There is panic in the tunnel. Construction workers have lowered chains and then themselves into the sinkhole looking for their new brother. Ceilings collapse, rubble slides down walls, but never have any of them witnessed the opening of a sinkhole; not at this depth. Most have ignored the orders of the higher-ups to wait for emergency teams and climbed down with lights and picks, to look for Joe. She watches… and smiles. The rubble piles like a maze and the shaft of the hole seems to split off in different directions, some laterally, some pushing further down, like some massive ant colony unveiled. One sandpig finds refuse and calls out for more light, but once illuminated, the light reveals only boards of rotted wood and bones… bones!—bones where there should be none. In one corner of an alcove of an offshoot of the main sinkhole, there sits a skull, half-smashed by a thirty pound chunk of granite. You will not find him, my little bees. He is mine now.

Read the whole thread: The Hunger Engine

Characters and Places: Joe Takanara, New York City