As I step out from the entrance of the alley I stop dead in my tracks. Wherever I have ended up, regardless of the abysmal state of cleanliness, there is beauty here. Not in an enchanting, otherworldly way, but more a beauty of persistence, tenacity, and resilience. Even with the wonders of modern engineering, I have never seen or even heard of a place like this. A city built into a ravine, structures and buildings clinging to every available surface like stubborn cave moss. Wooden shacks bolted to the side of larger metal amalgamations like mollusks on coral, small splashes of color breaking up the monotony of grey. Patchworks of stone and wood weave a tapestry depicting an unspoken history, ancient looking structures weathered by time intermixed with ramshackle hovels, looking new yet ancient at the same time. Metal pipes and beams crisscross everywhere, from the opposing ravine walls to the ones directly above me, walkways balanced on top of them give a claustrophobic feel to the ravine. At least half of the ‘airspace’ is taken up by some matter of construction. Everything looks like a precariously balanced stack of dominoes, but instead of any one part being the weak link, each structure plays a small part in the greater whole to keep it all standing. The sheer absurdity of the construction and the impossibility of how it was all held together makes me stand slack jawed for a few moments taking in the alien location.

  “Move sumpsnipe” a gruff voice accompanies a rough shove that snaps me out of my stupor.

  As I stumble back towards the alley, my hand snaps to the shiv in my pocket on instinct, and grasps the familiar handle. The owner of the voice, a veritable giant covered in what looked to be mining attire, continued down the street that I was now standing to the side of, paying no more attention after I was moved out of their way. I release my grip on the shiv, step back and press myself into a shaded crevice between some emptied, scratch that, mostly empty, chemical drums. While the alien script scrawled across the barrels is foreign to me, I can interpret the crude, but effective, warning drawings. Edging slightly away from the drums, yet still masked in shadow, I ponder the deluge of information my short foray from the alley has given me so far.

  Sumpsnipe, I roll the word around on my tongue. I can't say I have ever heard it before. Thinking back, I also can't say I've heard the language that was used to utter it either, yet I understood it perfectly. It reminds me of bilingual people I've talked to in the past, where they explained how they ‘thought’ in one language but spoke another.

  “Sumpsnipe” I mutter in the unidentified language, the word fluently leaving my lips.

  Unsettling. I feel as though I am thinking in english but whatever leaves my mouth is this new language.

  “Sumpsnipe” I mutter once again in English, the meaning of the word the same but the pronunciation is garbled, my native language foreign on my tongue. I quickly push any deeper ramifications that information holds out of my mind, whatever language I think and speak is not currently a pressing concern.

  Glancing around, I notice that while the street is not crowded there still is a trickle of foot traffic. Despite the worn down look of many passersby, none stop or dawdle in this area. Some scan the path ahead of them vigilantly, walking with purpose like they have a destination in mind that they will not be kept from. Their gazes take me in and then quickly dismiss my presence, almost regarding me like any other pile of debris that dot the edges of the street. A few other disheveled street urchins, who look no older than six or seven and are not pressed into the edges of the thoroughfare, receive sharper glances and more caution. Not caution like in the presence of deadly danger, but more of the avoidance of an inconvenience. The children, as compared to the other denizens, receive rougher treatment too by the looks of it. My ears pick out more of the muttered word, sumpsnipe, from the rugged street walkers as they pass by offending individuals. While most of the interactions are not particularly violent, with some of the pushes and shoves almost being like shepherds guiding sheep, a choice few offenders strike with malice.

  Outside of the few children that are arguably dressed better than me, the older denizens primarily dress like miners. Their overalls caked in a thick layer of dust, heavier than the layer that coats just about every other part which turns them monochrome. The dust does little to hide the large calluses that each of their hands sport but it also seems to weigh them down, movements measured, slow, and sluggish. There is a plethora of gazes and eyes that the miners sport, some steely containing a hidden fire but most glassy and sunken, dead to the world around them. Those with the fiery glint carry their burden better, each step purposeful as they shepherd the urchins out of their path. The rest of the miners carry vacant gazes and slumped shoulders, seemingly worn down from the burdens they bear. Their shoulders slouched and every step dragging along, no life in any of their movements. They honestly look more like robots than anything living, just going through the motions.

  “It's easier that way,” whispers flit from the chemical smoke that rises from the barrels, “you have nothing left to live for anyways”

  I jerk and stumble away from the barrels, scrambling backwards and falling onto the muddy street as muffled, insidious laughter follows me. I don't have any time to recover as I quickly jump to my feet to avoid an approaching pedestrian and another losing altercation. Noone else seems worried about the taunting fumes or my tussle with the ground, and I send furtive glances back towards the barrels as I flee the scene. My bare feet carry me along with the flow of traffic, away from the smoke, only to be rewarded for my distraction by sharp pain digging into the sole of my foot. I stumble forward, narrowly avoiding a collision with the back of a particularly broad shouldered giant miner and hobble my way back towards the… relative safety of the shadows. The inky domain welcomes me and provides a moment's respite to inspect my wound.

  Thankfully there is no evidence of red seeping through the muddy amalgamation that coats my foot. Grimacing, I run the bottom of my foot against a protruding brick that makes up a portion of the shadowy wall of my refuge. Scraping off the offensive mixture leads to a smaller jolt of pain, lesser but still present, to shoot through the sole but it gives me a clearer look at the underside of my foot. Thick calluses, rivaling those sported on some of the miners hands, coat almost every portion of exposed skin. They even inch their way up the sides of my toes, firmly gripping short, chipped, and chemically bleached toenails. The pain fades and further inspection confirms that the calluses did their job and protected my skin from getting pierced by whatever debris I stepped on. Cold sweat coalesces on the small of my back uninvited as I think about what horrors would await me if I got some manner of infection from an open cut that was caked in this city's grime. It would be all but guaranteed that I would get sick and I shudder as, for all of the deadly diseases I know about, I'm afraid of what mutations to ‘standard’ disease this unsanitary hellhole could cook up.

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  With a cautious breath, I step out of the shadows, but instead of rushing down the center of the street again I pick my way along the edges, never far from the safety and obscurity of shrouding darkness. Now scanning not only for other pedestrians but also where I place each step, I slowly work my way onwards. I have to step further into the street a few times to avoid other individuals lurking in the shadows, but I quickly return to their embrace once I pass the other occupants. While most are similarly dressed street urchins who all focus intensely on me as I walk past them, others are spindly individuals crumpled over in heaps. These gaunt folk have the same empty eyes I saw earlier, but there is an almost tangible aura of malaise around each of them. The few that are visibly conscious have a hungry gleam to their eyes, one that makes me give them a wider berth despite how much the exposed street unsettles me.

  I keep following the road as it leads towards the center of the ravine. The patchwork shacks and dilapidated buildings that look to be built from scraps of wood and rusted sheet metal turn into more cohesive dwellings. Still slum-like overall, but a noticeable improvement from the edges of the ravine. The elevation increases as I near the center of the ravine, and the verticality of construction does as well. A massive shadow looms through the fog and reveals itself to be a giant pillar that shoots up from what must be the center of the ravine. Bridges and walkways span from the pillar reaching higher and higher up, allowing access to upper levels of the ravine. As I get nearer to the central monument more and more people start to fill the streets, so I force myself to slow down to maintain a high degree of caution.

  The, presumably ever present, grey-green smog slowly darkens during my journey. Not enough to impede vision, but it causes the inky shadows to gleefully stretch and creep over where the light fades. As the humidity noticeably rises, the already pungent air gains an even heavier taste that weighs down my tongue. The lazy waltz of the smog picks up its twists and turns to a slow foxtrot as wisps of humid fog join the dance. The visibility decreases as the fog thickens as the fumes seem to be pressed down by the humid air. While it doesn't get cold a subtle chill nips at my skin which makes me be on the edge of shivering but my body does not do the act. A slight feeling of discomfort, like being on the verge of sneezing but being unable to, permeates my core due to the shivers being withheld.

  The decrease of conditions makes me notice a larger influx of individuals visiting what look like decrepit phone booths. There were a few such locations that dot back along the way I came but it looks like as the “livable” conditions improved so did the frequency of installations.

  Curiosity peaking, I creep over and watch as a visitor, no, a customer, places one of the copper gear-coins into a slot reminiscent of a vending machine. The woman, who could be no older than thirty, was not unique compared to any of the other street goers. Slightly slouched, her vigilant eyes relaxing a minute amount as she pulls a robust lever that feeds the coin further into the bowels of the blocky machine. With a mechanical whirr and distressing hiss the contraption shakes to life, not dissimilar to an air compressor used to inflate car tires. She grabs a bendable hose, composed of a patchwork of leather and tarred fabric, from a hook like that a gas pump nozzle sits in. The hose has a metal half mask attached to the end and the woman shoves it toward her face with little regard to the unprotected edges of the metal mask. She begins to inhale deeply and mechanical, almost menacing, rhythmic breathing commences. It goes on for what must be a full minute and the curled shoulders and slouched back of the woman straighten slightly as I can visibly see some of the stress dissipate from her form. After the minute of relief, the almost therapeutic whirring and hissing of the machine choke and sputter out, leading to her shoulders and back to slouch slightly once more but not as much as before her use of the machine. The woman heaves out a visible sigh, and sets the mask back on the hanger before turning to leave, the next customer in line patiently waiting. Her eyes regain the glint of vigilance after leaving the unspoken sanctuary of the stall, and she disappears into the mists, just another individual of many.

  “They're paying for air?!” This concept, so foreign and so alien to me, twists my gut into an unpleasant knot. My heartbeat rises and a simmering rage I didn't know I possessed rears its head as I can’t comprehend this new knowledge. I understand the air is terrible here, a sin in its own right, but making people pay to breathe was anathema to everything I used to know!

  The sour air seems to grow hotter, heavier with my rage, and my heartbeat sounds like a pounding drum in my ears. I take a shuddering gasp, attempting to cram moist, tepid air into my lungs. Forcing people to pay for what should be an indelible right, who? no, what monsters? would force this on them and why would people comply wit-

  *Molten heat, pain traveling from lips to lungs, nerves seared and torture absent for a blissful microsecond. Agony filling the void after, as my brain SCREAMED for air, for life.*

  My rage was doused instantly as if plunged into an arctic sea. A ragged breath shudders out of me, joining the everpresent fumes in their tango. They seem to twist and laugh, delighting in the pain, the suffering they cause by their mere presence. Mocking whispers tease their way past the dull drumbeat in my ears as the currents and eddies slow to their previous tune.

  I understood.

  I know what it was like, gasping and choking, the primal desperation, the urging, the demands to get that one, more, breath. While the tangy air wasn't, and probably wouldn't, ever be my first choice to inhale, I was happy with the fact that I still could.

  Would this place wear me down over time to become like that woman, my only respite a minute of air? Being on the very edge of breaking, holding on with whatever willpower I have left, losing hope day by day?

  I don’t know. I can easily admit the fact, but a yearning, something fundamentally desperate at my core, something that I didn't know was ever inside of me rebels at the thought and demands that I never give up that shred of dignity, of my right to breathe.