The Banquet Below

Aperitif

“Fatbergs they’re called. Mass blockages of fats, oils, plastic, grease, all manner of waste products really. Cotton buds to condoms. It all compacts down there, forgotten to most. Until, like every problem, it becomes noticeable.”

“—And that’s when you get involved.”

“That’s when we get work.”

The two men exited the car as it came to a halt beside the sewage entrance. One was in green slacks, and the other donned an ill-fitting three piece that seemed to be a culmination of the worst birthday gifts from three intolerable relatives. This was the man who had hired the Berkshire company, though he knew alarmingly little about the work at hand, other than the size of the fatberg, which peculiarly, he knew to the inch, despite never having sent anyone down to the sewer under his industrial estates, or having gone down himself. “Naturally I’ll be your associate throughout the process.” the suited figure proclaimed, his slender frame stretching by the tarnished murk of the riverside which hung miserably above the concave in which they sat. Mr Gula, in the slacks and brown leather boots, made his way down from the riverside to the sewage entrance where his colleagues with their heads down and hands in pockets, stood in a gaggle beside it. The words “Berkshire and Co” were printed in gold letters on the verdant van and the team’s slacks alike. 

The entrance was dilapidated, dripping water riding drooping green weeds that hung like bunting from the roof of the gaping black infinity that stood before it. One small yellow sign with a safety warning stood remarkably intact to the left, while above, there sat two square holes in the spalling brickwork, the positions of such, along with the menacing entrance below them, gave the impression of a face.

“It looks like a frightened face.” a startled young Ed remarked. Gula’s nephew fancied himself the jolly chatterbox among the otherwise quite serious stone slabs in his uncle’s employ. “Shocked, it looks like,” he continued.

“It looks hungry,” came another voice from beside the van. 

“And where is Mr Berkshire?” the Associate enquired peppily as he made his way over to them.

“Berkshire’s a little old for all this now. He’s over in the Lake District, stubborn bugger.”

“Anyone hungry?” the Associate asked. 

Groans and grumbles sounded from the group, as food is not permitted during shifts. The Associate paused… “Yes I suppose that’s right. I suppose it is.” He looked around the workers intensely, concluding with Gula, as though biting a little piece out of each of them, until he found his Entrèe.
 

From across the river, a turtle dove flitted between the frenzied branches of a birch which now stood lonesome amidst the metal medley of the industrial sight surrounding it.
“A turtle dove!” Agata remarked. She was a bright young woman of twenty-eight and the second youngest on the team, specialising in operating the high powered jets with which the sewage blockages were washed away. “I haven’t seen one since moving from Toruń.” 

“My mother had a turtle dove cavalier. Shame there aren’t so many anymore,” the Associate interjected in the way wealthy individuals do when their mask of authenticity is at stake. “They’re usually mating by this time, but he’s all alone.”

“Probably can’t find any of his own. Probably none around,” suggested Ed.

“Darn shame,” Agata said, “a darn shame.” 

Gula took position next to the Associate, keen to rub shoulders with his kind more frequently. This contract was a small fortune for what seemed to be a fairly simple and low risk removal – despite its size. Gula cleared his throat: “Alright then, we’re geared up, Agata, thanks for doing hoses for me love, and I want breathing apparatus on right from this point. We’re dealing with one ‘berg, thirty metres. Ed, make sure you’ve got your gear with you in case we call you down, other than that just stay on the line. Good lad.”

And with that, they nodded and set about entering the maze of tunnels and culverts ahead of them. 

Some time after travelling into the tunnel system, one of the workers found themselves startled by a sudden movement, letting out a terrible shriek which naturally drew the rest of the team toward him. When they arrived from the adjacent tunnel, they were met with a panicked turtle dove, flapping and flailing in the narrow blackness of the tunnel until it stopped. 

“Think he’s done himself in.” 

“It’s a she. And she’s tired,” Agata replied to one of the others. “Not sure why she’s so far down here though.” 

“How far are we in now, boss? Surely we should’ve hit it by now,” a worker asked.

“We’ve been walking for about—” Agata checked her watch. It was dead. “Funny, I charged it this morning.”

Coming to, the turtle dove took off and carried itself even further into the darkness ahead. The team followed while the air grew thicker with the stench of saponification from the glutinous blend of fats and litter as they merged rock hard into soap within the tunnel. “This is the one!” Gula shouted. “Berkshire one, we found it Ed,” he called on the radio, before noticing it too, was dead. In fact, not the faintest sign of power could be seen in any of Agata or Gula’s kit.

“Wonderful!” she said. 

“Very.” He turned to the back of the group and motioned for them to join. “Come on, we’re close here” – and out of the darkness emerged three petrified looking men. 

“It’s Lee,” one panted. 

“We were checking the other tunnel, tried to radio you but—” 

“But what?” demanded Gula. 

“Something took him” 

“Took him?” 

“We didn’t see, it just dragged him away.”

– – – – – – – – – – – – X – – – – – – – – – – – –

Entrée

The crew trudged through the rising sludge of waste in the adjacent tunnel, and before long they had found his ID card, yet he was nowhere to be seen. “Perhaps he got spooked, they fold in conditions like this, some men,” one of the crew remarked. Dredged in nervous silence, they edged more cautiously up the tunnel and further away from their fatberg. Gula, now carrying a great deal of the equipment so as to save time, stumbled and fell as he saw two bloody smears leading into a third tunnel separating off from this one. As the group looked at each other, their head torches darting from face to face in panicked conversation, a faint sound emerged from the end of the new tunnel. It was the scratching and hum of an old vinyl playing in the distance, its melody buzzing up and down the scale with bouncing flourishes on the brass section. The sound grew louder as the group followed it through the tunnel instinctively, leaving reason long abandoned.

“’Exactly Like You’, Roger Wolfe Kahn, 1930,” Gula said, “Ma used to dance to it”. As he pondered the significance of his own words, he looked around to the rest of the group, yet none were to be found. The song played on: You make me feel so grand. I want to hand the world to you. You seem to understand; Each foolish little scheme I’m scheming…

“Dream I’m dreaming…” Gula sang as he edged ever closer to the music. Suddenly, his radio crackled, a voice cutting in and out in and out and getting sliced by static each time it sounded. Soon, it became longer and more frequent.

“It—it—it’s me, Gully. It’s me, Ed!” Gula was overcome with relief as he realised that if he was able to contact Ed, he might have a means of regrouping with the others.

“Edward! We’ve had a—”

“I know.”

“Oh thank God. You’ve heard from the others?”

“Yes.”

“Where are they? Are they at the berg? Can you tell them to wait at the berg? I placed two lights down there. Could you tell them that? I’m looking for…” Gula paused.

“It’s alright Gully, I didn’t know his name either.”

“You what?!”

The radio crackled once more, and the light faded. Gula continued down the tunnel again, noticing small growths of waste beginning to form along the tunnel walls. The further he walked, the more growths appeared til the wall was almost entirely coated. He stood still, noticing that the vinyl had stopped playing. He looked around and gasped. The tunnel appeared to be pulsating, each globule all wired together by fatty roots that he only now could see. They heaved upward and downward like heavy breathing. He continued with the primed caution of a pacing guard dog. For ten more minutes he walked, slowly, and with gritted teeth, as the tunnel grew more bulbous mounds of fat – dripping with oil and laden with a plethora of niche antiquities. An ivory shoe horn, a music box covered in gems, an antediluvian marvel of masonry, all protruding from a much larger fatberg straight ahead. He examined the statute carefully, noticing that it very much resembled himself. His breathing became more frantic, when, interrupting his panic, the radio activated once more. Gula’s head torch started to fade, til it was only a dull ember.

“A real waste isn’t it? All these pretty things.”

“Edward. Please. What is this?”

“Do you dream much, Gully?” Edward’s voice asked through the crackle of the radio.

“Yes. About work”

“What else?”

“Going work”

“What else?”

“Edward, where am I?”

“What else do you dream about, Gully?”

“Ma. Dancing with her.”
The headtorch came back on, revealing a pulsating veiny mass of fat, folding upon lumps of oily skin. To Gula’s horror, he fell back upon seeing it. He tilted his head upwards and felt the warmth of breath upon him. That’s where he saw… Edward’s face, moulded into the fatty blockage of the tunnel. The radio activated once more.

“You’ll have to remove it, Gully. It’s quite the blockage isn’t it? You’ll have to do your job. You’ll have to get to work.”

– – – – – – – – – – – – X – – – – – – – – – – – –

Le Plat Principal

“Gula! Gula!” Agata yelled at the wall of the tunnel, where not moments before, a dark green door had appeared, illuminated by a series of footlights leading up to it, and through which, Gula had darted and vanished before the door itself disappeared with the footlights as they deactivated with a heavy click. One by one they cut out until the last set by the door flickered and faded, abandoning the tunnel once more to confusion and darkness. Through the door, Agata and the two men accompanying her had heard the faint crackle of what sounded like vinyl, though the thought seemed too ludicrous to entertain, and this job was privy to paranoia. No, Agata thought, this is a classic case of catastrophic thinking and poor communication freeing the mind. “An emancipated mind may conjure all manner of oddities,” her grandfather had once said. She shook her head, and with that she scrambled her wits and commanded the other two men shaking beside her.

“We go back to the entrance, fix the radios, meet up with Ed and try for the other two once more. If we can’t reach them, I say we retrace the two tunnels.”

“You saw what we saw,” one of them replied.

“All the more reason to find them.”

Reluctantly, the two men agreed, and the party made its way back to the intersection where the two tunnels diverged. Upon returning to the point where the man, identified as Peter Cain, went missing, and tracing back the trail of bloody smears which Agata had convinced herself were those of an animal, the three stood silently aghast, when, to their surprise, the entirety of the entrance tunnel was gone. It had been replaced by a gigantic fatberg, pulsating and heaving like some unimaginable felled behemoth wheezing its final breaths. Its reddish veins popped through the glistening skin. The stench corroded the sinuses even through the breathing gear. Agata moved closer to it, more curious than cautious, as though she were sure it were a dream. She reached out to touch it, and felt the surface of the gluttonous mass, which was covered in some kind of plasticine film. She pinched a piece in her fingers, and it unravelled slowly across the mass. Like tangled cling film it peeled and peeled, from a pinch to a handful, and before long there was a sheet of it, ten metres wide. The two men stood baffled in such a way that their minds had regressed to otherness. Perhaps they were far away from the sewer, in a holiday from childhood’s memory. Their idleness rendered them unaware of the slow, trudging mound that fell from the fatberg, which then reassembled itself with pieces of mucus, oil, and litter to the extent that it resembled a tall anthill. Its surface undulated with forgotten things, a pile of rotted serrations shadowed by the distance between them. Though, as it trundled toward them with increasing intention, its texture came into full view under the head torch beams. Its surface was full of antiquated

items and rarities, tarnished by the oozing fat that moulded around them, and in between each cluster of items sat countless orifices that opened and closed like a thousand feeding mouths piled atop one another. The men stared and the mass approached. And yet Agata, so focused on ripping away strips from the fatty sheen, was oblivious to the pilgrim mound passing her by. Two larger openings grew on the creature, swallowing several items within them like sinkholes. They were a ceaseless noir, infinite and gaping. Sewer tunnels on tour. The creature extended a telephone cord from itself which wrapped around the first man, Kaleel, yanking him towards its many mouths as they collided and assimilated into one. Kaleel screamed and choked and gargled and hushed in seconds that felt like hours. Meanwhile Agata continued her obsession toward the berg film, still oblivious of the gory horrors behind her. Next came the other man, Tim Hansen. His end came less quickly as he was knocked to the sodden floor, bulldozed, and absorbed into the mush smothering him from above. His face slowly sank into the back of the creature. His eyes spoke disbelief as he saw Agata still frantically tearing away the film while the creature – now very much himself – ambled away into the dark.

Tears fought their way from his eyes and onto the protruding trash from his brand new body. A splash on an antique clock.

Gula was crying, broken and bruised from hours of hacking away at the fatberg with a fork which had dropped from Edward’s mouth above him. Edward also cried, and though he couldn’t talk, it seemed Gula’s manic hacking and slashing was hurting him. The radio spoke words of encouragement in what very much sounded like Edward’s voice. It pushed Gula to keep going, goading him each time he felt he could faint from utter exhaustion. Finally, a green patch appeared in the fleshy tunnel that he had been digging into Edward. He extended his arm and rubbed it. It was wood. The same door, he realised. He immediately grabbed the fork and set carry on when the echoes of the vinyl began to sound once more, from the same spot they had vanished. At first he struggled between the two directions, half of him digging with the silver fork, the other half turned to checking the ever approaching hum of 30s songs behind him. The sound closed in. He stopped. It was right behind him. He edged out of the flesh tunnel and pivoted round to face the melody. The creature stood there, its body motionless, all the while its many mouths, which had again assumed their old form, were very much moving. Two mouths assimilated and opened wide. A record player was birthed from them, and held out by a putrid, oily tongue. Gula gasped, but not in fear, for that was long gone. He saw the words written on the vinyl within it: Roger Wolfe Kahn – Exactly Like You. With a familiar crackle, it began to play.

“But I don’t have anyone,” Gula told the creature. “Never did.”

The many mouths smiled. A pair of heels waltzed down the tunnel, their echoes doubling the rhythm of the taps, which accompanied the music gracefully, in a way only one woman in his life could ever do. She came into view and danced, arms stretched to hold the frame of an invisible partner, one of broad shoulders and good stock. It was his mother. She reached him. A pair of eyes rolled from the darkness ahead, right up to her heels where their motion stopped. Gula picked them up, and placed them inside his mother. She stilled herself to allow him the courtesy. With several waking blinks, she saw him. They began to dance.

A door appeared in front of Agata. Painted orange, oak wood, battened, ledged, framed and braced. Its edges were chipped and grazed, the paint dry and cracked toward the bottom – an abandoned project, the result of two unexpected twins and distant marriage. It was the door to the backyard, which met a narrow slate path that spilled into the garden with a little brown fence where the oaks leaned over and beckoned the house into the wilderness on the other side. It was the door from her old home. Of course, she thought. It couldn’t have been any other door. No other door was meant for her. The footlights lit one by one, exploding with punctuated brightness, as she walked toward it, slowly. It opened with the same familiar creak she had heard in the kitchen so many times before. Through it, a vivid and most brilliant banquet came into view. Below, there was a long table at which so many illustrious guests sat. Underneath the table, hundreds of bronze pipes penetrated a grotesque, many-mouthed thing that suckled upon the metal protrusions as they seemed to pump waste from the table into it. Agata caught several panicked faces straining in the fleshy mess. Two figures in cloaks and masks seemed to be attaching another pipe into it, before backing away with satisfaction. One of the figures carried a net, the other a spear. To Agata, It seemed that the thing they had plugged into was weeping. She felt it wanted to leave. She wanted to leave as well. She cared little for anything down there, below the banquet, below the rats that scuttled around chair legs in anticipation of scraps. No, anything beyond the banquet was not her concern. As she watched, the figures re-emerged with a crimson sheet and veiled the gaping thing, so as not to distract the guests.

– – – – – – – – – – – – X – – – – – – – – – – – –

Dessert

Agata had unravelled the entire fatberg without once needing her power wash equipment. How she had proven herself, to whomever it was that had sought to test her. And whilst on the subject, how grateful she was that it had been her they had tested, and how grateful she was for these tunnels, that her tenacity and prideful work within them had allowed her to survive. She had seen a great deal, as she was sure Gula had. But he hardly mattered now, for if he had really been important, if he had ever been set to run the company, he would have a seat at the great long table of this banquet. But he didn’t, his door led elsewhere. And she was here. She saw the mounted head of Peter Cain on the left wall, which was draped with many other fine sporting catches and kills of a similar sort. The table was a lavish and tasteful one, the kind she had seen in dreams, ever out of reality’s reach. It was a lavish and tasteful table for lavish and tasteful people, with rabbit masks and turtle dove cavaliers. A little carded sheet with the most exquisite bordering sat before her. “Agatha” was written on it. She had questioned it to a passer-by in a pearlescent dress and long flowing brown hair, who had motioned over to the illustriously-suited man that she recognised from the van. It was the associate.
“My name is Agata,” she called over across the sprawling splendour of silver platters and spilling drinks from imperial bottles.
“Not here,” he replied, now wearing a wolf mask.
He tilted his head and raised his glass to her, quelling any concern she had. She realised now, sat dining among this kaleidoscopic medley of colours and smells, how silly it must have seemed for her to ask about her own name. It was Agatha now. It should always have been Agatha.

She looked at the flags above descending on wire as painted acrobats flung themselves from the cables. The footlights from the green door at the end of the red-carpeted hall illuminated their grand dance. She felt proud. She saw Gula through a glass panel in the roof, still in the tunnel above, still dancing with his mother, their footsteps sounding around the dripping maze in an endless waltz. He spoke often of his mother, and there they were together, as the tunnels had willed it. Their shoes torn and feet bleeding from the years of dancing to the same song. She knew it well, for it played in the hall too. It was possible that there may have existed some pity in her for Gula and his mother, who had no business in the tunnels. But it is not the duty of a wolf to change its nature to benefit sheep. Agatha smiled. The blue-eyed, pearlescent woman placed a turtle dove cavalier on her head. Agatha Berkshire. “Thank you,” she said, as dozens of them turned in unison toward her seat at the end of the table. Her chair, a silver platter. The woman ushered in the two acrobats who dropped silently and gracefully behind her. They raised Agatha up as the rhythmic drumming of knives and forks began. Bang. Bang. Bang. The guests sounded, their mouths drooling and eyes widening behind the gawking of animal masks. The same song played on, and she remembered how Gula and Ed would sing it in the van on those damnable early mornings when the rain confused itself with mist. She remembered how she’d left Kaleel and Tim, and the other one they hardly knew. Might she feel a little bad about it all? She might. But there was no room for shame in the banquet below. She was a big success. A tremendous hit. The dessert. Picked most meticulously from a group, her flavour divine, intelligent, and tailored, yet homely and nostalgic. The phrase “Exactly Like You by Roger Wolfe Kahn” entered her mind. She mouthed the lyrics to the song, as tears of joy and relief welled up in her eyes and her platter was lowered into the centre of the table and met with salivating hungry mouths all jagged and yellow.

Now I know why mother, Taught me to be cruel. She meant me for someone, Exactly like you.