The Well

Ivars Krutainis on Unsplash

‘I hate wearing this thing.’

Minli fiddled with her sweat-stained headwear, fixing the loose rags over her slick hair and breathing equipment. Her heavy boots kicked up dirt, dissipating into the hazy mist as she caught up with Kowe. Their shadows stretched under the soft shafts of immense heat beating down on them.

‘We all do,’ Kowe said. ‘Luckily, you don’t have to like it.’

‘Right,’ Minli said between breaths. ‘Just have to put up with it.’

Kowe exhaled, amused. ‘Come. We’re almost to the Well.’

The dried, sprawling plains in the late heat gave way to the mountain range on the hazy horizon. No trees, grass, or plants thrived here nor anywhere else, as far as Minli knew. All was brown and dead, hot and dry, their settlement a few k’s behind them the only refuge providing shade and murky water.

‘How many times have you been?’ Minli asked.

Kowe’s reflective mask and rags hid his features, none of his dark skin exposed. She wondered if he’d even heard her until he finally answered. ‘Many times. Too many to count.’ He faced her. ‘Is this your first?’

‘No, I’ve been before. I’ve just never, you know, used it myself. Opened it.’

Kowe looked forward. ‘You should feel honoured.’

Minli nodded, thankful her headwear hid her amusement. Everything he said was so serious, so important. ‘Honoured, sure. A little nervous, maybe.’

‘There’s nothing to be afraid of.’

‘I didn’t say I was scared. Just nervous.’

‘Of course.’ Kowe looked at his boots. ‘It’s necessary. Without the Well, the tribe wouldn’t exist. We wouldn’t survive. We take sustenance wherever we can.’

Minli nodded, not bothering to argue.

‘Besides,’ Kowe continued, glancing at her. She could hear his grin. ‘That’s what these are for.’ He thumbed at the tall spear strapped to his back, the other hand pointing at Minli’s heavy arm-length club dangling from her waist.

As the sun slid down the sky fading from brown to a deep misty pink, Kowe pointed out a dirt-crusted signpost directing them to their destination. Minli sighed at the distance ahead of them. Her undergarments were soaked through with sweat, despite the lightweight breathable material and reflective outer layers, and her feet ached in the moist heat of her boots.

As if reading her thoughts, Kowe removed his face rags and equipment to swig warm water from his dented canteen. Minli did the same, staring at the endless expanse.

‘Is this all there really is?’ she asked. ‘Just dirt? Heat?’ Kowe smiled, cheeks wrinkling. ‘Has anyone ever gone to the mountains?’

‘Some. Few come back. Those who have say it’s just more desert beyond them. So, yes. It is “just” this.’

Minli shook her head. ‘There should be something to make it all… worth it, right?’

Kowe laughed, a deep bellow in his chest. ‘They warned me about you, your big ideas. Said I was foolish to bring you with me.’ They met eyes, still shielded by dark goggles. ‘Surviving. Living another day. That makes it “worth it”.’

‘Just surviving? That’s all the tribe is ever going to be?’

‘What else is there?’

‘Well, what are we surviving for? Just to get more food, more water? To have more children so they can do the same?’

‘Yes. To continue living.’

Minli sighed. ‘Never mind.’ Clearly he didn’t understand.

Kowe smiled wider, looking towards the mountains. ‘Nothing else matters, Minli. Not anymore. This,’ he said, sweeping an arm across the landscape, ‘this is our world. Maybe at some point, there was a reason to wonder about more than the tribe, more than our survival. Not anymore. It’s all there is, and if you live your life thinking there will ever be more, you’ll only be met with disappointment.’

Minli held her tongue and looked away, tightening their headwraps to continue. Their progress distracted her from arguments she wanted to make when the Well crept into view.

The Well was guarded by clay and dried mud walls, a space only large enough for a small group. A tall, slender tree trunk, branchless and blasted white over the decades, marked the hut from afar, an old two-person tall ladder resting against it.

Kowe lifted it, saying, ‘Help me with this.’

They lined it up with the hut’s entrance, pushing one end inside against a warped panel on the dirt ground. Inside, though not noticeably cooler, was dark enough for them to remove their rags and equipment.

‘Slide the panel away.’ Kowe held the other end of the horizontal ladder up outside. ‘Careful.’

Crouching, Minli pulled the heavy panel to the side, exposing the immense darkness below.

Kowe warned her back before pushing the ladder forward into the opening, still holding it mostly horizontal. He paused, waiting for Minli to meet his eyes.

‘Remember,’ he said. ‘This is our survival. It’s necessary.’

‘I know.’

‘I’m reminding you. It’s not always easy the first time.’

He watched her, leaving space for argument, but Minli stood her ground. Understanding, he pushed the ladder forward.

It slid into the depths of the Well until it met resistance at the bottom with a firm jolt. Kowe held it above the hole around his knees, the rest disappearing in the darkness, the only hint of what they might find below a few confused, weak murmurs.

Minli looked into the void for the source of the noise, instead only met with a fierce, repugnant odour. Without her mask, the stench of skin, sweat, waste, decay, and refuse disgustingly churned together.

She stepped back and met Kowe at the ladder. He still held the top as Minli approached it.

‘Ah,’ he said, giving her pause. ‘We don’t go down.’

Minli stepped back, silently relieved. The murmurs grew in volume and number, rising from the depths, demonic. Soon the ladder trembled with contact below, but Kowe held it firmly.

‘Ha!’ he called, so suddenly Minli froze. The warning had the desired effect, settling the ladder to stillness, the murmurs quieting. ‘Two male, two female,’ he called into the hole.

Minli looked between the pungent darkness and Kowe, though his focus never faltered. The ladder soon moved again, purposeful, the silence only broken by its creaking.

Minli’s heartbeat thumped in her chest when the first hand emerged from the dark.

The bony digits loosely gripped one rung of the ladder as another shakily rose past it to hold the next. Pale skin weakly clung to the muscles, lines of blue and red veins working with the effort.

The shaking hands climbed until a hanging head rose from the darkness, completely hairless and smudged with dirt and mud and what else Minli didn’t want to know. Its back was naked and pale, sharp bones pushing against the skin, marks and scratches scattered across the bald body.

As the person, if they had once been that, fully climbed from the hole, Minli didn’t know to look away or study the thin, dirty body further. Kowe thankfully intervened, grabbing the pale bony shoulder and throwing the thing against the wall. They smacked into it and fell, limp and empty.

‘Three more,’ Kowe said, holding the top of the ladder. ‘Keep an eye on this one,’ he told Minli.

She tried to watch the figure, both intrigued and revolted, as another three pale, naked, scarred bodies obeyed Kowe’s instructions and climbed weakly from the darkness to join the other against the wall. Their blank faces were too similar to tell apart, though their nakedness—despite the scratches and patches of crusted dirt and blood—at least revealed their genders; two male and two female, as demanded.

‘Cover it back up,’ Kowe said as he started to pull the ladder. Minli nodded, realising she hadn’t moved since the first prisoner had emerged from the Well. She moved around the hole and crouched to return the panel.

While Kowe dragged the ladder back, Minli’s heart jumped when she noticed the four pairs of small, squinting eyes across from her tracking her every move. Their surveillance first put her on alert, but as the seconds passed she relaxed at their expressionless studying, as if interested by her existence. If they were scared, or hateful—if capable of such emotions—they gave no physical sign.

The end of the ladder lifted from the hole and Kowe dragged it outside. Obeying his previous order, Minli lifted the panel to push it over the horrendous void.

Kowe yelled outside but Minli didn’t hear over the guttural grunt bursting from one of the things across from her. She met their eyes, unsure which had produced the horrible sound, until she saw why.

Though brief, the next few seconds passed at a punishing crawl.

From one of its many blood-crusted wounds, one of the things yanked a thin bone the length of its hand from the flesh of its own thigh. Before Minli had time to realise it had been intentionally placed there, the thing leapt for her. She dropped the panel and threw her hands up in time to catch the thing as it collapsed on her, pinning her to the ground and pushing the sharpened bone towards her, blood dripping on her cheek.

The shock of the attack—none of the tribe had ever reported something so unexpected—quickly faded and Minli pushed the weak thing off her, standing to wrench the club from her waist and swing it around in one swift movement. The heavy end crushed the thing’s face into the dirt, caving in the skull in a spray of warm blood, the body twitching and writhing.

A searing heat drilled into her neck. She instinctively, weakly, swung the club around, bringing her free hand to her throat. A dark heat seeped through her fingers as she met eyes with another pale thing, a female, holding another sharpened bone coated in what Minli realised was her own blood.

‘Minli!’

Kowe stormed in with his spear, driving it into the abdomen of her attacker. Blood sprayed from both ends where the spear pierced, but Minli felt no relief. She fell to her knees, dropping her club to squeeze her neck with both hands as the blood gushed from the small wound. With every pulse of her quickening heartbeat more heat spurted through her fingers, the intense piercing pain rising exponentially.

In her distress, she managed to comprehend Kowe trying to pull the spear free from his victim, but the pale thing gripped the pole lodged in its stomach, grunting with each of Kowe’s attempts, blood running down its legs to pool at its feet. When another of the things ran at Kowe from behind, Minli’s only warning was a gargle of hot blood.

The prisoner swiftly, casually plunged another of the makeshift weapons into Kowe’s neck, once, twice, over and over again as Kowe released the spear to throw a limp arm around to stop the attacker. After ten, maybe more, erratic stabs to the neck, Kowe fell to the dirt clutching his throat, the dirt beneath now a dark red mud.

Minli’s face smacked the ground. A sickening metallic smell filled the hut as she struggled to breathe through the liquid filling her mouth and chest, her limbs losing function. With bloody mud coating her cheek, she watched the two unwounded prisoners silhouetted by the blinding entrance.

Both the male and female’s blank faces watched Minli dying in the dirt before shambling from the hut into the heat outside. It gave Minli little solace that they wouldn’t get far in their naked, unequipped condition. All she could focus on was pain, breath filled with blood, vision blurring and darkening, and a growing chorus of grunts and moans rising from the dark beneath until it overwhelmed all her senses and she drifted to sleep.

Juli Kosolapova on Unsplash