MAGGOT- A short story

The boy nestled the hand grenade close to his chest . The deadly explosive felt icy cold even though the afternoon city was feverish with the summer humidity. He feared jostling it, so he walked quickly but with extreme care.

Shesh's bare feet padded as he navigated the rusting tin panels that lined the floor of this particular narrow slum alleyway. He could tell by the denseness of the air -and the smell- that he was very near the bottom levels of the many storied Sun City.

He knew they called it that because you could never see the sun this deep into the lower floors of the slums. It wasn't very clever. He figured that they just didn’t want to call it Slum City.

Cramped old apartment buildings, and scavenged bits of metal and plastic formed a rat warren of tiny overfilled dwellings and markets dozens of floors deep. Every twenty meters or so throughout Sun City, corroded water pipes and hulking bundles of cables crawled through the labyrinth like the roots of banyan trees.

Shesh slipped through a broken grating and after a moment found himself immersed in the harsh LED light that filled the bottom level markets.
Here the clangor of quasi-legal commerce roared. He could pick out shouted words in a potpourri of languages. He heard the street Hindi called Bambaiya, some Urdu, Marathi, and English. There were several others he could understand but not speak very well. His nose was hammered with the conflicting scents of chemicals from the laundry vats and the smell of hundreds of vendors hawking tantalizing food. All around people shouted about the great quality of their wares; curries, clothing, and technology.

Shesh clutched the grenade under his stained white shirt and walked briskly past the local laundry. Women knelt at the edges of sickly looking pools worrying at bits of cloth. The women sang and chattered while they beat and squeezed the filth from colorful thin sarongs and other clothing.

       Their voices mixed with the ignored din from several cheap flat screens that had been mounted on the walls. The dust-stained monitors featured a commercial for sweet water where Bollywood dancers flashed and twirled.
The smell of detergents and the bittersweet song the women sang pinched in the part of Shesh's heart where he kept snapshots of his mother. He shook his head imperceptibly and blinked his large almond shaped eyes. The boy marched on into the loud and crowded food market.

Shesh was just tall enough to see the wares being sold in the shack-like stalls. His dark orangish eyes darted over the colorful offerings. He could not help running his tongue over his dark lips. He stood on his toes and popped his chin over a few of the tables. Fluorescent green and white packages of genetically modified Plentils were being sold alongside rat kebabs, and cricket masalas.

Shesh licked his lips again as he watched the old woman tending the cricket masala stir the thick fragrant sauce. Crickets, coconut, tomato, coriander, garlic wafted into his little oval face. The woman scowled, chittered an admonishment in Hindi, and flapped her hands at him. Her purple sari was wrapped tight and her old flesh draped through the openings under her arms. It wobbled with her movement. Shesh flashed a brilliant smile that contrasted wildly with his dark skin. He flicked the tip of his thumb off his teeth at her in a rude gesture. She spat and commenced stirring. Shesh shivered with hunger and moved on.

At the next booth they were selling brightly colored bhel puri, a flavorful rice cake topped with onion, potato and tart chutney. Shesh stomach lurched and he decided to scurry quickly past the remaining food vendors. There would be time and rupees for food -after the job.

Shesh fanned his sweat varnished face with his free hand to clear the aromas that tantalized his nostrils. He gritted his teeth and hugged the hidden explosive against his skinny ribs.

     Shesh spotted the large center pathway that split the Sun City market and pushed past several people trying to join with the stream of movement.

     At the corner of the main road there was a filthy beggar balancing on a ratty cushion on top of an ancient CRT television. The screen blurred and fuzzy lines rolled over its surface but it was clear enough to see people on it. It was a news program from the Mumbai Arcology called “Mumbai-Pop!”. The brilliant white smile and perfect mahogany skin of a gorgeous Mumbaikar woman were on the screen. She was reporting about some rich famous person that lived in the glass-walled city. Below her was a news ticker. The letters on the screen scrolled: ...GLOBAL ECONOMIC CRASH OF 2075 EFFECT ON STOCK…
Shesh looked back up at the familiar beggar. His long matted hair and thick mustache all but hid his face. Only a formidable nose jutted through the mass of salt and pepper, and from the center of his forehead the dim glow of a luminescent tilaka mark. The glow-paint formed a red vertical line from his hairline to the bridge of his nose. The man had no arms. Only tiny buds of proto-fingers poked out where his clavicles should have ended. He wore empty short pants that folded in an odd way, underscoring his lack of any limbs whatsoever.

The deformed man on his decaying pillow was surrounded by a troupe of cats and kittens. He begged for money, Shesh knew, and used most of it to feed the cats. Shesh nodded at the man who returned the gesture. The little boy adjusted the explosive under his shirt so he could kneel and caress the mewing kittens that snuggled on the cushion. They pressed their tiny heads against his fingers and Shesh smiled and stood up.


The boy and his deadly cargo slipped into the mass of people slowly milling through the main thoroughfare of Sun City.

Standing like a canopy of trees, the adults talked, bartered, and swatted at flies. The men were often topless as the heat and humidity in the belly of the slums was ridiculous. Many wore simple colored dhoti wraps around their hips. The women wore saris in prisms of colors that glimmered despite the cheapness of the cloth.
Here and there people were savagely bartering and gesturing at their glowing knock-off datapads. Shesh strode on. He pushed through the masses using his palm to put pressure on peoples hips. They mindlessly made a little room for him to squeeze through.
He knew he looked like any other hollow eyed child and he would not draw anyone's attention around here. All about, there were other children hustling and working. They were begging and pick-pocketing, or trying to sell trinkets. All of the children had thin brown bodies that supported heads that seemed too big for their necks. They all scurried like gangs of monkeys around the legs of the grown ups. They were engaged in their own “market” of thieving, trading, and bullying.

Shesh unconsciously checked his pockets with his free hand, even though he had nothing else for the other kids to steal. His precious payload was making him overly nervous. He sped up his steps and made it out of the market in a matter of moments.

After more winding metallic tunnels of slum shacks, a rusted ladder, and a quick tromp through a stream that was mostly garbage and sewage, he arrived at his destination.
He stood in an empty lot that was hemmed on all sides by high duracrete walls. It was filled with refuse. The lot acted as one of many dumps for the citizens of Sun City and those that lived in the slums several stories above.

Before him was a solid wall that had been pasted with a giant poster. The image featured a heavily graffitied visage of Shiva. Blue night-time was depicted with rolling purple mountains, and in the foreground sat the azure deity.

He held his pink palm toward the viewer in a passive gesture. Coiled around his neck was a golden King cobra gazing into the distance. On the God's head nestled in a crown of matted hair was a tiny golden crescent. That shape, Shesh's mother once told him, represented the moon. It symbolized the cycle of creation or some such nonsense.

Most of the image was difficult to read thanks to simple decay, as well as the phosphorescent tags and terribly lewd drawings. Shesh himself had scaled the wall and painted the cartoonish vulva that replaced the third eye on the smooth and peaceful blue forehead.

The abandoned painting of the god sat in a small lot that may have once been a restaurant parking area fifty or sixty years ago, but was now a foul smelling dump. Sharp wreckage and picked through electronics hid the tarmac a few meters below.
Shesh climbed toward the wall that bore the god. There was a large stack of grey looking garbage. It seemed to rest like a tiny mountain against the wall. He disturbed a couple of skinny ill tempered dogs. They snarled and dashed down the pile and into another dark alley.

Shesh pulled himself up next to the peak of the pile of trash. He slid a piece of particle board from it. The door revealed a small entryway into a tunnel downward. The sheet of wood had cleverly been tied with netting so that junk hung and stuck to it very naturally. He moved the grenade from his dirty white shirt to a pocket in his decaying shorts and climbed down into the opening. His small hands reached out of the hole and pulled the trash laden cover back into place.

The vandalized god Shiva held court over the silent junk-heap once again.

----


Shesh squeezed along the inside of the wall that featured the tattered Shiva. He made sure to tuck his belly and arch his back to dodge the nails and spikes driven into the stonework. After a few years of practice and a couple jagged scars he had become very adept at maneuvering quickly in narrow spaces. The children had strung up very dim lights inside the wall and it made the going a little easier.

He finally reached the end of the hollow wall. Shesh had arrived at the entrance of the Mahi Durg. It was a half meter wide hole near the floor where the crawlspace in the wall ended. Maybe it was a vent for the wall from many years before? He wasn’t sure.

Pratik had named their hide-out the Mahi Durg. He was the “big brain” in their group and he said it was named for a kind of fortress.

Shesh thought it a pretty pitiful fortress, but, it was an exceptional hiding spot. It was impossible for anyone larger than maybe a fourteen year old to shimmy along the inner wall to get here, besides the entrance in the trash pile was really well concealed. Shesh smiled, that was his doing. He did not know as much as Pratik, but he had his own talents.

He leaned close to a heavy tamarind colored plastic tarp that lay across the hole.

“Let me in,” he whispered.

He heard the quiet voices that were bubbling in the quick round tones of Bambaiya Hindi cease. There was a small click sound and a hiss. Shesh slid the tarp to the side and eased down into the small room. When the other children recognized him, the voices and giggles immediately continued.

He reactivated the “doorbell” as the gang liked to call it. It was a simple trap. A thin wire was woven through the bottom of the heavy brown tarp. The line attached to a small switch with a carabiner. That switch operated an air compressor nestled against the wall. The machine's output was fitted with a long tube filled with metal shavings and motor oil. Not deadly, just really unpleasant.

The taped up remains of a cricket bat leaning against the trap was for the coup de grâce.

Sana the lone girl in their motley organization had a gift with machines, and the doorbell was one of hers. She was standing at the opposite wall digging around in one of the several dirty plastic bags looped to a pipe. The bags contained scraps of clothing and a few tins of vegetables or seasoned crickets in oil.

Three other children were laying in a dog pile that filled most of the floor in the broom closet sized room.

Azizul, Pratik, and Basir were wrestling. Pratik clad in a dingy white sleeveless top and earthy looking trunks was laughing and tugging on Basir's ears. Basir was struggling to get free but Pratik was wiry and strong. Pratik had locked his legs around the larger but slower boy. He held on to Basir's ratty polo shirt to keep him from reaching back and sinking a big slow fist into him.

Azizul, "The Map" had his narrow back pressed against one of the pebbled walls and pushed into the wrestling boys with his slender legs. He kicked both of them playfully. In the dim digital black light his eyes and teeth were ultra bright. The random patches of super pale skin that were spread over most of Azizul's body glowed brilliant blue. They looked like erratic lakes surrounded by dark chocolate land.

"Such big ears," Pratik teased as he pulled Basir's, admittedly, rather large ears. "Are you a dog-boy? Can you hear the flies buzz in the Arcology? Maybe Basir-Big-Ears has fleas!?” Pratik said into the cup of Basir's ear. Basir just grunted and twisted his head trying to free himself. He didn't speak much and tended to get even quieter when he was teased.

"Stop it, you swollen ass," said Shesh. He put his foot on Pratik's shoulder and pushed the other boy from his victim. "Look what I have, here." Pratik rolled to his knees and shot Shesh a dirty look.

Sana turned quickly from the plastic bags. She had squirmed into a holey yellow tee shirt with faded pictures of unicorns mounting each other. She was young, too. Just like all the others in the room she had the round innocent face of the prepubescent. Unlike the rest she had a milky eye that had been lost to an infection a few years before. "You got it?!" She asked.

Shesh shooed the other children and dragged a small crate to the center of the room. They all sat in a circle as Shesh gingerly placed the grenade on the box.

They all sat in awe of the deadly device. They looked close at it, their small noses were mere inches from the explosive. In the black LED light, the cricket ball sized grenade looked like a black hole that absorbed all light. Basir pulled out a little key chain that looked like a cartoon mouse. When it was squeezed a little diode sputtered an orangish light that cast over the object on the table.

It was maybe twenty five centimeters tall and perhaps eighteen at it's widest. It was oblong like an American football with blunted points, and it was pebbled with a deeply engraved hexagonal pattern. The grenade had a small rectangular shape at the top that sprouted a long dangerous looking crescent of metal that hugged the curve of the center mass. Shesh thought of the moon.

Basir touched the metal ring that was attached to a pin at the top of the crescent. "That's the part you pull," he said solemnly. "Then," he made a flowering gesture with his hands and mimicked the sound of an explosion.

"Everyone knows that, idiot," Pratik said. In the light of the cartoon mouse, his rat like features were made comical by his walleyes. Each of Pratik's eyes looked as though they were trying to escape looking at the other one.

Sana flicked Pratik's ear making him jump. "This is a chaff-bang grenade," her English was sharp and crisp like folded foil. "It explodes like a normal grenade but also throws up bits of aluminium and other stuff to mess with a drone's radar."

Azizul nodded. His brows creased, pinching the small white patches around his forehead. In Hindi he said, "You remember Tanvi and her gang? They got caught by the Rust Dogs. She said they had a chaff-bang and the Dogs got blown to pieces. She said they made hundreds of rupees on the wreckage. Along with the rupees they got from the scavenge run."

The children all looked at each other excited. Shesh beamed a smile and his head rocked slightly from shoulder to shoulder with the pleasure of having acquired such a valuable item.

"With this the Dogs can't stop us!" exclaimed Pratik.

Basir had a huge grin that spread from oversized ear to oversized ear. He slapped Pratik on the back and they all laughed. After a meager meal they readied gear for the evenings promising scavenging run.

----

“I still think I should carry it,” said Pratik.

He walked at the front of the group strutting backwards down the center of the dark road. Each of his eyes seemed to take in both sides of the muddy path. There were multi-storey shacks that lined the walls of the road in the outer ring of Sun City’s residential warrens. Each barren window wafted the sounds of televisions and the aromas of frying garlic and onion. It appeared to be dinner time for those that could afford it.

The group of scavenger orphans had ventured through almost two kilometers of slums and still hadn’t broken free of the densely packed lean-tos and tenement housing.

No one paid them any attention. They were not the only unattended children running around out here, and everyone had their own problems.

“Let it go,” Azizul the Map said with a big sigh. There was a short silence where all they heard was the squelching of their bare feet in the stinking mud.

“Come on. I’m the general of our little army, I should carry the grenade,” Pratik said, finally. He smiled and tugged at the straps of his sleeveless greying undershirt as though they were suspenders.

“Not so loud, idiot,” Sana growled at him. They passed a tiny jutting house where there was an intense argument taking place in Urdu, a woman with a scarf over her head threw out dirty water in the path of the children, glanced at them, then turned and commenced yelling at the man inside.

“We already agreed to let Sana carry it, Pratik. She’s the one that knows machines best.

Let it go,” Shesh said. After thirty minutes of this idiotic debate he was reaching his limit of irritation.

Basir nodded, his big ears seemed to flop with the movement.

“You’ll be sorry if the Dogs catch us up,” Pratik shrugged. He turned in a snit and shoved his hands into the pockets of his brown trunks.

“Just shut up and walk,” said Sana. She tightened the rope she wore as a belt around her yellow shirt with the humping unicorns. From it hung another shirt that had been fashioned into a bag. The heavy looking lump inside it was the the chaff-bang grenade. Shesh didn’t like how it kept slapping against Sana’s thigh, but she knew what she was doing.

They all wore thin ropes or extension cords for belts. They each had a couple of plastic bags with simple tools. Each of them had wire cutters that they’d nicked from a market or picked up with extra money in the prior months. Azizul even had a multitool that he’d gotten from his brother before he had disappeared two years ago. Shesh never met Azizul’s brother, but he knew no one else in the Map’s family had shared his condition.

The children also carried scraps of cloth or canvas that had been repurposed into slings for carrying salvage. It was extremely dangerous to hunt for the derelict bits of technology in the old industrial outskirts of the city. If you didn’t have enough bags to bring the loot back, the risk was never worth it.

Shesh was pulled from his thoughts when Basir tugged at his stained tee shirt. He turned and Basir pointed. Basir was the largest of them, and the oldest at maybe eleven or twelve years old. His silence and observant eyes made him an excellent look out. Shesh followed Basir’s finger. He could see the curving bases of massive smoke towers. The children could only see the bottoms of the cement cylinders because they were on the ground floor of the slum city. Shesh knew, the towers were the second highest feature visible in the Mumbai’s skyline.

The two smoke stacks marked that they were nearing the edge of the Powai Lake industrial center. Shesh knew, a little farther north, just past the stinking water refinery and desalination plant, the dense slum city broke. Once free of the slums, they could finally breath a little fresh air.

============= To be continued.