Pit of the Guilty

600-word short story for the Feb 28th IronAge Prompt: "The Pit"

Above all, Burke wanted to rise from the pit. To go upward, where the Sedations lived guilt-free and luxurious, conspiring to ascend into a state beyond conscience or consequence.

Guilty by charge.

Rital uttered the Prime Sedation Law to Burke over twenty years ago. Here Burke stood, his weary but strong body upholding the weight of a thousand artificial twinkling lights. The pit buried him and his fellow humans deep into what the Sedations considered the hell beneath their sanctuary.

Burke often thought of Rital— his yellow snake eyes and perfect teeth. A single strand of hair grew between the scales on the top of his head as if his blackened soul found a crack in the façade and spilled over.

During his years toiling in the pit, Burke remembered the shine on Rital’s purple lips and his words at the sham trial.

“You believe there is a natural law and natural justice. That is the lie. There is only Sedation Law. Justice is ours alone to dispense however we see fit.”

Somehow, the idea of natural law became Burke’s law. His bottom-dweller friends understood. He rubbed shoulders with them, his sweat and blood mingling with theirs. They didn’t need the stars above. They had each other.

The urge to rise festered within. Burke’s old bones screamed at him to stop climbing, but his heart yearned to see the stars one final time. Others yearned, though he didn’t know until they clambered beside him. Shoulder to shoulder, they escalated from the depths of the hell-pit, leaving behind a strange perfection.    

Burke’s legs pumped hot with acid at floor two hundred. Undaunted, he led his people skyward. Familiar walls of humble mortar turned into gilded halls.

Burke stopped in an arch of white marble, palm pressed to the cold stone, panting to fill his lungs. A black film coated broken fixtures on the overhead chandeliers, casting Sedation sitting rooms in shadow.

Burke frowned and proceeded to the next level. A gust of surface air washed his skin, kissing his face like the caress of a forgotten love.

Burke paused around each crook, waiting for merciless Sedation guards to banish him back into the depths.

No one appeared.

The underground halls howled with an empty wind. Burke took a tentative step into an open street. A tumbleweed crossed his path, bouncing happily through an abandoned mega-city.

“What happened here?”

Burke didn’t know who posed the question. He felt it like a vibration in the bodies of those he brought to the stars. He looked up, took in the sparkle in the sky, and bathed in its majesty. How often had Rital looked up? Had he appreciated the stars?   

Rital.

Burke sprang to action, navigating streets from rusted memory in search of the dwelling of his former accuser.

Some of Bruke’s people explored different parts of the abandoned city. Two kids, a woman, and three of his fellow mine workers followed him to the steps of Rital’s home.

Burke climbed the three chrome stairs, legs begging for relief from the strain of moving upward. He reached out to rap on the door. Instead, he lifted the folds of a torn poster pasted there. It read:

Guilty by Charge Is Proud to Announce: Sedation Meat.
Your neighbors never tasted so good.
One accusation is all it takes; the meal of a lifetime could be yours.

Burke smiled in bitter triumph. Natural justice was no lie.