A Thicket of Legs

A Thicket of Legs

A crushed chair meant a crushed little one if they happened to be beneath it, and they’d be forgotten in the filth, rotting themselves until the next rain came. “Red skirt!” Josie called, shouting behind, her high voice cutting through the dull, persistent groan of the big ones overhead. “Like pigs in a pen,” a big one once said, stepping on my hand as I crawled beneath. Their bloody hands chasing big ones trying to flee, their teeth chomping and shredding, spilling viscera across the ground. We wandered through the stinking filth below while the big ones got the sun. You could hear the big ones talk about it if you got lucky. We crawled through shifting bones and rotting flesh, but on the other side, sunlight and blue sky...I couldn’t remember ever seeing something so bright and clear.