It's Part of the Job

"Come on, you lazy lump, out of bed!" A blunt tree branch that served as his father's walking stick jabbed Saisha in the ribs. The misty cloud of his dream dissipated and with it all of the beautiful colors, scenery, and girls. He rubbed his eyes and when he opened them he was greeted by his father's grey-yellow teeth snarling at him. Grey hair poked out of his nose and ears and, when Saisha tried to look away from the grotesque sight, all he saw were the grey stone walls of his carved out room.
"Fine, I'm up." His shortness was rewarded with another poke in the ribs. The grumpy old man went into the next room, leaving Saisha some privacy. He hobbled to the corner of the room, half-asleep and sore. He took the lid off of a small metal bucket and urinated into it, then recovered it, hiding the rank smell. It was nearly full and he would probably have to dump it today; if his father saw it, he'd make Saisha carry and dump his bucket too. He left his bedroom, holding the bucket by its curved wire handle, hidden behind his back. His father was sitting cross-legged on the floor, dipping his gravelly bare hands into a bowl full of yellow muck and spooning it into his mouth. He swallowed quickly when he saw Saisha. His mouth widened into a grin with muck dripping from what few teeth he had left.
"Oh it's cleaning day, is it?" His father hopped up and ran to his room. He was spry for his age; Saisha didn't even have that advantage over him. He came back with a bucket twice the size of Saisha's, but just as full. He had lost the lid long ago – the only reason he didn't take Saisha's lid was because it wouldn't fit – and Saisha felt his legs go weak as the smell wafted towards him. He held out his hand and his father dropped the handle of the bucket into it, purposefully letting it slosh around and nearly escape its metal confines. With both hands full, his father saw an opportunity.
"Here, you'll need your energy today." He lifted the bowl he was eating from, a white cracked thing that had probably been carved from a dead animal's skull, and poured it into Saisha's face. Some of the muck made it into his mouth but most of it dripped down the front of his overalls. He wasn't sure which was worse. There was a hard slap on his back, which nearly made both buckets overturn, and he knew it was time to get going. His father heaved the large boulder out of the doorway and complained the whole time that Saisha should be doing this. They moved into the tunnel and he closed the door while Saisha waited.
"What are you waiting for, you know the way, daft boy." His father shook his head. Saisha wondered when exactly all his common decency had been destroyed. He walked fairly quickly and tried not to spill the buckets but it was hard with his father whining behind him. He passed Saisha the first time the tunnel widened. Later, when he had almost lost sight of his father, he heard him call out.
"I'm going ahead to shaft K, go dump the buckets in P and I'll meet you there." It would've almost sounded polite, if Saisha didn't know the unsaid threat that lay underneath his words. If he wasn't there to meet him soon, his father would fake throwing out his back and Saisha would have to do all the day's work himself. He rushed until he saw a big white P carved into the wall. They labelled all the shafts alphabetically, and were only up to K. His father renamed one of the older shafts, one that hadn't produced any minerals, to P. He thought it was a funny joke, considering that's where they would empty their buckets from then on. Saisha dumped his over first, then held his nose with his free hand as he dumped his father's bucket. He left the empty buckets in the main tunnel then ran to catch up with his father. Down in K he ran straight into the man's back, in the darkness.
"Quiet, you idiot." he huffed. Ahead of them, in what should've been complete darkness, was a sea of blue crystals scattered along the ground. Each one illuminated a spot around itself like a torch, though the color was blue, not red.
"Let's collect them! Imagine if we didn't have to pay for torches anymore." A flat third of their profit was deducted to pay for torches, oil and wood supports. Saisha thought if they used these crystals for light they could avoid that tax.
"I said quiet!" His father shouted, and for the first time Saisha realized he wasn't moving. Little white creatures, no bigger than his fingers, were crawling over his father. He looked at one crawling along his arm. Thin legs ended in thinner paws, that suctioned them to his skin and clothes. Occasionally it would lift its head and bob, as if it was sniffing the air, though it had no nose. In fact, the whole face seemed to be one smooth shape, only dented by the eyes. Where normal eyes should have been were instead perfect hexagonal blue crystals. Now that Saisha noticed them, he figured there must be at least three dozen crawling on his father.
"We're going to both back away slowly, and..." His father's sentence was interrupted by his own scream. The face of the one Saisha was studying suddenly broke apart. The smooth shape cracked like an egg, revealing sharp teeth. It and its brothers began taking huge bites out of the man. Saisha tried to swat them away as his father fell to the tunnel floor but more appeared from behind every crystal. They came at him like a wave and there was nothing he could do but run. He climbed the ladder of shaft K. The creatures followed him, their sticky feet letting them walk up the sides of the shaft so that Saisha was completely surrounded as he climbed. He emerged back in the main tunnel and took a quick glance behind him. The creatures had stopped. Saisha squinted at them for minutes before he figured out why they stopped. The main tunnel was always lit by torches so no one got lost. The light from the crystals was a soft glow, but the torches gave off a more brilliant flickering light that seemed to frighten the creatures. Saisha grabbed a torch from the wall and threw it down the tunnel. The creatures let go of the wall and flung themselves down and away from its light. He grabbed a few unlit torches from a pile that sat beneath every lit torch, as spares. He tossed them down as well, then descended the ladder with one more lit torch in hand, in case any of the creatures were still in the shaft. Once he was down in the tunnel he lit more torches and set them up in a path towards the crystals. The crystal-eyed creatures skittered away. He searched and searched – though he wasn't sure why – but his father was nowhere to be found. Saisha sat near one of the now unprotected crystals and pulled at it. It came up easily, only sitting loose in the dirt. Saisha had expected to have to swing quite hard yet carefully to free the crystals, so when it came loose he couldn't help the smile that crossed his face. He filled his pockets as full as they would go, stuck a couple more in his shoes, then one big one in his mouth, and climbed the ladder. He deposited them all in front of shaft A, the only shaft that led up, and hit the bell on the side of the wall. A thin electrical wire led all the way up to the surface. Within seconds he heard the rumble of the elevator. The bell shouldn't've been rung for another week, when their shipment was due, so as Saisha expected, the men who came down the elevator were the businessmen, not the workers.
"What's going on here?" A man in a black suit stepped off the elevator. Two more identical men stood behind him, though they stayed silent.
"I've got a new product. Something you're going to want." Saisha pointed at the ground to the pile of glowing crystals. The businessman bent down and picked one up. His eyes went wide as he realized the potential. He grabbed Saisha by the shoulders.
"You absolutely must tell me where you got these!"
"Well, you see... we own this mine; we're not renters. I don't really have to tell you anything."
"Name your price then!" The businessmen couldn't keep the eagerness out of his voice and it cracked while he spoke.
"You hire workers to bring it up. You buy me a house on the surface. And we split the profits, eighty twenty." Saisha tried to speak calmly. He was sure this offer was too much, but his father had taught him to start high so that when they bid you down they felt like they came away with a deal. He almost thought he was asking a preposterous amount and that the businessman would leave.
"Of course! Anything else?" The businessman's arms were still on his shoulders and he could feel the man shake in anticipation.
"Ah... that's it, for now." Saisha couldn't think of anything else to say. The businessman turned around and whispered to the two men behind him. They each pulled out radios and spoke faster than anything Saisha had ever heard. The businessman turned back to him.
"So let's see, some details. This is the Evan mine, right? That must make you Saisha Evan?"
"That's correct."
"It says in this list that you work with your father, where is he?"
"I'm not sure. He's gone."
"Gone? Is he missing, dead, what?"
"Definitely missing, probably dead." The businessman blinked at Saisha's callousness.
"And you don't care?"
"My father wasn't the nicest man in the world. And besides, miners like us are used to accidents, it's part of the job."