncertain steps distance. He could see a small slatted window pulsing slits of light through the dust mote swirls at one far end but this was only the first of four rooms up here he had been told and his heart sank at the prospect of his summer vanishing before his eyes. When he had been roped into cleaning out the old woman’s attic he had been glum and shattered at the prospect of his summer vacation being spent in a dusty smelly and sweltering! Old creaking bare beam barn loft for a weekend for what was half minim wage lugging crates up and down the narrow hand rail-less attic steps then down two more flights of stairs and then out the back to the storage shed where others would sort through this and that for transport to the storage sheds or for sale or for the junk men. The only perk was that he was told he could keep anything that was tagged for the junk men and he told himself that he might find some cool stuff that he saw value in and that no one else did. But now standing here and seeing the first room of the attic he realized this was not a weekend task but more like several weeks of work and he felt the sad sinking feeling of the hopeless drudgery of unjust labor which only the poor and the young tend to know.

The well to do boys, Brad and Vic, would sit outside logging and categorizing the stuff he mule backed it down and piled up. They would load up the boxes and items the short distance from the storage shed in the back yard to the waiting truck. They would walk around with a lap top and spiral note books and ice tea beading drops of the only sweat they would know on their pink smooth hands while he coughed and sneezed and spent the day covered in layers of thick chalky dust and blew black snot into tissues and listened to his bones crack as he bent and heaved and trundled up and down the stairs in an endless march of labor. His heart sank until he could no longer feel anything and his head dropped to his thin chest as his arms hung to his side as the lone dust covered naked bulb swung this way and that on its long coarse rope like twined black and brown fuzzy wires; the slightly swaying pool of light in the congested airless crypt like attic, all the world like the gentle swing of a guillotine blade cast lose from its housing arcing in deadly pendulum strides. His dark shadow at his feet seemed to be a pit he was rapidly sinking into as his few faint shadows of his body swung and stretched this way and that as dead men corpses left up on the hangman’s rope in a slow rain of dust.

Slowly over the course of four weeks he slowly filled his small bed room with various items he found in the attic and got to keep as part of his pay. Every piece had been an argument and a fuming helpless silence against Brad and Vic who wanted him to have nothing but the old lady had insisted he get and keep the few pieces he found that had been set aside for the junk men and which only when he showed and interest in them the two rich boys had suddenly yanked back off the junk pile and placed them in the storage pile or sale pile. Most of the items he got to keep were old paper posters of Vaudeville shows and theater lobby cards as well as a few shirts and jackets. But the item he had the most trouble with was his prize and joy of the long month of sweat and labor. And that was an old 1930’s large shell shaped wooden radio with an enormous dial set in its center. The thing was huge as large as his entire upper torso and it was made of some honey colored wood with brass metal trim around the mesh cut outs of the speaker housing on the front. It had a short brown fuzzy cloth like cord to its heavy plastic plug in and he had stopped everything the moment he had unburied it and lugged it to a chair and plugged it in upstairs in the only outlet he could find. And it had worked! Some crackle and pop and static but it had come on after the tubes had warmed up louder and louder until he could make out clearly the voices of some radio show. He was certain that he would never get to keep it, but when he had taken it downstairs and the other two boys had plugged it in it wouldn’t come on at all. He had tried to play it cool and act as if he was not interested in the radio despite how much he wanted it. And though certain it was now broken they still refused to put it in the junk pile as dollar signs danced in their eyes and even the old woman seemed reluctant to voice her usual approval of the few claims of items he had made when he had finally said he would like to have it. In the end on his last day of work at a little lunch of the usual triangle cut tuna sandwiches served on immaculate white china which he always left black dirty finger prints on despite washing his hands thoroughly and lemon aid in tall thin glasses that were heavy and seemed designed to hold only a few swallows of liquid, she had surprised everyone by declaring the radio to be his and refused to hear anything more about it.

He had taken the radio home and plugged it in and it had worked like a charm! You had to lean your head almost up to the mesh on the front but you could hear the voices clearly and the more you listened to it the more easily you could hear them, like getting use to a new language or the dialect of a different people. The two boys had claimed he had removed one of the old tubes so it wouldn’t work and it would go on the junk heap so he could take it home, and secretly he had done just that, though he felt no real guilt about that, as young teens tend to have the intensity of this or that fleeting feeling washout the overall sense of awareness or memory. But when he found out he would not get the radio he had secretly placed the tube transistor back inside it but it still had not worked for the two boys though they had tried it several times throughout that last week. So when he had got it home to his bed room and plugged it in and it had warmed up and came on in its pops and hisses he had been very happy and his hatred of the two other boys who had done so little and been paid so much more had rapidly diminished and all the injustice of the world of ‘haves’ and ‘have not’s’ had faded away as he fell asleep and dreamed of faraway strange cities and beautiful young women who mysteriously dwelled there.

It took him several days of trying to get the ball game to play on the giant wooden gothic cathedral window shaped radio before he realized that no matter how much turning of that giant lighted glass dial with all its small strange numbers and their intricate layered arcs of lines and symbols he could only get one station to play?! And that station played only one program?! Some old fashioned radio play of some adventure story containing a super heroine named Miss Mercury who fought crime in a large metropolitan city in ever new serials that played non-stop back to back. It baffled him, and at first he felt his usual resentment and that strong dull wincing crippling pain of being cheated by life once again but then he listened more closely to the radio serial adventures and found them entertaining so he just sighed and would switch on the radio when he was tired at the end of a long day and listen to the program for an hour or two which was about how long a single episode would last and then he would yawn and turn it off and lay down to bed.

This went on for the remainder of the summer until school threatened and the autumn storms snuck back in to toss and rattle the large oak tree outside his small bed room window and the green and yellow of late summer began to burnish into the orange and browns of frost tipped winter’s harbinger, but savage winter was still far off and the encroachment of its deadly grip now fell in sudden but long cold gray rains that gave rapidly away to summer again, like thoughts of the future frightful uncertainties tangled up and tripped out of sight by the here and now’s rattle of heady beguiling empty promises.

It was after a particular difficult and unjust day that the young man had listened to the radio program and had been both thrilled and alarmed by the usual peril and threatening adventure of the young Miss Mercury that he had noted that everyone has it tough even little teen adventures in faraway fantastical cities of long ago and he had laid down his head on the blotter pad of his small desk and fallen asleep in the shadow of the great big box of a radio in his small cramped room with it’s still whining pops and whistles and rip roaring adventures continuing on merging with his young dreams like muddy streams into a great crystal clear roiling river, as night faded into the tunnel of time. And darkness slipped its noose to hunger in the bellies of just and unjust men.

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“Hey, hey buddy. There’s no sleeping here.”

Andrew slowly pulled himself out of a deep sleep and groggily raked his hand through his hair. He looked up and was startled to see a police officer in a crisp starched uniform prodding him with a short menacing black billy-club and giving a stern but bored look. He looked around him and blinked; he was in a park and had been sleeping on a bench?!

“No sleeping in the park. Get up and walk it off and don’t let me find you again or it’s straight to the tin-pan.”

The police officer was already walking away slowly to join his partner who was paused near the parks open nearby iron gated entrance. The officer turned to look over his shoulder and hesitated until Andrew got to his unsteady feet and moved away from the bench.

Suddenly there was a loud boom and then a blur above them. “What was that?!”

“Ah, new to the city, I was sure I had never seen your face before, me-bucko. Well, now that was our own little Miss Mercury! A real to life super heroine and from the direction she was flying I would say she is heading toward the docks to thwart some devilish high-jinx’s. Hmmm, that would be my guess. Now stay out of trouble and don’t let me catch loitering about the park again.”

Andrew waited until the two police officers had continued through the park’s entrance with its iron bar gates chained back wide to the red brick wall running along the length of the side walk in both directions. He gave them their space and slowly walked out into the city street proper. He stood amazed. All his life he had lived in a small rural town in the mid-west and had never been to a large city before but he could tell in an instant that there was definitely wrong, strange, out of place, unusual about this city. The street was lined with Packard’s, shiny black and green cars from the late 1930’s! A Ford truck with an open bed fenced in freshly painted wooden rails coughed and belched past him! Men in gray flannel suits with sharp boat bow hats and women in ankle length dresses and pearl necklaces clutching hand bags to their sides walked rapidly this way and that as if they had fallen out of an old Humphrey Bogart black and white movie on the late show! And everywhere there were birds and no planes not a single jet trail crisscrossed the sky?! Cats ran this way and that and dogs hustled and bounded down streets lined with white stone apartment buildings and alleyways with parked cars and behind him young girls pushed prams and chided tardy boys in short pant jump suits who held large trucks or balls or had balloons tied to their wrists. And everyone other than him was wearing a hat! Even the women had little almost doily like hats pinned to their elaborately curled hair. And large telephone booths of wood and glass on the street corner where a man and a woman were lined up to wait their turn and an open door drug store where a soda counter served kids and teens. And a horse?! There was a horse pulling a cart! Right down the street surrounded by the round shiny bug shaped cars and no one seemed to notice! He finally found his legs and continued to wander around wide mouth and gapping as a trolley car just missed him with a young man and girl clinging to its side as the man shouted. “Tourist- rube! Get back to the sticks or out of the way!” and the girl had laughed and smiled with bright shinny wide eyes.

“This is amazing!” he shook his head and ran back up onto the sidewalk as zipping cars with white wall tires honked at him. He paused at a newspaper kiosk and looked at a newspaper front page flapping under a brick, “THE BIG CITY TIMES” and in the corner next to the header, “March 1^st 1935”. He shook his head again and then moved on as the vender gave him a long sour look. “Big City? I have never heard of such a place before, but then surely this can’t be real? It must be some kind of weird dream. But I have never had such a real so very, very real dream before?” A shadow fell over him and he looked up to see a large dirigible crawl across the sky blotting out the early morning sun. Then he spun again as a hiss of steam and whining and clank of metal alarmed him and he watched a tall mechanical device walk down the street. It was several yards tall far above his out stretched hands potential reach and it moved steadily on long jointed metal legs. High above on its long segmented body rode people who talked and laughed as the driver before them in a white long coat and white blacksmith gloves and a white sort of bakers hat with white goggles and long white scarf steered them along until they reached the opening to the park and the machine lowered its self in huffs and puffs of steam and the well-dressed couples got out as the mechanical device lay like a long gondola boat on its accordion folded up legs. He stared at it and headed back to retrace his steps to it when he stopped up short as a couple raced out of the park laughing and the girl leapt on board as the man handed the driver some money and he joined her and up and away the machine went in one smooth motion its long legs carrying it rapidly away.

“Never seen a daddy-long-legs before? You must be from the hill country! A word of advice kid, you’re obviously new here, get a job fast as I hear the Reynaldo’s factory is going to lay off again. But stay away from the docks and the meat packing plants, nothing good can come from working in those places. In fact if you can swing it stay away from the textile mills as well. I hear the city is looking for workers if you don’t mind a little danger.”

Andrew looked back at the man working the newspaper kiosk and could only manage a dry mouth nod of thanks to him as he quickly turned to some fresh costumers. The young boy already lost to his thoughts of his beginning day.

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Andrew spent the better part of the day wandering around noting all the strange out of place things like street lamps that had one main bulb that shown straight down but two smaller bulbs that swayed this way and that on articulated metal stalks until something came into their beam of light and then they followed it until it moved past their beams reach. He witnessed these on the streets that seemed in perpetual shadow from the towering buildings rimming them. Big City seemed full of odd things which he was sure were not quite right but then he would remind himself this was just a dream and shake his head and laugh his short little horse open mouth laugh.

But as the day lengthened into afternoon and afternoon into early evening he found himself growing tired of walking and hungry. His pockets contained nothing but a strange single ring which he kept reaching into his pocket and feeling as he grew increasingly uneasy about how long this dream seemed to be taking and how liner it was, how he had to walk every step one by one on increasingly aching feet in his thin soled leather shoes. He had never owned leather shoes before and his dress pleated pants were thin and his shirt was stiff and oversized and the button jacket he wore was of little use as the cold winds began to blow with the setting of the sun. This dream was taking far too long. He was almost starving now and everything seemed to be closing down for the night and still he had no money not even a wristwatch to trade for a sandwich, nothing.

There was an odd hush for several hours and then the city began to stir again as the night life began to prowl. Suddenly bright lights turned on in the starless dark and theaters opened and bars became loud and boisterous and the police men on foot disappeared to be replaced by slow moving squad cars and black and white vans that showed up and whisked away taking angry talking people with them. The smells of the city changed as did the sounds and it seemed a much different place than it was just a few hours before. The cars that moved through the streets became larger longer and the long thin daddy long legs were replaced by odd squat fat glass domes that moved on rapid little legs that looked like long cilia hairs that moved incessantly as they swirled down the streets and dropped off women in furs and glittering gems and men now in top hats and tails. And everywhere there was shouting and deathly silence punctuated by a lone dog howling or a muffled scream from the inky maw of an alleyway.

Hunger drove him on wavering feet with a dizzy head and growling stomach into the first bright open place from which the smells of deep fat fried meat waffled out in face slapping arousal. He noticed it was not too busy and the cook was the service man at the counter. It was like a deli, a long counter fronted with glass and food set on plates covered in wax paper. You paid based on the color of the plate. Hand the guy the money who was behind the high counter and point at the plate and he took your money and gave you the plate where you then found a seat along the line of booths against the windowed wall. The place was oblong and not very big and the guy behind the counter kept working the fryer and the coffee machine relentlessly.

Andrew pulled out the ring from his pocket and held it up to the man who gave him a stern unblinking look. Andrew pointed at a plate of food and the man took the ring and looked it over. He was Chinese and he said nothing. He then put the ring in his pocket under his white grease stained apron and reached in and handed Andrew a plate of food. It was a different plate but Andrew said nothing, simply noting the ring must not have been worth enough for the plate he had been pointing at. The Chinese man handed him a metal fork and butter knife and spoon which all felt bulky and heavy in Andrew’s hands and then a cup of coffee and a very short odd heavy glass with wavy sides full of cold water without ice. He gave Andrew a dead-pan look and then went back to his fryer and lit a cigarette leaning against the large coffee machine urn. Andrew took a seat in the empty dinner and devoured his food. The meat had a funny taste to it and looked odd. But he was starved and did not care.

The Chinese man used a phone that was next to the cash register once and Andrew got up and used the very small rest room crammed into the end of the short tunnel that made up the odd dinner. He returned and sat down at his smeared empty plate and nursed his coffee as he rested his aching feet. After a while a man came in and talked rapidly to the Chinese man who talked briefly back to him and handed him something and then pointed at Andrew. The man in the heavy wool black coat with gray flecks came hurriedly up to Andrew’s table where he took off his hat and dropped it on to the table and with a deep sigh dropped into the chair across from Andrew. He reached into his pocket of his suit and pulled out something and held it above the table, hovering his closed fist there as Andrew looked at him perplexed. After a few seconds the man grabbed Andrew’s wrist and turned the young man’s hand palm up in a sudden wrenching grasp and dropped the object into it and let go of Andrew before he could jerk his hand back. In Andrew’s hand was the ring he had just traded the Chinese man for the meal. Andrew looked at it and then back at the Chinese man who slowly smoked with folded arms leaning back against the coffee machine and stared dead-pan back at him.

“You must be desperate indeed to pawn a ring like that,” the man took out a pack of cigarettes and pounded it into his open palm. “Or do you even know what it means, what it is? Did you steal it?”

“Wha- no I just found it in my pocket when I woke up, in the park. Say who are you?” Andrew eyed the door out of the corner of his eye and wondered if he could make a dash for it if he needed to before the beefy large guy could grab him?

“You just woke up and the ring was there? Did you put it on? Did you place it on your finger?” The man had placed a cigarette in his mouth and now produced a glass faceted small oblong cylinder with a chrome and copper top he shook the device violently for a few seconds and then held the chrome end to the tip of his cigarette and lit it as he spoke. Andrew could just make out some small crawfish like creature encased in the glass that glowed for a few seconds and then faded from view.

“Ah, no I guess I didn’t. I don’t wear rings as a general practice that is I have never worn one before so-“

“Well I think you should wear this one. And don’t worry the food is paid for, but don’t try and pawn the ring again. If you are down to nickels and need some dough there is joint about a block from here where you can haul boxes on the night shift and get paid, very little, at the end of your shift, or you can bus tables across the street for tips, or if you are feeling rambunctious and have nothing to lose the city is looking for some young desperate men. Just head three blocks down that way,” the man gestured with his cigarette out the window and at their reflections as he put his lighter away, “until you see the large stone building across from the fountain square and ignore it and go past it about a block along the street with the large statue of the guy on a horse and head along until you see this white stone building with lots of black iron. It should be the only one lit up this time of night on that entire block. Look for a stair case leading off the street and down and knock on the big ass black door there at the bottom. Work is dangerous but it’s the best pay you are likely to get in the city right now. What with you being a stranger and all and besides working for the city always has its, er, perks.” Without another word the large man got up and put his hat back on firmly on his short oiled hair and walked briskly out of the dinner. After a few confused minutes Andrew left the place as well handing his plate and utensils to the Chinese man who said nothing but stared at him with emotionless unblinking eyes.

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Andrew had enough of hauling boxes around all summer to last him a life time and being a waiter sounded like a nightmare so he headed in the direction the man had indicated and followed increasingly empty streets that widened into tree lined boulevards with statue lined dived mediums and changed from small chopped brick buildings into block long single stone buildings of mammoth size and singular conformity. Obviously the government offices and courts of Big City, and he was dually impressed by the enormous square with its huge green bronze statues in the central fountain that was bigger than his entire house and made his sore foot way across the well-lit but deserted concourse stirring up odd looking birds whom he guessed to be pigeons and rails, that either exploded before him into coveys or raced away screeching at zipping erratic sprints.

Large streets radiated out from the central square and other than the odd lone slow silent patrol car and a few loud roaring vehicles racing by at suicidal speeds he saw no signs of life. He could smell a river nearby but did not see it in the canyons of the towering white stone monoliths. It was a longer walk then he had expected but he finally saw the street that was headed by a large statue of a man on a horse set on a large white block pedestal set squarely in the center of a divided street and he turned down it walking hunched over with his hands as deep as possible in his pants pockets against the cold steady wind that blew down the street and straight into his numbing face. He blinked tears out of his eyes against the teeth chattering cold and thought he had surely gone too far and passed the stair case he was looking for when he saw the lights of the building, much smaller than the rest, set nestled along the far street and he raced across toward it.

The weak yellow light came entirely from only the windows which were set at ground level all the other windows in the building were dark and all had pulled blinds included the lighted up ones so he could see nothing inside the building. Only the odd drum head yellow parchment light that leaked out at the seemingly decorative windows at his feet which did not rise up above his knees. The only entrance to the structure seemed to be a stair case set in the side walk leading down that ran almost half the length of the building across its front. The building was an exact mirror of the other government buildings; being made of white stone with black iron trim and black accessories with raised large corner stone pieces here and there for decoration, but this building was tiny compared to its massive kin and was almost swallowed up and hidden by its neighbors. But it was separate and there were alleyway’s almost too narrow to walk down lining both its sides. He raced to the building then cautiously stepped his way down the dark unlighted steps until he was standing at a large iron door. There was a plaque on the wall and on the door its self but in the darkness of the unlit well he could not make out what they said. He paused and then yanking his coat collar right around his throat he found the door knocker on the center of the door and raised it up and dropped it. it made an odd weak sound and he cursed in belief no one would ever hear him and he was doomed to freeze to death out here on these steps.

He reached for the door knocker again which was biting to the touch and was surprised to find the door whisked open on creaking hinges and himself so unexpectedly face to face with a stern faced man with a large seemingly fresh scar running down his face and cheek.

“So you going to tell me want you want or are we going to stand here freezing our dicks off?” The man’s voice was nothing but gravel and sand.

“A man said I could make some money here-“

“What man?”

“Well, I didn’t get his name. He paid for my meal and said I could find work here, that you paid at the end of the shift-“

“By the job. We pay by the assignment being properly completed. There aren’t any shifts here. Did your friend tell you anything about this place? About this job he recommended?”

“Well, no he just said-“

“Right. Some friend. Okay kid this is how it works. This is the sewer company. Ha! I can tell by your face you think you will be shoveling shit! As if! It’s not that lucky here kid. You see that building there?” He pointed a filthy looking finger to his right and Andrew followed its short jab by looking up the dark staircase over his left shoulder at one of the identical huge towering buildings that over shadowed the smaller building he was standing before. “Now that is the water treatment plant as well as offices of the commissioner and his lackeys and all the big brain engineers and even some honest working folk. And that building there,” he jabbed his finger to his left and Andrew followed it up and over to the looming white stone building identical to all the other government buildings he had seen in design towering on his right. “Now that is the building for the sewers, storm drain systems, and flood control. Those are the guys who get to shovel shit. And this,” he shoved his grimy finger hard into Andrew’s chest so that he winced and folded into the blow slightly but did not move back, “is the department of sewer extermination.”

“Huh, rats.” Andrew rubbed his chest and rolled his eyes.

“Ha, you wish. So you coming in kid or just passing by?”

Andrew looked at the swarming clouds in the angry starless moonless sky and felt even down here in the protection of the sunken stair well entrance a fresh blast of icy gusting wind rip right though him, “I guess I am coming in.”

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The first few rooms were surprisingly dark and full of large hissing pipes and whirling humming machines which Andrew found very odd that you would have your street entrance open into what looked like a cramped dark low ceiling boiling room? But the difference in temperature was instantaneous. Andrew went from freezing to sweating in the waves of heat in about ten footsteps. He followed the squat burly man through the maze of dark copper pipes this way and that until he found himself in a white tiled hallway cluttered with over strewn bulletin boards and empty wooden chairs and doors open and closed leading off into dark offices or hallways all over ran with pipes that seemed to have the right of way in the building’s design.

The man began talking as he continued to walk in his odd shuffling ambling gait as soon as they hit the better lighted hallways. Andrew had to scurry to try and keep his head near the man’s rolling wide shoulders as it was difficult to hear him as he made no effort to talk back to Andrew but spoke straight ahead of him as he pushed through doors and bowled down corridors. “…and that’s how it normally works. You get assigned to a group of more experienced hunters. One rookie to at least four experienced hunters and you start in the upper mezzanines not the lower warrens but the book says six to a pack and only one rookie, but heh, like the book has ever worked down here. We deal in reality not big brain thick skull wishes. So here’s what I got tonight. I got a crew of two way out in the depths our best, and another squad of four somewhere nearing…” he took a long look at his wrist watch and moved several outer rings on its crystal face. “The central shaft of the Omega-Four quadrant about now, and a crew of six pushing Kreeptiods along the Obsidian rift, and this lot.” He stopped up suddenly causing Andrew to half bounce off his wall of muscle back and jarring around him looked down at a group of six men. They were sitting in chairs and sprawled upon the floor, two looked badly wounded swathed in bloody bandages and the others looked exhausted, sweaty, and banged up.

“This lot was mopping up some infestations on the upper levels when they got jumped. They were eight. They left two men behind. We don’t leave ANYONE behind. It’s bad for business and moral and not to mention the reams of paper work that entails. So kid, these two are going to the hospital and you are going to join the rest as they go BACK down and bring back their teammates. Got it? Good. Reeves you’re point.”

The men started to slowly gather themselves up and squash out their cigarettes under bloody crusty boot heels. “Ah, sir, excuse me. But shouldn’t I get some kind of equipment if I am going to go well hunt bugs was it?” Andrew looked at the man who stared impassionedly back at him and then glanced over at the man he addressed as Reeves. Without a word Reeves reached down and took what looked like some kind of crude shock pole from the unconscious man slowly bleeding a puddle on the floor and thrust it into Andrew’s arms.

“You got to buy your own equipment kid. Them’s the rules. You can blame the big wigs in the court house square for that and the commissioner of public works and the treasurer and hell maybe even me if it makes you feel better, but in the end I can only issue out what you can first pay for. No credit in this business, hell most don’t make it through the first four missions. But if you want to live just follow Reeve’s and do what he tells yeah; hell he is just shy of losing his rookie status. Takes ten completed patrols or assignments to do that and he is just two shy so that, makes him the most experienced man in your unit by far so just keep your head down and your wits sharp and try not to get killed. You come back in one piece and I will fill out the paper work and you will all get paid. Alright then, enough talk. Bring back the fallen and take out some of them greenies too.”

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It was a short walk to one of the occasional steel doors which had a wheel lock and looked more like a hatch on a navy vessel than any kind of a normal door. Directly behind it was another hatch set firmly in the floor and it opened to a set of rungs imbedded in the surface of the metal tube shaft and down they all went.

Andrew had a hard time remembering his first night on the job. Just odd bits came back to him latter like a collection of lost and then found puzzle pieces of long discarded puzzles that had been thrown away because they had been missing too many pieces. He remembered one of the guys who spent most of the mission walking next to him walking half bent over like the rest of them and he was armed with a straight razor and his slacks where torn and ragged at the cuffs and caked with gray mud at the knees. And that Andrew as the lowest man on the totem pole he had to carry both body bags and that the rubber bags were very heavy and awkward and that the razor guy had helped him use both their belts to fasten them to his back. He remembered finding the body’s bit by bit and fighting some large scaly pink and green monsters but could only remember large mouths with lots of milky fangs darting at him and painful claws which he never saw and the smell the horrible smell. But mostly he remembered the mouths of teeth and red unblinking eyes like a sky of rubies in the dark. But yeah, mostly the rows and rows of teeth lunging up at him, and the way his body wouldn’t move when he wished it was moving very fast. He also remembered going through man hole covers and sweating hard to lug the two dead bodies in the rubber bags up the rungs from this level to that level and how all the pieces in the bags would roll around and shift in weight as he pushed up on the bag on the ladder as another was grunting with the straps invisibly above him lowly cursing as bellow him he could hear the screams of fighting. And he remembered the only time he was scared, really, really scared, was not when they had been fighting the monsters in the dark tunnels but when they had been walking through a white tile hallway and there in the florescent glow of the overhead lights they had looked down and there had been this trail of bloody clawed foot prints. Just these huge pads and claws printed so calmly in a measured pace right down the center of the floor and they had been walking in the other direction. This huge two legged monster had somehow passed them in the tunnels and was somewhere behind them and the blood was fresh and it was slick and sticky under his thin leather soles and he had felt this electrified fear and his mouth was all coppery tasting and he started to shake and couldn’t stop shaking and that was when the lights started to flicker and Reeves said that the some of the monsters had the ability to cause all electric devices to short out in their immediate presence and they started taking out these old fashioned torches and lighting them but there had only been three torches so the rest suddenly found themselves in the dark looking at these faint red glows of torches smokely burning as the lights went out and stayed out and then the low growls and he realized his suddenly powerless electric prod thing now was nothing but an ungainly broom stick and… yeah that was when he was the most afraid.

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“Andrew?” Andrew looked up blinking under the fresh cut above his left eye and winced against the pain as the bruise on his left cheek had caused his neck to feel oddly numb except for the thousands of jolts of needle like pain whenever he moved his head and his fingers were screaming on his left hand where much of the skin had been rubbed off and his knee was still bleeding through his torn slacks but it was his ribs on his right side that were killing him. He wondered if they were broken. It was Reeves addressing him who looked like he was posing for a cigarette ad with his tousled blonde hair and chiseled classic features. He seemed bullet proof. “Benny and Copper just got back from the outer deep and they wanted to see you.”

It took him awhile to find the two men who wanted to see him as Reeves had made no effort to tell him where they were, ass. But after stumbling into a new group gathering to head out on a fresh patrol he got directions to a lone spiral stair case leading up into a short tower and there he found the two young men who were alone in the room at the top of the tower.

One of them leapt up from sitting on a trunk and walked rapidly over to him with hand extended, “ah you must be what was it now? Andrew wasn’t it? So good to meet you at last! I am Benjamin and that sour faced sullen bastard brooding over that map is Copper, well his name is Kopeperveck but everyone here just calls him Copper. Which of course he hates. But he seems to hate everything and I think that secretly makes him happy.”

Andrew started to raise his right hand to shake the offered hand held before him but then looked down at his white knuckled fist which was still full of the silver coins.

“Ah, yes you can stash your gear in that trunk there at the foot of your bed, and I think there are some fresh clothes over there in that portabella. Some shirts and trousers I think? This place is about as safe as any in Big City and we keep the door locked when we are out and here is your key so you can come and go as you please.”

“I-I don’t understand?” Andrew now looked down at the key which was lying on the small pile of silver coins in his right hand as his left was freshly bandaged into a useless mitten.

Benjamin held up the back of his right hand toward Andrew and wiggled his fingers and there on his finger was a ring exactly like the one Andrew now wore on his right hand and behind Benjamin, Copper lifted up his right hand and looked up from the table and the map he was studying and showed his ring as he said quietly, “welcome Andrew to Big City, the stuff of nightmares.”

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“Well we all want to go home, but I think we should bring our new friend up to speed on this world around him before we get into that as that will surely be of a more practical nature now won’t it?” Benjamin looked back from the indifferent Copper who sighed and went back to studying his maps as Benjamin turned and smiled at Andrew. “Now where to begin… okay that money you just earned? You see it is coins all minted with a star on them. They call them ‘stars’, not very original but here’s how it works there are copper stars and it takes one hundred of them to make a silver star and silver stars take one hundred of those to make a gold star and all of that is called ‘day money’. That is you can use that currency in any shop open during the day. You can buy food, shelter, clothing, services, etc. now they also have coins called, ‘night money’ they look just like day money coins except they are made out of a sort of indestructible crystal. Copper calls them poker chips. Now shops open at night use the night money but they will also take day money but the night money is worth a lot more than day money the rate changes but I think last I heard it was ten copper stars to make one red star which is night money’s copper coins and five silver to equal one blue which is night money’s sliver stars and I think it was two gold stars to equal one night money yellow star coin? You see night money is worth more because at night all the monsters tend to creep out of the tunnels and sewers and warrens and caves and snatch people from the city-“

“Not to mention that is also when most of the gangsters and gangs and thugs and cut throats tend to roam around. And those my friend are the REAL monsters.” Copper gave Andrew a stern look and went over to the small potbelly stove and removed a whispering kettle off of it and poured himself a cup full of something that smelled like peppermint and took the mug back with him to his perusal of the map.

“Well, yes, anyway the thing to remember is to save up your night money for night so you don’t have to lug around pockets full of day stars to buy anything at night. The rate of exchange is always changing too with the fluxing ratio of day stars to night stars as it is based on the number of crimes and monster attacks on a per quo bases from the weekly department of public safety postings. Oh and don’t exchange all your day stars into night stars or you will find yourself over paying in day shops all the time! What else? Oh, the city! Big City they call it. And it is big. Far as we can tell from the maps we have been piecing together and drafting ourselves, it is about the size of France! One continuous seamless jumble of a city-“

“France?! You know about France?” Andrew found himself shouting and this startled him.

“Yes, you see he wants to know about getting the hell out of here not on where to buy the cheapest loaf of bread!” Copper set down his mug and stood up and looked at Andrew. “We are both from Earth just like you.” He held up his ring hand with his palm toward him so Andrew could again see his identical ring. “I found an old TV and took it home from a garage sale. When I turned it on I could only get one station that played endless episodes of Miss Mercury adventures. I fell asleep watching it and woke up here in the hill country.”

Benjamin held up his hand and ring, “I found a box full of old comic books. All of them were of this Miss Mercury character I read them fell asleep and woke up here down on the wharfs.”

“We had these same rings on our person just as you have when we woke here.”

Andrew looked down at his ring on his right hand and twisted the ring with his bandaged left hand as he spoke, “I found this old radio that only played Ms. Mercury dramas. I fell asleep and woke up here in the park. The ring was in my pocket of these strange new clothes.”

“You see somehow that young girl is the key to all of this!” Copper slammed his ringed fist into his open palm. “And she must be the key to our escaping this place.”

“What place, where are we exactly? I mean at first I thought this was all but a dream but now?” Andrew walked past the two men and looked out the ring of windows that encircled the short squat  tower at the city sprawled bellow.

Copper pointed back at the map which was several maps layered and overlapped together. “As far as we can tell Big City is surrounded by the Dark Sea on three sides. Ships leave and come back a few weeks later with cargo of trade from a few smaller cities scattered along the coasts here and here. That is if they do not get attacked by sea monsters or get lost in the storms or attacked by the pirates of the Channel Islands or well the thing is, they only go here and here there is nowhere else all of this is just well nothing. And this here well this is called the Hill Country a bunch of hills that eventually lead into the Black Forest. The hill country is nothing but a few isolated small rural towns and farm land and well that is where the new people come from.”

“Last night two men died here and I am sure dozens of more died scattered throughout the city its self. In a few weeks’ time that same exact number of people who died will just wander in fresh and new from the hill country. That’s how it works. People die and the same number that died are replaced by people coming in from the hill country always the exact number never more never less. We have been tracking the obituaries and the monthly census. Big City is never more or less people except for a few hundred here and there who haven’t arrived from the hill country yet.”

“They are hard to kill too. These people, I mean, you have an explosion downtown and bodies strewn everywhere in the street and a few days later they are all walking around back at work.” Copper scratched his head.

“And look at this,” Benjamin grabbed a stack of newspapers off a chair. “Look at the date. See, the days and months progress normally but every New Year it is 1935 again. It is always 1935. And no one gets it no matter how you try to explain it to them. To them it is perfectly normal that it is always 1935.”

“And they don’t age, we don’t age. I came here ten 1935’s ago and my face in the mirror never changes… except for the new scars.” Copper rubbed his stubble chin and frowned.

“I showed up seven years ago and he is right we never age here. We can die, we can be killed but other than that we never age.” Benjamin shuffled through the newspapers, “every day is different they make only small advances in science and medicine they go about normal lives but they don’t change much as far as clothes and styles I mean some things change but mostly the large picture remains constant and the same.”

“It is just like our Earth in the year 1935, but there are so many strange differences at the same time and there are no stars no moon the sky is either day with a distant thin smear of a sun or pitch black night and of course the monsters and that super heroine Miss Mercury.” Copper sighed and pushed his hands slowly over his maps.

“She is the only super heroine in this world. The only one and the people rely on her to save them from these daily attacks by monsters and mad scientist and well you have seen the adventures, or rather heard them I guess, you did say you had a radio or something like that. Well those adventures are real or as real as this place gets and they go on just as you witnessed them, here all around us day and night.”

Andrew looked at Benjamin who tossed the papers back onto the chair, “but are they all like us? All these people have they been brought here too?”

“No they are not from our world they live here and when they die they are replaced by a person from the hill counties who wander into town all fresh and ready to go and always new and different looking. Looking to make a new start in Big City, It’s rather unsettling really.” Benjamin raised an eyebrow and blew out a sigh.

“As far as we can tell there are only now three of us in Big City. But there may be one or two who woke up on the Channel Islands or at one of the smaller trading port cities or god help them, in the Black Forest which is nothing but wall to wall monsters stretching endlessly into the fog.” Copper jabbed his finger at each place on his maps as he spoke.

“At first we thought there had only been one other before us. We found his ring or were shown his ring when we went to the elite council who is the government of this city with our story, but recently Copper made a horrific discovery.”

“Yes, in my quest to find a way to escape this place and return to Earth I put the skills I learned here at the Sewer works and snuck into the locked depository of records offices and there I found a case full of these rings… hundreds of them. All on display… just sitting there. So you see we are but one of hundreds that have come before us to this place and have remained stuck here until they die.”

“What do they think about us then? I mean don’t they think it’s odd that we have just appeared in their world?” Andrew waved his right hand in a sweeping gesture over the city a few stories below the squat short tower before him.

“Do you speak French? No? Do you speak German? Well I speak French and am speaking it now and Copper speaks only German and is speaking it now and what are you? English? And I am sure you are speaking that now and I do not understand English nor German and yet I understand you both clearly and you I would guess do not speak French nor German and yet you seem to be understanding us perfectly and what do these people speak? We seem to understand them perfectly.” Benjamin waved his hand over the map between him and the frowning Andrew.

“When one of them dies a new person shows up wandering in from the hill countries. To them that is perfectly normal. I don’t think they think there is anything weird about us though only the government here seems to really know who we are and our stories. And even then I think they only see the rings we wear which bear her symbol, Miss Mercury’s symbol and they worship her so really they just ignore us as long as we keep quiet and don’t cause trouble.” Copper tapped his ring and the back of his hand on the map table. “Have you seen the babies being pushed around in the carriages? There are only a few in the entire city. The carriages are empty but you will occasionally hear the wail of an infant while walking down the street but you will never see one. The children playing? You will only see them or more readily hear them in the parks or at the school grounds but only out of the corner of your eye and only a few on rare occasions. Ghosts I am guessing, there does not seem to be any real children anywhere in the city at all. When the babies or the young children died no new ones came out of the hill country. How could they and survive that dangerous long lonely journey? No one ages no one changes in appearance. Not the way they dress not the way they wear their hair always the same. They never have sex and never become pregnant with child. Yet when the women are dragged off and raped by monsters they become pregnant and in a few hours give birth to pods that grow into new monsters that grow up. The monsters grow up but never die of old age. We have to hunt them every day and night to try and keep their rampant populations in check and each night they steal more women to mate with. Sometimes we find them, these half naked women, dazed and wandering in the tunnels and bring them back. A few weeks later they are back to their lives as if nothing happened. But they can die, these seemingly immortal people, and when they do they set up small tombstones to mark their passing but cremate the bodies so the monsters can’t dig them up and eat them. There are four cemeteries in Big City the smallest is not far from here, near the giant quarry, it takes hours to walk from one side to the other with its hills and crypts of small marker stones bodiless graves. Urns everywhere in the city in every house every apartment even here they have them in the break room and scattered along hallways and book shelves. There is a cemetery out in the hill country that swallowed up a town. You walk from house to house and everywhere around you are tombstones and slabs of marble and mausoleums. The dead here outnumber the living by tens of thousands to one. These people have been living here and dying here in a seamless changeless measureless expanse of time for how long I don’t know. But I do know that this place has become increasingly darker. I can see it in just the short ten years I have been imprisoned here. The monsters are wining and the fogs of the Black Forest and the Dark Sea and the endless tunnels below us are steadily slowly spreading, devouring up this land and these people.”

“Well be that as it may, back to Miss Mercury, the people worship her; the criminals surly don’t and I am sure there are many in the government who wish she wasn’t always popping up here and there looking over their hunched embezzling shoulders.” Benjamin adjusted his small round glasses and smiled.

“Well what does she say? What does Miss Mercury say about us about these rings about this whole place?” Andrew’s voice was angry and betrayed his frayed nerves and exhausted battered body and mind.

The two men looked at each other and then back at Andrew. “No one knows anything about her. She just shows up and rescues people or beats up the bad guys. Just fly’s in rescues a kitten from a tree or thwarts a bank robbery and then soars off… poof vanished!” Benjamin frowned and then took off his glasses and whipped them on his un-tucked shirt tail.

“She doesn’t do PR. No shop openings no interviews no political photo ops no showing up for a Miss Mercury day. She just pops in and wallops whatever it is that needs a good thrashing and then skedaddles before you can blurt out a ‘thank you’ or a ‘who the hell do you think you are!’ Just gone in a flash… swoosh. But in the decade I have been here I have managed to put together a scrap book of the few newspaper clippings the papers have of her, mostly police log reports, that and a lot of shop clerk gossip and rumors. And I have figured out this much; she is NOT Miss Mercury all the time. She has a secret civilian identity but I have no idea who or what that is. She transforms from her alter ego into Miss Mercury with some kind of word of power and this meteorite or comet then comes crashing out of the sky and slams into her in this huge fiery boom explosion. The impact causes everything to shake and rattle around her but it damages nothing? The shooting star can pass harmlessly through buildings and what not as if they weren’t really there and it just slams into the girl and explodes and when the ground shaking flash is over and the rock debris rain harmlessly down, there is standing Miss Mercury. Neat huh, just like in all those episodes, eh? You see we got an edge over all these others we have watched her in our world we already knew she was this normal teen girl who transforms into this young super heroine we already knew about the meteorite that slams into her every time she transforms but we have forgotten that until we find it out in this world. See I can tell by your face just my mentioning her transformation and that sky rock slamming into her and I can see the recognition on your face as you suddenly remember it. it took me years to piece this stuff back together here but as soon as we hear it again or see it fresh and new in this world we remember that bit from our world like remembering a half forgotten dream.”

“Now if we could only remember what her civilian name is?” Benjamin whispered.

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“Ten years in this place for Copper and what did Benjamin say? Did he say he had been her seven years or was it five? And neither one of them have ever met Miss Mercury face to face? How is that even possible? I saw her flashing across the sky just minutes after I first arrived. Surely there must be some way to meet this woman and talk to her. I am certain she is the key to getting out of this place.” Andrew paused and watched the people walking the street, some hurriedly some arm in arm some laughing some angry some distracted, all looking normal healthy and alive if a bit archaic in their 1935 suits and dresses. “And what is that shit that we can only get work in the sewer extermination crews?! Benjamin says you can ask for work at any of these other places but they are never hiring no matter what the place cards say. Only the monster hunting gig has work and pay, all the other places have the same people working day after day shift after shift or if they just died, well then they are holding the position because someone is on their way from the hill country? All because we aren’t a part of this place we aren’t supposed to be here we don’t fit in the puzzle. That and he says these rings mean we are supposed to be some kind of heroes. And in this city heroes fight monsters. Heroes and poor homeless people or suicidal nitwits or whack jobs like Reeves.” Andrew watched some prostitutes hanging outside of the corner bar talking to a police man as the over cast sun meekly cast a few rays through the lowering sky. “Benjamin says the prostitutes fuck for money, they are the only women in the city who know what sex is, but he says it is because it is their job and that they always get the same few costumers. Like the city has this one year long master loop of time that just endlessly repeats. Day to day things change but it tries to remain the same year after year. Never any more people never any less. He doesn’t think things are getting worse he thinks Copper is losing his mind. Copper thinks the damn city is alive and dying. All I know is that if this is somehow a representation of some city in 1935 than it could never have existed before 1935. It can only be what? Sixty, seventy years old from my own time when I was pulled out of it to here? And why are there so many well alien weird ass things? I mean there are so many just utterly bizarre bits and pieces you would never find on Earth. That stuff they pour into their car tanks looks like rotted cottage cheese and smells worse?! Ugh!”

He angled away from one of the city’s many parks. Ever since Copper had told him about the ghost images of children and the empty prams he had went there only once to prove to himself that Copper was full of shit and had scared the pants off himself with all the images of children playing but only out of the corner of his eye and the source-less sounds and the playground equipment that moved in windless moments and with hair rising on the back of his neck he had fled the place and now he avoided all the parks giving them a wide berth.

“And why can’t we remember shit about Miss Mercury from all those adventure episodes we witnessed back in our world. Copper is right though no matter how hard I try I can’t actually seem to remember any of the adventures or anything about her even though I know I had listened to so many of them? But she must be the key to getting out of this place and I can’t keep paying six silver stars for a hand job from a fat ass hooker! And I never get the hand job! She takes me to a room and then never undresses, never seems to know what my penis is?! And people just keep walking in and out of the room talking to each other as if we aren’t there or talking to her, it’s like even the hookers here don’t know what sex is?! They take your money and talk in the double entendre of sex but never actually do the deed!  And two gold for a blow job?! She wants two gold stars for a blow job?! That’s outrageous I know they only charge ten copper stars for their regular Johns for the whole nine yards. And I still don’t think they even actually fuck! They just walk off to a room and return as if they have done something, like walking into the room is what the ‘sex’ was.  No clothes taken off no touching no nothing? It’s because we aren’t supposed to be here we don’t somehow fit into the city’s structure even the simplest of things can sometimes turn so very weird it’s like they all somehow recognize we are not like them. They ignore us utterly unless we are looking right at them and they have to deal with us and then it’s like trying to pull your own reflection out of a well. I can’t do this until some monster rips my head off in the sewers or some gangster shoots me in some botched robbery attempt. I have to find a way home. I don’t think Benjamin even wants to leave. I think he just wants to find some way to live here forever but safely without having to hunt monsters in the sewers to pay for his room and board. Only Copper seems serious about getting out of here. But all he does is stare at his maps all day and night until he runs out of money and then he goes bug hunting taking the most dangerous assignments available so he only has to go out every few weeks. Benjamin always goes with him when he goes but otherwise Benjamin takes the lesser paying less dangerous jobs almost every other day. He’s hording his money but for what? Copper says he has a huge stash of it hidden somewhere .Can’t trust the banks they are always getting robbed. And this money I just don’t get it! Day stars night stars! Silver stars they call them ‘nickels’? Everyone here speaks in endless slang it is like learning new languages every day!  And if you want to buy a car or a house or actually own anything in the city you have to earn certificates?! These bonds you get for the time you have lived in the city and all and any public worthy deeds you have done for the city council or community service. I just don’t get it, Copper says half the apartments and business are empty and have always been empty and always will be empty yet to get a lease or move in or start up your own business you need these certificates from the council and endless stamps from all these government departments doing them favors to get them to stamp your certificate to increase their value only to give them back to the council like money as well as real stars as well and a lot of real stars at that. It’s bureaucracy at its finest; this place is just as fucked-up as home.”

Andrew crossed the street again and entered the corner drug store and purchased; a roll of gauze, some white tape, some metal splints, and a bottle of iodine, and left the drug store, again getting charged double the price of everyone else because he somehow doesn’t belong in the this world somehow does not quiet register in people’s minds here. “You have to repeat everything over and over again as if people don’t quiet see you or like you somehow aren’t in sync to their senses.” He shifted the small white paper bag into the crook of his arm and made his way back to the small tower attached to the back side of the department of sewer extermination building. It was a short fat tower made of the same identical white stone with black trim like all the other government buildings and the top floor was his new home with Benjamin and Copper. He could thank his ring for that perk. They still had to pay rent but it beat the lower floors which had no windows and where the other men slept and slowly died.

There were basically two kinds of missions at his new job; Greenies and Bugs. Now bugs were the less dangerous job and paid much more so everyone wanted a bug job. Bugs were big in the city. The hill country raised small two foot long black bugs that you harvested and opened up their carapaces to reveal a bright orange flesh that had the consistency of a stringy clown wig. That was what passed for chicken in this world. People ate those all the time. The bugs in the sewer came in all shapes and sizes but they were not very bright and there were many kinds of tricks you could pull on them making hunting and killing them a hell of a lot easier and relatively safer than hunting the greenies or monsters. You didn’t get paid to kill a bug instead you got a share of the sale of a bug. The people here used everything from these bugs. The meat, the shells, everything and that share often added up to more stars than a straight monster hunt. But it did mean the laborious grunt work of dragging the carcass back to an access point with a hoist and that could be a literal pain in the backside. Greenies, monsters, you got paid per kill or sometimes per mission and more often than not a combination of the two. Again the money was pooled and divided up but those that did more fighting got more money but they also got more dead sooner and faster than the more cautious guys. Monsters were what you were supposed to be hunting down there in those endless warrens but the head boss, the man he met at the door on his first day/night wasn’t about to turn down a bug hunt as long as he got his cut and the monster quotas got filled. Copper was the best monster hunter alive, he not only hunted only monsters and killed them in great numbers often filling the quota for an entire week, but he did it in the Deep. The most dangerous locations scattered in the Far-Off where maps ceased to exist was called the Deep or sometimes the Outer Deep. It was beyond the edge of the maps where all the monsters lived in vast numbers where no sane man wanted to go. He came back not only with full quotas but would make new maps and share them with our boss which in turn made ‘his’ boss next door very happy.

Benjamin said the reason Copper kept heading out into the Deep was because there was a street rumor amongst the criminal element that Miss Mercury liked to visit the deepest darkest places where the monsters where the most savage and most ‘HUNG’! And that he believed he might stumble over her there in the most remote recess of this world.

However, unlike Reeves who always came back without a scratch and was the new up and coming golden boy, the rest of us came back torn up each and every time. Since the extermination job was really the only job one of us ring bearers could get we understood too grimly how our fate would end. Sooner or later we would be torn apart by some giant bug or swarm of bugs or some fanged clawed monster and our little gold embossed rings would wind up in a glass case along hundreds of others in a locked room.

Since working at the sewer extermination building was the only job one of us from Earth could get we were confident that there was only three of us in all of Big City. There might be others scattered off in the smaller cities or in the channel islands or back in the hill countries but sooner or later if they could manage it they would be drawn to Miss Mercury bound by that ring to try and find her and she spent most of her time in Big City. So we believed that there were probably only three of us currently in the entire known world here. But it was an educated guess at best born more out of ignorance than actual facts.

“I still find it hard to believe that they have been here for years! How can they survive that long? There is something strange about this place… something strange about everything here.” Andrew pulled the collar of his thin jacket up against the cold wind and with hunched shoulders jogged to the stair well leading down to the door to the sewer extermination building.

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“Okay now listen up, we got a rescue or recovery mission here tonight. Seems one of the head big shots over at the ministry had his wife snatched by a greenie and yanked down in the sewers. So all four teams tonight are going to focus on finding her and bringing her back in whatever shape she may be in. Casper you get point search the upper tunnels, subway, maintenance you know the drill. Reeves you take point and hit the stretch along the river flood gates and turbine housings and drain systems. Hicks you take point and lead your team back along the old city ruins and collapsed mines. Wallace you take point and go straight down to the boroughs and head across the metro warrens and up to the hospital access junctions. Now Copper you and Benjamin and Andrew you three head down into the Deep. This is the sixth time this little lady has been nabbed and every time we find her she is down in the Deep with her legs spread before a pile of big leathery green eggs and a big smile on her dazed face. She is quiet the hot little number and I think some of the Ancient Ones down there have taken a real fancy to her. So take the express down to twenty seven and repel down the Great Scar Rift to make good time. Now, they are sending down no less than thirty-two security forces (police and secret police) in groups ranging from fifteen to twenty to thirty in number and they will be searching for her as well. So watch out from any friendly fire from these amateurs and expect to see lots of dead bodies and fat over stuffed bugs and greenies. Now this is a rescue/recovery mission. Don’t go around trying to rack-up the stars and the hoists will be sealed off so no bug hunts. Just kill and move on. The pay is good enough as it is, trust me for those of you have never done one of these. Find her and bring her back either alive or bag and tagged. Use the wall phones to report back in that are scattered about whenever you come across one. Oh and take a lunch as this going to be an ‘all-nighter’. And again for those of you new to this job, that term means you are down there until she is found. Hatches will be sealed up behind you. Good hunting.”

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Andrew had never seen so many men in suits before and hats as there had been at their meeting and he had never seen the meeting room before either. In all his weeks of working at the sewer extermination building all the briefings had been held in the hallway or break room. So it gave the whole mission a sense of foreboding unease as he clung to the repel line and he hoped either Copper or Benjamin had some idea what they were doing as he was sure he had no clue.

Suddenly in the dark bellow him he could see the distant lights of Copper and Benjamin jostle about as the sounds of struggle erupted. He was still several dozen meters above the fight and could only make out a few dark large shapes milling and leaping around the far ledge bellow where the entrance to the half severed and collapsed rock and steel catwalks to the lower Deep began. He spun in place as he tried to judge the shadowy chaos swirling below him and if there were a clear place for him to land his stopped descent, but the fight seemed to be centered upon the very point where the rope ended and he was soon being tugged this way and that as hissing roaring beasts became entangled in the coils of the repel line. He clung desperately to the rope as he was helplessly slammed with clenched teeth jarring impact again and again into the rough uneven surface of the jagged black stone as he tried to decide if he should continue down the rope or climb back up to the previous ledge. The decision was made for him when suddenly a heavy black shape slammed into his back; a ‘Cherub or Chubbie’ as the women of Big City called them. A ham hock sized bat winged lump of downy muscle that looked to him like nothing but a large bulbous nut sack and enormous penis with wings. The blind eyeless thing hunted its prey with ultrasonic radar and its sucker tipped wings and long rat like tail were dotted with short sharp claws which it now used to slice into his back for purchase as its large ever chubby erection slapped him harshly across his cheek. He instinctively let go of the rope with his right hand and swung at the foul creature. Just then another winged Chubbie landed above him and grappled with the rope trying to support its hefty weight. Its razor sharp claws instead sliced through the old line and in a second Andrew found himself falling alone through the darkness. Despite himself he yelled as he plummeted and the yell became an unmasked scream as he realized he missed the winced at impact landing upon the thin ledge now embroiled in a grim fight of leaping swarming monsters and rushed past spinning into the dark void of the chasm.

In complete blackness he fell tumbling faster and faster out of control and throwing his arms and legs out spastically in uncontrollable fear of the sudden impact that must surely come. The impact did come but it was not hard and bone crushing life stealing pain but instead a shock of warm firm soft flesh?!

“Don’t worry I got you!” The voice was young but authoritative and in a blur he was now moving rapidly in a horizontal rather than vertical rush through the darkness.

To his ever growing amazement he found himself lightly deposited upon one of the lower stair landings of steel mesh and stone that made up the haphazard surface of the lesser rift chasm. Ancient oily sensors made a rusty moan and an old bluish light slowly seeped on from out of its dust covered thick fish eye glass covering above the black grimy telephone. There in the growing faint light he could make out a young woman hovering just before him. He knew in an instant it was, “Miss Mercury!”

The young girl smiled and settled down to stand upon the old platform just in front of him. He was surprised to realize he was almost a foot taller than her! “Hello citizen, I am glad you are unharmed. It is a very dangerous place down here. You should be more careful!”

“Ah, yes, thank you for saving me… ah, Miss Mercury.” Andrew found himself suddenly before the very woman he had been trying to find for what seemed a month of Sundays and now that she was there before him he couldn’t for the life of him put his racing thoughts into words!

“Think nothing of it,” the young girl half turned to go and panic jumped into Andrew’s chest.

“Are you down here searching for the missing woman as well?” It was the first coherent thought to solidify in his throat and he blurted it out.

Miss Mercury turned back to him. She was obviously a very young woman and very beautiful. Though not very tall her body was very well proportioned and her long lithe frame moved with graceful movements that belayed her extreme powers. Her hair was a sort of messy thick brown mop under which her bright dark eyes flashed and her wide smile leapt under a small freckled nose. Her costume consisted of a simple purple dress. The upper part of the one piece had a high stiff collar which was wide open at her throat. It remained open in an odd cut out that traversed down and across her chest ending at a simple pleated skirt that fell mid-thigh. The material of her sleeveless dress looked almost like a shiny vinyl or plastic and was trimmed in white and matched her all white go-go boots and small white gloves which stopped abruptly at her wrists. She had a small belt with her insignia upon the buckle and she wore a large ring over her right glove middle finger which also was emblazoned with the same symbol. The costume was very simple overall but it took him several long staring attempts to take it all in as his eyes kept being pulled back to the young thin girl’s almost impossible shuddering over spilling cleavage! Her firm full breasts were simply huge!

“32 double HH.” She said simply as she put one of her gloved hands upside down with palm up on her jutting full round hip and gave him a half dead pan half bored smile. “It’s the answer to the first question everyone asks me. Now what was this you said about some missing girl?”

“Huh? Wha- oh yes the Prefect’s wife! Or I think it was his wife anyway some woman is missing down here who is married or related to one of the big shots that is why we are all down here. I thought that must be why you were down here as well. Isn’t it?”

“Wha- Yes! Of course it is!” The young girl instantly became very nervous and defensive. “What do you think I would be doing down here! You don’t think I come down here to let myself be sexually assaulted by these large penis virile beasts do you?! That’s absurd! That’s a disgusting filthy rumor spread by jealous fish wives and two copper star whores! I have no idea where it started! Yes of course I am down here looking for this, er, person same as you! Humph! Men!” The young super heroine folded her small arms under her mighty bosom almost causing the giant pale globes to erupt out of her cutout top’s décolletage and stamped her foot which caused the firm orbs to shake mightily to the sudden sound of thunder and quivering earth.

Andrew recoiled from the angry pouting faced girl and struggled for balance as the earth shook under him. “Look I have this ring,” he suddenly held up his ring for the girl to see. “I wonder if you can tell me anything about it? Do you know why I am here in this place? This is not my world I do not belong here. Do you know who I can get back to my world? I think you are somehow the key to my being here.” He spoke rapidly and in a rush afraid the angry girl would soar off and leave him and this rare opportunity to get back home would be lost forever!

The girl frowned and then dropped her arms back to her sides as she leaned in and looked at the ring. “It is similar to mine but different. Where did you get it?”

“I woke up here in one of the parks several weeks ago and it was in my pocket,” He held his hand still as the girl looked up from the ring and studied his face intently.

She looked at him a long time and then nodded. “Alright, come on.” She grabbed him by his upper arm and fly off through the air at blinding speed.

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“This is my special place,” the girl had put him down gently and he grabbed his knees as his dizzy head continued to spin. He looked around him. They were deep, deep down in the chasm and somewhere on the farthest wall with no visible signs of human hand could be discerned. They were on a large wide ledge on a sheer rock outcropping and he forced himself to stand up and move on shaky legs in order to keep up with the rapidly walking young woman. The hip sway of her full pert upturned buttocks caused her short stiff pleated skirt to whisk back and forth like a lion’s tail and flashed pale white spheres of naked buttocks in the process.

He swallowed hard and tried not to stare at the young girl’s wiggling ass as he surveyed the natural rock formations of jutting spires which somehow seemed to have been focused by a conscious will a mammoth structure. In a few strides he saw that the entire back side of the lone jutting outcropping was fashioned into a large fortress cave. The open mouth lead rapidly into a huge hall complete with chairs made of boulders and a large circular table which was pierced by a fall of clear bright water that went straight through the table and the open floor to fall thousands of feet beyond. All was fashioned from the same black rock and seemed naturally formed with no forced carving hand. The entire place was lit by the glowing water fall in the center of the massive table and room. Its wimpled rolling light glinted on the surface of statues lining the niches of the far walls. Each statue bore an inscription beneath its pedestal and to these Miss Mercury waved a hand in passing.

“Those are the totems representing the sources of my power. I pronounce a word made up out of the first letters of each channeling totem and that is how I transform back and forth. Wana see me do it?” The girl giggled and looked back over her should at him and her eyes flashed red as she bit her thumb.

Andrew frowned, “sometimes when you look at me your eyes turn red. Why?”

The young girl instantly blushed and stammered, “my eyes turn red when I use my x-ray vision. I mean, if you had x-ray vision wouldn’t you peak now and then too?”

Andrew thought about how he had stared so openly at the young girls breasts when he had first seen her and how he had just been struggling not to become hypnotized by her swaying butt when she had lead him into her secret hall and swallowed hard and nodded and smiled.

The smile returned to the young girl’s face and she seemed relieved even though the deep blush remained on her freckled face. “Okay, an even trade then. Now you can see me as I really am!” The girl made a stern face and raised up her arms and shouted, “TA-DA!” there was the a loud peal of thunder and then not one but dozens of meteorites shot down from the heavens and smashed into the girl exploding and shaking the entire area. After the pieces finished raining down Andrew lowered his instinctively raised arms from before his face and head and saw a young girl standing before him. She looked very similar to Miss Mercury, same cute face and thick mop of hair, but she wore glasses now and had braces on her smiling teeth. She wore a tight red t-shirt that read, “I am not a nerd I am a level 12 paladin” and a very tight pair of torn faded blue jeans. Her breasts were smaller but still full round and massive on her thin frame. “32 double DD. That is also the answer to the first question everyone asks me! Ha!” She laughed and doubled over in delight keeping a steady gaze at his eyes as her breasts leaped and jiggled under her straining t-shirt.

“Wow!” it was all he could say.

“So… not too disappointed?” She raised up and then dropped her shoulders and clasped her hands together with wrists crossed over each other in front of her lower stomach and shook her upper body lightly from side to side as she looked up at him from under heavy lowered eyelids.

“No… far from it.” He blushed back at her.

“Good! It’s not easy living up to being the other side of the bookend when you’re competing against your super heroine self. Ha! Now come here!” She grabbed his wrist with what felt to be slightly damp clammy hands and dragged him across the large single room. She stopped before a large circular stone bed covered in soft downy furs and nodded. “That is why I brought you here!”

Andrew stared at the bed and then down at the top of the head of the girl next to him and swallowed hard, “uh I am not uh well I-“

“So what do you think? Don’t be shy tell me what you think it means to you?” She gestured and then held up her right hand with fingers splayed showing the signet ring that still remained there upon her finger.

It took Andrew a moment to catch on but then he noticed that right behind the bed along the far wall were two large stone figures. One of a nude man and one of a nude woman both were holding forth their hands to each other and ring upon each figures outstretched hands from which rays had been carved in relief upon the stone wall around them.

“I mean I think it is pretty obvious myself what it means,” the young girl looked back over her shoulder pulling her glasses down to the tip of her nose and her eyes glowed red as she stared hard at Andrew’s crotch and licked her lips.

Andrew was too engrossed in studying the two huge statues to notice this and opened his mouth to speak but fell instantly mute in perplexing contemplation.

The young girl looked back at the male statue which had a huge penis that fell down to almost its knees and looked back at Andrew’s crotch with red eyes again and cleared her throat, “it hasn’t been easy finding the right size, er, right man but I think we have a wiener! Ha!”

“Oh! I get it!” Andrew suddenly straightened up still staring at the statues.

“Thank the Goddess! Now let’s get started shall we?!” The girl began to pull her t-shirt tails out of her tight blue jeans waist band.

“Yes! You see, the man is standing on a stone image of Earth! My Earth! You see we have to touch rings!” Andrew was pointing excitedly at the statues and nearly jumping up and down.

The girl froze and lowered her shirt back down, “What?”

“Don’t you see we have to touch our rings together,” he had grabbed the girls shoulders and shook her hard as he began to move her around to his other side in his flushed excitement. “You stand on this side of me just like the statues and I will stand like this and now we raise up our rings and touch them.”

“Seriously, you want to touch rings?” The girl looked at him in dead pan disappointment and a surly look came over her face.

“Now raise up your ring. Come on raise up your hand.” He tugged her wrist up and the girl held up her ring hand in a lackluster slouch as she dropped her other hand to her hip and shook her head.

The rings clicked together and there was a faint blue spark but then nothing. “I don’t understand,” Andrew looked back at the statues and re-adjusted his position.

 While the girl sighed and gave him the most disappointed frustrated look she could muster. In a very soft voice the girl whispered, “why do you want to go back to that world anyway? I sure don’t.”

“Wait there are those totems again! Carved behind your statue! Say your word of power!” Andrew looked back at her from the statues and motioned her with his hand to speak.

With utter indifference and boredom the girl sighed out in a low gruff voice, “ta- da.”

The rings glowed and the room shook and a cascade of fire balls rained down from the sky.

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Andrew woke slowly and raised his head up from his desk. The old radio was mute before him and it took him several minutes to realize he was back in his room. He half fell from his chair as he moved around touching things to make sure they were real and then looked at his hand and saw the ring was gone. He looked at his reflection in the mirror above his dresser and studied his face and then lifted up his shirt there were the scars still there made by claws and teeth and mandible but it was his old clothes not the ones from the other world. He moved around cautiously and then raced downstairs and out into the street.

It was several weeks back in his normal life of which he had been away from for so many months but only a few minutes at the same time before he began eyeing the radio again. That old radio that only played Miss Mercury radio plays. He plugged it in and turned it on but it did not work. He set it in his closet and went back to his normal world, his boring world, his colorless humdrum pointless world. After a few more mindless months he had the radio out on his desk and was prying off the back cover to see if he could see why it wouldn’t work. Out from the back of the open radio a lone single ring had come tumbling out. He picked it up and swallowing hard put it on his finger and the radio had crackled and popped and he spun the dial with a safecrackers focused intensity for over an hour until he found the only signal so very weak amongst the static and then he lay his head down on his desk next to the popping hissing radio and with the broadcast faintly playing he went to sleep.

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