Metabolism - Scott Nicholson

Metabolism - Scott Nicholson, ebook

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Metabolisma short story by Scott NicholsonThe city had eyes.It watched Elise from the glass squares set into its walls, walls thatwere sheer cliff faces of mortar and brick. She held her breath, waitingfor them to blink. No, not eyes, only windows. She kept walking.And the street was not a tongue, a long black ribbon of asphalt flesh thatwould roll her into the city's hot jaws at any second. The parking meterpoles were not needly teeth, eager to gnash. The city would not swallowher, here in front of everybody. The city kept its secrets.And the people on the sidewalk- how much did they know? Were they enemyagents or blissful cattle? The man in the charcoal-gray London Fogtrenchcoat, the Times tucked under his elbow, dark head down and hands inpockets. A gesture of submission or a crafted stance of neutrality?The blue-haired lady in the chinchilla wrap, her turquoise eyeliner makingher look like a psychedelic raccoon. Was the lady colorblind or had sheadopted a clever disguise? And were her mincing high-heeled steps carryingher to a midlevel townhouse or was she on some municipal mission?That round-faced cabdriver, his black mustache brushing the bleached pegof his cigarette, the tires of his battered yellow cab nudged against thecurb. Were his eyes scanning the passersby in hopes of a fare, or was hescouting for plump prey?Elise tugged on her belt, wrapping her coat more tightly around her waist.The thinner one looked the better. Not that she had to rely on illusion.Her appetite had been buried with the other things of her old blind life,ordinary pleasures like window shopping and jogging. She had once traveledthese streets voluntarily.Best not to think of the past. Best to pack the pieces of it away like oldtoys in a closet. Perhaps someday she could open that door, shed somelight, blow off the dust, oil the squeaky parts, and resume living. Butfor now, living must be traded for surviving.She sucked in her cheeks, hoping she looked as gaunt as she felt. The wispof breeze that blew up the street, more carbon monoxide than oxygen, wasnot even strong enough to ruffle the fringe on the awning above thatshoeshop. But she felt as if the breeze might sweep her across the brokenconcrete, sending her tumbling and skittering like a cellophane candywrapper. Sweeping her toward the city's throat.She dared a glance up at the twenty-story tower of glass to her right.Eyes, eyes, eyes. Show no fear. Stare the monster in the face. It thinksitself invisible.What a perfectly blatant masquerade. The city was rising from the earth,steel beams and guywire and cinderblock assembling right before theirhuman eyes. Growing bold and hard and reaching for the sky, always bigger,bigger. How could everyone be so easily fooled?Forget it, Elise. Maybe it reads minds. And you don't want to let it knowwhat you're up to. You can keep a secret as well as it can.She turned her gaze down to the tips of her shoes. There, just like a goodcity dweller is supposed to do. Count the cracks. Blend in. Be small.Ignore the windowfront of the adult bookstore you pass. Don't see theleather whips, the rude plastic rods that gleam like eager rockets, theburlesque mockery of human flesh displayed on the placards. And the nextwindow, plywooded and barred like an abandoned prison, "Liquor"hand-painted in dull green letters across the dented steel door beside it.All to keep us drugged, dazed with easy pleasure. Elise knew. If it let ushave our little amusements, then we wouldn't flee. We'd stay and graze onlust and drunkenness, growing fat and sleepy and tired and dull.She flicked her eyes to the sky overhead, ignoring the sharp spears of thebuilding-tops, with their antennae for ears. The low red haze meant thatnight was falling. The city constantly exhaled smog, so thick now that thesun barely peeped down onto the atrocities that were committed under itsyellow eye. Even from the vigilant universe, the city kept its secrets.Elise felt only dimly aware of the traffic that clogged the streets. Notstreets. The arteries of the city. The cars rattled past, with raspybreath and an occasional growl of impatience. In the distance, somewhereon the far side of the city, sirens wailed. Sirens, or the screams ofvictims, face-to-face with the horrible thing that had crouched aroundthem for years, cold and stone-silent one moment but alive and hungry thenext.Can't waste pity on them. The unwritten code of city life. Inbredindifference. Ignorance is bliss. A natural social instinct developed fromdecades of being piled atop one another like coldcuts in a grocer'scounter. Or was the code taught, learned by rote, instilled upon them by astern master who had its own best interests at heart?And what would its heart be like? The sewers, raw black sludge snakingthrough its veins? The hot coal furnaces that huffed away in basements,leaking steam from corroded pipes? Or the electrical plant, a Gorgon's wigof wire sprouting from its roof, sending its veins into the apartments andoffice towers and factories so that no part of the city was untouched?Or was it, as she suspected, heartless? Just a giant meat-eating cementslab of instinct?She had walked ten blocks now. Not hurriedly, but steadily and withpurpose. Perhaps like a thirty-year-old woman out for a leisurely stroll,headed to the park to watch from a bench while the sun set smugly over thejagged skyline. Maybe out to the theater, for an early seat at asecond-rate staging of Waiting For Godot. Not like someone who was tryingto escape.No. Don't think about it.She hadn't meant to, but now that the thought had risen from the murkyswamp of subconsciousness, she turned it over in her mind, mentallyfingering it like a mechanic checking out a carburetor.No one escaped. At least no one she knew. They all slid, bloody and softand bawling, from their mother's wombs into the arms of the city. Fed onlove and hopes and dreams. Fed on lies.She had considered taking a cab, hunching down in the back seat until thecity became only a speck in the rear-view mirror. But she had seen thefaces of the cabbies. They were too robust, too thick-jowled. Such as theyshould have been taken long ago. No, they were in on it.And she had shuddered at the thought of stepping onto a city bus, hearingthe hissing of the airbrakes and the door closing behind her like asquealing mouth. Delivering her not to the outskirts, but to the belly ofthe beast. They were city buses, after all.Walking was the only way. So she walked. And the night fell around her, inbroken scraps at first, furry shadows and gray insubstantial wedges.Lights came on in the buildings around her, soft pale globes and amberspecks and opalescent blue stars and yellow-green windowsquares. Prettybaubles to pacify the masses.She felt the walls slide toward her, closing in on her under the cloak ofdarkness. Don't panic, she told herself. Eyes straight ahead. You don'tneed to look to know the scenery. Sheer concrete, double-doors droolingwith glass and rubber, geometrical orifices secreting the noxiouseffluence of consumption.She thought perhaps she was safe. She was thin. But her sister Leanna hadbeen thin. So thin she had been desired as a model, wearing long sleekgowns and leaning into the greedy eye of the camera, or preening inbathing suits on mock-up beaches in highrise studios. So wonderfullywaifish that she had graced the covers of the magazines that lined thecheckout racks. Such a fine sliver of flesh that she had been lured to LosAngeles on the promise of acting work.They said that she'd hopped on a plane to sunny California, was loungingaround swimming pools and getting to know all the right people. Elise hadreceived letters in which Leanna told about the palm trees and open skies,about mountains and moonlit bays. About the bit part she'd gotten in amovie, not much but a start.Elise had gone to see the movie. She sat in a shabby, gum-tarred seat, thesoles of her shoes sticking to the sloping cement floor. There she'd seenLeanna, up on the big screen, walking and talking and doing all the thingsthat she used to do back when she was alive. Leanna, pale and ravishingand now forever young and two-dimensional.Oh, but putting her in a film could be easily faked, just like theletters. A city that could control and herd a million people would go tosuch lengths to keep its secrets. All she knew was that Leanna was gone,gobbled up by some manhole or doorway or the hydraulic jaws of asanitation truck.And she knew others who had gone missing. Out to the country, they said.Away on vacation. Business trips. Weddings and funerals to attend. Butnever heard from again. Some of them overweight,... [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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