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stupidgtblog · 8 months ago

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Untamed

Part 39 of my story! Read the index and content warnings here.

!!Warning!! this is one of the darkest chapters in the whole series. People die in this, there is violence, and a large-scale disaster occurs. Read with caution.

Joe Piccoli had never seen war, and he had no idea that he was about to become acquainted with it. He was too engrossed by the forbidden words on the page to even consider the possibility.

“I can make the Irishman hate the Italian and the Englishman hate the German”. The passage read. “It can be accomplished through the simple redistribution of resources. If the experiment is to progress, however, it must move beyond small-scale enmity. What I now seek is a more universal villain than that, a monster to wage war against so that the people can feel self-assured that the values they uphold and fight for, the values of Tiny Town itself, are just and righteous. We must find a bogey-man so culturally backwards and so difficult for the average miniature to understand that no man would be bold enough to defend it.”

He had found the handwritten journal under a stack of files on Dawson’s desk, and a feeling of dread settled into him as he glanced at the next line:

“I can think of no better example than the pet tiny.”

His eyes snapped away from the page at the sound of footsteps, and he pushed the book back under the mountain of paperwork with all the adrenaline of a man on fire. Then he sat innocently in the main office with his hands folded into his lap and his back straight as a pencil while the hair on his neck stood on end. The lightbulb above flickered ominously all the while.

It wasn’t Dawson who entered, but the guard who had pursued him when he had first broken in to see Tim. The burly man threw Joe’s newly-minted ID card down on the desk as though it were rubbish and glared at him with utmost contempt. Joe swallowed as he took the ID with a shaking hand, a piece of paper worth all of ten thousand scraps, and tucked it into his pocket. He couldn’t be certain if he would be allowed in at all or robbed of his scraps and taken straight to jail. The lightbulb above flickered three more times as the guard himself appeared to be weighing his options, before he tossed his thumb toward the doorway and said,

“Get the hell outta here, and don’t try anything funny.”

Joe obeyed the guard’s orders and when he left the building he kept right on going, stumbling into the semi-open space of the town entrance. The claustrophobia of the intake office never left him, and as he looked up to the sky he noted that it was uncharacteristically black against the electric streetlights that lined the only road, as if the void had swallowed the moon and stars whole when he wasn’t looking. The entire area was an imposing tunnel of splintered wood, all of it dry as kindling.

Thus began his quest to find Danny, or so it would have been if Joe didn’t have company. Jumping at the sound of footsteps he turned around to find Tim O’Grady bounding up to greet him. The man was grinning from ear to ear, and over his back he carried a rucksack that no doubt contained the diamond Joe had just sold to him.

“Lovely weather tonight, isn’t it?”

Joe wondered to what extent the void above them counted as weather. Try as he might, Joe couldn't keep from turning his head upwards in the hopes of telling the time. Danny was to burn at dawn, but Joe had no idea when exactly that would be. The wait in the intake office had felt like hours, and he had the lingering sense that however much time he had was swiftly running out.

"Neat piece of engineering, isn't it?" O'Grady remarked. "That's our second sky."

"Second sky?"

O'Grady nodded.

"Used to be that when it rained, we'd all get stuck in the mud. S’why we put everything on those high support beams and boardwalks. Coupla wee'uns even drowned one time ‘cause they couldn’t get out. Then Dawson got caught in it one day, and not a day later he had that put in place. Real mysterious piece of work, it is."

"What do you mean?" Asked Joe.

"It appears and disappears on its own. Nobody knows how it works!" Said O'Grady.

"Isn’t it just a tarp or something? Don't the giants outside the wall just put it on and-"

O'Grady stopped Joe in his tracks with one hand and slapped a hand over his mouth with the other.

"Nobody knows how the second sky works. Got that?" O'Grady reiterated.

Joe was only freed when he nodded in agreement, and that was the end of that.

"So uh... how do you tell time around here?” Joe asked as innocently as possible.

"Excited for the burning, are ya'? You'll know when the bell rings." Said O'Grady, and Joe took mental note of it. “Let’s get going!”

The Irishman all but carried him towards an inner atrium composed of many different entryways. The one they were headed for had a sign over it that naturally read Irish.

“Welcome to the most Canadian ward in Tiny Town! Yer gonna fit right in with the lads at the pub, I just know it. Oughta go for a pint before the big event.”

Laughing nervously, Joe muttered a half-hearted, “yeah…” as he wondered for the life of him how he was going to get out of this situation and find Danny.

“Come on, hurry up! The night’s still young!” O’Grady carried on towards the gate of the Irish ward, and as he neared it a pint-sized fireball shot out and latched itself onto O’Grady’s leg.

“Da’! Da’! What’d ya’ bring me?” Asked the little girl.

It was Mary, O’Grady’s feisty first child. She climbed right into her father’s open arms, laughing as he twirled her around, and for the first time in a long time Joe was reminded of the O’Grady he once knew: the loving, tender father who doted on his wife and children.

“What did I bring you?” O’Grady echoed.

“That’s your borrower friend, isn’t it?” She asked, pointing directly at Joe. “Did you get more chocolate?”

O’Grady laughed loudly and nervously as he set her down, earning himself a sharp look from the guard at the gate.

“Now now Mary, Joe’s no borrower.” He said at maximum volume, presumably just as much to the guard as to Mary. “He got himself an ID fair and square. He’s one of us now.”

“…oh.” Mary sounded a touch disappointed as she looked Joe up and down and reassessed his likelihood of supplying her with chocolate.

“He’s a fine, upstanding citizen who’s-” O’Grady’s words were cut short by a gasp. “Mary! What happened to your eye?”

O’Grady knelt down to examine her. Looking closer, Joe could see that the little girl had one very big shiner on her left eyelid.

“Slingshot.” Mary answered.

“Who did that to you?”

“The little boy from the Italian ward with the crooked teeth.” Mary pouted.

O’Grady looked up at Joe with utter fury in his eyes. Joe, meanwhile, averted his gaze. It fell on the piece of paper in his hands that had the word ITALIAN written on it in capital letters.

“The boy from the Italian ward… Piero’s boy?” O’Grady ran a hand through Mary’s hair and pointed to the gate. “Your mother and I will take care of this. You run along back into the ward, mouseling, and don’t cross the white lines.”

“’kay…” Mary sighed, and off she went.

Standing up, O’Grady rubbed his neck and beckoned for Joe to follow him inside.

“The only downside to living here is the neighbours.” He sighed.

Joe didn’t follow him. Instead, he looked from O’Grady, to the stern-eyed guard a stride away, to the ID card in his hands and weighed his options. There was no way he would make it into the Irish ward, and even if he snuck in somehow, he didn’t foresee himself receiving a warm welcome. O’Grady might be in denial, he reasoned, but the thugs who had attacked him before had not been. At the same time, by not following along he risked facing the wrath of O’Grady.

Deciding the wrath of one Irishman was better than the wrath of an entire ward of them, Joe hesitantly spoke up.

“Yeah… about that, O’Grady, I… I got something to tell you. And I know this might come as a shock to you, and I’m sorry I hid it for so long, but…”

The words tumbled out of Joe’s mouth before he could stop them and his heart pounded in his chest. He had never known fear like this, and as he spoke it was as though he were watching himself in third person, or being spoken for by some evil spirit that had taken possession of his tongue. Everything in his better nature told him that this was an incredibly stupid thing to do, and yet as Joe stood there, tongue-tied, watching the look of puzzlement creep into O’Grady’s face, he knew he could not live in a world where it went unsaid.

“…what is it?”

"I..."

"Out with it, lad!"

O’Grady was still his friend, he hoped.

“…I’m an Italian.” Joe said.

His throat tightened. His hands shook. His pulse throbbed in his ears. These three words could very well be enough to get him killed, and he automatically began to step away from Tim and prepare himself to flee once they were spoken. Tim was a head taller than Joe and twice his weight in muscle. If he wanted to bash Joe’s head in, he could easily do so.

Violence was what Joe had been expecting. Nothing in the world could have prepared Joe for what came next.

“No you’re not!” O’Grady grunted in disbelief.

“Tim… I…” He looked at O’Grady helplessly, then showed him the ID card, though he knew O’Grady couldn’t read it.

“That’s what it says on my ID. I can’t get into your ward without an ID. They’re not gonna let me in.”

Joe could feel the sharp eyes of the guard at the gate boring holes into him. Tim noticed it too.

He stood impatiently as the illiterate Tim squinted at the ID, then back at Joe. Laughing loudly he put an arm around Joe’s shoulder and steered him away from the guard.

“Well that must be a misprint! There’s no way you could be an Italian. I mean, you don’t act Italian!” Said Tim, giving him another sporty shoulder clap as though it would somehow entice Joe to agree with him.

Withdrawing the card, Joe rubbed his forehead. Then he lowered his hand, holding it outward with his thumb, middle and index fingers pinched together, and shook it at Tim.

“What does that even mean, Tim!? Waddaya mean I don’t act Italian!?”

O’Grady crossed his arms, turned up his nose and declared,

“Because you’re a good person, and those bastards in the Italian ward are not.”

Slowly, Joe’s hand fell to his side as O’Grady’s words cut him deeply.

“Never in my life have I met a good Italian.” O’Grady continued. “All they do is steal our jobs and our apartments and terrorize us in the night. You saw what they did to Mary! They’re a step away from snatching up our children and selling them off to Hollywood. Why, I don’t believe such a thing exists, a good Italian! You’re likely just deluded, or pulling my leg.”

Joe’s blood began to boil as he thought about his good Italian mother and his good Italian brother and the good Italian man at the restaurant who had gone out of his way to make polenta for him that night. For ages now Joe had been listening to O’Grady harp on about how horrid he thought Italians were, but it hurt on a whole different level now that Tim knew full well what was on Joe’s ID card and in his very blood.

“…Tim, don’t you ever think that maybe the world is bigger and more complicated than you want it to be? Is it really that hard to believe that an Italian could also be your friend?”

O’Grady paused for a moment, and for a split second he appeared to soften.

“Don’t get me wrong, lad, I’m willing to keep an open mind.” O’Grady said, clearly choosing his words very carefully. “Perhaps there are good Italians somewhere in the world, and perhaps you might be one of them, but...”

O’Grady didn’t finish his sentence. He didn’t need to. Joe had already filled in the blanks in his head:

“…but I’ll still think the worst of other people like you by default, and so long as we know each other, it will be up to you to prove yourself one of the good ones.”

It was O’Grady who would set up the goalposts, Joe knew, and O’Grady who would keep moving them out of his reach with every attempt he made to prove himself a decent person.

Instead of doing that, Joe pocketed the ID card.

“Well, Tim, I may or may not be a good Italian, but it’s not up to me to convince you one way or another.” He said as he turned in the direction of the Italian ward. “You’re gonna believe what you’re gonna believe, and I got a life to live and shit to do.”

“What!? No! I-I didn’t mean it like that!” O’Grady called after him. “Don’t go in there! Are you mental!?”

Joe looked over his shoulder once and only once, and saw Tim with his shoulders slack and mouth agape, looking absolutely gobsmacked. Joe didn’t dignify him with a response. He simply handed his ID card to the man at the entry to the Italian ward and passed through it easily as breathing.

"So what kind of Italian are you?" Asked the young man as he gave Joe an introductory tour of Tiny Town.

Thinking it was the right answer, Joe replied, "I'm Giardino on my dad's side, but I was raised Casa like my mom."

"Yes, but what kind of Giardino? What kind of Casa? These things are important, you know! You from the north? The south?"

"I'm… from Toronto Star, actually." Joe said.

"Yeah, so am I, but besides that!" The boy chortled.

As if his exchange with O'Grady hadn't been exhausting enough, Joe was once again confronted by the Townies' suffocating need to categorize and identify, to appraise and quantify.

"There's not many of us, ya' know." The curly-haired youth chattered on. "Not as many as the Irish. It’s nice to see a new face around here."

Joe jammed his hands in his pockets as several members of the ward trudged past hauling large twigs. He picked up the pace and trotted closer as the youth led him to the ward center where Piero was waiting to greet him.

"Why's it so important what kind of Italian I am? Why does any of this matter? Setting up these borders, not letting anyone else in... seems like it's doing more harm than good."

"It's to keep us safe! You'll see. It's how the giants do it." The boy explained. "You gotta know your friends from your enemies. The good people from the bad ones. Italians help other Italians. That’s how things work here." The sound of a snapping twig momentarily interrupted him. "You ever lived in a borrower town? Ever let in some stranger who stole all your food stores? It's like that."

"No..." said Joe, who had lived in several borrowing towns. "That's never happened to me. Has it ever happened to you?"

Catching up with the youth, Joe saw his eyes widen for a moment.

"Uh, well, I’m sure it happens somewhere.” The youth insisted, and whistled to Piero, who stood in the entryway of an apartment building. “Hey, Piero! Here's your first torch!"

Piero’s attention was elsewhere, it seemed.

"She bit me!" Wailed the little boy with crooked teeth.

"Who bit you?" Asked Piero, kneeling before the boy with great concern.

"That little Irish girl with the frizzy hair!" Said the boy.

"Tim's girl." Growled Piero. "Go see your mother. I'll take care of this."

As the boy dashed up the stairs Joe could hear Piero cursing under his breath.

"Damn Irish. Sending their own children after us..."

Clearing his throat, Joe stepped towards the wolfish looking man and waved shyly.

"Hey, I'm uh... I'm here for the public execution thing?" He said, noting how chilling the words sounded coming from his own mouth.

Piero lit up at the sight of him.

"Ah, yes, yes! You're the new guy. Follow me..." He motioned Joe over to a pile of twigs in the middle of the street as the two walked and talked.

"So this is the uh, Italian ward, huh? It's nice..." Joe lied.

Truthfully, it wasn't what Joe would consider a nice place at all. Long ago, when his family had lived in The Times, Joe had stayed at several borrowing towns full of tinies that giants would have considered "Italians." Those had been bustling places full of chatter and music and life. Here, what few Italians there were pushed past Joe with steely eyes and determined faces as they twirled their knives and patrolled their streets and guarded their borders, all with a sense of solemn duty.

"It beats living in a garbage dump, I suppose." Said Piero, who sounded even less convinced of Tiny Town's niceness than Joe was.

Joe cast him a quizzical glance. Then he debated with himself for a moment before allowing himself to finally ask a question that had been on his mind for several months.

"So... how'd it get like this? With all the white lines and the uh, fighting with the Irish?"

Piero stooped down and grabbed a twig from the pile.

"The Irish used to live in this ward before we showed up." Piero explained. "And they used to flip switches for a living like we do. Then Dawson went and changed everything around." Joe stumbled back as Piero thrust the heavy twig into his arms. "He moved the Irish out of these apartments and put them into the smaller ones the next ward over. Made them push buttons for a living - doesn't pay as well as flipping switches. They've been trying to run us out ever since."

As if on cue, a voice rang out from the Irish ward far down the street.

"HEY, PIEEEEERO!" Called Tim O'Grady from the very edge of the white line that divided the two wards. "FANCY A CHAT!?"

A small army of knives were pointed in Tim’s direction by the Italian ward's stalwart defenders. Joe could see that O'Grady had brought soldiers of his own, and Joe's blood ran cold at the sight.

Joe Piccoli had never seen war, but now he was seeing the beginnings of it.

"Go throw that on the pyre for me, would you? For good luck." Said Piero of the twig in Joe’s arms as he readied a small sword of his own. "It’s at the Garrison building, down that way."

Joe gulped, nodded, and staggered back towards the other end of the street where the tip of Piero's sword pointed him. As he followed the white line that looped around the ward, he noticed he was moving in alternating circular patterns, almost as if he were navigating a maze.

His pace slowed to a halt when he overheard something curious from outside the city walls.

“…no use. Talking our way in won’t cut it.” Said a voice that sounded a lot like Marty Hammerson’s.

“…can sneak in then. She’ll be able to…” Joe strained his ears at the sound of another voice that sounded an awful lot like Billy’s. “…but be careful. I know you have a bone to pick with Dawson, but don’t…”

Joe changed course and tried to follow them for as long as he could, only to find that they were headed back in the direction of the street war brewing between the Irish and the Italians. As they faded out of earshot, Joe was left with little hope after what Harry had done to him. For all he knew, even if it was Marty and Billy they could be looking to put Joe back in Herman's jar, not to save him and Danny from their predicament.

When he turned back towards the Garrison building he was met with a curious sight: a news stand, like the ones the giants had. Some papers were in English, some were in Italian, and none of them had any good news to share. Slowing his pace and turning his head he made out headlines that read, “HOW TO TELL IF YOUR CHILD IS BECOMING A PET” and “PET TINY KIDNAPS FOUR AND SELLS THEM TO HOLLYWOOD” and “IRISH GANG INVADES ITALIAN WARD.” Everything about Tiny Town, no matter the ward he was in, was steeped in an underlying fearful energy that put Joe himself on edge.

He kept moving down the winding streets and there it was, the Garrison building: the heart of Tiny Town. It was a near-windowless panopticon splintered by toothpicks that jutted out of the wooden monstrosity like a crown, and at the very front and center it bore a sign that read, “GARRISON INSTITUTE FOR SOCIAL RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT.”

Joe's mind wandered back to something Lorraine had said ages ago, about the giant interest groups who were meddling in Tiny Town, and he shuddered to think what happened to any tiny who found themselves inside that building. Little did he know, he was about to find out.

The white lines on the ground narrowed down and converged into a triangular point, signifying that the Italian ward stopped just outside of the building along with the other nine wards as though they were the points of a star. Joe stopped along with that line and contemplated overstepping it. There was no law against it that he knew of, yet the thought gave him an uneasy feeling all the same. Looking from the end of the line to the front of the building ahead he saw a small army of guards moving in and out. Most of them were concentrating on setting up Danny's funeral pyre: one long stick stood upright among the rest, and the smaller twigs and strips of paper surrounded it like a nest. It sat a little ways outside of the front deck of the Garrison building, and behind it and to the left stood a podium. To the right of it all hung a golden bell that reminded Joe of a giant's Christmas ornament.

The pyre had not even been lit yet and the air was already heavy.

Joe flinched at the sound of a commotion so loud it rang out from streets away - Piero and O'Grady's confrontation had erupted into a full blown brawl, no doubt, which drew the guards from their posts. Seizing his opportunity Joe took his own twig and, acting as naturally as he possibly could as a line of them marched past, he set it onto the pyre and wished for the good luck Piero had promised him. Then, instead of going back from where he came, he scurried up the deck of the building and around to the side, looking for windows or any semblance of an entry point. He found one nearby, a basement window low to the ground, though it looked closer to a grate in the side of the building than anything resembling a proper window. It was doubtful Joe would fit through it, so he knelt down and peered inside instead. Through the grate he could see a figure in a stone basement slumped over and tied to a chair. His spirits rose alongside his adrenaline when he realized it was a figure he recognized.

"Danny! Pssst! Danny!"

His heart soon sank again when Danny didn't lift his head. At the risk of ending up in that basement himself, Joe's voice grew louder.

"DANNY!" He whisper-shouted, and quickly scanned the area for guards.

Seeing none, he rapped on the grating for good measure. That got a grunt out of Danny, and groggily the dancer lifted his head and turned to look at Joe. Both his eyes were black and his face was covered in bruises. When he smiled, Joe could see that two of his teeth had been punched out. Joe covered his mouth in shock at the sight of him before composing himself.

"Hey. You made it." Danny rasped.

"I'm gonna get you out of here, okay?" Said Joe, searching frantically for a way in. The basement was stone but the building itself was not, and Joe wondered if he might be able to pry his way in with the hairpin.

"Don't worry about that. Get the list first." Danny said.

"The list?"

Danny coughed and his head dipped. He appeared to be fighting against the pain. Then he continued.

"Ever wonder how Dawson got so powerful? It's that Garrison Institute. Any tiny he didn't like got marked and sent off to the labs. He never got anything in return from them besides power. But after a while..." Danny started rocking from side to side in the chair he was tied to. "He realized it'd be more financially lucrative to sell his people to the snatchers directly under the table."

Joe's white-knuckled fingers curled around the bars of the grate and squeezed as the footsteps of a guard grew louder nearby.

"Everyone in this hell-hole is a product." Danny explained. "They just don't know it." Danny's rocking intensified, and the chair began to wobble in Joe's direction. "Dawson hasn't figured it out it yet, but tonight I nabbed a list he keeps of every snatcher in the city. It's in my collar." The chair toppled and fell, painfully close to where Joe knelt at the window above. "Can you get it?"

"I... I can try, but what about you?"

"We'll get to that." Danny insisted, though Joe remained doubtful. "Just take the paper and run!"

Joe took the hairpin from his belt and drew it towards Danny's shirt collar. He could just see the little piece of paper rolled up inside of it, and the tip of the pin came desperately close to reaching.

The footsteps were growing louder.

Joe reached for the paper, once, twice, three times. The tip of the pin lightly caressed the list's curled corner when the footsteps turned down Joe's side of the deck and stopped.

Joe froze. Danny winked at him. Looking from the fallen prisoner to the hairpin in his hands, Joe had to think fast. He drew the pin back, then lunged it at Danny through the bars, hoping it would look as violent as possible to the guard who was now watching.

"That'll teach you to mess with us, you housepet!" Joe gloated, doing his best to talk the way O'Grady did. "You're lucky they won't let me kill you myself!"

The guard drew in behind him, observing the situation.

"Geez Louise," he chuckled, "give it a rest, kid! Kicking his teeth in is my job."

Two blocky hands fell upon Joe's shoulders and steered him back towards the front of the Garrison building where he could see that a crowd had gathered.

The bell rang without a second to spare. Dawson stood at the podium holding a paper megaphone in hand that reminded Joe of a circus ringmaster.

"First torch!? Who's our first torch?" He barked into the crowd.

“Not me this time.” He heard Piero protest.

Joe carefully slipped the pin back into his belt and made a beeline for where the Italian ward stood within their respective lines under the watchful eye of the guard. As he did so, he looked on as Danny, now gagged, was dragged from out of the building and tied onto the pyre. The audience threw a volley of garbage in Danny’s direction at the mere sight of him, making Joe’s stomach turn.

"Settle down!" Dawson ordered. "We haven't gotten started yet!"

Sweat rolled down Joe's temples as he shuffled into the spot where the Italian ward had congregated. There were hundreds of angry tinies in the vicinity and only one of him, and he sill had no plan to speak of for how he was going to escape this.

“Italian ward, where is your first torch!?” Dawson demanded.

Piero beckoned Joe to the very tip of the triangle, right in front of the podium. Standing next to the two of them, barely an arm’s length away, was the O’Grady family. Reining in their unruly children beside Tim O'Grady was a face that Joe had not seen in a long time: Sophie O’Grady, Tim's wife, though he hardly recognized her at first glance. The round woman’s hair was much longer and she was wearing a dress of all things, like the ones Tim had once sported. She caught sight of Joe too, and for a split second opened her mouth as if to greet to him before falling silent again.

Silence was especially unusual for her.

Joe could tell by the look of her husband beside her that Tim was still freshly riled up from his close encounter with Piero, though the sound of the bell seemed to have put their border skirmish on hold. When Joe looked to Piero he could see that the Italian ward boss was returning O’Grady’s icy stare. The tensity that flowed across the white line that divided them was almost palpable.

Piero’s face warmed as Joe drew near, and he pressed a long, ceremonial looking torch into Joe’s hands. All the while Dawson kept on barking.

“FIRST TORCH!?”

“Right here, sir!” Piero said, and horror crept into Joe as Piero turned to him and added, “You did good out there tonight. I want you to do the honours.”

Joe blinked at the torch and then at Piero.

“You want me to…” Joe gulped. “No, Piero, I couldn’t, really! I mean-I’m flattered that you would-”

“TAKE IT!” Piero snapped.

Dawson shot Joe and Piero a stern glance and the guards surrounding the Garrison building fixed their attention on the both of them. There was no saying no, Joe could sense, for even if he did he would end up on the pyre himself. Begrudgingly, Joe snatched the torch from Piero’s hands if only to draw the eyes of the crowd away from him. Meanwhile, Dawson launched into a bombastic introductory speech.

“I don’t understand. Why do you want me to…?” Joe’s heart was pounding so heavily that he couldn’t even finish speaking.

When he looked into Piero’s eyes he didn’t need an answer. He could tell by the deep despair in them that Piero had done these honours many times before, and in all likelihood would have to do it again. It was the face of a man who had been forced against his will to kill. The face of a soldier.

Casting his gaze down to the wooden torch, Joe wondered how he would get out of his predicament. He glanced up from it to where Danny was tied upon the pyre and saw that the dancer was staring at his shoes in defeat. Studying the crowd Joe could see that there were easily five hundred other miniatures in attendance, and only one of him.

“…larceny, petty theft, shop lifting, and uh… illicit gum-chewing, we the people of Tiny Town sentence you, Daniel Smalls, to…” Dawson turned his megaphone upwards and roared into the second sky, “DEATH BY IMMOLATION!" Clearing his throat to the sound of a roaring crowd, he concluded his speech with, "The Italian ward will do the honours.”

Now that the charges were laid, every pair of eyes looked at Joe downright excitedly, seemingly eager to see what came next. Joe remained silent as Piero lit the torch in his hands and patted him on the back, then stepped towards Danny at a pace slower than a funeral dirge, still trying to think his way out of the predicament he had found himself in. His eyes darted from the streets lined with guards, to Dawson at the podium, to Piero and Tim who both looked at him expectantly, to the five hundred cheering, ugly faces who called for the death of Danny Smalls.

“Come on Italian ward, we haven’t got all day!” Sneered Dawson.

He looked up to Danny, tied to the pyre, and his heart split in two at the sight, for when Danny looked back at him his eyes kept on smiling. The torch shook in his hands as he stopped dead in front of the pyre.

"Italian ward? Get mooooving!" Dawson taunted.

There, in the center of Tiny Town, with no hope of escape, Joe accepted what he had to do. There was only one right thing that he could do. He lowered the first torch.

"No." Joe said. "I won't do this."

Confusion leapt like a spark through the crowd of onlookers and Dawson lowered his spectacles.

"I beg your pardon?" He said.

Joe turned to Dawson and looked him in his cold, dead eyes.

"This is stupid." Joe said. "I won't do it. He's just a person. If you wanna punish him for ruining your party put him in a drunk tank over night or something, don't burn the guy to death!"

The audience tittered and gasped at Joe's words. He was about to drop the torch and stomp it out when someone sprinted out of the audience and clasped it back into Joe's hand.

In was O’Grady. The Irishman laughed nervously and cleared his throat as he tried to steal the spotlight.

"Erm, what he means to say is that he won't do it without me, seeing as we caught the pet together and all-"

Joe pulled his hand away.

"I don't need you to speak for me, O'Grady. I'm not doing this. Take your torches and shove it!"

The crowd fell silent as if in shock. Dawson, meanwhile, squinted at Joe in utter disbelief. Practically vibrating with adrenaline, O’Grady drew in closer to Joe.

"I'm trying to help you." He said under his breath.

"You're not helping anyone, Tim." Joe turned from O’Grady to the crowd. "None of this is helpful! None of this makes anyone safer!" He whipped a finger in Danny's direction. "You don't even know this man, and here you are burning him to death! You people call this civilized!?"

Joe scanned his audience. Some averted their eyes from him. Others remained stone-faced. Others still appeared completely irate. Piero appeared to be burying his head in his hands out of sheer embarrassment.

All the while O'Grady's face contorted as the realization set in that Joe was not the person he wanted him to be. His eyes grew distant and his pupils dilated into pinpoints of pure rage, aimed directly at Joe Piccoli.

The tension rose into an electric silence, and it reached a fever pitch when Dawson spoke up from his place at the podium.

"Well, well, well, looks like we've got ourselves a pet supporter." He crowed. "You lot know what we do with those degenerates!"

A blood curdling cheer of jubilation erupted from a solid majority of the tiny town tinies, and they began pelting things at the pyre once again - this time targeting Joe rather than Danny. He backed away and dodged the debris as the torch crackled irritably, blood boiling with rage and frustration. That was the moment when O'Grady pounced on Joe and tried to wrench the torch handle away from him with both hands.

"Let me do the honours, Mr. Dawson!" He said. "We Irish shoulda got first torch all along, not this traitor!"

The crowd concurred, throwing jeers and taunts in Joe's direction along with their sticks and stones.

"Yeah!" Said one voice.

"Get him!" Said another.

"Kill the pets!" Said a third, and soon the group devolved into a single unified chant: "Kill the pets! Kill the pets! Kill the pets!"

As he struggled against O'Grady Joe could see the fear in his adversary’s eyes, of what exactly he did not know. The fear of Joe being a pet, perhaps, or Italian, or a borrower, or anything else O’Grady had been taught to live in fear of. The Irishman's voice wavered with anger.

"Don't you remember what that bastard did to us!?" Rasped O'Grady.

With those words everything clicked. He knew implicitly who O'Grady was talking about: the earless son-of-a-bitch at the watchmaker's. The pet tiny who had captured and enslaved them ten years ago. Although he could see that O'Grady was on the verge of tears, Joe held the first torch firmly and didn't look away from his maddened stare.

"Danny's a different person!" Joe protested, pulling the torch back in his direction with all his might, the heat of it scalding his right cheek in the process. "Don't you get it, O'Grady? All of them are! Some of them are good, some of them are bad! They're just people!"

"They are monsters!" O'Grady snarled, finally overwhelming Joe. "I know people, and people are wretched things! They make a mockery of us good, honest folk, and so do you for supporting them!" O'Grady shoved Joe back will full force, causing the lit match to spin and fly from both their hands.

When Joe hit the ground O'Grady declared, “Gutters was right about you.”

Joe was too preoccupied with O'Grady to see that the burning torch had landed several strides away, dangerously close to a support beam that held up the Garrison building. O'Grady was on top of him now, with one hand around his throat and the other landing a blow that struck him with all the strength of an entire ward of Irishmen. His vision blurred and his head spun.

"Excellent work, O'Grady!" Dawson cheered through the megaphone as O'Grady dragged Joe through the dirt.

As blood trickled down Joe's temples he looked to his right through sideways vision and saw Sophie of all people, with her head bowed and tears in her eyes. The rest of the crowd erupted into murderous glee as Dawson announced,

"THROW HIM ON THE PYRE!"

Joe, who was only half capable of words at this point, could only repeat the same few sentences over again.

"I'm a person, O'Grady. Please don't do this. I'm just a person."

O'Grady didn't listen as Joe's voice grew thinner and thinner. He rolled Joe over, tied him with twine that a crowd member passed over to him, and sat Joe's limp body down at the base of the pyre.

Joe tried to scan the crowd in search of a way out, but his vision was obscured by the blood. Through it he could just make out Piero the outline of Piero, his last conceivable hope. The ward boss only gazed at his boots in shame as Joe pleaded with him through his eyes to do something.

In Tiny Town Italians helped other Italians, so long as neither was caught fraternizing with a pet.

"Light the second torch!" O'Grady ordered, and another cheer rolled through the crowd. Irish, Italian, English, German, regardless of how the tinies were categorized, they all sang for Joe and Danny's blood.

Joe squeezed his eyes shut as smoke filled his lungs, too tired to struggle, too tired to pray. A thought - what he was certain was his last thought - came to him:

If this is human nature, I'm better off dead.

The smoke grew thicker as Joe accepted his end. Little did he know, fate would not grant Joe the luxury of death just yet.

"FIRE!" Someone shouted from the crowd.

"Yes, yes, I'm getting to it!” O'Grady replied. “Damn cunts, where’d ya’ put my second torch…?"

"No, you idiot!" Snapped Dawson from the podium. "It's the Garrison building! You! Guards! Put it out at once!"

Joe raised his head at the sound of rushing feet. A growing panic swept through the crowd as the smoke from the Garrison building grew thicker. Looking up, Joe saw a flurry of fists as fights began to break out left and right between the various wards of Tiny Town. More and more miniatures were stepping out of line to escape.

"What are you doing!? Everyone stay put! Everything is all under control!" Dawson ordered, his composure swiftly unraveling.

That was the moment the sign atop the Garrison building crashed down behind the podium, and the crowd went ballistic at the sight. Joe heard Danny mumble something through the gag, and although he couldn't make out the words, he could tell it was a witty one-liner of some sort from tone alone. Wondering how Danny could remain so lighthearted at a time like this, Joe struggled to his feet as he fought against his bindings. The fire licked ever closer to the pile of kindling they were sat upon as he made his final, pitiful attempt to escape.

The rest of Tiny Town had forgotten them in the pandemonium. Fisticuffs turned to knives as Irish fought Italian and English fought German and hundreds of Tiny Town’s good, honest folk struggled in desperation to escape the blaze, each one at the expense of the life of another whom they had been socially conditioned to despise.

"STAY PUT! REMAIN IN YOUR PLACES!” Dawson squealed as the bodies fell, “LET THE GUARDS-"

Dawson couldn't finish his sentence before one such knife came for him. It dove straight into his back, crumpling him over the podium, and on the other end of that knife was none other than Lorraine Burroton. Joe had just managed to get onto his feet, and when he turned around he froze at the sight her standing triumphantly over the skewered demagogue.

"I told you I'd be back someday." She snarled into the dying man’s ear.

Pulling out her knife, she raced over and turned it on Danny's bindings and then Joe's.

"Lorraine!? How'd you know we were here?" Said Danny.

"It's a long story, just follow me!” She answered.

Joe pulled out the hairpin from his belt and tossed it to Danny, who twirled it with a smile and hobbled after Lorraine. She kept him well within arm’s reach for fear he might fall, and Joe did the same as he brought up the rear. They circled the left side of Garrison building, still untouched by fire, and ran down a long forgotten side street until they reached a section of the fence with two valuable lifelines: a slit in the second sky, and a length of twine hanging in from outside. An easy means of escape.

“I know this place like the back of my hand.” Lorraine panted. “This street’s a dead end. They’re all gonna go for the main gate. It’ll buy us a few minutes to climb up. You boys okay?”

Joe looked from himself to Danny, who had received twice the beating he did. He could sense Danny’s hesitance to climb, for Joe had plenty of his own.

“Hey, compared to the time they sent a live cat after me in Hollywood this is... this is nothing.” Danny quipped as his knees started to give way.

“Yeah, I don’t trust that. You’re comin' with me.” Said Lorraine, catching him.

"I just gotta go get more blood." Danny slurred. "I'll be fine."

“It's a damn miracle you made it this far. How about you, Joe? You think you can make it?”

Joe could hear the sound of voices coming from the corner behind them. He ran a hand over his bleeding head and nodded. He had no choice but to make it. He had to do it for Danny’s sake, otherwise the entire night would be an exercise in vain.

“I can make it. Take him up first. He looks pretty bad.”

“Way ahead of ya’.” Lorraine said. “Guard the rear where you can.”

The burly woman pulled Danny in and slung him over her shoulder. Crouching low to the ground, Joe kept to the shadows with his bootknife in hand as the voices drew nearer. His eyes traveled from Lorraine and Danny, who were gradually making their way up the rope, to the pitch black unknown that lurked down the side street. Joe tightened the grip on his knife and every nerve in his body froze as the voices rose to a crescendo of rage and fear.

The smell of smoke filled his nostrils again. The fire was drawing closer.

Then a wave of feet ran past and missed the side street entirely. The voices fell with no one in sight, and when Joe looked up he could see that Lorraine and Danny were now halfway up the twine. Seeing that the coast was clear, he took his knife in his teeth and started climbing. His hands shook as he did so, and he pretended he was running a simple borrowing errand and not escaping mortal danger in a feeble attempt to calm his nerves. Some semblance of relief soon came over him when Lorraine and Danny, after another painstaking minute, neared the hole in the tarp. It would be one more minute, maybe two, Joe figured as the air grew hotter around him, and then this hellish night would be over.

That was the moment when a large fist closed around his ankle.

Looking down from over his shoulder Joe saw the green eyes of O’Grady, filled with animalistic madness. Like a hunter in a killing rage the Irishman lurched upwards, his face devilish and distantly inhuman in the light of the fire, kicking and punching and pulling at Joe until the Italian’s already week grip began to slide.

“JOE!?” Cried Lorraine from above as O’Grady’s knee collided with Joe’s stomach. The corners of Joe’s mouth bled as the knife blade dug into them and he was almost sent falling off the twine, only to catch himself in one last act of desperation. He carried on in pursuit of O’Grady, who had his eyes on the prize that was Danny Smalls. It was Joe’s turn to lunge upwards now, and he managed to wrap his left arm around O’Grady’s eyes, disorienting his assailant long enough to take the knife out of his mouth with his right arm and saw at the twine.

“Don’t worry about me!” He shouted to Lorraine. “Just get Danny out!”

Joe could see the pain that cut into Lorraine from halfway down the twine as she looked up to the tear in the tarp, a mere finger’s length away from her, and then back down to Joe. There was no more time to hesitate; the fire was climbing up the fence and now it was seconds away from torching the tarp above too, in all likelihood scorching her and Danny along with it.

Blood flowed from Joe’s left forearm as O’Grady sank his teeth into it.

“Get to the other side of the city! The others will be waiting there!” Was all the advice Lorraine could give before Joe’s knife cut through the final thread of the tarp and sent both him and O’Grady careening to the ground below.

Joe hit the ground first and had the fortune of getting up before his adversary did, knife in hand. He felt the weight of that knife as he studied O’Grady and weighed the Irishman's life along with it.

“I don’t want to hurt you, O’Grady.” He said to the man who had once been his friend.

O’Grady rose to his feet and trained his eyes on Joe the way a predator tracks its prey, not the way one human looks at another. Instinctively Joe bolted, but O’Grady quickly pounced on him and sent the knife in his hand spinning into oblivion. Joe struck him blindly in the jaw with a strength he didn’t know he possessed and staggered to his feet, running into the smoky blackness that had once been downtown Tiny Town. Now it was a labyrinth of orange light and bodies, some alive and some not. He followed the sound of the crowd until he reached a main street as the world grew steadily hotter. Hoping that the confusion of the crowd would help him shake O’Grady he ran head on into the chaos and let it swallow him.

He could see nothing now. When the world wasn’t on fire it was blotted out by smoke and ash. Joe couldn’t be sure if he was nearing the other side of the city or not, so instead he simply did what he did best: he ran. Down the winding maze of burning streets, he ran. Into the starless dark, he ran. Past the streetlamps that had long gone out, he ran. He wove through the panicked citizens until finally he reached the wooden fence that enclosed the far side of Tiny Town.

It was a dead end. Turning around, he saw that he was now surrounded by fire with no way out. Nonetheless, his feet kept on moving, he jogged left and right over and over, looking for some opening, some opportunity to get to safety.

The crashing sound ahead of him didn’t stop his running, neither did the shaking of the earth, the screeching of the tires, or the headlights of the motor car. Even the wooden fence falling away like ancient ruins struck down by an angry god wasn’t enough to stop him. Joe didn’t stop moving until he saw exactly who it was that had crashed that car into the burning city.

The figure of a giant stepped out and loomed above the burning buildings. Like a great beast of ancient legend it towered above the flames until the smoke parted to reveal…

“Harry!?”

Joe’s limbs turned to ice at the sight of him. The giant spotted Joe and immediately raced towards him, kneeling down, hands outstretched, his beautiful face haloed in the headlights like a creature otherworldly, and in any other universe this would have been the most romantic moment of Joe’s life.

This, however, was the universe where Herman Avery had put Joe in a jar mere hours ago, so instead of leaping into those hands and riding off into the morning light he stopped short and stared up at the giant who he no longer knew.

“Joe, come on! We don’t have much time!” The giant pleaded.

Joe stayed put. He watched the fingers as they shook and twitched, frozen in terror, as sirens wailed in the distance.

“Please come with me, Joe! I’m sorry. About the jar, about the interview, about everything!”

The fire surged above and the second sky was engulfed faster than lightning strikes, casting an apocalyptic glow over the two of them. The sight of the giant backlit by the headlights like some colossal monster overwhelmed him completely. He took one step back, then two. No amount of apologies would fix this, Joe knew, and upon that realization the imaginary thread that had once bound the two together frayed down to its final thread. When Herman's hand shot desperately towards him as if to grab him it snapped completely.

Joe turned and ran just as two of the buildings that were burning down beside Herman also snapped completely. They fell towards each other, crashing over the giant’s back and pinning him to the ground, his nose inches away from Joe.

Joe stopped and turned to look back out of morbid curiosity. He watched as the giant, with all his mighty strength, struggled beneath the weight of the wood and kept on crawling in Joe’s direction like a desperate hunter.

“Please, Joe! Please come home! Come back! I’ll do whatever you ask me to, just--please don’t do this!” Begged Herman, and whether the tears in his eyes were the result of smoke or desperation Joe could not be certain. His heart tore at the pain in the giant’s eyes, but he still couldn’t find it within himself to draw closer to him.

That was when the still-living townies decided to take their chances by running over top of the giant to freedom. They raced forward in Joe’s stead, but Joe, his trust in giants still freshly broken, dodged them as he darted the other way, into the light of the fire and the heat that outmatched any oven as soot filled his lungs. He ran like a thing untamed, straight into the mouth of this hell of humanity’s own making.

Joe ran, though he understood not what he was running from, and neither did he understand what he was running towards. As the smoke obscured his vision he had no idea that waiting for him within the chaos and the darkness was Tim O’Grady, whose hand clutched a knife and whose ears recognized the sound of the giant’s voice.

Joe Piccoli had never seen war. What he was about to see would be much worse than that.

For you, the reader, and for me too, for neither of us are above the behaviours depicted herein. Next chapter coming someday.

#divorce era #:(

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