Crumpled helplessly on the floor of the chamber, Joe stares at the little metal box, closed now, wondering at the meaning of anything that has happened in the last who-knows-how-many hours or days. “I’ve lost my mind,” he says to the little black box. Looking up from the circle of light that the lantern provides, he stares at the darkness that rises above him, tear tracks on his face illuminated. “None of this can be real.” He sits up, some trickle of resolve running into his veins. He crosses his legs and again, focuses on the box, takes a deep breath and, “Beatrice.” Some errant memory from his childhood intercedes and Joe is forced to smile at the remembrance of a movie. “Beatrice! Beatrice! Beatrice!” He chuckles when nothing happens. “Figures.”

“Talking to your little box?” says Ghede, entering the chamber. He looks around the room, trying to sense where Joe is.

“Over hear. I’m over hear… she was speaking to me.”

“She speaks to you through the box, eh?”

“Sometimes… it seems like it. I think she used to speak to me through a backhoe, though.”

“Backhoe? What’s that?”

Ghede makes his way toward him. He is hauling a large canvas bag, draped over his shoulder and trailing behind his lithe frame. Joe looks up, Ghede standing over him. “It’s uh… a tractor.”

Ghede mouths the word slowly, turning it over, “Trak-tor.”

Cocking his head Joe replies, “You don’t know what that is?”

“No, can’t say I do. But…” Ghede looks around the chamber, sniffing, “Listen closely. She speaks through quite a lot of things.”

“What you’re look for is over there though. Go past me; in the corner of the room between the pipes.”

“Ah. A surrender.” Ghede begins to make his way to the corner where the corpse is. “What did she say to you?”

“She asked me who I am.” Joe gets up off the floor and follows after Ghede to the corner.

“Huh. Trick question.”

“Oh? So then, what’s the answer?”

Ghede feels around for the pipes and then Lays the canvas bag out in front of the gap between the pipes, “What do you think the answer is.”

“Well, I’m Joe. Joe Takanara. I’m a construction worker—kind of a demolitions expert.”

“No. Your not any of those things. Your certainly not a construction worker now, or demolishing anything for that matter.” Ghede reaches in between the pipes and tugs on the legs of the corpse. “Until a few moments ago, you weren’t Joe Takanara; just Joe to me.”

“Well, I’m also American… and Japanese…”

“Oh, so you’re a nip?” Ghede turns to ask.

“Excuse me?”

“What?”

“Just—just don’t say that. It’s rude.”

“Is it?” Ghede feels one of the legs break free. “Damn it.” He pulls the leg out and throws it on to the canvas sack. “Well, at any rate, if you think on it, you aren’t any of those things—those are empires and countries—you’re not an empire or a country are you?”

Joe bends down to help Ghede with the body, “I suppose not. What about you? You have a funny accent.”

“Do I now?”

“Yes. So who are you, where are you from?”

“Two very different questions. Who I am is simple: I’m the undertaker.” Ghede pauses and looks wistful. “Where I’m from?… It’s hard to remember. I used to live in the city, New York. I remember that much—not much else. There was this street corner, I can still see it. The micks used to scuttle about there looking for work. There was a fruit stand. I remember… it’s silly. It’s mostly gone now—memory.”

The pair manage to haul most of the corpse out by the second leg, the hips still attached, the rib cage, all loosely covered in ragged clothing. “Who do you suppose he—she?—was?”

“Whoever he was, he didn’t know.” There is a clunk as the skull rolls off the body and back into the corner behind the pipes. “It’s why most of them give up. They go on for so long until they forget everything and the question is the only thing they can remember. They keep thinking the answer is in the details they don’t know anymore. Then they just huddle up somewhere and rot.”

“God, how sad.”

“God’s got nothing to do with it.”

Joe gets down on all four and reaches behind the pipes, blindly patting the floor until he locates the skull. He pulls it out and holds it in front of his face. “He or she… is just a thing now.”

“Mostly. We’ll throw ’em in the furnace.”

Joe helps Ghede arrange the corpse in the canvas and then Ghede ties it up with straps.

“So, Beatrice…er… the Painted Lady… she asked you the question?”

“She did, and she gave me the answer. To put it mildly, she helped me to see it very clearly,” and for emphasis, Ghede pulls his sunglasses down, revealing nothing but skin.

Joe gasps, but just then, a loud scraping sound comes from another part of the room and Joe and Ghede turn towards it. Where there is an expanse of and sand dust covering the floor, a circle appears and then twists and lifts until Joe can see a manhole arise and then two hands shove it aside. From up out of the hole, the head of Walt appears. He throws his arms up over the floor and pauses to catch his breath. “Good Lord, I hate it down there.” He wrinkles his nose. “Smells like sulfur.”

Read the whole thread: The Hunger Engine

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