very interesting point there Oddey. thanks.
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Joe awoke with a headache as the buzzer sounded. He was lying on the floor next to the crate he was originally sitting on. Crob was asleep on a crate next to Joe with his back against the wall, Relb was also asleep on the crate he was sitting on, against the wall, Muller was lying across the crate with the tins and half full bottle of alcoholic substance on, asleep, and Rol was awake, sitting on the floor with his knees up, smoking a cigarette.
“Well well, wakey wakey.” Rol said to Joe, who was still groggy.
“Dear…dear me. How many did I have?” Joe croaked, rubbing his forehead.
“Too many…do you remember what you were doing?” Rol said in a puff of smoke.
“Err…” Joe racked his brains searching for last nights events, but he found nothing but a blur. “No.”
“You stripped off and streaked past a load of sligs.” Rol said quite calmly, then taking a drag of his cigarette whilst looking at Joe’s face to see his reaction.
“Fuck off did I.” Joe said with a smile.
Rol chuckled to himself and finished off his cigarette, stubbing it out on the crate Muller was asleep on.
“Time to wake these sleeping sloggies, I think.” Rol said as he stood up.
He nudged Muller and said “Hey…piss-head…time for work.”
Muller mumbled something and tried to roll over on the crate, but fell onto the floor with a thud. Rol burst out laughing, along with Joe, and this woke Crob and Relb.
“Fuckin’ hell…what’s all the noise for?” Relb said in a hoarse whisper.
Crob rubbed his eyes and spoke, “Why’s Muller on the floor?”
“He’s fell back to sleep! You saw him fall off didn’t ya’, Joe!” Rol exclaimed.
“Yeah…lazy bastard.” Said Joe.
Rol shook Muller by the shoulders, saying “Come on Muller! Time for work! Get up!”
“Best get going, before them sligs beat seven bells out of us.” Joe said, standing up.
“Your right, your right…gotta’ go.” Crob agreed.
They all left the hole and sneaked through the air vent passage, seeing as no other sligs knew of the place, and Joe and Crob made their way up to walkway seven in the mincing section to retrieve their equipment.
Crob climbed back onto the ladder and begun to make his way down, Joe following him, their buckets in their hands, when a slig shouted.
“Mud! Get up here!” The slig yelled above the noisy machinery.
Joe looked up and so did Crob to see a slig leaning over the side above on walkway nine. He was waving them up. Joe and Crob started to climb up the ladder towards him.
“No, only need one. You,” The slig barked in Crobs direction, “Go somewhere else.”
“See ya’ later.” Crob mumbled to Joe as he climbed down.
“Great.” Joe said under his breath, climbing up the ladder towards the slig.
When Joe reached walkway nine, he saw the slig that had shouted him facing him by the ladder, and another two sligs standing behind him, talking.
“There’s some blood on that poster. Clean it up.” The slig said, pointing towards a ‘Paramite Pie’s’ poster.
Joe walked past the sligs and dropped his bucket of old water onto the floor, his rag swirling around inside its metal shell. That’s when he noticed more than just a splatter near the bottom of the poster. There was a whole streak of blood leading behind him. Joe followed the trail with his eyes and saw that it reached a mudokon corpse at the feet of the sligs, his head bashed in, and to Joe’s horror, scarlet brains were on display from his cracked open head. The whole body was in a pool of deep red blood, so large that it was dripping off the side of the walkway.
Joe wretched, and was sick all over the steel plated floor. One of the two talking sligs laughed.
“Ha ha! You see that Don! Ha ha! He went an’ gone an’ spewed up everywhere!”
“Mudokon scum. Clean that shit up now!”
Joe stood bent over, looking at his own sick pooling around his feet. He didn’t react to the sick touching his feet; he’d past caring.
The slig that had shouted Joe up walked over to him, and put the muzzle of his rifle in Joe’s throat, then lifting Joe’s face up to eye level with his.
“You clean that up good and proper. And don’t go tellin’ your friends or any other sligs what ya’ saw, otherwise you’ll end up like my sticky friend here. Understand?” The slig breathed in Joe’s face, the breath of a violent, murdering thug.
The slig lowered his rifle, and walked away.
“Watch you don’t slip over now! Ha ha! And don’t forget to pick up the brains!” The other slig giggled as he walked away with the other two sligs.
Joe cleaned up his sick and the blood splatter on the poster. He also cleaned up the bloody streak that lead to the dead mudokon, nearing dangerously close to the cold limbs of the cadaver, but he did not go anywhere near the head of the mudokon, and tried his best to keep his wandering eyes away from the gruesome sight.
Eventually, someone noticed the blood dripping down from walkway nine, and came to investigate. Two sligs climbed up to the walkway Joe was on, and asked him what had happened.
“Fuck! What happened here mud?” One of the sligs asked, looking at the corpse on the floor.
“I don’t know.” Joe answered cautiously, “I was just told to clean it up.”
“You must of heard some names mentioned mud? Come on! Spit it out!” The other slig said impatiently.
“Easy Ralf, he might be in shock.” His friend said calmly, then looking at Joe. “You can tell us pal, we’re not like the other sligs here, we’ll get the bastards that did this. Don’t you want them to get their comeuppance?”
“Some evil shits have done this. Look Kol, they’ve bashed his brains outta’ his skull!” Ralf said in outrage.
“Well, there was three of them, and I heard one of them call the other ‘Don’. That’s all I know.” Joe confessed, looking up from his crouched position on the walkway, rag in hand.
“Right. You hear that Ralf? He said one of ‘em was called ‘Don’.” Kol said to Ralf.
“Well we got a few hours ‘till the end of our shift. Lets look for them then.” Ralf answered.
The two sligs walked off without saying another word to Joe, and Joe felt nervous about the fact he’d just told them the name of one of the killers. What if they found out it was him?
“Shit.” Joe uttered to himself.
Once Joe had finished cleaning up what he wanted to clean up, it came to him. Why not leave Rupture Farms all together? The glukkons of Rupture Farms had already told the sligs not to let any mudokons out of the factory; they were slaves after all, but what if he did it anyway? He could sneak past the guards at night, get through the stockyards, and make it to an isolated part of the free-fire zone surrounding Rupture Farms.
What about his friends? Well they could come with him. It would be hard trying to get five mudokons out of Rupture Farms, and Joe was no hero. If anything Joe was just an anaemic, cowardly mudokon with a weak stomach. But hell, it was better than witnessing brutal attacks on mudokons and sligs alike, and having to clear up the shit afterwards.
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sorry about the wait, been busy with The Land Of Dostollin. hope you like it anyway Oddey.
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