III

Rick has ridden the subway since he was a baby, probably been on every single train the MTA offers rides on. He has seen every tunnel. When the Second Avenue subway opened, he made a special day out of seeing what all the fuss was about. It was short and disappointing, and one day he hopes they finish it.

But today, sitting in the back of this rickshaw, Rick hangs on for dear life. To say that he is being given the scariest ride of his life is totally an understatement. It's like day has died and only a starless night exists.

Behind him, Rat has found a way to cope by screaming every curse word he’s ever likely learned. He’s taught three to Rick already.

Futu-ți gâtu? It’s fun to say, certainly but he can only guess at its meaning.

Du-te dracului and Du-te-n Pula both seem connected, and Rat keeps saying them over and over.

He is thinking about the word dracului and how it sits so close to a certain vampire character he has seen about fifty movies about. The vehicle makes another sharp turn and the left wheel leaves the track before settling back down with a spray of ozone-scented sparks as Rat teaches him a fourth new curse word, Chi Shugra.

Like falling down an endless hole, eventually you stop falling and just exist within the discomfort of near-death. In fact, he begins to look forward to the screeching complaints of rickshaw wheels against the track because it is only when the metal wheels spark that he is able to see anything in the pitch-black that surrounds. In the small showers of sparks, he sees the track hovering over a shadowy abyss below and a very far-away, rapidly-diminishing ceiling dappled with stalactites. He is almost happy until they fade and he is thrust back into the delusional blackness in which anything could be happening.

The rickshaw suddenly descends.

Then shoots back up only to slow down until it almost stops then after a pause, whoosh down an even steeper decline.

Rick’s butt actually leaves his seat and before he lands, he manages to catch both the wheelbarrow and Rat as they sail up and away. He puts them back where they belong, stomach lurching into his mouth. His heart is already living there so they should be happy together. The downward trajectory seems to go on for several minutes before ending in a sudden leaping of the vehicle from the tracks and a shower of bright sparks that reveal stone walls lining both sides. The stone looks ancient and reminds Rick of what he thinks the Great Wall of China would look like. He’s never been. And probably never will go.

As if the disappointment of Vietnam will be the most foreign place he will ever go.

Without warning, the ride ends in a squeal of protesting brakes. Rick is thrown forward as the rear end of the rickshaw leaves the track. He tumbles into a darkness that feels like lukewarm soup. The black darkness is pervasive and stinks of rotten eggs. He feels it all over himself because it is, a sticky muddy goo.

“I don’t know if OSHA would approve of this, guys,” Rat complains from somewhere in the dark.

He wonders what would happen if he tried to leave. Would they let him reverse course back the way they came? He climbs to his feet and tries to step out of the ankle-deep muck. It sucks down on him. It is warm and wet and sloshes into the vents on the sides of his jungle boots and then through his toes.

“Fuck,” he whispers as he puts the foot back down and pulls the other foot out, experiencing the same.

Where he imagines the rickshaw is, he hears three distinct voices arguing. The words don’t come but he can definitely tell two were mad at one. Then some scurrying and whispered words that sound like cursing followed by, “lucida lux vestra.”

These words are screamed out with much authority by its tiny screechy voice. The command is followed by a blinding light that floods Rick's brain with painful white. The light thumps against his eyes as it fades down to something manageable and he finds himself in a muddy area split in two by rusty train tracks that just end, disappearing into the mud with jagged edges as if they have been ripped apart by something with ferocious strength. Opposite the destroyed tracks are the ones they once connected to the ones dangling into the impossible abyss below. Those tracks stretch up until they disappear into a foggy haze floating far, far above.

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Rick feels a sense of dreamlike wonder at it all; the light, the track, even the warm muddy goop. Deep within his mind, he knows that he should be concerned with, if nothing else, the fact a light has blown away the darkness with no discernible source, but instead, he finds that he is okay with it all. As if he is used to stuff like this happening all the time. Like every single day of his almost seventy years of life, an oddly shaped man, who may in fact be three little people standing on each other's shoulders, brings him to a point so deep in the subway system that he doesn't even recognize it as a subway tunnel anymore.

“Did you just make light appear with a command?”

The unbalanced figure is reconfiguring itself within the coveralls. Once the shaggy head of blond hair, sans cap, emerges he finds Rat with his eyes and points to the rusty tracks, “Dig!”

Rick finds himself annoyed at this, which might be covering for the fear and uncertainty that is bubbling like lava in his chest. His fists clench. “Is this a joke? What is happening here?” his voice betrays the emotions wrestling inside of him. Emotions like, I deserve better than this, and why me? Also, he wonders if this is all a setup and if he is the butt of some sick joke

The head disappears back into the coat and after some whispering, reappears. “Plastered on its face is a huge smile, fake, of course. “Please dig the tracks free.” The voice is deeply accented with something mixed with Eastern European and someone from Bangladesh.

Rick sighs. That's what he does, he digs. He looks around and the floor is covered with a greenish muck. He is deciding whether to tell them to dig their own goop when a third hand appears up through the collar.

Awkward with an armpit in his face, the blond says, “Oh, yes! We will pay.”

He almost reminds them they pay Workforce, not the workers when the small hand opens and sitting in it is a fat roll of cash.

“All yours.”

“Okay, fine.”

He finds the shovels not far from Rat and the wheelbarrow, he lets him in on the plan then digs a path from where he is standing to where the tracks submerge in the mud. He pulls the wheelbarrow behind him and dumps shovels full of mud inside. Once the wheelbarrow is full, he dumps it off the side of the cliff. The first load falls for what seems forever until it disappears into a white wispy cloudbank far below.

Rick is magic with a shovel. His old muscles mechanically turn the mud-covered track into something usable and the rickshaw driver sits slumped near his vehicle in three lumpy hills working on the engine with six hands. The rickshaw took a beating when it landed. Parts and pieces are everywhere, but each time Rick glances up at it, it looks more and more like the thing that picked him and Rat up at the 170th street station.

He goes for a few hours without stopping, feeling satisfied with his efforts and knowing Rat is far behind him in terms of what he has done. But he is good company and Rick knows he would not like it down here without him. His touch of home makes this work feel not so unusual. Looking back on what he has done, he leans on the shovel for a bit of a breather. The area is nothing like a subway tunnel. Not to mention that he feels hundreds of miles of Earth above pressing down, complete with stalactites.

“Dig!”

He shoots an annoyed look into the eyes of a red-headed man-child thing with huge green eyes. He blinks in shock and when he reopens them, the blond dude is back pointing just as aggressively.

He gets a bit mad at this. “Some appreciation goes a long way, man”

The eyes that seem too big for the little head already, grow even wider as he recoils in fear before disappearing back into the coveralls. When he pops back up, after a bit of chittering, he says, “Please?” sweet as sugar.

So, he continues to dig and dump, and more of the track is exposed shovelful by shovelful.

The sourceless, steady bright light in the cavern hides any sense of time and Rick does not own a watch. Nor does he have lunch or the money to buy it so even as his stomach begs for sustenance, he ignores it and keeps working. Work always ends. So he sticks the shovel into the muck and lifts it over and over again. Eventually, Rat’s only job is to follow with the wheelbarrow and dump it when it is full. Rick doesn't even notice that he stopped digging. His plan is to keep his head down, finish the job and get so drunk tonight on what they pay him that he forgets all about the damage he has done to himself and all the damage he wishes he could do to the world.

He is a machine when it comes to digging. His hands are thick with rough calluses and he has come into the ability to just let his mind go free of thought and just work.

After what could have been minutes or hours, a voice commands, “Wait.”

Then more skittering.

He looks up, confused, wondering if the day is over.

“Venit cibum” in a commanding squeaky voice.

And a table appears on the track behind the rickshaw, covered in a feast.

“Eat, then dig?”

Buried deep inside his brain, Rick wonders if a table filled with food should just appear out of nowhere. Food like still-steaming roast chicken, cabbage rolls, a mushroom medley, honey ginger carrots, freshly baked rolls with salty butter, and a cinnamon torte covered in gooey icing. And one should certainly never eat from a table like that, but oh God, the smells. Like Thanksgiving day. Like entering a pizzeria and knowing one of the pies is yours.

More skittering and the head disappears and then pops back up, “please?”

But that was unnecessary as both he and Rat were moving toward the table almost as mindlessly as two people can get.

Rick obliges. He sits in the comfortably padded dining chair with arms and looks at the delicious spread wondering where to start. He pulls a leg from a chicken and takes a bite. It tastes like nothing he has ever eaten before in his life. So good. So amazing. As if he has never had chicken before. Around a bite, he moans involuntarily. After his first bite of food, he can’t stop. It’s as if the many years of going without were a dam and this food just breached his self-control.

He eats so much that when he is beyond full and the table is littered with empty dishes, he finds himself falling asleep until a dangerous roar pulls him back from what would have been a very deep sleep.