We Dream In Ones and Zeros: An Anthology

The Poison We Breathe

PROMPT: Write a sci-fi story about a poison (Strychnine). 

CW(s): implied sexual violence, animal abuse, extreme body modifications, murder and death.

· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·

The poison we spill,

is the poison we breathe.

Someone said that to me once, a long time ago.

I can't remember who exactly. Maybe that blind Pujari from one of the dozen decrepit temples in the slums, always trying to sell his gibberish as ancient wisdom.

Or maybe it was that old, lonely woman who would give me some of her plain dosa to eat every time I sat down to listen to one of her endless life stories.

My memory ... isn't what it used to be.

But whatever, it doesn't matter.

Whoever it was, their words seemed to have stuck.

Like maggots, they had burrowed deep in some small, clammy, forgotten corner of my brain. And they would come to me at the most random and inappropriate of moments, like one of those old "friends" that only calls you when they need a little bit of your "time".

A silly, useless, made-up expression that thinks it's saying more than it actually is.

That's what I used to think, anyway. Because I really didn't know any better.

I couldn't yet taste the bitter irony dripping down from them, infecting every breath and scream out of my mouth, every sight, every foul stench and every noise around me, spreading more and more in my veins with every step I take to claw myself out of that pit of snakes they call life.

That's the thing with poison though, isn't it?

It's silent and slow, just as much as it's deadly. You never know it's in you.

Until it's too late.

*

The poison we spill,

is the poison we breathe.

Strychnine.

You'll hear that word a lot in the streets of Lower Meenapur.

It's a compound, a crystalline alkaloid, mainly used for killing pests. There's a lot of them down in the deep valley we call the Pit. Rodents mostly, but also macaques, cheeky little demons that they are. The kind of creatures that are much more suited to the vertical, industrial hellscape that is the cramped, corroded and unregulated infrastructure of the lower levels of the city.

No birds though. Not even the mutated ones can survive the perpetual smog that covers the entire Pit. Like a toxic blanket of death.

That's all it was, wasn't it? Just another poison, amongst the many swimming in the bowls of the city.

I never thought too much about it.

Not until I found myself being dumped onto a dark alleyway after what had to be the second worst night of my life, like a sack of rotten meat that no one wants to deal with. Because it was then, as I laid there, all but numb to the bruises and stains on my body that I was trying really hard not to think about, that I saw it.