Real life in an alternate universe.
May. 7th, 2011 12:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
platedlizardA/N: A little something that has been percolating through my tiny mind. I'm sure my parents will see where this is coming from. In this series I'm going to be blogging as if I am a couple characters--haven't decided on their names yet, so if you have any ideas feel free to give them to me.
Preview:
did I ever mention how much I hate crawl spaces? it's insane. They are really just the empty spaces underneath houses, where all the stuff that used to exist inside a house now resides. rats. Rat poop. cat poop (because the cats tend to view any area of dry and somewhat loose earth as one giant litter box) plumbing. electrical work. Weird bits of ancient masonry and terrifying post-and-block construction (seriously, if you own a house go under it and look at the pillars and foundation, and if it doesn't look scary either you don't know what to look for or your house is under thirty years old)
dead children.
did I ever mention how much I hate crawl spaces? it's insane. They are really just the empty spaces underneath houses, where all the stuff that used to exist inside a house now resides. rats. Rat poop. cat poop (because the cats tend to view any area of dry and somewhat loose earth as one giant litter box) plumbing. electrical work. Weird bits of ancient masonry and terrifying post-and-block construction (seriously, if you own a house go under it and look at the pillars and foundation, and if it doesn't look scary either you don't know what to look for or your house is under thirty years old)
dead children.
i don't really mean to light of it, but today was one of those days where you have to laugh or cry.
The agency got teh call at 7:38 in the morning. the neigbors were reporting some sort of stench, and a housing inspector went over to check things out. I guess he knew something was wrong the moment he arrived, because he called the police immediately, and we were informed not long after.
The house, the upper part where people usually live, that is, was empty. Stripped clean, only a few pieces of furniture and a few things that would be impossible to haul off quickly, like the appliances, were left. But what really fascinated him was the vents in the crawlspace. In normal houses the vents are protected by screens to keep vermin out (the effectiveness of the screens are debatable, as they are usually neglected and, at least on my house, basically non-existent). actual protection against critter with opposible thumbs is basically non-existent as well, meaning humans and raccoons can get in. Fortunately raccoons prefer to live in trees and humans, for whatever reason, don't usually think about entering crawlspaces unless they actually own the home. But I digress. This house, unusally, had metal bars over the vents. Thick ones.
Now, there's nothing wrong with putting metal bars over the crawlspace vents, but it's weird. Weird enough that the inspector shined a flashlight inside, and what he saw there made him call the cops, who called us.
The firedepartment busted down the door to the house so we could get in and find the crawspace hatch, as someone apparently had the brilliant notion that blocking the hatch on the outside with plywood would prevent the contents of teh house from being discovered. And you know what? they were right. If it wasn't for the stench of over fifty dead and dying kids this place would never have been discovered. That crawlspace was Hell on Earth.
That's the only way to describe it. Well that and 'mass grave'. But I'm getting a head of myself.
I'm sure you've all heard about the Altered kids by now. They usually appear at about the apparent age of two or three outside the walls of our City-States. No one knows where they come from and hell, they're too young to tell us. If they're lucky they appear near a place like New Avalon, where they're viewed as some sort of reborn gods or goddess, taken into the city, cared for, pampered, and practically worshiped. If they aren't then they end up in a place like Dorchestor or Sound, where they may be out-right murdered as 'abominations'. Other places are a mix, some viewing them as children, others as little better than animals.
And the kids themselves? Well, I admit I'd never seen an Altered kid before, although I have seen the pictures. They are nearly always some kind of mix of human and animal, cat ears and dog tails, or sharp canines. Some where supposed to be entirely human, except they had odd abilities or strange hair-colors (practically unnoticeable in this day and age of neon-green hair dye). I'd heard everything, that they were violent, that they were sweet, they were normal, they are mature far beyond their years, they are permanently stuck in an infantile state. Personally I'm inclined to think they are normal kids and therefore all of the above. But I guess I'm about to find out in person.
So, after busting open the house and squeezing ourselves into that godforsaken crawlspace we found ourselves in utter hell. Specifically the Hell that Bezelbub rules, because the flies were incredible. At this point I'm wondering why I'm even here, with so many flies the kids have to be all dead, right? It's so disgusting that when the tiny monsters land on me I just want to peel off my skin, and I would rather focus on my disgust then focus on the cause of all the flies.
Because lining the walls, especially piled near the vents, are the bodies of dead children. Altered children, children with no past, and no future. Scaled skin and furred tails bristled with swarming maggots--the sight is so sickening that i throw up for the first time since college and all I want to do is escape out the hatch and run away.
But I crawl forward anyway, because these are kids and my job is to take care of kids, even if teh only thing we can do for them is give them a nice coffin and a headstone, and maybe some justice. The first thing I do is check for life. I wasn't expecting any, but to my vast surprise (and relief, because now I could focus on something other than death and maggots) there were a few alive, and a few others I wasn't sure about. One boy, and to the rest of my days I will certainly remember him, had feathered wings, like a dark-winged angel. He was propped up in a corner, trying to keep as far away from the dirt and filth as possible, and my heart twisted when he weakly turned his head in my direction, his hollow eyes meeting mine.
I moved next to him, some instinct driving me to comfort the boy before it was too late--as close to death as he was it might be his last chance to feel that someone cared for him. I carefully slung an arm around him and held him close while I shouted for a stretcher. He was tiny, it's really hard to judge a malnourished child's age, and I had no clue where to start with the Altered, but I thought he looked five or six. A very small five or six, almost nothing but bones and feathers and giant dark eyes. He leaned against me, his fingers tangling in my shirt even as the firemen hustled a stretcher across the crawlspace to us. It was a bit of a struggle to get him to let go when the stretcher arrived, but at last i untangled his fingers and tucked his downy wings around him on the stretcher.
"It's better," I said, "they're going to take you to a place where you'll be fed and cared for." And, I mentally added, it won't be in a fucking crawlspace. The boy watched me with huge dark eyes as the firemen hauled him away and I tried not to feel like I just abandoned my own child.
They took him to the hatch under the porch, which had been unblocked, and hauled him out of sight.
Then I went back to separating the living from the dead.
Yeah, crawlspaces freak me the fuck out. I have to spend time in them (doing insulation, seismic retrofit, et, remind me to tell you guys about the time I nearly fucking DIED in a crawlspace). I always expect to find the most horrible things in them. What I usually find is showers of rat poop. OMG, don't get me started on the rat poop. :(
There will be more story to come.
Preview:
did I ever mention how much I hate crawl spaces? it's insane. They are really just the empty spaces underneath houses, where all the stuff that used to exist inside a house now resides. rats. Rat poop. cat poop (because the cats tend to view any area of dry and somewhat loose earth as one giant litter box) plumbing. electrical work. Weird bits of ancient masonry and terrifying post-and-block construction (seriously, if you own a house go under it and look at the pillars and foundation, and if it doesn't look scary either you don't know what to look for or your house is under thirty years old)
dead children.
did I ever mention how much I hate crawl spaces? it's insane. They are really just the empty spaces underneath houses, where all the stuff that used to exist inside a house now resides. rats. Rat poop. cat poop (because the cats tend to view any area of dry and somewhat loose earth as one giant litter box) plumbing. electrical work. Weird bits of ancient masonry and terrifying post-and-block construction (seriously, if you own a house go under it and look at the pillars and foundation, and if it doesn't look scary either you don't know what to look for or your house is under thirty years old)
dead children.
i don't really mean to light of it, but today was one of those days where you have to laugh or cry.
The agency got teh call at 7:38 in the morning. the neigbors were reporting some sort of stench, and a housing inspector went over to check things out. I guess he knew something was wrong the moment he arrived, because he called the police immediately, and we were informed not long after.
The house, the upper part where people usually live, that is, was empty. Stripped clean, only a few pieces of furniture and a few things that would be impossible to haul off quickly, like the appliances, were left. But what really fascinated him was the vents in the crawlspace. In normal houses the vents are protected by screens to keep vermin out (the effectiveness of the screens are debatable, as they are usually neglected and, at least on my house, basically non-existent). actual protection against critter with opposible thumbs is basically non-existent as well, meaning humans and raccoons can get in. Fortunately raccoons prefer to live in trees and humans, for whatever reason, don't usually think about entering crawlspaces unless they actually own the home. But I digress. This house, unusally, had metal bars over the vents. Thick ones.
Now, there's nothing wrong with putting metal bars over the crawlspace vents, but it's weird. Weird enough that the inspector shined a flashlight inside, and what he saw there made him call the cops, who called us.
The firedepartment busted down the door to the house so we could get in and find the crawspace hatch, as someone apparently had the brilliant notion that blocking the hatch on the outside with plywood would prevent the contents of teh house from being discovered. And you know what? they were right. If it wasn't for the stench of over fifty dead and dying kids this place would never have been discovered. That crawlspace was Hell on Earth.
That's the only way to describe it. Well that and 'mass grave'. But I'm getting a head of myself.
I'm sure you've all heard about the Altered kids by now. They usually appear at about the apparent age of two or three outside the walls of our City-States. No one knows where they come from and hell, they're too young to tell us. If they're lucky they appear near a place like New Avalon, where they're viewed as some sort of reborn gods or goddess, taken into the city, cared for, pampered, and practically worshiped. If they aren't then they end up in a place like Dorchestor or Sound, where they may be out-right murdered as 'abominations'. Other places are a mix, some viewing them as children, others as little better than animals.
And the kids themselves? Well, I admit I'd never seen an Altered kid before, although I have seen the pictures. They are nearly always some kind of mix of human and animal, cat ears and dog tails, or sharp canines. Some where supposed to be entirely human, except they had odd abilities or strange hair-colors (practically unnoticeable in this day and age of neon-green hair dye). I'd heard everything, that they were violent, that they were sweet, they were normal, they are mature far beyond their years, they are permanently stuck in an infantile state. Personally I'm inclined to think they are normal kids and therefore all of the above. But I guess I'm about to find out in person.
So, after busting open the house and squeezing ourselves into that godforsaken crawlspace we found ourselves in utter hell. Specifically the Hell that Bezelbub rules, because the flies were incredible. At this point I'm wondering why I'm even here, with so many flies the kids have to be all dead, right? It's so disgusting that when the tiny monsters land on me I just want to peel off my skin, and I would rather focus on my disgust then focus on the cause of all the flies.
Because lining the walls, especially piled near the vents, are the bodies of dead children. Altered children, children with no past, and no future. Scaled skin and furred tails bristled with swarming maggots--the sight is so sickening that i throw up for the first time since college and all I want to do is escape out the hatch and run away.
But I crawl forward anyway, because these are kids and my job is to take care of kids, even if teh only thing we can do for them is give them a nice coffin and a headstone, and maybe some justice. The first thing I do is check for life. I wasn't expecting any, but to my vast surprise (and relief, because now I could focus on something other than death and maggots) there were a few alive, and a few others I wasn't sure about. One boy, and to the rest of my days I will certainly remember him, had feathered wings, like a dark-winged angel. He was propped up in a corner, trying to keep as far away from the dirt and filth as possible, and my heart twisted when he weakly turned his head in my direction, his hollow eyes meeting mine.
I moved next to him, some instinct driving me to comfort the boy before it was too late--as close to death as he was it might be his last chance to feel that someone cared for him. I carefully slung an arm around him and held him close while I shouted for a stretcher. He was tiny, it's really hard to judge a malnourished child's age, and I had no clue where to start with the Altered, but I thought he looked five or six. A very small five or six, almost nothing but bones and feathers and giant dark eyes. He leaned against me, his fingers tangling in my shirt even as the firemen hustled a stretcher across the crawlspace to us. It was a bit of a struggle to get him to let go when the stretcher arrived, but at last i untangled his fingers and tucked his downy wings around him on the stretcher.
"It's better," I said, "they're going to take you to a place where you'll be fed and cared for." And, I mentally added, it won't be in a fucking crawlspace. The boy watched me with huge dark eyes as the firemen hauled him away and I tried not to feel like I just abandoned my own child.
They took him to the hatch under the porch, which had been unblocked, and hauled him out of sight.
Then I went back to separating the living from the dead.
Yeah, crawlspaces freak me the fuck out. I have to spend time in them (doing insulation, seismic retrofit, et, remind me to tell you guys about the time I nearly fucking DIED in a crawlspace). I always expect to find the most horrible things in them. What I usually find is showers of rat poop. OMG, don't get me started on the rat poop. :(
There will be more story to come.