The Mine

They call me The Swede but that is not my name. Or at least I don’t believe it to be.

I haven’t a clue how long I’ve been here, but I know I didn’t start out here.

These mines are new to me, not my element, my place.

“Swede, back to work. Less thinking. More working.” Foreman didn’t yell, he didn’t have to. Everybody in here, myself included, was afraid of him.

He was a monster, not in size but in cruelty. Today he would go to lengths to reinforce that legacy. A sly Ouch was echoed throughout the chamber. A nameless man had burnt his fingertip on his candle. Foreman walked to his spot on the wall, told him to rise and show him the finger. How he could see it through those goggles, I do not know. With a smile caked in the grime of the mine, Foreman grabbed the man’s hand.

I remember how the men in the tunnel became breathless as they waited to see what Foreman would do next. Knowing that should any of us raise the Foreman’s ire, a similar hard fate awaited us as well. For some, it was as reliable as using one of the magic crystals the mystics spent all their time staring into.

But there, seemingly suspended in time, the Foreman’s gloved hand held fast to the nameless man’s wrist. 

Only the Cogs didn’t stop and gape. They poured in through the outlying tunnels. The foreign mechanics that powered them, clicking and whirring the whole time. They were fine timepieces in human form. Their bodies somewhere between man and machine, an unholy coupling of technology and perversion. They went on with setting up their extraction stations; giant machines that once fully assembled would occupy the entire tunnel. They would then heat the rock that surrounded us, and take the precious moisture that lay within. The Cogs paid the scene before them no mind. That is, if they even had a mind to begin with.

Foreman, stared into the nameless man’s eyes, delighting in his wriggled-cowering. “Is this the one that hurts?”

The nameless man’s accent was strange, a tongue I hadn’t heard in my lifetime. Meek, and already full of regret at having spoken out. The nameless man held up his index finger, and uttered a phrase that was unintelligible to me. I could only make out the last word: Sir.

Foreman nodded and then spoke. His voice boomed, to the point where it was hard to tell whether he was speaking to solely to the nameless fool before him, or all the poor souls that were slaves to the tunnels and to the sound of Foreman’s voice. “Sir, is derived from the term sire. Which was reserved for the knight’s of lore.” Foreman’s speech seemed pleasant, nearly conversational, though it carried none of the accent that the nameless man’s speech did. That immediately changed as anger became infused with his words, “To address me as such is nothing more than a thinly disguised insult. The gulf between our standing is such that you should refer to me as your king. By comparison you are the lowest of the low in this world. A tool, your purpose only two fold; to further our progress, and to perish after doing so.”

Foreman slipped a dagger from a sheath. The nameless man’s finger fell to the tunnel’s floor, joining the crushed, powdery rock.  The motion was so quick, if not for the missing finger it could’ve been argued that it didn’t happen at all.

The men in the tunnel returned to work. The nameless man wailed, his face a contortionist act of tears, snot and pain. We were forbidden to help him. He would be forced to cauterize the wound or pass from either loss of blood or infection. Some of the men here whispered about tiny, insectile creatures that hid in the dust here and could find their way into men’s wounds.

When the Cogs had readied their extractors, and the Foreman was satisfied with the fear he had shored up in our minds, life returned to normalcy. So that’s to say, life returned to work, because that’s all we lived for.

When the regular hum of mindless labor had once again taken over the tunnel, I then had a thought, and quietly set my hammer and spike down. I found the nameless man.

“Hold still.” My candle was lit, and at full glow. I removed the nameless man’s felt cap, and shoved it into his mouth without asking. The flame met the remnant on his hand. It cooked, and I regret to admit that I was so hungry, my mouth watered at the smell.

The nameless man squirmed, rolled and tried to twist away. But I held fast. “I’m aiding you.” I had to wonder if he was delirious and knew my intentions.

The flesh sizzled shut, however by this point the nameless man had let his consciousness go.

Luckily, the whistle blew just then, we would get an hour to eat and seven to sleep. I carried the nameless man to our sleeping quarters, for as the other men passed us, they would do no more then look at the ground.

As I laid my head down that night, I thought some more. My mind sought answers. I wagered at how long I could keep this up. I fanaticized about getting out. Then my thoughts led me to how I could accomplish just that. For what I thought of as the first time, I smiled.