Never Knew Another by J. M. McDermott

rat-trap. Warehousemen chewed on bread and sawdust sausages while they walked to work. A skinny woman puked into the sewer-grate. She cursed her lover’s face.
    Djoss bought an apple. Rachel snatched it from him before he could take a bite, and looked at it carefully. She shined it with her bare hands. He grabbed it back from her. “Get your own,” he said, and bit into the apple. With a frown, he looked down at it. The apple was all brown beneath its red skin. He ate a few bites anyway, then offered Rachel the rest. It tasted like wet rot. “I’ll get my own,” she said.
    “If you do, you’re sharing.”
She tossed the core into a ditch.
    “No, Djoss,” she said. “No, I won’t share an apple with you.”
    Djoss blinked. They couldn’t share anything if she bit it first. He knew that.
    Behind them, a homeless man pulled the core from the ditch, stuffing it in his mouth. Rachel felt a chill move over her skin.
    “Let’s get out of here,” she said, glancing behind her.
    Djoss had seen it, too. The two walked faster down the street.

    ***

    We found the Pens, and we stayed.
    Djoss and Rachel were in a cobbled street lined with colorful shops. They sat down at a street café for tea and biscuits that tasted like they were both made from the same wet, brown paste, and watched people walking.
    Rachel frowned because no one was saying hello to anyone. It didn’t seem like a friendly place. Djoss smiled for the same reason. It was the kind of place he could find his brand of work.
    Wind came up from the abattoirs, carrying the smell of animals kept in close pens and death. Rachel put down her tea and biscuit and tried to cover her nose. Djoss choked and held his breath until the wind passed. He nodded at her, trying not to laugh.
    “Gotta be rowdy work around here. Smell it, can’t you? Nobody come looking for us if it smells like that. Good folk don’t bother looking.”
    “We’ll get used to it,” she said. “We just need to…” Her eyes were still watering. She waved her hand. Djoss took her tea from her and tossed the dregs from her cup. He dropped what was left of her biscuit and smashed it into the ground, stomping on it. No one could eat what she left behind. No one could get suspiciously sick. He hadn’t done this since they came to the city. He was already planning on staying in this district longer.

    ***

    Djoss fell in with some people when he was looking for work. It just happened. All that wandering, and it happened out of nowhere.
    A butcher kept his pigs in a pen behind his shop. He wasn’t a big enough shop to house his animals at the merchant exchange, to get them slaughtered in the big abattoirs. He kept them in his yard, killed them in his shop, and sold them here. Only sixteen pigs remained, rooting in their own muck, waiting for their turn beneath the knife. They were small. Poor shops like this one killed what came in, butchered it and ground it all into sawdust sausage.
    Djoss stood at the gate when the butcher came out, clearing his throat. Djoss wasn’t alone. Three boys were there, too, looking for work. They were probably brothers: tallest, middle-sized, and smallest with the same homemade burlap clothes. Djoss was like a tree beside them.
    Everywhere’s different. In the north, he’d have knocked on the door in front of the building and requested work in writing, with a sealed certificate from the city work council, forged. Here, in Dogsland, he stood back and waited. They made you wait to make sure you’re serious.
    Rachel waited in a nearby alley, watching from a shadow.
    Three pigs went to their death in the shop without anyone speaking a word. The butcher was a small man, with ropy arms and crooked teeth. When he came out for the fourth pig, he sneered at the beggars at his gate. “You want something?”
    The tallest boy spoke first. “Just looking for work. Anything you got.”
    “Got nothing. I do all the work here. You tell your dad he stinks worse than my pigs.