Bottom Dwellers By Fiona Clark

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Bottom Dwellers

by

Fiona Clark

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We are the Bottom Dwellers, the basement dwellers, deep under the high-rise block of Hellton Towers. No-one sees us, no-one knows we are here. The basement was boarded up for many years before I was old enough to remember, Cal told me. When my mother, father and elder brother were lost, on the Outside, Cal brought me and Ama down here. We slid down the old laundry chute, into the cellar with its rows of silent washing-machines, like space-ships ready for orbit, and the dripping tap over a chipped box-sink, our precious source of water. Cal and Ama made our home in the rooms behind this, where people had stored tools and tins of paint. A small grid lets onto the Outside, giving us air and a few hours of sunlight. Ama makes me sit under the grid, to get the slanting rays of sun onto my face, next to the feeble tomato plants, with their pebbly green fruits, which scarcely ever ripen.

Ama tells me we are not really Bottom Dwellers, because below the basement is the ground, and under the ground are caves and tunnels from the Before-time, where people used to live, and before them, the Ancestors, who painted on the cave-walls and left imprints on their hands on the rocky surfaces. Ama uses the tins of paint to decorate the walls of our home. She makes images of bison spirits, of deer running through woods, images known to her own people from the dawn of time. She made me dip my hands in the paint, every year, and press them against the wall to show how I’m growing, my tiny baby hands, until now.

At night, Cal climbs up the laundry chute, and into the upper levels, and onto to the Outside to collect supplies. He takes whatever he can get, sometimes cans of food, a dead squirrel, a bag of rice. If shops are being looted, he follows behind and grabs whatever is left or dropped by the Tribes. But Cal is worried about getting old. He’s always told me that when I’m thirteen, I must learn to climb the chute with him, and to scavenge for what we need. I’m thirteen today and have pressed my handprint onto the picture wall. An adult’s hand, a scavenger’s hand, only I call it ‘borrowing.’

In our home, I have a few old books and lurid comics, full of aliens and superheroes, tattered and worn thin with use. One of the books is ‘The Borrowers,’ by Mary Norton. The Borrowers are tiny people who live in the posh house of some before-time people. Arriety, her father, Pod, and her mother Homily, live under a tall clock called a grandfather clock, and come out at night to borrow small items which the humans will never miss – a safety pin for a gate-catch, a chess piece for an ornament, scraps of food. I can identify with Arriety, and for years she has been my imaginary friend.

Cal, Ama and I sit at the packing-case table, where a lighted candle flickers. Ama cooks in a haybox, and on an old barbecue stand, with a makeshift flue through a hole in the wall to the Outside. As it’s my birthday, she’s cranked open a long-hoarded can and we are having corned beef fritters, which smell and taste delicious. There’s a solemn feeling in the air.

‘It’s tonight, Yol,’ Cal tells me. ‘Your first scavenging raid. You must be brave, silent, and above all, do everything I tell you.’

I nod speechlessly. I’m afraid but manage to control my trembling. At last, I will get to see the upper levels, and perhaps, the great Outside.

We dress in black, with balaclavas Ama has knitted, and black gloves, black scavenging sacks. Ama kisses me, wishes us luck. I can see she is controlling her trembling, too.

Cautiously, Cal and I ascend the laundry chute. It is smooth, dark and slimy inside, but Cal has soldered lumps of scrap metal to the walls to provide hand and foot holds. We scramble up towards the flickering circle of fluorescent light, and Cal helps me out into a gloomy, narrow corridor. He holds a finger to his lips and beckons me forward. We creep along the walls and wriggle out through a tiny aperture. Suddenly, we are in the Outside. I feel a rush of cold air on my skin and look up to the dizzying emptiness of the night sky, arcing above our heads, the cloudy darkness tinged with a bilious orange glow. Into that terrifying emptiness thrust the gargantuan dimensions of Hellton towers. I press myself face downwards on the ground, fearing that the building will collapse and crush me. I feel Cal’s reassuring but urgent hand on my back, patting me, pulling me to my feet. With the other hand, he indicates a row of bins, close to the outside of the building. As my senses clear, I see we are in a narrow yard, enclosed by four high walls.

We move to the bins, take off the metal lids with exceptional care, and begin to probe the contents. I’ve been primed as to what to look for. Banana skins can be scraped for precious potassium. Chicken bones can be boiled for soup. Stale bread can be grated for crumbs. We pick though each bin, methodically, but it’s slim pickings tonight. With his thumb, Cal indicates the wall. My heart pounds. We are going over the wall, into the full world of the Outside. Cal swings his grappling hook, high to the top of the wall. The climbing rope coils downwards.

Cal climbs first, skilfully, but slowly. I can see the effort it takes for his aging limbs to scale that vertical surface. Then he’s astride the wall, and the rope curves my way. I brace my body, and step by slippery step, I scramble and haul myself to the top. Cal goes first, scurrying down the other side like a spider in the darkness, landing softly as a cat. I follow behind him, and we are creeping past giant scrap heaps, crashed cars, broken appliances, loops of electrical wire. Some of this may prove useful, on the way back, but food is our priority. Suddenly, there’s shout, and a flashlight beams our way.

‘Run,’ whispers Cal, ‘To the railway bridge. I’ll find you there.’ He points my way, I duck and scurry past the mounds. I hear him throw a can in the opposite direction, to create a diversion. A taste like iron in my mouth, I keep on running, crouch down on the rusted rails inside the railway bridge, which is festooned with graffiti, bubble writing, genitalia, slogans, in fluorescent spray paint. I wait, heart thumping like a fist against a drum. Surely it’s audible? I try to calm my breathing. But Cal doesn’t come. I can hear shouts and a clatter of metal objects cascading, a clamour of raised voices. Then silence. I try to remember the plan, which has long been part of my training and preparation for this day: in an emergency, head for the safe house, by the river, a green-painted shed, with a corrugated-iron roof, with the white-washed words: Denton’s Nautical Supplies. Find the river by the smell. Follow the river. The safe house lies beyond on the left bank, if anyone still maintains the post.

I clamber up the mud bank beside the bridge. In one of my old comics, there is a picture of hell fires, with skeletons dancing in front of them. That scene comes alive before my eyes, here in the patch of scrubland, littered with cans. Orange, red, yellow streaks of flame, manic bony figures with empty eye-sockets. Music pumps out from some unseen source, throbbing, beating, drumming, drumming.

As I’m quivering here, a skeleton leaps towards me, his face bone-white, his gap-teeth grinning with ferocious intent. He grabs my throat, pulls me down the mudbank, flattens me with his angular limbs.

‘Who are you?’ He runs a hand down my body. ‘A girl?’

‘Don’t touch me!’ I spit back.

He lets me go, scrambles away a little. It’s a skinny boy, dressed in black, the bones sprayed onto his mask and clothing with luminous paint.

‘Who are you? Which tribe?’

‘No tribe,’ I falter.

He peels off the skeletal mask, a black hood, painted with skull markings. Greasy red hair, hollow eyes in an emaciated face. He seems almost as frightened as I am.

‘I came from over there,’ I gesture vaguely, ‘With my grandfather, Cal. But there was a flashlight, some crashing, and he disappeared. I’m to wait for him at the safe house.’

Naïve of me, I know, to blurt out so much information, but the Outside is huge and terrifying, and this boy is another human being.

‘Safe house? Denton’s Nautical?’ He scoffs. ‘Not been ‘safe’ for years. Security found it, caved the roof in.’

‘But… where shall I wait for Cal?’

The boy’s voice is gentler now. ‘Look, Cal’s not coming back. That flashlight… it’s Security. They’ll have … dealt with him.’

‘Dealt..?’

‘Not coming back.’

Hot tears spill down my cheeks, there’s a burning coal in my throat.

‘Look, where do you live? Which level?’

‘No level. Under all the levels. In the basement. I’m a Bottom Dweller.’

‘But Security boarded up the basement years ago.’

‘It’s a secret…’

‘Safe with me. Listen, I’m from Level Seven, halfway up. The Top Dwellers on Fourteen, they own me. I run their drugs for them. But I slipped up, lost some cash on a raid. They’ve said nothing, but it’s just a matter of time. I need somewhere to hole up, where they won’t find me. I’ll get you back there, stay with you out of sight.’

‘No’ – I imagined Ama’s grief-stricken face: to lose Cal and inherit this intrusive stranger, all in one blow.

‘What choice do you have?’

It’s true. It takes two to manage the grappling hook and rope. Plus, I am an amateur in the ways of the Outside. I glance up at the full height of Hellton Towers, its prison-like walls, its thousand windows, blank, blind eyes. I think of the flashlight, of the unseen power of Security, of Cal, who is not coming back. What choice, indeed?

Suddenly, along the top of the mudbank three or four more skeletons appear, grasping spears.

‘Keep still!’ hisses the boy. We crouch in the shadows. The skeletons are stamping, performing some sort of war dance, brandishing their spears.

A small creature streaks across the top of the bank. With blood-curdling yells, they are on it, stabbing it with their spears. One of them holds the creature aloft. It’s an urban fox, red fur dripping with blood. The others catch the blood in their hands, smear it on their bodies and faces. They set off with whoops towards the flickering orange flames of the bonfire.

We breathe out.

‘It’s now or never,’ whispers the boy. ‘They’ll roast that but be back for more.’

In an incongruous gesture, he takes my hand, shakes it. ‘Ben.’

‘I’m Yol.’ I beckon to him.

We creep back past the scrap piles, dreading the flashlight, the footsteps of Security, but nothing happens. We skim towards the walls, the rope still dangling from the grappling hook. We look up together, move slowly forwards, into the darkness, or the light.

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Bio:

Fiona Clark is lucky enough to live in the beautiful and historical county of Suffolk, UK. She writes poetry, playscripts and short stories, and is currently planning a novel. Fiona is an active member of Suffolk Poetry Society (SPS), and of Suffolk Writers’ Group (SWG), and an Associate Editor for SPS online magazine, ‘Ripples.’ Fiona performs her poetry at Poetry Aloud poetry café, and SPS poetry festivals. Fiona was among the winners of Fast Foreword Festival short story competition, 2023, and was first prize winner in SWG Angry Ghosts poetry competition, 2022, Offtopic poetry competition, first prize, May 2023, highly commended, August 2023, November 2023, honourable mention in Norwich Café Writers competition, February 2024. She is a frequent poetry prize winner in ‘The Oldie’ magazine. Other publications include: SPS ‘Twelve Rivers’ magazine, Ink, Sweat and Tears, Dreich magazine, Littoral press magazine (digital), Bridge House publishing, Offtopic (digital) and Silver Birch press(digital). Her writing focuses on the natural world, memories, mythology, human relationships and history. Her writing can be found most easily at poetrywivenhoe.org, 2023, under the headings ‘Fruit and flowers’, ‘Rivers and lakes’, and ‘Fishes and sea-creatures.’, and many other titles.

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