By her third chicken leg, Kay would never consider unicorns cute and fluffy ever again. Every glimpse of gnarly stained sharp teeth revealed by those deceptively soft horse muzzles would haunt her dreams. If someone told her last week she would be engaged in the mortally dangerous act of horn polishing mythical creatures, she would have laughed herself sick. Now, she was trying not to throw up from the smell. Kay thought her nose would adjust to the odor, but within the hour, she fought to keep her eyes from tearing up at the potency of it.

The stench was a physical thing, the scent of rot and meat, old blood, piss, and a dozen other unseemly substances mingling in a soupy muddy mire stomped beneath dozens of hooves, coating their legs and flanks. A grotesque odor that had settled in and grown claws. It swiped at her every time she dared to breathe through her nostrils, and stung the back of her throat as she took short shallow breaths.

She felt light headed by the time Stanley slid off the last mare, thoroughly coated in horn dust and streaked with filth. The unicorns slunk low in the corners of the pen like a herd of wary jungle cats, their unsettling eyes watchful as the pair took their leave. Kay sucked in a deep lungful of the significantly fresher hallway air, coughing as the air conditioned chill caught in her chest. She glimpsed back at the herd as Stanley shut the door, unnerved when her gaze connected with the baleful glare of the roan.

Kay bit the inside of her cheek. "How can they live like that?"

Stanley glanced between her and the closed door, a vee crease in his brow, his confusion magnified by those ridiculous glasses he'd strapped to his face. He would probably be scratching his head if not for the grease and filth coating his fingers. "The unicorns?" He shrugged. "They don't seem to care about the mess. We had a cleaning crew for a while, but they kept mauling the groomers. Think they prefer it, honestly."

Kay doubted that. Okay, she didn't doubt the mauling part, but that stench practically burned the inside of her nose. "But do they live like that in the wild--"

"Listen, I am going to change real quick so we can finish the tour. Mind waiting here for a minute?"

From the odor coming off him, Kay couldn't really blame him, but she knew avoidance when she heard it. She gave Stanley a tight nod, who took off for the locker rooms in a wince worthy bow legged angle. Those unicorns had wide backs; poor guy probably had chafed thighs.

There wasn't much scenery to chew in the corridor of the Grid. To avoid pacing and counting rivets again, Kay reviewed the territories Stanley toured yesterday. The locking mechanism on the doors was sort of medieval, which made sense given what Tiny told her about the unfortunate fate of electronics, but the doors, aside from their reinforcement didn't seem all that secure. From this side, she couldn't see how a determined dragon couldn't nudge their way free, a rather uncomfortable thought. She was in the midst of imagining herself being trampled beneath vindictive unicorn hooves when Stanley emerged in a fresh uniform, hair wet from a quick wash.

"Hey Stanley, what keeps the unicorns in their pen?"

Stanley shook himself, tilting his head as if to rid it from water. "They're keyed in."

"Pardon?"

There was that damn vee again, creasing his brow. He waved his hand, as if her questions were a gnat buzzing in his face. "Magnetic locks. Magic immune." He wiggled his hip, where a fat ring of keys gave an obligatory jingle. So many keys, the ring had to weigh like ten pounds. How did he walk without sounding like a small out of tune brass band in these halls?

"Every cell has a key. Now, come on. Time to finish the tour," said Stanley. "We need to feed the pixies before noon or they get mighty testy."

Kay stumbled over her own feet. "Do they eat raw meat too?"

Stanley gave her a moon eyed look. "With those tiny mouths? They'd have to swarm a cow like a pack of piranhas."

Kay fought off the mental image of blue butts razing a cow to the bones as Stanley took off. She had to trot to keep up with his pace today, as he led her down through three more floors of the grid, everything from gnomes to manticores and every mythical beastie she'd never heard of filled the cells. Her head spun with names and designations, droning on repeat in Stanley's nasally voice. The cells were only labeled by number, the inmates blurring together that guaranteed a nasty surprise when it came to expectations. She wondered how she could possibly keep them all straight without some sort of map when the elevator dinged, opening on the final level. Stanley hit the open door button and jutted his chin outward. Unlike the other floors, the corridor here was considerably dimmer. Unlike the upper floors, this one was lit by intermittent torches that flickered and sputtered in a breeze that didn't reach the bright boxy sanctuary of the elevator. The torches cast soot stained shadows on the way and added to the dungeon-like atmosphere.

"And this here is the fifth floor, where we keep our high security inmates," he said. "Now, let's head back upstairs."

Kay shuddered, undeterred by Stanley's dismissal of the last level. "What's down here?"

Uh oh, the frowny face appeared. "Told you, it's the high security wing," said Stanley. "You won't need to deal with them until you've acclimated."

"Them?" Kay murmured more to herself than her tight lipped cohort. The other floors were crammed with inmates, but she didn't think that was the case here. Movement caught her gaze, a shape that flit between the torch shadows in flashes of blue. A loose pixie? She stared at it as the elevator doors slid closed, wondering if she should say something, but the figure paused on one of the brackets, illuminated by the flames.

What was a bluebird doing five floors underground? It had to be trapped down here. Kay started to reach for the elevator buttons when the bird launched from the bracket and retreated into the dank recesses of the corridor.

"Right, should have enough time for the pixies. You can help me carry the buckets."

Just like that, the bluebird was the last thing on her mind. "What's in the buckets?"

***

Kay stared down at her lunch tray.

She thought hauling buckets of live meal worms into a room of ravenous pixies would put her off food, like forever, but she was famished by the time she dragged herself into the elevator. She rode up to the commissary beside a far too energetic Stanley.

Her appetite evaporated when she got an eye at the offering. Fried chicken. Kay might have thrown up in her mouth a little. Stanley didn't appear to share the same aversion, loading up his tray with a selection of pieces and sides.

"Is there a vegetarian option?" Kay posed her hopeful question to one of the ladies behind the counter. The woman pursed her lips, no doubt ready to tell her off when Tiny appeared behind the counter in a hairnet and chef's apron.

"Who doesn't like fried chicken?" His crossed arms flexed, making the cooking tatts on his forearms quiver.

"How many jobs do you work here?"

"You're holding up the line." He nodded her aside.

Kay dropped out of line and followed him to the end of the buffet counter, where Tiny produced a saran wrapped salad from one of the half a dozen fridges. He placed it on her tray with a flourish. "Rough day?"

Kay thought she saw a glint of amused sympathy in his eyes, but from that height it was probably a trick of the light.

"Horn filing day," she said.

He winced. "Yikes. You ever need an alternate lunch option, flag me down, Ms. Oritz."

"Please, Kay is fine," she said.

"I suppose Tiny works for me," he said with a grin.

Kay squinted up at him. "I think Lunch Lady suits you better."

He laughed at that. "It might." Tiny's attention shifted to the line. "Oi! Switch out those potatoes!" The ladies scrambled to comply to the roar still ringing in Kay's ears.

"Thanks for the lunch save, Tiny," she said as she took her tray into the seating area. The commissary was packed, wall to wall, with men and women in suits at high long tables with raised black stool seats. Her hands tightened on the edges of her tray, keenly aware of the smears of pixie shit on the legs of her uniform.

Stanley sat at the end of one table, happy munching away at his fried chicken, seemingly oblivious to the wide berth of stools around him. The suits ignored him, and they ignored her as she sat down across from him.

It was clear, no matter how fantastical the circumstances, a basement gig was still the bottom of the totem pole.

Kay picked at her salad as she took advantage of her invisibility and studied the other employees of Fantasy Land INC. They all possessed the same well put together exterior, the corporate uniform of clothes that had to be pressed and dry cleaned by someone else. All of them, both men and women, ate their fried chicken with a fork and knife, in small polite bites. Maybe it was the way they wiped their mouths with a linen napkin after every mouthful, but the lot of them reminded Kay of her ex.

The Jerk would fit right in here.

Kay shook her head and picked at her salad. It wasn't a bad salad, though the crispy fried onions reminded her a little too much of meal worms. She stared long and hard to make sure they didn't move, but hunger finally won out. It was either feed herself or pass out in some creature's cell.

"So, no electronic devices, but we use elevators and electric lights?" Kay figured she could at least attempt conversation with Stanley, though questions seemed to slide off him like a greasy spoon.

He held up a finger and finished his mouthful, which Kay considered a point in his favor. "Call it selective muckery," he said. "They like to mess with cell phones and computers because they know it annoys us humans. But if they screw up the elevator, they don't get fed. If they mess up the lights, they get to sit in the dark too." He shrugged. "They're vindictive, not stupid."

Kay tapped her fork against the plastic bottom of her salad container. "I mean, they're prisoners. Can't really blame them."

Stanley sucked on his teeth with a loud 'tch'. "Think it would be better if we let them run wild?"

She stopped the automatic 'yes' before it left her lips, aware of how her supervisor stopped eating to give her his full attention. Maybe it wasn't such a good idea to unleash of herd of carnivorous unicorns on an unsuspecting population. Not all of the creatures here were aggressive predators, but they all had magic and decades of contained resentment. But that wasn't the reason Stanley watched her now and Kay knew it.

"No, of course not," she said. Stanley instantly relaxed. Kay wondered how long it would take 'HR' to show up at her door if she said otherwise. She doubted she'd even leave the building.

Still, creepy as the unicorns were, part of her, the part that wasn't freaking out, kinda felt sorry for them. And it wasn't just them.

The pixies flew in a constant circle in their cell, ceaseless movement like sharks. There were no visible perches but the floor, where more than one sad looking creature sat in a crumpled heap, their wings wrinkled or broken. If they stopped moving they dropped but there wasn't enough space for them to properly hover. They crashed into one another as they swarmed the feed buckets. Stanley didn't appear concerned by the ones on the floor.

"They'll get back up," was all he said in answer to her question.

Most of the pens were too small or too crowded for the creatures they housed. The centaurs huddled in a pen like the unicorns without enough room to run. The more cells they visited with buckets and bins of food, the more Kay noticed. The mermaids had no room in their tanks to do more than tread water, snatching the feeder fish as they sank with near feral movements.

"How long has this group of inmates been in here?"

Stanley appeared to have two modes, productive and puzzled. He blinked through his thick glasses at her. "What do you mean this group? I told you, the Grid was established in the eighteen fifties."

"Wait," Kay stopped mid way to dropping a fish in a mermaid tank. She shook the sardine at her supervisor. The female's pupils dilated as her eyes followed Kay's movements. "Are you telling me every inmate is nearly a hundred and seventy years old?"

"Naw," said Stanley, "I'm sure some of them were born after."

Kay stared at him until the mermaid slammed against the glass, gnashing her teeth. Kay hastily fed her the rest of the fish. The mermaid had been stuck in this too small tank for over a century? No wonder she was half crazy.

She must have looked troubled because Stanley clapped a fishy hand on her shoulder.

"Hey," he said. His magnified eyes darted behind the lenses as he leaned in. "We do the best we can. Try not to let the little things bother you." The warning couldn't have been more obvious if he ended that inspired pep talk with a conspiratorial wink. Kay fought not to roll her eyes.

"I need this job, Stanley," she said. A painful truth. This morning she'd cashed in a bag of soda cans for bus fare, which still felt like borrowing from her roomie, since Jess drank half a dozen Dr. Peppers a day. Even if she noticed conditions here weren't great, what the hell was she going to do about it? She wasn't even off probation yet.

A vague sense of discomfort cluttered her thoughts as helped Stanley wheel a wagon of ground beef into E block.

Least the dragons were predictably carnivores. Kay dutifully stood by the wagon as Stanley shoveled a serving into individual troughs at each cage. The dragons ranged from the size of a wild turkey to a small mobile trailer, and each of them seared their beef with a gout of flame before they gobbled it down. Who knew dragons preferred cooked meat?

There was a hiss and squeal of metal behind her. Kay stiffened and slowly turned around.

Dorothy crouched in her cage, her slit pupils wide. Was that a butt wiggle? There was a definite butt wiggle in the dragon's hind quarters. Kay locked eyes with the dragon, a tug of unease at the base of her spine. The sensible part of her wanted to flee.

"They can't get out of these cages, right?"

"Eh? Naw, reinforced tempered steel. Too much of a bother," said Stanley.

Kay relaxed a fraction. Dorothy's forked tongue slid out and tasted the air. In a very mature rebuttal, Kay flipped her off.

"Wouldn't make eye contact though," said Stanley. "They got a mean streak a mile long."

Kay didn't have time to dodge as Dorothy spat a fist sized fireball straight into her chest.