Joey was tramping through the slick, shitty, spick of the Delve. Mud muddying his muddy boots. His fucking proudly polished Dr Marten’s swathed in shitty, manured filth. He passed a face down, bloodied body floating on the inglorious muck - the Tramper’s clothes had been ripped off the ShitSoul and appropriated to someone with a degree more life in them. A spirited rumble, from the mines below, disturbed the endless slidge slodge and turned the cadaver over like some dispirited zombie. It was a woman, rancidly ugly, her staring eyes, still open, had little globs of shit sitting on them. Joey looked at the once woman’s midriff. It was an open weeping mess of gore and Delve mess the exact shape of a Catastrophe foot. A flickering movement caught Joey’s attention, gibbedy fuck Mr Moon! That ShitSoul was pregnant weren’t she? Woo, ain’t that little tyke got some fucking mettle to still be alive? Damn it, man.

  Joey stared at the vaguely In Utero baby, feebly kicking exposed organs into the grimy soup. Ain’t nothing, Mr Moon, out in the Delve a quick death was mercy. Weren’t no point in letting the squib survive - it’d just grow into its worthless life and have other worthless children and the whole worthless mess would start again into the mystical faraway.

  Joey’s muddy boot came down hard, bippity bop, slippedy slop, ain’t it just like sticking your foot in jelly or some shit? Damn. Joey winced slightly as soft bones gave way to organs which popped audibly. It’s a mercy he thought without his usual single minded conviction. Welcome to the Delve Mr Moon.

  Joey continued his tramping. He reached the harder, compact stone trail which lead into the mines; the Delve proper. He left the Great Sludge and, gloriously, it’s disgusting stench behind.

  We don’t think bout it do we Mr Moon?

  Nope.

  For we all know what the Great Sludge is don’t we?

  Aye.

  Ain’t it just the collective human waste from the whole city of Lux?

  Aye.

  Shit.

  Joey stepped into a yawning cave, the entrance to the mines. He heard the faint demon noise of the Death March echo from the catacombs below. He began down the illuminated trail, the stinky lights a relief to his nose after the Great Sludge. Clinky Clanky Mr Moon. Joey remembered, Joey RollaRama man, damn, weren’t he caught and sent to the Delve? Joey remembered, them clanky shackles - cutting into raw flesh, infected, puss filled, smelt like death, made puke, vomit. God the sweat, the blood, that cocktail, dead? Weren’t he? Dead, almost, maybe not. Joey RollaRama man, the Martyr of Bimbletown, he died man. He’s fucking gone to the Other, he is no more, he no longer bees.

  Joey shook away the devil memories; he felt like his fucking stomach was going to fall out his bleeding arse hole. He tried to forget or to forget to remember, something... just concentrate on walking, one foot, two foot, three foot... you got it man. Joey RollaRama was faraway, different life, different face, different shape. Joey clasped the sheaths of paper ever more vigorously and kept on keeping on.

  Boom de Bop, the Death March got louder and louder. A cacophony filling each and every chamber. Ravaging the ears, filling each head with the rhythm, the beat keeps on man, it always does, it has to man. Joey’s head filled to the brim, blessedly, all other thoughts and memories fled from his immediacy, nothing but the song, the noise, the death march. Faculties disappeared, synapses slowed and he started walking, marching, stepping to each 2nd beat. Boom Da, Step, Da, Step, Da, Walk, Da... on and on and on and on and on and on, never lost yet never found. He was getting near the Devil’s Drop; a giant rip in the fabric of the earth, a man made greedy gorge. He heard that voice, ya know? THAT voice. He knew it well, a keening, off pitched, gravelled voice - shouting in a vaguely tuneful way. Joey’s lips started to, awkwardly, repeat the words; the long ago remembrance leaking out of him. Drip, drip drip, man, you remember Joey don’t ya? Sing along. Welcome home.

  Delving, delving, forever deeper, forever wider.

  We delve in the delver's delving,

  where the sun don't shine and the birds don't sing.Aye, but why?

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  Why my brother?

  What life is this curse to live such a cursed life?To live in the delve is to die in the delve and never a light to shine our sight.All for the queen's lust for her lover.

  That's right for the queen, the gold and the gleam.

  Ransack, rape this earth; take what's hers.

  Give her your heart and you life and your love.

  You are nothing, the palest of the pale.

  Dimwits with dimshits - and dim eyes to live dim lives.

  Delve, delve, delve, till the deepness falls to shallowness and we reach the other side.

  Ain’t that something Joey? Can’t forget now can we? It brings it back man, we all remember BimbleTown, we know your name yet not your face. Ain’t it right Mr Moon? Joey tried to block it out, tried to forget, tried to stop it. Just one foot then the other, he told himself. He continued down that all too familiar tunnel ‘till he reached Devil’s Drop.

  Upon entering the mine, Joey’s eyes snaked up the precipitous sides of the gorge and there on a platform some 8 foot higher than the mine’s trench was the Death March. Joey’s eyes picked him out... the owner of that voice and for a moment their eyes met, Joey stared into those cruel, shallow eyes - those speckled green orbs of torment and grief - and Joey let it come back, just for a lick of a moment, emotional depth, he remembered how to fucking loathe and hate something. Hands clenched, ready, knuckles hard, let’s go. Whoop, got Joey jibberdy revved up man. No place to go. Swing, swing, swing, murder, murder. Ha-ha ain’t that just the face of the Devil? Ain’t it just like a mirror Joey?

  He unclenched bleeding fists. He relaxed. Focus on the beat man, that endless rhythm, the Death March. Push everything else down below, sub, under. He let go.

  The Death March was much as it had always been. A raucous orchestra of guitars, plugged into those amplifiers stitched into the very earth itself. Buried within living rock so that each strum, plunk and flick seemed to reverberate from the pits of hell itself. The guitarists themselves were not much more than slaves. Talented ones. Each given to copious ingestion of Stims - cannisters of proletariat drugs - velvet, lush byways to lands of colour and soulful unawareness. So they played and they played long and hard, until the pulsing finger blisters burst in rivulets of bloody puss that flowed down the guitar’s body and mixed with the rocky dust at their feet. Still they played, lost in magic drug-land, just close enough to feel the beat and swim in the fucked up melody - on and on and on. A short, exhausted, unaware life comprised entirely of eating, shitting, sleeping, drugging and rocking the fuck out. It was the same with the legion of drummers behind them. Sat there in sweaty leather trousers and vests - scarves, top hats - Punks of the old age. The Death March man. Lead by that guy. That shitbag that Joey would rather forget... Ginger.

  Ginger ain’t he just the meanest bastard that ever did live? Yah? God damn, ain’t he so? Joey looked at him. Squealing into that wretched microphone - holding it tight. In the other hand his whip. Each day he’d limber up and down the mine. Delivering mean ass punishments as he saw fit. Whip, snap, crack, god. He liked that man. Sometimes he’d rip out his cock and stroke himself whilst unleashing his vitriol on some unfortunate pleb. Just the way ol’ Ginger liked it man.

  Ginger was bordering 7 foot tall. A huge, limbering tree of a man-ish. Skeleton thin, ashen, pale skin stretched drum taught over jutting bones - thinly, thinly, so it looked like he may rip at any given moment. Blue veins, puckered with needle tracts, running from top to tail. Got to have that sweet H man. Black boots, fishnet stockings and just the cutest little tutu you ever did see. All pink and frilly and shit. Above the poorly applied, whorish face make-up Ginger had fearsome red hair, almost naturally so. Mangled, brownish teeth so often covered in blood. Who’s blood? Whooo ain’t that a question. See Ginger would often bite the slaves. Them in the chain gang. He’d hop down and rip out gorgeous chunks of flesh with bare teeth and chew blessed chewiness. Spitting it out like cud when the blood had run dry. Too he’d slice open himself ritually, when the song of the Death March was at its most frenzied, and salivate over sacred scared body.

  The Death March man, they’d play and play, driving on those poor ass slaves. On and on and on and on into eternity, the countable infinite. Suffering, pain, shit, Joey knew it all too well. Joey remembered the feel, the taste of blood. The pain in his arms and his back as he lifted his axe again and again; the fear of his strength giving up, of going beyond exhaustion and dropping where he stood. That’s how people died in the Delve - Ginger would be on you in a flash, if not, some brutish, strung out, arseface driving a catastrophe.

  Joey’s head whipped sideways as the all too familiar clinky clank of a catastrophe permeated the atmosphere. He tensed. He spotted the gleaming hunk of metal drunkenly staggering through the trench. It was man shaped yet half as tall again. With some spickshit dwarf driving the fucker. Them dwarves were always messed up on Stims too. Thing was that they were hard as shit to drive and devilishly uncomfortable - they need some relief some how aye? Yeah we knows how it goes. Don’t we?

  Still, Lux generally disliked retards. Made into pariahs or killed, whichever, Joey din’t give two shits. Yet dwarves. Well they gots this special job, something that only they could do. Joey shook his head free of thought and scampered off down the trench. Disconcertingly close to the catastrophe and Ginger. Joey remembered the slave that he was. Joey remembered Joey’s face. He forgot Mr Moon man. He remembered being a fucking poxy, squib.

  Weren’t what he was there for. He had to go beyond the Delve. Time to wander down the 3 mile, dark track to the dim, oiled glow of the GrisGros.