"A New World Basement" by Alex Grass

Everything changed in a microscopic moment. It was between when the anesthesiologist began the trickly drip-plop-drop of propofol from the IV into my bloodstream, and waking up, I believe.

I came to, on a gurney behind a curtain like a bedsheet. The world sounded different. Everything looked the same, but there was an ineffaceable ring tone sound.

It was dull and distant, an unbroken bloop—like the noise electric stovetops make when you set the pan down wrong on a burner.

The discharge nurse brought me my papers, and everything seemed as usual. Except, the last page said: DO YOU AGREE THAT FAILURE TO PAY YOUR BILL MAY RESULT IN DEBTORS’ PRISON AND/OR SERVICE IN A WORK COLONY? 

I wasn’t even able to choose. There was only a box, with the reply already Xed out: YES ⌧

I left the hospital and saw a man begging for change right on the corner. This man didn’t have a typical beggar’s look of grizzled prophecy; his clothes were moth-bitten, but clean. “Please,” the beggar said, “I need money to buy back my daughter. They keep her in the Basement. But they don’t let me work!”

I was about to ask the beggar what the “Basement” was, but he was interdicted by two flatfoots—cops dressed not in their perennial navy blue, but attired all in black, their glossy boots better suited to goosestepping than patrol. Both the black-clad beatcops grabbed the beggar, one cop at each elbow, and started carrying him off.

“You can’t do this to me!” the beggar screamed. “How can I get the money to get her out if I can’t even work?”

One of the cops took out a black aluminum tire thumper and walloped the beggar over the head. I heard the sick crack and gush of a split skull. The cop who’d swatted the beggar didn’t smile, didn’t even appear to be able to emote, but the other one grinned as he squatted down next to the beggar: “You ain’t supposed to get her out. You ain’t supposed to earn money. You’re supposed to listen.”

I don’t think the beggar was physically capable of listening any longer; the metal tire thumper had rendered that faculty obsolete.

The black-clad beatcops saw me and I ran. They laughed and laughed, and in between their hooligan guffawing, they took wild, swinging kicks at the ribs of the beggar, whose head was pink and red and who didn’t move other than when he was kicked.

I passed several intersections, and at every one I saw black-clad beatcops listening to their two-way radios, all of them staring at me, smiling. They began to yell, “The Basement!”, or, “No payment, send him to the basement!” I didn’t know what they meant. I didn’t want to know.

And then I saw a door hidden behind an alleyway dumpster. I opened it and ran inside. But my feet didn’t find the floor. Instead, I fell—and I kept falling—down, down, down, into the deep, deep dark.

Alex Grass was born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and three kids. His recent work has appeared in Flash Phantoms, Maudlin House, and Trembling With Fear. His last novel, A Boy's Hammer, was selected for inclusion in Kirkus Reviews' Best Books of 2022.