Docks

Things clicked into place so quickly and unexpectedly that I had to go: why hadn’t I noticed that “cactus” and “fish market” were used a little too much by Blue Fly and the dealers to be a coincidence? They’re talking about places; they have been this entire time. “Apple” means New York City, “cactus” is New Mexico, “fish market” is Clearwater….I’ve wasted so much energy and time trying to figure out where the eggs were being traded—but they were talking about the biggest distribution centers all the time! Maybe I was still reeling from getting out of the trade, and it just took this long to finally sink in. Damnit, we could have done so much to stop this! Why didn’t I remember sooner?

When I got to the harbor I hid behind some crates, knowing that the dragonfly still painted on my hip could either keep me alive or get me killed. Getting there had been strangely easy; the routes I learned when going to and from customers’ houses enabled me to sneak through the city while remaining almost unnoticed. Just another call-prawn, coming back from a job…nothing to look at here. I finally got to the salty openness of the docks and crouched down behind a crate. I could feel my heart in my throat and the cold on my limbs—everything was monotone and I didn’t know exactly where I was. What mattered was what I was seeing.

Men were moving about, their faces covered by dark cloth like burglars in the night. It was impossible to pick out their identities. The men hauled crates off of a gigantic cargo boat, one after another, and lined them up like dominoes. When the two men nearest me wandered back into the warm, covered area of the cargo ship for a smoke break, I crept over to one of the splintering wooden crates and whispered through a gap on the side. No answer came…and why did I expect one? I should have known then, and stepped back into the ignorant darkness. But I didn’t—something in me must have still hoped, or ignored the truth.

I pried the top off of the crate, ignoring the blast of blistering, fetid air…and stepped back, swearing to myself and blinking back tears. The inside of the wooden box was coated with waste and sawdust; the stench that drifted up from it is beyond my words to describe. It reeked of waste and blood, of death and the last stale breaths of suffocated Poleepkwa…of my people, my brethren.

Inside, sprawled amongst the filth…my eyes were drawn to the children. Children, with bruises and cuts adorning their bodies, almost torn limb from limb, or even worse just staring up at me with glassy eyes, like fish. No laughter, no light—nothing was left but these hollow, battered bundles of plating. Everything…everything was taken from them. They were dead, and their corpses had been left lying around in the crate, like firewood or trash. Not the remains of living things…of children…

They’d been left to die as if they were worthless, not even of much value to the dealers themselves. These people had sat back and let them claw each other to death, out of sheer helplessness and fear, in crates without water or air. Had they heard their cries and chosen to ignore them, or had the crates muffled their screams? I didn't know, and it no longer mattered almost as soon as I thought it. Of the twenty inside, only one still kicked out blindly at the heat, eyes sick and glassy…I will always remember their muttering. “So hot, so hot.”

I tried to help, but what could I have done? This little child was too far gone, and there was nothing I could do…the most I managed was holding the poor broken body close and praying silently to Vishnu, God, whoever watched this scene unfold and did nothing to stop it. The feeling of something dying very close to you...it makes something deep inside you die as well. You know something has departed, something that can never be caught and slid back into place; it leaves a hollow inside you.

After, I pushed the crate off the dock and tried not to cry out as the splashes came and I saw shapes sink into the inky water. Better a burial at sea then having your corpse sold as food. I crept off before anyone noriced, slinking back into the city that slept, unaware of the horror unfolding within it.

I want them dead. All of them—Blue Fly, Mistress Pike, all of them. There’s nothing more you can do for people—they aren’t even people, no person could casually kill another or put them in conditions like this. These dealers are monsters, and only fit to die. Now. This has to stop, it has to, and there can’t be any more crates, or pipes, or phones…it has to go, all of it.