I drove the shovel into the soil, taking subtle notice of the blood dripping from my fingers. It was well beyond blisters and to the slick muscle against the hard shaft of the wooden handle.

I’d gone to that place for opportunity and a variable wage undiscussed, but my life hung in the air. All around me were caterwauling moans and the sun was going down.

Before that, I was an analyst, totally divorced from my work and reporting data that’d be used to increase profits by a decimal percentage—profits I’d never see. Office work, although easy enough—you sit in an air-conditioned office five days a week and stare at a computer screen—beguiles and gnaws at you with time.

I was in my mid-thirties with a bald spot developing at the crown of my head, tens-of-thousands-of-dollars in debt, and so underpaid that I couldn’t fathom a way out. They make quips when you’re young about how the world is never as it seems and how money makes it go round. I think if I’d had the forethought to take any of that seriously, I should’ve run into woods at age nine when I said I was going to.

Each drive to the office flooded me with dread and each drive home, though a welcome reprieve, was hardly an end to the suffering as thoughts of work lingered in my mind. Work had, at some point, become so ubiquitous, so overwhelming, so all-consuming that when you told a person you were a chief data analyst for a medium-sized software developer, they raised eyebrows and nodded their head like it meant they respected you. Titles are nice, but respect doesn’t pay. They give you a few syllables, nice sounding words, and people unwise assume you must be paid well.

Perhaps I should’ve gone into a trade and ignored all that fancy college talk. Would I be happier then? Would I?

I am self-aware enough to know that I am a depressive, that I need to speak to someone about my problems, that I need to medicate myself and hammer the nail that sticks out, but there is a thought that stays with me at all times, ever present, like a thorn in the folds of my brain: it wasn’t supposed to be like this! I feel like a child to say it like that, and yet I know it to be true. Alcohol helped. When I could afford it. I couldn’t take time off from work, because taking time away from it was like removing myself from life. Work is life.

Quitting that job was simultaneously one of the most exhilarating and terrifying experiences of my life; it only took three minutes. I lifted my computer monitor over my head and slammed it into the wall in a manic fit, kicked my rolling chair over, and stormed into my boss’s office. He sat there behind his desk with a tuna sandwich pinched between his fingers, its innards spilling out onto his pressed shirt in the midst of his bewilderment.

He shouted, “What the hell are you doing, Will?”

I’d done it a million times in my head; I had all the good words seared into my mind, but when it came, I dumbly stomped my foot and screamed, “Fuck you, Jim! I fucking hate this! I hate you. I hate this office. These walls are too yellow. I hate the stale smell in this building. I hate my job.”

“Get out!”

“Oh! I’ll get out,” I jabbed a finger into the air like I wanted it to stab right through the man, “I’ll get out and you’ll never see me again, you dick-headed, shit-hole-face!”

The door slammed shut behind me before I’d even realized it. The air was a tangible thing I moved through, and my eyes cried tears of joy, confusion. Frustration too. Maybe frustration most of all.

Moving through the cubicles and past reception, darting eyes met mine before returning to their desks, their work; surely, I’d become a topic around the breakroom.

On my way to the car, through the parking lot, feeling the asphalt beneath my feet, that’s where it kicked in. Freakish, gut-twisting nausea overtook me. I slammed into my car, pinned myself against it with a forearm, and vomited between my spaced feet.

Then, I was worthless. No longer was I a threat, a person to be heard, a disgruntled employee. I was a nobody without a job. No identity and no one to be known. What would people say when I told them? I had the title before. The respect. Standing there in the parking lot, looking at my half-digested lunch, I could see what I was. Someone without any money. Without any respect.

I was drove home in absolute quiet, to the loft apartment (always the apartment, never home) just on the outskirts of Chicago, when I saw it. It was a little girl. She ran out into the street in a bright yellow dress; my headlights in the evening dark illuminated her open scared face, but I saved her. I jerked the wheel. The hand-me-down Chevy passed to me from my dad pierced an opening in the guardrail and careened into a ditch, rolling a few times over. I was certain I would die. I should have died.

After shaking the stars away, I pulled myself from the driver side, glass in my right arm, adrenaline pumping through my body, screaming at me to survive. It wasn’t until after a trip to the hospital that the doctors told me I had a fracture in my left foot to complement the lacerations along my forearm. I told them I’d swerved to miss a girl. I told the emergency responders the same before that and my parents a variation after everything else. No one could find her.

There wasn’t a girl. There never was. I didn’t save anyone, but it wasn’t for a lack of trying to save myself.

Medical bills took root and I moved home with my folks, back to the suburbs. For months, it was hard to walk without feeling a pinching nerve shoot up the left side of my body; that sensation would numb with time, but never disappear entirely. It was an ever-present reminder of my ‘accident’.

My accumulated debt rose into six-figures. There was no end in sight.

When I’d moved out on my own, Dad had changed my childhood bedroom into a sports room, a shrine to the Steelers. Every night, I stared at terrible towels and bobbleheads of old school players like Terry Bradshaw or John Stallworth, while trying to sleep. I tried searching for jobs but got no calls. Although my parents were never the confrontational sorts, I could feel the mood change after about a month or two. Little comments here or there, or text messages sending me links to companies I’d already applied to.

I began raiding their liquor cabinet on a regular basis to help me sleep in the twin sized mattress we’d hauled out of the basement. Then I began drinking in the mornings too.

One evening, while I sat in Dad’s dual-car garage on a plastic lawn chair, I received a text message from an unknown number.

“Is this William?” it read.

“Who’s this?”

“It’s Casey. If this is Will, we went to school together.”

I thought hard about it. I did know a Casey, but I hadn’t spoken to him since our college graduation. He was nice enough, always on the periphery of my friend-group. “Hey, it’s been a while. What’s up with you?”

“I’m in town for a bit and wanted to see if you’d be down for some drinks.” There was a pause in texts while I thought, and he sent another. “Drinks on me. I want to go this place I’ve heard good things about, but don’t want to go alone.”

I mulled this over. Me and Casey had never been close even when we were on speaking terms. How had he gotten my number?

The garage door opened, and Dad’s headlights cut through the dark of the garage. After he shut the car off, Dad looked at me and offered a thin smile.

“What’s up?” He glanced at the nearly empty tumbler resting on my lap then at the bottle by my foot.

“Not much.” I could feel my speech slurring. I didn’t feel good about that.

There were a few other pleasantries exchanged before Dad moved through the garage to the door leading into the house, slapping the button on the wall to shut the garage door. I sighed and downed the rest of what was in my glass then stared at the messages on my phone before shooting Casey a text, “Sure. When did you have in mind?”

Over texts, we agreed to meet at a run-down pub nearby, miles outside of Chicago so that even on my way there in the evening, I could see the skyline lit against the waning sunset. I’d asked Dad if I could borrow his car and I swear I saw the suspicion flash across his face; I don’t know if I can even blame him. But he acquiesced with no prodding.

It was a bad part of town; standing with my butt against the hood of Dad’s car while waiting on Casey to arrive, I scanned the area. Out from the parking lot, there was a broken-up road with potholes, a stray cat swatted at a strip of plastic caught around a pole light, and I could hear the bustle of the city through the tunneled alleyways. The only cars in the lot were Dad’s and four others; I’d already poked my head inside to see if Casey was waiting for me. No dice.

He showed, thirty minutes late, in a slick Corvette (it was a few years old, but still incredibly impressive). When he stepped from the vehicle, I expected him to be dressed in a full suit, but he wore his trademark thick rimmed glasses I remembered from college, a Hawaiian shirt, and jean shorts; his socks reached up to his knees without touching them.

“William!” he shouted, stretching out his arms for a hug. The space between us closed quickly and before I could say anything, he had me in a bear hug; Casey squeezed hard, and I almost left the ground. He pulled away. “Goddamn! It’s good to see you. Losing a little off the top, I see, but that hardly matters anyway.” He scuffed the top of his own head with his knuckles to show he meant my bald spot. “Thick in the middle too.” His finger darted out and poked me in the belly.

My jaw clenched. “Yeah. You know me. I’ve always been vain.”

His expression stalled before he shot me a smile. “Ready?” he motioned to the bar with a neon Coors light blinking in its window.

The smell of the pub was moist drywall and a solitary waitress sat us at a booth near the front door while the bartender—an old woman with sleeve tattoos—chewed on the end of a pencil eraser, her eyes glossing over an opened book of crossword puzzles.

After ordering a few beers, Casey leaned in, swallowing back a hefty swig. His manner was direct, cavalier. “So. I’m sure you know that I didn’t invite you out to reminisce about the good ol’ days, no?”

I took a heavy drink. “What do you mean?”

“I get the feeling you’re down on your luck.”

“What are you talking about?” I tried smiling but could tell it wasn’t convincing.

“William, I’m a straight-shooter. I don’t have time for dilly-dallying more than I should. I’m an important man with important goals. Time is money.” Casey rubbed his fingers together to insinuate real fake money. He took another swig from his glass mug before wiping foam from around the corners of his mouth. “God, this is piss-water.” His glass was half empty. “I know, I know. Me prattling on about how important I am might seem gratuitous, but it’s become the truth. I have a tight schedule. I have other dates tonight and intend on keeping them.” Casey laughed. “Guess I’m like Santa Claus in that way.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” I chewed on the edges of my lips, hoping to find dead skin.

“I work for an organization that’s become interested in you.” He drummed his knuckles across the table between us. “In fact, when your file came across my boss’s desk, I knew we had a winner. A real company man.” While he spoke, he wheeled a hand in front of his face then slowed and polished off his glass before slamming it against the table; from the corner of my eye, I saw the bartender look up from her crosswords and frown at his display. “Anyway, I saw your picture and knew we had to snag you up before someone else.” He craned forward so quickly that it forced a flinch from of me. His thumb and forefinger pinched around the circumference of my bicep. Then he leaned back in his booth seat, shoulders slumped, eyes wild and glazed. “Yup! You’re strong alright.”

“Are you offering me a job?”

Casey seemed to chew on his tongue while the waitress replaced his mug with a fresh one. “Something like that. Something like that, sure. I like to think of it as a pre-interview. The real one comes roughly a week from now. This is more of a meet-and-greet sort of thing if you know what I mean. I told the higher-ups that you wouldn’t need it, but this is the dance you tap to when you work for the sort of people I work for. They want you to do it by the book.” He plodded a fist across his flattened palm. “That’s how they like it. This is how they offer opportunities. Now.” He glanced at his fresh mug before sliding it across the table towards me. “As I said, I’m Santa Claus and I’ve got a few other names to cross off my list. None quite as nostalgic as you, but still.” He flashed a grin, removed a money clip from his Hawaiian shirt’s front pocket, and slid this alongside his untouched beer. “There’s five-hundred dollars there.”

“I can’t take your money.”

Casey, removing himself from his booth, staggering with a wild glint in his eyes, wagged a finger at me. “Nuh-uh. Pride’s a sin, William. Take the money. Have a nice night. You’ll receive a call in a few days to set up the real interview.”

On his way out of the pub, he howled, slapped the doorframe, and I was left baffled, holding the money clip in my hand. Leafing the bills out, I counted them and recounted them. Looking sheepishly around the barroom, I tucked the bills alongside the money clip into my pants pocket. I couldn’t finish my own drink, let alone start the one he’d left. Dazed, I left the pub after paying for our drinks with the money Casey had left me with.

I waited impatiently for the mysterious call he’d promised. A week passed and my constant assurances to Dad that I’d lined up an interview felt more and more like lies.

Then it came. I laid, stretched out on the twin size bed tucked away in the corner of the dark room sometime after everyone else was asleep. My cellphone buzzed on my chest, and I lifted it to my eyes. There was no display for the number; the screen merely showed the icons to deny a call or accept. Without question, my thumb answered, and I placed the phone to my ear.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

Scarcely, the droning sound of a mechanism played somewhere on the line—like I was being recorded. Or perhaps that was my imagination. My mouth was dry, I stared up into the ceiling, and some base impulse urged me to cancel the call. But it was too late. I’d been waiting for it. I coughed to clear my throat while I spoke, “H-hello?”

The whirring sound on the other end of the line stopped and there was complete silence on the line, save deafening imagined static. When my phone spoke, it was shrill and disjointed. “William. Burghardt.” It was an automated message but hearing my own name in its robotic parlance sent a shiver up my spine. “Gibson. Woods. Parrish. Avenue. North. End. Six. Thirty. A. M. Monday.”

“What?” I said into the receiver.

The line was dead, and my phone screen was black. I hurriedly conveyed the automated message to Google to find that Gibson Woods was a nature preserve maybe an hour outside of Chicago, just across the state line in Indiana. I found Parrish Avenue. Monday. It said I should go there on Monday at Six-thirty in the morning.

Nerves kept me from sleeping for the rest of the night.

-

The wind was cool but warming up. I’d found Gibson Park and left Dad’s car in the place’s parking lot, choosing to hoof it further up Parrish Avenue which held the park on its right side and a neighborhood of bunched houses on the left. When I came to a corner with a green shoulder boring down a separate road, Crane Place, I knew I’d gone as far north as I could. I stood there, feeling tired, staring at the backend of a small family home with a garage door. Yawns broke between sips of my coffee. In hopes that it might matter, I’d shown up thirty minutes early—alongside a typed resumé—I’d also brought a winning smile! Not really. I was miserable, full of questions, wishing I was in bed. Instead, I stood on the side of a back road with a woolen beanie slammed over my head, too early in the morning to concentrate.

Continuously, I checked the time on my phone. As the sun crested the trees from the park, my eyes watered from yawning hard. Another sip of coffee.

The school bus appeared, coming up the road from the way I’d come. Its engine broke the morning lull of an otherwise quiet neighborhood; songbirds were gone and the rhythmic hum of it came to a rest in front of me, its brakes becoming a hiss as it rocked on its axles to a stop. The bus windows were pitch black, covered by welded sheets of metal, and I briefly wondered how anyone saw out of it to drive. The panel-doors fell open and instead of being greeted by a human bus-driver, there was a metal column without a seat, standing where a steering wheel should’ve been; all along its surface stood lights of varying colors and rhythms. A robotic voice rang from the recesses of the bus. “Candidate. William. Burghardt. Welcome. Watch. Your. Step.”

While reaching out to grab the railing to its steps, I hesitated, but within a moment of my hand meeting the cool metal, I hoisted myself onto the bus and the doors quickly shut behind me. Other faces met me immediately (other passengers). Each one looked as confused as I felt. Lined in the seats were the startled expressions of twenty or thirty other people of varying builds, races, and ages.

“Another one,” hushed a face in the back, meagerly illuminated by overhead lights in the windowless bus.

I felt the shift beneath my feet as the bus rolled on and I gripped the railing to steady myself. It was as though I’d stepped through a portal into another world, an apocalypse where everything beyond the metallic shuttle had been reduced to irradiated rubble. It was almost cozy. Without making a fuss, I found a seat quickly and shuffled in alongside a woman with a stomach bulging beneath her suit jacket. She refused to look at me and instead stared down at her hand resting across her pregnant belly—the other hand gripped the back of the seat in front of her and I could see that her nail polish had flecked away. Strands of hair fallen from her ponytail half-hid her muted expression and I offered an “Excuse me.” when my thigh touched hers.

“It’s early and the nausea is getting to me. I really wish I could crack a window. Get some fresh air.” She said this more to herself than to me.

Chatter ensued deeper in the bus and swiveling heads guessed at the strange circumstances. Each of us had been offered jobs. I turned my attention back to the woman in my bench seat. “How far along are you?”

“Thirty-four weeks.”

“Where are we going?”

Her laugh was dry. “Like I know!” She shifted to face me. “Sorry.” Her expression softened. “I have no idea.”

Voices grew impatient as we moved. “Where are we going?” people asked. “What positions do they need filled?” were others. “I really need to piss.”

There were other stops along the way. The doors would slam open, rays of morning light coming through, and a new wide-eyed hopeful would enter before the bus doors slipped shut. Each time, the voice would say the candidate’s name. Each time, I would feel the claustrophobic atmosphere intensify. Each time, a voice told me to push my way past and dive for freedom. By the end of it, there were possibly fifty people or more crammed into the bus, some standing, some able to squeeze three to a seat. Our collective hot breath brought mugginess so that it was like we were all inhaling each other’s exhales. It felt more and more like we were in one of those wagons people transport cows in.

With my coffee gone, I placed the tumbler between my knees and tried to reread my resumé by the overhead lights.

Then we all felt it. There couldn’t have been another stop, no. There was no more room. We all rocked forward in our seats as the brakes protested. The door remained shut for a moment and whispers from the other passengers swallowed me up; I could feel the energy in the air, like everyone else was holding their breath. And so was I.

The robotic voice came from unseen speakers, and a few of the other passengers flinched. “Watch. Your. Step.” The daylight entered the dimly lit bus as the doors came open and we remained inside, audible worry like static.

I shifted to look at my seatmate; she now had both hands gripping the seat in front of us, eyes glued to the doorway leading from the bus. It was, in retrospect, a look of horror—in the moment, I thought she needed fresh air. So, I stood and moved so she could go. And she was behind me. And the others followed. And we marched, single file, to slaughter.

We filed from the bus into an open field of grass surrounded by trees. There were other people, dressed in military style fatigues with firearms strapped to their hips, eyes hidden behind reflective sunglasses. The morning was going, the sun was out in full force, it was growing warmer, but not by much. I pulled my coat closer around myself to stave off the surgical looks of the people decked in military garb. My eyes wandered. The vehicles were jeeps and some people stood along them, some with rifles, some with nothing but their hands, all looking at us new arrivals. Each new face that removed from the bus examined their surroundings with wonder. We huddled in clumps in the field; the chatter from the shuttle long dead so that I could hear the wind.

Looking to the bus again, I saw figures atop it, they’d used ladders to gain a vantage over us. There, among them, I recognized Casey. He was not in the military uniform nor was he wearing his Hawaiian shirt I’d seen him in days prior; instead, Casey was stuffed into a full suit. Atop the bus, Casey flanked a man with a smart short haircut that looked much more at home in a suit. The unknown man was bald, cleanshaven, grinning, holding a bullhorn. Alongside them, atop the bus, were two guards, idle but stiff.

As the others continued to file from the shuttle, I looked out at the open field, at plots of rectangles created with white spray paint against the kempt grass, each one several yards from any of its neighbor. Lying within each rectangle was a shovel. I swallowed and my legs wobbled.

I turned to look at the man atop the bus just as the shuttle doors slammed shut. The man put the bullhorn to his lips and spoke, “Welcome! Welcome to you all! You all understand why you’ve been gathered here today?”

“Job?” asked a man from the crowd, a burly guy with square shoulders and hair that covered his ears.

The orator nearly jumped and clapped his hands, pointing a finger to the man that’d answered his question. “Yes yes yes! That’s right!” He composed himself. “You have been gathered here for a job. There are several openings,” He seemed to count our heads with his finger in a mock, knowing way, “But not enough so that you can all have a role.” He offered a frowny face like a pouty child. “Consider it a test like any other. Most, and I do mean most of you, are viable candidates, but there are only so many slots we can fill before it doesn’t become economically viable. You understand, yes?”

A few of the other candidates nodded along. And so did I.

“What’s the positions you’re looking to fill?” asked the burly man from the crowd, half-raising his hand in line with his question.

The orator seemed to brush this off, “Several, but this is more a test of determination, perseverance,” He swirled his hand to accentuate, “You will notice one of our lovely helpers moving among you now to ask for your cell phones. Please deposit all cell phones in the basket and they will be returned to you at the end of the process. Thank you!”

Just as he said, I noticed a woman with a wicker basket in one hand worming through the crowd. She wore fatigues and motioned for each candidate to offer their phone. When she came to me, I had my phone in my hand, ready to put it in the basket.

Without much thought, I whispered to her, “What’s happening?”

She snatched the phone from my fingers and tossed it into the basket along with the rest without saying a word. I stood there, baffled, knots twisting in my stomach.

“Now!” said the bald man, “It takes a strong, determined person roughly a full workday to dig a grave.” Mumbles echoed through the crowd as one of the military clad figures held a ladder steady so that the bald man could access the ground. Red in the face, beaming like a motivational speaker, the bald man reached into his suit pocket to withdraw a gun; he waved it around more like a fork, a utensil. “However, our studies conducted over recent trials shows that whenever a person is placed under extreme duress, they can cut that time in half.”

The nervousness was palpable in the gathered crowd and a cloud passed in front of the sun.

The woman I’d sat next to on the bus shifted from one foot to the other like she needed to use the bathroom. How was she supposed to dig? That was all I could think. How could she dig? Finally, she piped up, more hope than I thought she could manage piercing through the chill wind in her voice, “I would like to withdraw my application.”

Without hesitation, the bald man, still waving the gun around emphatically on a loose wrist, swaggered through us—the candidates—moving more like a scarecrow come to life than a man. He stopped in front of her, reached out with his free hand, all the while grinning, and rubbed her pregnant belly. She grew visibly frustrated at his touch. “Honey,” she winced at his icy words, “We wouldn’t have hired you anyway.”

I couldn’t hear, but that wasn’t it exactly. It was that I heard to much. Maybe she screamed? Maybe the gunshot swallowed the sound—when I finally could hear again, I noticed whimpered disbelief from the crowd. The candidates stepped away in a spiral around the bald man and the body. With my eyes darting all around, I saw the stonelike figures of the guards, our shocked expressions mirrored in their unflinching shades. Then I locked eyes with Casey, his arms crossed while overlooking the scene from atop the bus. He did not look pleased, but he did not look astonished; the nearest emotion was possibly apathy.

A few of the other candidates, in a panic, began shouting things. “They can’t catch us all!” I heard. But I was frozen to the spot, merely an observer, too afraid to even breathe. Machinegun fire rained down on ten or fifteen as they rushed towards the tree line before they were caught in a manic dance orchestrated by hails of bullets. Then they fell and moved no more. Above the chaos, the bald man screamed gleefully, “Oh! I hate to see it when someone’s unwilling to be a team player.”

If before I could not breathe, at that moment it was all I could do. Anxiety rushed through me, and I began to hyperventilate, taking in great rushes of air that made me dizzy and blurred the world through uninhibited tears. Only one thought echoed through my mind: we were all going to die there in that open field.

“Dig!” someone shouted over the frenzied cries of my fellow candidates. Holding back nervous vomit, I pivoted in confounded circles. “Dig!” came the word again. In a moment, I knew the voice before I saw him screaming it from atop the bus. It was Casey. At first, there seemed a hint of a plea in his voice. Like he wanted this all to end just as well. But seeing his face, it was contempt for us on the ground.

Other candidates found the painted rectangles on the ground and lifted their shovels. I crawled towards the nearest one but wasn’t fast enough. The burly man from before, the one that’d seemed so skeptical, pushed me out of the way and scampered towards a plot, clinging onto the shovel there.

A few more gunshots rang out and I kept my eyes to the ground, still crawling, not wanting to see the blood, unable to block the cries of the dying before they would be cut short by more gunfire.

Finding a shovel, I grabbed it with stiffened joints. Catching sight of my hands on the shovel’s shaft, I saw smatterings of blood across my jacket’s sleeves. Had I been shot? I focused, but there was no pain. It must’ve been the blood spray from a fellow candidate. I pushed into the ground, weak at first, but then with ramping enthusiasm. There was no time to think, no time to ask why, no time to look around. It was me and the hard earth. I shed my jacket.

Metal slicing through rooty grass gave way to packed dirt and as my biceps screamed, I briefly wondered if I was digging through tar. Like I was moving straight to the center of the earth, to hell. Everything was silent except for the arduous heaves of my fellow candidates. In the midst of hypnotic shovel-throws, a gunshot rang out and I looked to its origin. There, slumped in a perhaps foot-deep hole, a man lay slumped over his own legs, blood running like a faucet from the gaping hole in the side of his face. Through the red, I glimpsed the shine of bright and tender brains.

The burly man that’d shoved me was nearer the gathered vehicles, past his knees in the ground, not looking up. Beside me, to my left, there was a woman with sinewy arms, a white business blouse caked in dirt, a look of raw determination tattooed across her downturned face. It occurred to me that among the candidates, I was the only one not digging and so I continued.

Time became an elusive specter that waded through the field, snatching our lives from each of us as every new arbitrary gunshot signaled the end and yet, there on the brink of eternity, there was no time to think about how it became meaningless. It was me and nothing else. They were not people. They were something else. I was not a person. I was something else. Divorced from my humanity. Every grunt sounded far away, animal.

Blisters arrived on my hands and the pockets of fluid burst so that blood ran the length of the shovel handle; I hardly noticed.

Mounds of unearthed dirt grew across the horizon, and I grew my own. I sweated until there was no more, and I was a dehydrated husk inhaling winds of dust with each heave.

There were caterwauling moans and the sun was going down. I was up to my neck in ground.

Slamming the shovel deep, there came something solid on the other end, sending vibrations up my arms. I drove again to meet the great rock beneath the soil and on the third, the handle shattered in my hands; splinters exploded into my palms, and I cried out in pain. A soldier—that is what they were—rounded the hole I was digging and peered down at me, soulless and with a rifle slung across their chest. It was no time to nurse my wounds; I dove to the ground and dug with my fingers, scraping away with my nails till they came away from their homes. I did not feel any other compulsion beyond survival in those hanging moments where I searched for the edges of the stone that’d destroyed my shovel.

I heard the soldier at my hole shift in their boots—even without looking up, I could feel their sight burning into the back of my head. I drove my fingers into the earth in hopes that I would not die. And when I found the great stone, I leveraged with all of my might, lifting with legs, back, spirit. A hollow ache shivered up my left leg from my previous car injury, but I bottled it.

The coarse rock came like a tooth from gums, and I hoisted it across my legs. It was massive and flat and jagged, and the edges dug into my palms while I wrestled it awkwardly. With all that was left in me, I threw it overhead, hearing it land somewhere on the ground. I fell onto my bottom and pulled in another dust filled breath.

As I struggled to stand, I felt hands pull on my shirt, fingers dig into my armpits, and my feet left the pit. My back slammed into the ground that’d been overhead only moments ago and I saw the sky while I lay there. I coughed and wheezed through the grime.

Two soldiers appeared in my blurred vision while I stared up at the evening sky. They were looking down at me as I tried to compose myself. All I felt was hurt.

Moving into a sitting position, I examined my surroundings. Other soldiers slopped bodies into the open holes and the engine of a huge machine echoed through the field from somewhere.

One of the soldiers that had pulled me from the hole lifted their rifle and pointed it at me.

Tears welled in my eyes, so I closed them and waited and there was no sound. Until I heard a voice break through.

“William, is it?”

I opened my eyes to see the bald man. He’d hunkered down in front of me, flanked by both of the soldiers. Hearing my own name brought me back to the reality of the situation.

The man latched both of his cold hands onto the sides of my throbbing head and pulled me close so that our foreheads touched. “Would you dig another?”

My shoulders shook and the water would not stop flowing. Without even knowing, I nodded. “Yes. Yes, I’ll do it. I’ll dig as many as you need.” I saw his face contort into a morbid elongated monster through tears—he was grinning.

He kissed my forehead. “Essential,” he said.

I felt the cool touch of something sharp scrape down my cheek, but I did not have the strength to recoil.

He stood and closed the pocketknife he had dragged across my face before moving on.

The soldiers rallying me to my feet and pushed me on towards the bus, lit by alien halogen bulbs. Standing in line were five other Candidates, their faces dejected, their hands ruined like mine. Each one stared at the back of the next as they filed into the bus; I did the same. There stood the soldier with the wicker basket, at the door to the transit, urging us to retrieve our phones from the others.

Each candidate bore a slice down their cheek, marking them for what they were. Essential.

The last to arrive at the bus, I took one look before boarding. A bulldozer arrived—that must’ve been the engine I’d heard—to push the dirt over the corpses they’d thrown in the freshly dug holes. Some were shallow. Some weren’t.

The ride home was long and quiet and empty.