Upstream I went, where the stones were purple and waters deepened in that hue. The low cranks from small wooden boats hitting the walls of the piers. Boats like houses, with a long boxed canopy where a blanket covered the tented interiors. There were men sleeping in there, you could see their shadows play against the thin walls of the covering. Men with women. Some men with other men, all in that luscious play. I walked along the edge, behind the store and houses, climbing low fences. Landing in pens where chickens squawked and screamed in their pen houses. Women came out to inspect often, only to find themselves with a gust of wind. Nothing more. Just a gust.

The homes seem worse beneath the cliff, overhead the shadow of stone made absolute dark of this fringe society. There up river, right below the mouth of the cliff the destitution was obvious. Boat houses. Small metal-sheet houses. Straggler with scuffed hair turning stones along the waters, looking for food in scrap bundles. It seemed like a junkyard. Scraps of food, baskets and thrown wasted clothes lined the floors. There were no divisions for homes, for any space really. Things just grew out themselves. I walked along, not even worried about being spotted. Most people didn’t care. They slept around campfires, staring up at me as I passed them by, a strange smell emanating from their breaths. No guards were here. I came to some kind of plaza, which was really just a group of these pygmies surrounding a broken water fountain. There in the wide berth, along the circumference, they had made a kind of fire. They sat and joined in talk against the round fire. Some having sex in the open, a sort of crazed hysteria in their wild moans.

I kept to myself, putting my shoulders up and maintaining right next to the river. I stopped finally at my target. A gap up, directly above the river. It was a hole in the cliff. There were metal grates, though you couldn’t see them. What you could see were the collapsed bodies of those ejected. People scrunched and broken and in piles of their own blood, somewhere underneath the murk. At least I was told.

I looked to my side. An old woman with a hump dragged beside me, her long finger extended out.

“Is this where they drop the bodies?” I asked.

“Yessir.” She said. “The waters are deep. Hides it all.”

“How hasn’t a body floated up?”

“They done make ‘em eat rocks. Methinks?”

“Excuse me?”

“They fill their bodies with the stuff. Makes their insides rocks, it’s a poison the mages concoct. That’s what I hear ‘least”

“That’s fucking insane.” I said. “You’re telling me there’s stone people down here?”

“Ain’t no one going to dive for ‘em.” She said. “That’s the rumor. Some people think it’s just a toilet bu-”

“Okay. Okay.” I said. I dipped a toe inside the water. “I think you’re hearing too much horror, lady.”

“Think what you do. I’s only tells you what I hear.” She said. “And it don’t come cheap.”

I threw three silver her way. She counted and nudged her hand. I threw two more coins and she grinned, toothless, her little flower bandanna swaying long past her bald scalp. She waddled away, singing almost, going back to that group center of the trash-plaza, to sing the songs of wealth made.

I looked to the water, putting my foot in it and feeling the chill up my spine. To my rear, a wooden door laying moored on the floor, sunk deep into the purple gravel. I nudged it out and placed it on the water surface. Half of it rotten away, the paint chipping as I dragged it through to the water. It plopped and splashed and I tested it with one foot before resolving my whole weight onto it. My body shook a moment. Then I breathed easy as the thing held strong. I leaned down and with a little chair leg, pushed myself out to the river, dragging a little as I crossed it to the cliff side.

What a terrible trip it was. The waters so thick and dark and pulling at me, and me with my little chair-leg-paddle, desperately splashing. I gave up and threw the damn stick mid way, jumping out and into the water and swimming about a quarter the way to the otherside. I must have looked insane. Well, insane it was. I dragged myself out from the water. At least it was a hot night. I blew my nose out, spat water, turned my head and let my ears drain. The cliff side was high up above, and the land below it was thin and rugged. Sharp stones like little mountain tips. I jumped up one edge, onto another. This way and no other way was possible. Climbing each rock carefully, testing the land with my palms if I could. It was door now, you see. That type of dark where almost all becomes invisible. The worst type of dark to climb any expanse. Yet climb I had to, the little hole in the cliff side was right above, leading into the river. It was a metal grate and a long chain rose up and down each time the cover was lifted.

I made it as far as the stones would let me and for the next few feet, I climbed. Testing the walls with one hand, breathing heavy, and taking slow steps up the rounding cliff wall.

“Fuck this.” I said. “I’m never doing this ever again.”

What a gross climb. I must have been fifty feet higher, looking down at a dangling chain that extended out to the other hundred I must have had to go through. It dangled in the air, barely visible. I could only feel its dragging length by the wind it cut through. I hesitated, feeling the air. What a harsh breeze to go through at this moment.

I waited. My skin prickly, the hairs in the back of my neck rising high. It all went flat. I jumped. Oh, I felt stupid. I went, close to the chain, and struck it. It burned against my skin as I fell. I caught it. Dragged down something. Did not stop. My flesh yanked and bleeding, I clasped it with my second hand and stopped at the end. My shoulder killed and burning with ache. Both hands bleeding, skin ripped off. And the gloves? Forget about them. There were no more gloves.

I held to, dangling at the bottom and looking down. A black river, sharp cliffs close and pointed to me like spikes.

“Fuck this. Fuck this. Fuck this.” One hand pulled, then the other. My hands aching as I went up and up.

The climb was terrible.

I made it to the grate, leaving a trail of blood along the chain. Up above, my weight had yanked the damn thing so the door was open, I put one foot along the entrance and bounced off it. The chain teeter and when it finally came close, I leapt in. The door closing fast behind me. The warm air ceased, I was greeted with a loud bang as the metal popped into slot. The chute was angled down (obviously) and so I walked the incline up, looping and looping. Every now and then I’d hear the doors open and up above, I’d see trails of piss fall down. Then the door would pop close and fill the tunnel with the dreadful echo.

It’s strange to say, but I wished it was only piss and shit.

About halfway, the metal door opened once. I must have been close, because I could hear something being thrown. Rolling. I stood still and waited. Perhaps it was food? Trash, a bucket or something heavy? I waited in that tunnel, my body low to the ceiling. And then I saw it. In that extreme dark. Pale eyes rolling in their sockets, the head spinning as it went falling and falling down. A little wash of water following it, loosening it like a hard pill to swallow. I held my mouth, covered my nose and looked up.

“Fucking shit.” I said, beneath my breath. Small things followed the head. Arms, legs, cuts. Cuts of men. Stony-skinned, like scales covered their bodies. Hardened almost. Or perhaps? Scarred? It was like a shell covering flesh, mutating it into something hard. The pieces went down. They rolled and rolled and I could hear them, up until they hit the door with a bang. The chute opened. Warm air come up and I almost vomited as the smell returned. Sickly sweet decomposing flesh. The fecund scent of dirt, of sweet rotting flesh. A faint taste of minerals, stone. Like copper was on my palate.

I trudged, taking slow steps as I came up towards the top, where the incline was at it’s steepest. My body low, both hands trudging through the dirty tunnel as I balanced myself up. I came to the top. Waited there.

The door opened. A man looked at me with wide eyes, bucket in his hand. He wore a black mask, but I could see the bright eyes beneath the cover.

I punched him straight in the throat and he collapsed back. The chain tangled behind his weight and held the door open as he laid there, holding his throat. He struggled to breath.

I raised my foot and struck him straight in the head.

To be honest, I wanted to throw him through. Let his body crack on the water surface. Let him die, body-broken, in the river. But that would just cause too many problems and problems were something that kept mounting moment by the moment.

I looked around the room. It seemed half garbage disposal and half morgue. A slab of wood laid to the corner of the room, bloody butcher knife stuck through the surface. I grabbed it. The man pleaded, trying his hardest through his crushed throat. He crawled away mumbling words like an infant, I took the cleaver and raised it high. He turned and screamed.

I hit him with the flat of it. His head went dizzy. I looked to the other side of the room, clothes were bundled together. I raised each sheet above. Thin, blood stains still on them. Vomit, shit, too.

I cut them with the cleaver, long strips. And before long, the Garbage Man was in bondage.

I leaned down, the man was hog tied and the strip of cotton along his mouth was drenched in his saliva.

“You wait here, you make any noise and I’ll make sure to turn you into pieces. You understand? They won’t find ya. Ever.” I said.

He nodded, crying.