He had always heard the stories. The nunkers that didn’t make enough profit for their boss would disappear and never come back. He wasn’t afraid. Most other nunkers had no initiation whatsoever to go through, but he even had one or two sumnuffs keeping an eye on him within a day of being there. At least, that’s what he told himself. Insie was only 12 when they took him, but he didn’t go quietly; that had earned him his reputation. Unfortunately, that same reputation meant that he had to deliver a certain character to his inferiors. The only way he could do that was by fighting with the sumnuffs, which happened to land him in trouble quite a bit. Since the bosses wouldn’t risk injuring their finest asset, they punished him by making him show the most recent greenhorns the ropes, acting as a twisted kind of tour guide. This is what brought him to the empty cavernous area famous for one thing and one thing only: the first awakening in hell. This is where every greenhorn had ever woken up for the first time once arriving in The Coves, including Insie himself. How they got there, no one knew. The only thing anyone knew was that there were no entry or exit points in the room. There was nothing but the beginning of the end of their lives. Somewhere behind him, he heard the groaning of pain signifying the awakening of the most recent arrival, who slowly stood up before realizing that he wasn’t where he was before. The boy fell right back down on the ground, clearly from malnourished weakness in his legs, and looked horrified at the sight of another person in the room, obviously anticipating the worst. He scrambled backwards, clearly expecting to be taken somewhere new and tortured endlessly, unaware that he was at the final destination. The newest abduction was a scrawny looking thing, all terrified eyes and twitchy fingers. Every glance he made seemed to be a silent way of him begging for his life. Pathetic. A kid like that wouldn’t last a week in The Coves.
Insie waited for the boy to calm down for a couple seconds before he spoke. With the ones that instinctively ran away, he had to be patient. Insie hated being patient. After five silent seconds went by, Insie could feel his eye beginning to twitch. The boy seemed to get the memo and realized that he wasn’t in danger, so he soon spoke up.
The first words a greenhorn says when they are first abducted tells you everything you need to know about them. Usually, the most common occurrence is a question about who Insie is or where they are or why did the sumnuffs take them. Occasionally something interesting comes up-cursing or threatening-that tells Insie that the greenhorn will be one to watch. The boy looked at Insie suspiciously, as if deciphering some kind of code, before his eyes widened and he looked straight at Insie.
Finally, the starved child said something.
“They took you, too, didn’t they?”
Insie snarled and felt his hand twitch. He didn’t even dignify that with a response. Instead, he ignored it and began his introduction. The tour had begun.
“A nunker like you ain’t got nothin’ worth fightin’ for when it comes to the bosses, but if a sumnuff tries to show himself over you then you got as much right as anybody else in The Coves to bite back.” The kid looked anxious for a notepad at that moment, as if he was learning a new language that could somehow take him home. Pathetic. “You’re a real scrawny thing so I’m gonna guess you didn’t have to go through any initiation, so you’d better thank any god you got if nobody tries to snag up some of your rocks.” Insie wouldn’t admit that he was angry about the greenhorn figuring him out so quickly, but he would be lying if he said he hadn’t intentionally used words that the boy couldn’t know in order to confuse him. It was petty, but Insie didn’t care. Meanwhile, the kid looked like he had just been thrown into some other universe where nobody spoke his language. Perhaps that was close. Slowly, the scrawny greenhorn raised his hand up as if he sat in a school classroom. Pathetic. When he spoke, he spoke with a slight tremble in his voice and a less-than-subtle stutter.
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“I-I’m s-sorry, but you didn’t tell m-me anything.”
This kid was going to get eaten alive. Sighing an exasperated breath, he tried to explain. “Anybody new here is dubbed a greenhorn. You’ll get used to it until people stop callin’ you that. You and me, we’re nunkers. We’re the ones that do all the work and get none of the pay. We get the heat if anythin’ goes missin’ or production slows down. The people that brought you here are sumnuffs. They get some of the pay, do some of the work, and that’s enough for them, but they just work as the bosses’ lackeys. The bosses are the scariest demons you’ll ever see, anything they say goes, and anyone they so much as think about gettin’ rid of disappears overnight. We call this hellhole The Coves because there ain’t never any light gettin’ in here, and there never will be. Now, you got a name?” The greenhorn spent a moment catching up to the conversation, and then went reeling when he realized that he had been asked a question.
“My name is Jamie”, he said. Insie knew that his name wouldn’t keep him alive any better than his “muscles” would. “Do you have a name?” Jamie asked.
“You can call me Insie.”, he granted. Jamie looked perplexed.
“Insie? That’s an interesting name. What does it mean?” the newly named greenhorn asked.
“Incinerated.”
Jamie froze. His eyes went wide and his mouth fell slightly open at the answer he received. He looked entirely shocked. Insie decided it was best if he explained. “Nobody here keeps their given name. It’s the only part of ourselves that we can still protect, and they take that away. If you undergo an initiation, they give you a name. If you don’t, then there are two possible ways you get your cove name: either you pick it and introduce yourself as that name, or the other nunkers make sure they give you one themselves. You seem like a good kid, so I’ll tell you now that you can’t go around calling yourself Jamie or you won’t last a day down here. You need a new name.”
Jamie pondered for a moment. Insie took this time to examine the boy’s appearance. He couldn’t have been any older than 16, merely a year and a half behind Insie’s own age. Jamie had striking raven locks and Insie could tell that if not for the horror currently contained in them, his eyes would be dazzling if he smiled. He had a lanky figure, looking more like a boy just released from his abductors than any greenhorn Insie had ever seen; he knew that none of them were fed for days when they were taken, and Jamie’s form clearly demonstrated that. Despite being painfully emaciated, he was somewhat tall, with eyes that looked nearly purple in their contrast to his pale porcelain skin and cheekbones that looked sharp enough to cut through stone. Now that Insie thought about it, all of Jamie’s bones seemed to be sharp enough to be weapons due to just how starved he was. Insie concluded that the boy’s name suited him well, as a name usually given as an abbreviation for something more was well suited to a boy that seemed to have so much lying underneath of his brittle surface. He’d never tell the greenhorn this, but he decided then that, to Insie, the boy would always be Jamie.
After what seemed like ages, the gaunt boy looked up. He had chosen a name for himself. “How does Pricker sound? You know, because I’m all bony and bones can be sharp?”
Despite his best efforts, Insie erupted into laughter. He laughed until he felt a burn in his sides and tears welling up in his eyes. The sound of such rare genuine mirth echoed through the walls of the cavern they were in and ricocheted right back to the two boys in the middle of the empty space. Meanwhile, Jamie appeared to have absolutely no inkling as to what was so funny. After Insie had calmed down enough to speak again, he tried to figure out the best way to explain what had made the very unintentionally terrible idea so amusing.
“Kid,” he started, still fighting back his own laughter, “people tend to shorten any name you pick within about a week once they get used to you, and if they shorten yours do you know what they’ll shorten it to? Prick. You’ll be naming yourself Prick.” Jamie’s eyes were blank. Insie waited. Then, all at once, the boy’s face turned a prominent shade of red and he quickly averted his eyes. Insie didn’t even try to hold back for the sake of politeness, laughing harder than he had in years.
“How about we just call you Jagger, yeah? It leaves room for some people to poke a little fun,” Insie could feel his lungs aching to let him laugh once again as he finished his statement, “but at least you won’t be introducing yourself as a Prick.”