Plumber

I’m a plumber. Wrench, headlamp, cord, resin, treated animal skin, climbing rope—these are my tools. The wrench is a nice one, too, a hefty Craftsperson model from the time before the Triple Volcanic Eruption. It belonged to the last plumber—all we have left of him, actually.

The job wouldn’t be so difficult if I weren’t leaving all this color. Rolling hills and meadows—green. Random little flowery things—yellow and red. Villages of beaten paths and synth-block bricks—tanny-brown. Sky—blue and white, obviously. I suppose you might get some purple and orange hues out of a good sunset. It’s a lot of color. Down where I’m going, into the Underneath, it’s all black. Even with my headlamp, all black. Black, black, black. Better get going before I think about it too much.

The one part of the Underneath we can see up here, the one part we allow, appropriately has no color of its own. It looks like a solid grey brick with a door in it. The grey is called concrete. Man-made, but a rock in its own right. Certainly feels like it when you scrape your elbow; the elbow-scraping happens a lot, going through such a narrow doorway. Can’t forget to close said door behind me. It’s made of metal.

Goodbye color. On to my job.

Headlamp on—the light cuts a path down the dark flight of stairs. In spite of how insistently they creak, I never engage them in conversation no matter how badly I want to talk to somebody. The talky stairs lead me to a large chamber of broken glass and warped, dirty panels. They used to be white. The chamber also used to be taller, but now the ceiling is barely six feet tall. It was once the top floor. Many other floors are stacked under this one, less broken and squashed.

Haven’t been to all of those floors, though. I have a shortcut. Right in the middle of the dark chamber, I’ve got to pry apart a couple of metallic doors with the handle of my wrench, then with my hands, then—don’t lean forward or down you go! The shaft is deep, running all the way to the ground floor. There used to be a cart of sorts that ran up and down at the push of a button; I think its components are built into our town hall. Without that cart, though, I’ve got to sling the rope through the old pulley overhead. I’ve gotten pretty good at it. Another thing to remember is to steadily swing off the ledge before rappelling down—keeps you from spinning. Good thing there’s a lot of things to remember in a plumber’s job, otherwise you’d get to thinking about other things. Less pleasant things.

Going down. Hand under hand.

Compared to the top floor, the bottom level is a cathedral. I’m in the Underneath. Down here there are a few intact windows, some furniture shards that couldn’t be bothered for salvage, and remnants of fuzzy carpet—like synthetic mold. I must leave through the main entrance; the leak is that way. I think I can hear the faint gurgle from here.

I step across the building’s threshold, from concrete to asphalt.

Here you can see it all.

The tower I came down is the straightest one; all the other high-rise buildings are leaning at drunken angles. Not many windows are left—the gaps in the skeletal tower structures gape in the form of a million mouths and eye sockets, a cubist collage of skull fragments. They were called skyscrapers once. The only sky they scrape now is a dark overcast layer of hardened soil, a few roots scraggling down like fossils of lightning and rain. Where I’m standing, it is hard to believe the cracked, heaving asphalt was once a road for millions of self-propelled vehicles. And yes, it is all black. Black roots, black windows, black tower frames, black exposed girders, black hunks of stone and dirt, black vehicle fragments, black walkways, black puddles, black smell in the air. All your headlamp does, paradoxically enough, is illuminate more blackness. Only two things break the black: my skin, reduced to a fishbelly hue in the glow, and the silvery pipes. The pipes come from my town above. They penetrate the layer of soil, clinging to sturdier “sky”-scrapers as they reach down into the Underneath.

The pipes run to the ancient water mains. I’m a plumber. My job is to fix the pipes. There’s an energetic trickle sneaking through one of the larger asphalt cracks; the leak must be that way.

It’s a bit of a trek, hiking toward the source of the problem. As one climbs across jagged chunks of road, like broken ice on a thawing river, you can’t help but think of the green meadows around your village. The hills are held up by this desiccated civilization. These two terrains couldn’t be in more contrast—green soft folds in the sun versus the jagged edges of ombric nightmare shards, honed by the light of my lamp. Brr. The trickling noise is stronger, but it’s making me shiver.

The water is coming out of that doorway. This squat structure was once a convenient trading post of sorts—only one story, glassed in on three of its four sides. Might’ve sold fuel. Despite its faded yet garish paint job, it matches the surrounding towers down here with its glistening shards and dusty shroud. A couple of pipes from above snake in through the gaps to suck more life out of this place. They duck behind a counter. Back there I’ll find the leak.

Escaping water greets me with its drawn-out hiss as I round the corner. To me it’s a friendly noise—a hiss is a relatively minor leak. I’ve held arguments with bubbling, gurgling, and vomiting noises before. Probably won’t need the wrench.

The patch is a pretty quick deal; first, use some cord to bind the pipes together as closely and firmly as you can. Coat the cured animal skin with resin, then wrap and squeeze it tightly around the leak. Check for other leaks, then wrap a whole lot more cord around the patch. Keep checking for more leaks. Yep, that’s a problem fixed. Not a tough one, this—I think I recognize my handiwork on a couple other pipes too, and those are still here…

A scratch. A scuttle? A dry hiss.

Shouldn’t have paused; pausing makes you think. Makes you think the one thought you’re trying to avoid—and tightens your grip on your wrench.

They say that other things live in the Underneath.

END

For the last three years I submitted stories to my college’s arts magazine, they’ve published one of them. In 2018 they took two; “To Write a Story” won the fiction award, and this story accompanied it.

I submitted a third that I think I liked better than these two, but that one didn’t seem to make it. Oh well. More submission ammo for me.

The primordial ooze that spawned this short story was the idea that an apocalypse would not do away with the jobs we’re familiar with today. Instead, they’d probably become more…vivid. Interesting. Definitely hazardous. I did my best to address all the senses in this one, and it looks like it turned out rather well. Could probably expand this into a novel if I had the inclination to do so.

No, I didn’t really have something in mind when it comes to Whatever-Lives-In-The-Underneath. Just scary stuff. It’s creepier if I don’t tell you.