The Nine

By: G.G. Harris

You could wrap yourself in miles of spare rags and old salvaged clothes then light them on fire, but it never made a difference. When the cold came from inside, nothing could make you warm again.

Hell’s been called a lot of different things—Doom Town, The Asylum, Hades, Gahanna, The Rotten Apple. But when Dante wrote The Inferno, he got the story right. Part of it anyway. He talked about the nine circles of Hell and how each one was worse than the last. Subtract levels one through eight, and he had it. Everything is like level nine, where the real baddies went to endure subzero climates and have their nether-regions cradled in cryogenic underwear.

My part of The Nine, as we locals refer to the place, is a cozy little armpit known as Scrapyard City. It’s a dry, frigid maze of high-rise shanties, catwalks, and junk metal barely fit to stand, much less protect the Woebegone souls who inhabit them. My black-market shop is grounded right in the middle of it all, giving me a great view of the drum-fires and fellow Woebegone who still believe they can absorb some warmth off the flames. If it’s heat they wanted, they were about to get all they could handle.

I glanced out through the open window of my shop and stared at the reddening sky. A firestorm was coming. A twisted reprieve to the humdrum of arctic life.

The crowds of Woebegone going about their business on the catwalks and pathways outside hadn’t noticed the impending catastrophe. Most wrapped themselves up like Tusken Raiders, so their clothes obscured their view. I stuck to my t-shirt and button-fly 501s. They kept me just as warm, and I was comfortable.

I pulled a brace out of my shop window and let one of the heavy overhead shutters come down. My little store happened to be one of the only shielded structures in Scrapyard City. If I didn’t close up before the impending storm, my tiny slice of paradise would be overrun with every killer, thief, and rapist within two-hundred yards.

Read the rest in issue 002!