Hello, my friends and the occasional relative!

My series of old ideas rolls on. #1 here, #2 here. # 3 and #4 I will not link today, maybe later. You can find them here, easily enough. These are scraps of writing I have mostly probably discarded as the basis for a larger story (one I will share I still have hopes to use – will you guess which one?), but think are worth letting folk have a random look at. I do of course assert full copyright control over these story ideas.

This week is something I sat down and committed to screen 14 years ago. November 22nd. It does not seem that long to me. I was thinking about pulp fantasy ideas, and this one said hello. I hope you like it.

If someone wants to use this as a prompt, or continue the story as they wish, they have my permission to do so, provided I am credited for the portion I share below.

The Salt Miner’s tale

‘I have been here long, a long time. I was a young man, it seemed, for many years, and after that a strong man for many years more. The mines are cruel, 8 men of 10 die within 2 years, and yet I have been here long enough to become old and withered and wiry, but I can still work, and here you work until you cannot, and then you die.

‘Now I am old, and no longer the best saltman, but I have a place: the overseer of the mine values my skill, my knowledge: how to find the best seam, the weakness in the salt, where best to place the chisel, how to strike. Now I instruct the new, show them how best to serve our masters, how to most efficiently mine the salt. It keeps me alive this little while longer, down here in this dry hell.

‘You are new here, and I see in your eye the restless yearning for freedom. Once I shared that look, once long ago. There is not an inch of these mines I do not know, there is little I have not seen. Many men before you have sought freedom, no-one has succeeded. The only release is death. The only time your body sees the sky is when your corpse is taken by the guards up the main shaft and out of the mine.

‘Do not try to feign death: every corpse gets a guard’s sword thrust before leaving, just to be sure. Some have gone mad, attacked and killed guards before themselves being cut down, others have tried to organize rebellion, but the overseer can seal the mine, and leave us to starve or choke as the fumes overcome us with the vents above closed. Once I dreamed, as most here do I suppose, that beyond the next block of salt I freed I would see dirt, or grass, or light and sky. We allow ourselves this delusion, for all know the main shaft, the only way in or out, is sunk many fathoms down, so we lie to ourselves and hope for a strange hillside, or a cliff on the outside that we shall accidentally strike. I remember miles of plains, and dreary low hills beyond, but still with every strike I hope to reveal a hole in a sea cliff, gulls screaming and surf pounding against stone and sand. Oh how I wish it. But I know it cannot be true. The salt teaches you to hope for impossibilities. You recently had your freedom, you recently were above ground, you know there is no such near cliff, or sea, but in time you will dream of it all the same, use it to keep working the salt. You will hear the gulls screaming.

‘There was another like you, mightily thewed, and of a restless intelligent mind. He watched and waited, and one day killed five guards, including one of his own size – he donned that one’s armour, mutilated his face, and then tried to mingle with the reinforcing guards and escape up the shaft with those sent to dispose of the corpses. I saw the lift take him up, dragging the body of the one he had killed. I had hope, until he was thrown back down the shaft, still in his stolen armour, shattered and broken against rock and salt, a warning to all of us who had thought anyone could escape.

‘I know what you now think – that I am but an agent of the overseer, telling you this tale to discourage you. How else without the overseer’s protection could I survive? Others have thought as you, and many beatings have I taken, painful and hard to withstand. It is true I avoid going now to areas of the mine where I can be ambushed, or am too far from the guards – to the other prisoners this seals my appearance of guilt. No, I simply wish to live, and I will not be killed by men who will die before me in these mines because of their misplaced suspicions. I am here because of my skill with the salt, and my endurance, and my seeming acceptance of my fate.

‘I shall not see the sky again. I will die here, I know that, and it will be soon. My only victory, (I would like to say revenge, but there is no vengeance, only release), my only victory will be to die quietly, without pain. To go to sleep on my pallet and not wake – that would be my victory: to not die in pain or fear, not in a collapse, or at the hands of the guards or my fellow prisoners. It would be a small thing, but mine.

‘I am foolish to even hope for that much. Stranger, I wish you luck, but all I can offer is instruction in how best to mine the salt. I cannot help you to gain freedom. It does not exist here.’