Chapter 1 – Stacked shelves

'Trestle's and son'.
The sign read clear, as if painted, replaced and cared for most of all; where each letter could be a sign of its own; in stature, size and font. All in a glorious gold coloured paint which reflected the dwindling sun in dazzling pillars of liquid light. The streets were oil painted, a canvas, where each bench and each light post seemed meticulously placed, drawn, solid on a background of skyscrapers and low cutting air balloons. 'Do you strive for a body like this?'; flown above what could only be confused civilians, as there was no tag line, no number, no logic. Just the blimp which trailed it lazily through the sky, and the awe it inspired.

By the time of 9 pm, the city streets were dead. But not in a rotting way, in a way that it was perfectly cremated. Ash.
There were signs of life, crisp packets, birds in the wind, distant laughter and talking; a teddy bear sat upon a thrown of solidarity, where it overlooked the cramp back alleys between commercial buildings. The overfilled garbage bins; and their spewing mouths as they puked expired foods and rubbish.

But despite the silence, instilled with the white physique of the streets, a clamour lay in the dark.
Where away from the painter's white brush, away from his canvas, a line of streets lay crafted between factories and police stations.
Signposted 'Dead end', it housed the unsavoury, the work force that toiled through the long hours of the night. Policed and monitored by the only two exits, skinny gaps that slid through the grasp of the tightly wound buildings, no exit was without permission. It lacked paint; a cavern of bare brick and black stains indistinguishable from the shadow, where everyone was unnamed. Or a number.

The accommodations offered were cramped and un-forgiving. 5x5 metres per room, shared toilets with insatiable queues; where no-one got to use the toilet through the strict regime of 'work, sleep, repeat', an infinite queue that no-one could beat. Past the bustle of faces was the cafeteria; a room where poor catering was provided, and food was barely cooked as much as it was salted and boiled.

From one side of the 'street', past the iron glare of a bright green door, were the stairs. Which snaked upwards at least a mile high, opening onto floors and floor of cheap housing, cushioned by large billboards which also ran up the side of the slum. Covered and conveniently tucked from view. But it was not hidden or unknown. It was simply ignored.
This was the fate of an inferior race.

To be mimes in a pantomime of no-fur regime. Where they were concealed and forgotten about, where they were simply a sub-species.

Anthros, or 'Woollen' to those with a sense to keep their tongue; of the Kingdom of Slate, of the province of exploited vulnerability. Had long since been ruled by the no-fur and deemed a race of slaves.
Tools in the game of chess the industries played, they were cheap and expendable work, that needed little pay; and filled the vacancies that a rapidly expanding city so blatantly had.

'Trestle's and son'.
A place where Woollen were committed to menial back breaking jobs. Lifting pallets, stacking shelves, taking apart and reassembling anything. Whilst not as heavy as jobs in the factories and chemical plants, the hours were unforgivable. 13+ hours a day, with barely anything to show for it by the end of the day.   
Days wasted. But this day had only started.

Woollen approached the entrance of the building. Knives in tow.

The shop floor aisles melted into infinity, where each aisle of messy goods melted into each other, and each hour of sorting would dissolve into a hell of hunger, tiredness and pain. A sickening amalgamation of boredom and fear. Sten-Wig felt time force through his body, draining his life and tearing him apart. He was lanky, not rare for a Khamet, with a thin coat of black grey fur. On his forehead he was marked with a number, 74. It was the mark they bore, of acceptance of their haunted fate.

His tail was thick, with a soft coating of black fur, though it was scabbed towards the base, where less hair grew. Two perked ears which encapsulate a tribe of soft downy hair. His left eye was covered by a light brown patch, complimenting his bright blue eyes and brooding gaze.
He wore the uniform of a woollen worker, bright colours, mainly blues, where the no-furs would wear red. This made it just that much more obvious when looking from afar. 

Sten-Wig, of an educated background (lessons from his late father), often found himself lost in his thoughts, and they were his only joys.

The number 74 often dwelled on his mind; it was his identity, and it defined him, like it defined the others of his race and in similar enslavement.

His neighbour in the next aisle, multiplied by the janitor and the total subtracted from the plumber boy, made him. Sten-Wig. The number.
Is that all I am? Part of an equation. Means to justify the product of a sum; contemplated by a 'mathematician' or some unjustified power.

His mentality had been numbed by the day's work, and he felt his hands slow to a crawl as he made multiplications of people's lives. He realised his mistake and hurriedly resumed work at a brisk enough pace.

Echoing down the hallway, Sten-Wig heard the footsteps. The approach of his races captors, the crack of hatred and vitriol as it shouted down at one of his friends, he heard the footsteps as they paced towards the back corner of the shop, where he worked, and he felt the presence pass behind him.

Blood hot with anticipation, he tensed the base of his tail, and lay it flat on the polished tiles; ensuring it was an inconvenience to reach. It was a common punishment, cruel and certainly painful, pulling on the tail of a Khamet; the race of cat like creatures; unpractised since the reign of the Shavoo empire, almost 200 years before.

Even being 3 weeks since his last punishment, scabs still clung to the short fur clamping the base of his tail, attaching it to his body. The no-furs had made the land theirs, and without mercy they had established themselves as Gods, industry and slavery the tools of their piracy.

The clocks had been the first things to go, introduced, amongst other technologies, when first contact had been made with the no-furs, they had welded with their lives. However, the no-furs saw an advantage in exploiting the un harvested work force and had arrived with metal vehicles which spat fire; and hand held cannons which made a bloody mess of any who stood strong still. What had once guided the working days of the Kingdom, threatened to inhibit moral, and limit the realistic working hours in a day. Luckily to the no-furs, time was still a construct; and without the clocks the long working hours were barely noticed, 13 hours a day at-least, 7 days a week. Time dragged on, and the constant abuse the animals suffered ensured that even counting the hours was a hard task.

This is not to say that it wasn't achieved. An author, F.U Anon, published a book, all under the crude analogy of mice and water voles, which made serious topical comments about the 'fluid society', an obvious reference to 'Salt water city' and the numerous factories and chemical foundries which were essentially no more than work camps. It counted off obvious and unobvious injustices, naming the mice as the rulers, and the water voles as the sub-servant race; it was a foot note on a later chapter that the average working day was 13 hours. Completely seemingly irrelevant, but with so much weight, this one line, a chapter to the people it inspired, incited the Norman Brook massacre. Where the workers of a chemical foundry, trapped and gassed the no-fur command in a tight broom cupboard, and after each consecutive gassing, the bodies were dragged past the neat queues, and the next 2 no-furs were passed into hell.

 The first 14 chapters of the 20 chapter book seemed innocent enough, with fluid diamond rivers and green expansive canopies, the last 6 chapters, 26,340 words in total, used each word to effect. 200 of the 26 thousand words were 'oppressors', 12 of these words were 'mentally strong, physically weak', and the book clearly had purpose to incite a rebellion. More obviously so that synonyms of the word 'rebel' appeared, 130 times.
Currently the only book of its type, it was made incredibly illegal, and the mundane punishment of tail pulling and cutting, led way to higher cuts. Until it was no-fur sport to slit the throat of any 'Woollen' (A derogative term referring to any citizen non-no-fur.) who read the book, 'The mouse and the vole' or rebelled against their 'mouse' oppressors.

(To say that it was simple game hunting would be an understatement, a drastic one. Executions were broadcasted live, and spot checks, spontaneous, were common in the slums, built to be closest to factories and industries for easy and cheap transport between them. It also insured any single business was never too far away to send security to do some chopping, if there was evidence of tardiness.)

Since release, the publishing company of no-furs, clearly too occupied to read the woollen fiction crap before their rapid publish, were all sacked; 'The cave path' they were called. With a crude drawing of a mountain path skirting into the mouth of a gaping cliff as their logo. It had become a symbol, and instances of cave path graffiti had become instrumental to the rebel movement which raged in the East.

Sten-wig had only seen one such graffiti, and it had nearly cost him his hands.

 He allowed his eyes to glance down at the shelves he stacked, no-fur food, sweets and savouries; even woollen meat. He glanced at a jar of white slop, and saw in the reflection, a silhouette of a no-fur bending down behind him; his hands hadn't been working fast enough.

Sten-wig felt the pull on his tail; and the sharp surge of pain which shot up his spine. From the coarse feel of the hands on his tail, and how hard they pulled, he knew the face of his pain. A short stocky no-fur called Grenwell, whose family had been killed in the Woollen rebellion; he 'worked' every Wednesday, and his only purpose seemed to be to torture. Sten-Wig tried to keep his body grounded, but he felt his back paws lift of the floor and he was dragged kicking into the middle of the aisle. Sten-Wig caught the glint of steel in Grenwell's pocket, and the sick smile that was plastered across his face. The muzzle slipped out freely, and Sten-Wig had no choice, for the sake of the blood in his veins, to comply, as the muzzle was slipped over his head.

Sten-Wig reasoned that his death would already have been assured and dealt with; and his walk to work through the slum would have been far more unpleasant if his copy of F.U Anon's book had been discovered. Crudely stuffed into the false bottom of his wardrobe, it was not exactly hidden. His relief was drowned by kicking and shouting as Grenwell wore his family in his fists, and battered them into Sten-Wig's side; with a non-surprising lack of passion. He felt Grenwell tear at his ears, which he wore batted to his head, folding and twisting them; until tears were brought to his eyes and he begged for the pain to stop.

The muzzle was a cruel device. Not in that it caused physical pain, not that it maimed or hurt; but in that it had a tendency to encourage complete panic. The muzzle was a tightly bound steel cocoon of metal, where the Woollens snout fitted into the sleeve, and the device was tied behind the head. From two small holes at the end of the piece, breathing was stunted and raspy; as the mouth was unable to open and the nose was restricted.

The idea of the device was to encourage the woollen to work; as it would only be removed once they had satisfied the discontents of the no-fur.
Because of this, Sten-Wig was keen to return back to work. Where for another hour he continued to stack the shelves, sorting through crisp packets and organising pin heads. He danced to death's tune, as he worked for his life, the clinking sound of metal melodising in his ears.

Not for the first time since he had been assimilated into this life; he imagined a perfect world, like the one that his parents had told him about; where there were no no-furs and the Woollen were still Anthros. He stifled a growl as he heard someone approach from behind him, completely oblivious to the danger that he was in.

He first felt the wire wrap loosely around his neck, he mused that it fitted like a necklace, but second to this he felt it pull hard on his throat, it fit like a noose. Truly Sten-Wig never understood why the no-fur was garrotting him to death, but Grenwell did. At least the parts of him that weren't leaking onto the floor.

Rebel leader Arthur Breach, a Khamet like Sten-Wig was, but impressively black, had led an excursion from the slums, and to the market. Their target was a murderer and sadist. Grenwell, last name not disclosed. Arthur and three others, of similar dissent, had led the party of 7 inside of the market; armed with knives stolen from the kitchens; and despite the soft faces of each and every one of them, the Khamets especially, they hadn't exactly been cute and cuddly when they ran their blades across the throats of each and every no-fur worker in sight. They killed indiscriminately; and had managed to cut open Grenwell alarmingly close to where Sten-Wig worked.

This was why the no-fur was attempting to kill Sten-Wig, because of the most obvious assumption that can be made, when you find a dead body less than 7 metres away from a Woollen stained in blood and with a muzzle. For the worker who was strangling him with a shoelace, this was his duty. He couldn't have known that there were more bodies, too many bodies for any single Woollen to have conquered. Not since he had only just arrived from the warehouse, and had stuck to the back wall when he had found the body. He was oblivious to the Khamet which approached from behind him, and not saw, but felt the knife as it sprinted across his throat.  

The pressure relieved on Sten-Wig's throat, as the workers final action of dominance melted into gurgles and groans, as he sang bloody murder to spare his life.

When even this melody dissolved into the silence of the market, the rebel pulled Sten-Wig up by his arm, removed the muzzle using a silver key, bloodied, from Grenwell's body.

Sten-Wig saw Arthur Breach for the first time, the way he held himself, and the way he wore blood nonchalantly, sprayed over his hands, and making muddy of his complexion. His face wore evidence of age, grey hairs which sprouted from the black silken fur covering his face. Bright green eyes and perky ears, he looked more like a member of a boy band than a rebel. From one shoulder, padded with a leather piece, to his left hip, was rope, knotted and inexplicable in purpose. Etched onto his knife was a tally, which read and reeked like death, as the scent of blood washed over Sten-Wig's senses.

The water vole mask, a product of the rebellion, hung from his hip.

The cave path.

“Come" The rebel beckoned him to walk. “We must go…"