Fomku and Pin: Fingertrap. By Violet LaFleur

Glistened droplets hanging from the air as shone swords. All matter of dust and pollen, spores and aerosol spills waned gently in the intruder rays, suspended in time. They may have been everywhere, throughout every wave of air. Only in the sunlight were they forced visible. Dark, mossy sludge overtaking crumbling concrete pillars. Bluish gray, young sprouts between the tilework. Fungal colonies relishing the cold wet emptiness. They were content to sit there for all eternity like that. But the cracked down streets above payed it no mind. It didn't matter how quiet it must have been down there, how undisturbed. All those matters could only find themselves further down the line. In this pock, every errant screech, hooftrample, coo and caw of the world above would enter this place as unnaturally as if it were the opposite. The artery split open in the middle of the road, open to all matter of disease and intrusion. Open to us.

"Theres no getting through the rubble, we have to go through the subway" Fomku chirped to me. We both looked into that wounded street, for a moment blocking the suns gaze from setting down in.

"Pin, hold this." He gave me A length of rope. I pretty much did everything he said. His amber hair jostled in the sun above, contrasting sharply with the overgrowth behind. Red and green, like dull christmas lights. Digging through his backpack, he found a flashlight. He took the rope from me and walked a ways away, tying it off to a lamp post. I kept staring into the hole. It might have been a rude thing to do. Cruel, mocking; To give that splitsecond chance of hope. Some 9% of the sun temporarily removed, I rolled it around in my head. Would it be better to stop staring and let it pour in again? Or continue to stand there, eyes fixed on slimey concrete. Stand there and let all the rats and insects think for a moment: we can be at peace again. We may not have to flee to the deeper ribbons of earth, up and away from that which pours down on us. Fomku dangled something in front of my eyes, a pair of gloves. I chose to be cruel.

"I don't want you to get hurt again."

They were my gloves, but I really wish he would let me get them myself. He probably doesn't want me messing his stuff up. I tried my best to grab them on a spot he hadn't touched, but also a spot that hadn't externally touched anything else. It was difficult. He sighed in frustration, and I hurried to put them on. They were sweaty, and it was my sweat. They reminded me of my old fencing glove, I would wear it over and over again until the cloth sanded down to nothing from the rough texture pistol grip. After a while, washing didn't really do anything, and it would be flat as cardboard when it dried. Thats how it felt, and it would be a little while before they formed and softened again.

Fomku looked to his left, then his right. The city was still, covered in bombed out pockmarks. Perfect little scooped out half circles in the geometry. The sun beat down hard, vines and bushes lighting up. I felt it on the back of my neck, burring against my skin. He turned on his flashlight, and went down the rope, down into the tunnels. I was alone up there, but only for a little bit.

"Okay, its safe. Come down."

I looked over, staring at the top of his head. He was looking around, all nervous like. His equipment jingled slightly from all the wavering. I took one last look around, before grabbing the rope and jumping in.

The air became slick and sticky in a second. My feet hit the tile ground with a wet sploch. I looked around with him, eyes and heels turning like lighthouses. There was an authoritative silence in the tunnels. Hums of captured breezes echoed around the pipes, hurrying somewhere far away and invisible. For the air was still here, hanging sheets of a mixed up dust concoction layered through space. The subway cars stood there, still and unmoving. Fomku continued, measured little steps as his gradient dissapeared out from the golden overhead, into the blue and gray. I looked up from where we came. The ropes dangled there, swaying slightly from some invisible wind or phantom reverberation. I stepped out of the sunlight spot, and came into full embrace of the cool dampness.

Fomku looked back at me with an annoyed face. I didn't do much except annoy him. He grabbed my gloved hand.

"C'mon, we gotta move."

Even through the glove, I disliked it. Without the glove it would have been painful, right now it was just discomforting. With the moisture in the air, the seams and threads had begun to relax. Crystalline particles undoing themselves, laying against the flesh of my hand once more. I didn't want Fomku's contamination on me, especially on my hands. He understood and didn't understand. I tried to convince myself that the plastic lining around the fingers was still solid and wouldnt let anything through. They were worn, teal rubber cracked with small cuts exposing the fabric. I clenched his hand, hoping to seal the ridges shut. His measured little steps became my own, as we walked down the platform. Past the traincars, cutting through the misty air. Rats scurried in the cages and railings overhead, sometimes I would hear gobs of wet something would splash down on the tiles around us, or run down the steelbeam pillars and walls. I kept close to Fomku. His presence often warded off any flings and goo from getting on me.

"There shouldn't be anything in here." Fomku said nervously, flashing his light around, as we walked to the end of the platform. It was the only streak of vision we had, a bar of proof lighting up all the hanging particles in the air. Without it, I wouldn't have to register their presence. But like it or not I had to see it. I took a deep breath, trying to take it all into my lungs, trying to make sure I could feel it all as deeply inside as I could out. My eyes closed for a little bit, as I trailed behind Fomku. If I could let him steer my legs and be my eyes, then I could just breathe in all the damp air I wanted to and let that be my only connection towards this place. Maybe I could be a little closer, if I took in the tunnel itself within me.

the right side of my shoulder knocked into a corner, and I shuddered, splitting my eyes wide open. The other workers would put their hands on my shoulder all the time and I would have to dodge them. Or the trails from their aprons would brush past my clothes, because they kept them so loose and big, soaked up with all sorts of debris. I would almost scream every time they would brush by me, because of how suddenly it burned my skin. If they were trying to be friendly they would seem deeply distraught, a cracking rodsnap in their heads that immediately brought a hazard outline down around me. A softly pulsating one that marked me permanently, and I was the only one who knew they could see it, even if they couldn't. There were no eyes here to light up and let me know they've found me out, just smooth tile walls. That gave me a little more to work with.

Groaning a little bit, in frustration if anything, I stood still. Fomku had already stopped when he felt the thud chain through our arms as we rounded the corner. His flashlight scanned an MTA EMPLOYEES ONLY BEYOND THIS POINT sign, dirty dusty rust speckled green with moss spores. He knew what had happened. I rubbed at the spot with my sleeve, trying to dilute whatever was on the wall that was now on me.

"here" He slung his backpack to his side, and started digging around. "Do you need the isopropyl?" He took the rectangular plastic bottle out from one of the compartments, sloshing half full with clear liquid, wrapped around with a teal rag. I shook my head. At this rate I would have to scrub down not just my shoulder but my sleeve too, and I didn't want to make us later than we already were. Plus I really shouldn't use my isopropyl so wantonly, it wouldn't be clear when we'd be able to refill again. Hopefully the atoms would dissipate in time, they sometimes would. He sighed, putting it back in the bag.

"Stay closer to me, okay?" I nodded silently. He didn't take my hand this time, the platform had narrowed. So much that I could only follow behind him as he led. He clung to the side of the wall, while I did my best to one-foot-in-front-of-the-other, swaying gently to make sure I didn't come into any contact on my right. We were going somewhere we had no business in going, before or after. It never bothered him, but made me scores nervous. Like some custodian was going to pop out from the shadows and tell us to scram or he'd call the cops. The tunnels gently howled from far away. It wasn't any human or biological sound. Only warm air moving to where it was seeked, balancing pressure zones pushing from one to another, back and forth. I wanted to close my eyes and feel it in my lungs again, I didn't want my eyes to dilute it so much. But the path was too narrow.

Eventually, the platform opened back up to a chained off maintenance area, door clamped shut with a padlock. Carefully, we grabbed the fence and climbed around it. Jingling and shaking, disturbing the tunnel's breath. It didn't feel right. We swung around the edge, our boots smacking the tile floor on the other side. It looked the same, in the waving flash light. Two wide empty sets of tracks surrounding a central set of columns. The area was sparser, here. There was another path going forward, with another fence in our way. After that it was empty tunnel, stretching on to the end of the flashlight's usability. The more I focused on it, the more varied the hums and swishes became, in front and behind me.

"Lets look around first" Fomku said, waving his flashlight over a door embedded in the front column. Flat and steel and unassuming. It creaked open, just a bunch of heavy machinery that neither of us knew the name of. A few boxes of what looked like screws, industrial strength adhesives. Fomku uninterestedly waved his flashlight over each shelf, before closing the door and turning. There was another across from it, in the other column. A mirror image straight down. We crossed the middle threshold, facing down an identical door. It swung open easily, a small pile of dirt spilling out the bottom.

When I worked in the kitchen I would always have to walk by the dishroom. Spoiled water would pool on the floor and slosh around under your shoes whenever you went in front of the walk ins. I remember how it took up a barely viscous tone with the mixing in of meat drippings and sticker adhesives and soap scum, lightish gray and almost embarassed to even be there. I would always step so carefully up and through, trying to find the pockets of raised ground so it wouldn't trail to the hems of my pants. The water here was black, pooling on the concrete utility room floor. Silty, wet with dust and soil, thick and present. It flowed out for an inch or two at the base of the door. Beyond that was where she sat.

Cracks in the pavement above were casting beams of light down on her. The moss on the shelving took them in, surrounding her with green pockets peppered on the black plastic that she lay slumped against. Her jaw was missing, lying no where nearby. Eyes sitting above a deep red chasm, sparkling from the sun and looking nowhere in particular. Her chest didnt fair much better, it was split right down the middle. Torn apart, bits of her throat hung open and glistening in the light. Ribcage exposed, small bridges of bone going back and forth before hiding beneath spared muscle, red and stringy. I stared at it, glowing sheets of rubies where the skin had been stripped away. Her intestines were thrown out in front of her, laying curled up inbetween her legs. We stood there, staring at her. He began to close the door, but I put my hand out. I looked up. The cracks in the sky were jagged, alternating in angles and and width. It was possible she tumbled down here, up from above. But whether she fell in from the ceiling or wandered in to rest, it happened very recently. The rot had not begun, and her organs still looked fresh and soft. What we were witnessing was the beginning of her calcification. She lay there as a shrine to be. Cautiously, I approached.

"Hey!! what are you doing??"

She looked so peaceful, laying there. I stepped in, feeling the sludge underneath the surface layer through my boots, sinking in ever so slightly. I crouched down, knees sinking into the silt, and put my arms around her.

"She probably hasn't been hugged in a while."

I didn't really care for Fomku right now, I spoke more for her sake than for his. Her dampness was detectable through my jacket, my left arm shifting and sliding a little bit over the exposed chest. I looked up at her, into her mouth. Her top layer of teeth were still there, small yellowed pellets. Her hair hung behind her, short. The color of chestnuts. Running my right hand through the strands, I got off my knees and laid my legs directly on the ground, so that I could get a better position with her. I felt the mud start to soak through to my legs. I tried moving away, up to the patch of dry dirt which she laid on. Her head shifted like a doll's in my hand, gently bobbing left and right without anything inside to power it.

Slowly, I heard the door creak shut to my left. Bootsteps echoing out somewhere, stopping at the door across. I kept looking at her, the light made little valleys in her mouth. It was a gradient of bright pink to near black red, it shifted and changed whenever I moved her head.

I didn't want to dirty her with them. I took off my gloves, placing my naked fingers back over her neck and across to her shoulder. Her skin was smooth and pale in my hand, textured with thin invisible hairs. The spine lobbing around at the base of the skull, aimless. It was a length of rubber surrounding a flexible chain. I moved her head back and forth, side to side, absentmindedly, watching how it obeyed wherever I told her to look. Eventually I aimed it to the left, settling so I could look into her eyes. They were fixed, hazel orbs. Thin little whisps of gray hung around the edge of the color. I looked into them, at the black little spots, half expecting them to blink at me. I looked into them, and they looked into mine. Slowly, as if not to shock her, I lifted my left hand up to her missing face, the softness of exposed muscle pressing against my thumb. Little spears of bone poking out from the red that surrounded it, I felt them out with my fingers, tracing over the hinge of the jaw. Then, down to her chest, resting my fingers on her ribcage. It was a powerful thing, I pressed down on it and it flexed slightly but did not give, my hand slipping down towards the bottom of her lungs. Then, below that, too. There were soft organs, connective mucusine sheen unbroken in some places. I dug in a little bit, gaps in between what must have been stomach and liver, sheets and pieces lay flat and deflated. First my index finger, then my middle. It gave easily, slipping in between. My other fingers craddled around a handful I couldn't identify, but my primary two moved side to side in between what remained of either's boundary. I seperated the pieces with my fingers. inbetween was a small pocket of nothing, of empty air, transluscent at the bottom where they still stay touching. Swiftly, I dove my hand into the crevace. It was on my knuckles and palm now, floating there between each segment. Out of all the parts of my body, my hand was the only one surrounded on all sides. Suspended, hanging there. Slight movement allowed, but nothing to give above or below. Deeper, up to the ridges of my wrist, I felt something solid and straight. My index finger looked around, trying best to feel the sides of vertebrae. Ridged high and low, my finger stooped up and down as it ran the inch or two afforded. I made a little tempo, then stopped, and let my finger curl slightly around her spine. As smoothly as in, I lifted my hand back out, and placed it on top. It was much cooler than I thought it would be, whatever draft coming on from high up flowed over my hand, lighting it up with a small sensation. I looked up, back at her, staring at me. Staring deeply into me. Her eyes held the future in them. Gray clouds coming up on the horizon, lumps of hazel spots sinking back into themselves. Soundlessness, a mouth wide open from which nothing could come. It was too much to witness. I closed my eyes shut and closed in, griping her tighter and tighter. Small tears began to trickle down my cheek, falling and sinking into her chest below. Her open throat shrugged down over me, teeth raking against the back of my head. The dampness stuck itself to my hair. In time, whatever heat my body had would flow into hers, and she would sink into me, not just sit above me. Sniffling, I repositioned my legs in front, like hers, laying back and into her. Her torso shifted, facing me as we lay there. Deep breaths, in and out. Opening my eyes, I watched as her right arm lay limp and to her side, behind her back, seeking the ground.

We sat there for a while until I laid back, taking her down with me, my boots almost reaching the door. Eyes closing slower and slower, heavier still. Cracks from above began to dissapear from view. Night was falling, the wound would soon be sealed.