“When I arrived at the center of the city, I encountered a throng of people carrying around metal fittings and various other mechanical odds and ends. This time, I was a bit more careful about how I approached people, so I watched and waited. I soon discovered they were building a rollercoaster inside a skyscraper. It wound down from the top of the inside of the building, twisting into hallways, offices, up and down elevator shafts and stairwells, and presumably into the basement and maybe even the sewers. I could see the cars zoom past some of the windows, and I could faintly hear the joyful cries of the passengers. Soon, a ridiculous little absurdity began to wiggle around inside me—I desperately wanted to take a turn on the ride. But a derailed car filled with screaming riders came crashing out of a thirty-story window, so I decided to move along. At least, until the roller coaster was repaired.
“It didn’t take me much longer to figure out that the whole world had pretty much gone off the deep end, so I decided to find a quiet place to relax. I was about to sit down behind a dumpster and read from a damp fashion magazine I’d fished out of it when I heard something behind me. It was sneaker-woman, smiling so hard she made my face hurt. She just stood there like some kind of demented doll. After I don’t know how long, she put her hand out like she was checking to see if it was raining. Suddenly, across the entire city, it started raining bloody body parts.
“Twitching arms, blinking eyes, quivering livers—you name the body part, it fell all around me as I ran. The sharp slapping sounds of flesh meeting concrete punctuated the dull wet thump of bodiless heads hitting the ground. Blood splashed everywhere from the constant rain of limbs, and I was soon covered from head to toe in gore. I would have loved to ditch those damn slippers if I hadn’t needed them to run across the bloody pavement. Squish-squash, squish-squash, squish-squash!
“I looked back over my shoulder. She was still there, smiling, not so much as a drop of blood on her. I had no idea what she would do if she caught me. She was all of my height, which wasn’t saying much, and about the same build—again, not saying much. She didn’t have anything in her hands, no visible weapon at all, just a great big smile full of smoldering madness.
“As I ran, the bones of my mind were beginning to snap and rub together. Little bits of pain began to pop and crunch inside my head. The insanity that had taken hold of the world was trying to get to me, smashing its shoulder against the door of my mind, but something wouldn’t budge. Some piece of stubborn sanity had propped itself against the door, firmly holding it shut, forcing me into the role of a lost sunbeam wandering a night that wouldn’t end. I knew the woman had been sent for me.
“She was going to put me with all the other newly outdated relics—sunshine, morning strolls, coffee dates, and all the other staples of the previously ordinary world. I prayed for a breakdown, for my mind to split open and start spilling hordes of flying, headless clowns into the sky, but it just wouldn’t happen. That’s when I discovered one small sliver of notable change—I was hungry. I hadn’t been for weeks. I knew I wasn’t supposed to be. It wasn’t part of my script. I’m sure I was intended to busily pile dung beetles into mile-high pyramids or something crazy like that, but all I really wanted to do was eat.
“A falling foot hit me directly on the head, and I had to slow down. I stumbled into the doorway of a laundromat. The crashing of blood-soaked limbs beat a wicked rhythm on the roof. It was like God was using the top of the city as a gigantic bongo drum. I moved away from the large windows at the front of the place, giving me a far better view of the chaos outside than I was comfortable with. Namely, Sneaker Lady came strolling through the downpour.
“She just calmly walked toward the laundromat, smiling her nuttiness into a world already clogged with the stuff, staring at me through the gore and glass. The ‘rain’ still avoided her like the plague. As she moved closer to the windows, blood started dripping from the ceiling tiles, and the crashing of body parts onto the roof seemed to multiply. She didn’t even try to open the door, she just stopped in front of it and stuck her hand out again. It seemed like her smile was becoming brighter, more real. I know that’s a hard one to wrap your head around, but it was like her smile had been muted all along, barely visible from behind the thin plastic curtain of our cheap little reality. It was somehow burning its way through the divider, showing its true colors.
“Like a thunderbolt, a severed elephant’s head smashed through the roof, taking out the door, granting Sneakers access to the building. The woman stepped around the head, the arc of blood spraying from its still-flailing trunk always seeming to miss her. I screamed and ran out the back door.
“I ran until I crossed beyond the city and into the woods. The body parts were still coming down. The only real change was the sound. The loud smashing was replaced by the cracking and rustling of parts falling through the forest canopy—limbs falling through limbs, I guess you could say—and the softer thuds as they landed in thickets and underbrush.
“It wasn’t long before I found my salvation—a cave. I practically dove into the thing. I didn’t care who or what might’ve been in it, I just wanted to shut out the sounds of the rain. It was a huge cavern, going far deeper than I expected. I squish-squashed my way inside, hoping I would just dissolve into the darkness and be done with everything, once and for all.
“Well, I didn’t dissolve, but I did eventually collapse into a sobbing heap of blood-soaked ruin. And no, I wasn’t crying over my lost family, or the insanity that had replaced the world. I was crying because I had become so very hungry. It was like a blazing, ravenous fire growing inside my belly. To my surprise, I had almost unconsciously begun to stuff my mouth with whatever crawled across the dank floor. Spiders, salamanders, it didn’t matter—in they went. I did this for hours, until I was full. Soon after I was done gorging myself, I realized I wasn’t alone. There were other things down there with me.
“Animals of every stripe haunted the darkness around me. The poor things were horribly sad. The world had betrayed them. It had become unnatural, and so there existed no place for them. No place, that is, other than at the bottom of a cave, sharing their misery with a bug-eating human whose feet squelched when she walked. They just milled about or slumped against the rocks. I was perfectly safe, mind you, as even the biggest bears and cougars were in too much shock to consider eating me. We all sat down there for quite a while—I’d long given up trying to keep track of time—resting against one another, depressed. Eventually, it occurred to me to do the only thing I could think of to raise our spirits—I sang my little song.
“Now, I wasn’t much of a singer, but the words were easy to find, and my throat felt better, having eaten. The song just sprang out of me, and my new friends sang along with me. We sang louder and louder, harder and harder, longer and longer, until we were all screaming the words in the languages of both man and beast. What else could God sound like, if not the combined voices of his greatest creations?
“My Lord, did we ever dance and roar and spin! We were making such a ruckus, but we all thought, To hell with the end of the world! We’ll just sing until there’s nothing left of us!
“Now, who do you suppose showed up to try and spoil the party? Yup, Sneakers. I could see her by the light of our lovely song, still smiling, still crazy. Suddenly, I could feel the fire in my belly burning through my meal of worms and lizards. I smiled back at her, and I could feel my lips and teeth playing at the limit of my own newer, greater reality. We were still singing when we rushed her. Oh my, were we excited! We were just insane, I tell you! The foolish little thing had no idea what kind of a family we had become, what kind of song we were singing. We buried the woman under our combined weight.
“I was still singing when I ripped and tore at her with my thin painted fingernails. Yet there was something missing from my song, something that my new family had long understood, that my stomach had been burning for. Then it came to me—I plunged my teeth into the woman
’s chest and ate out her heart.
“You should have heard us howl! I was laughing and gorging at the same time, hugging and kissing my new family. The blood was everywhere, all over my clothes and hands, drizzling down the back of my throat. It was glorious! I was happy, and I was safe. I was home.
“I wasn’t scared anymore. I didn’t even miss the old world. In fact, I wanted nothing more to do with it. It’s surprising how quickly you can change when you have to. And that was just the beginning. We would change so much more by the time the rest of the world woke up. Speaking of change, I finally got rid of those lousy slippers. The red sneakers were a perfect fit.
“I found the world much more to my liking back then, when everything was simply meat and darkness. Even though I was built from Sunday shoes and daytime television, it was the absence of all those things that really cleared me up and put a good sharp edge on me. The Darkness made me aware of what I could be, showed me my calling, I guess you could say. But all that was just a big pile of dry kindling for the fire in my belly, a fire that was just as gigantic as was the world’s supply of thick, delicious meat. The fire burned so bright, I could actually see by it, for God’s sake. It was like the sun was all nestled up deep inside my guts, shining across the world through my hunger, letting me see through a spectrum of gluttony.
“My appetite proved contagious, too. Soon, it spread to my new family. It burnt away everything that wasn’t needed—eyes, fur, memories, and all other useless organs and systems. We were reborn in hunger, and we loved it. You know that feeling you get when you’re starving and finally take that first bite of your favorite food? Now imagine never being full, and sitting down to an infinite buffet table filled with all of your favorites, and just eating and eating and eating. That first glorious bite lasts forever, and we were like roaming voids, forever gnawing away at the world. Hell, I’d have swallowed the whole damn planet if only I could’ve opened my mouth wide enough.
“Eventually, I learned to detect all the empty mouths of the world, glowing like fires burning on faraway shores. I could see them below the earth, across the oceans, even hiding behind dull, lifeless eyes, salivating from salty tear ducts. I knew it was my job to fill them all up. Just by aiming my hunger, I could transform their desires into a single burning appetite for the soft whisper of sharp teeth gliding through tender meat, and the sweet streams of blood that slide along the tongue.
“I aimed my hunger at you. Sure, you tamped it down, but it’s still there, smoldering. I can see it plain as day. It’s never too late, you know. Go ahead and try me. I’m sure I’m delicious. You know what they say—the only thing better than raw is still screaming.
“No? Suit yourself, then.
“I’m surprised you haven’t gotten it by now. It’s hardly my fault. I’ve been forthright with you all along. But my life is only as long as my story, so I’m certainly not going to spell it out for you.
“Now, I couldn’t make everyone hungry, mind you, but you’d be surprised at just how many I converted to dedicated carnivores. Funny thing, hunger. Everything being equal, that’s all we really are—a collection of small, hungry mouths. I have a knack at consolidating them, is all. It feels like I’m making things right—putting all the teeth in a row, so to speak, where they all belonged from the very beginning.
“On second thought, I guess I shouldn’t be so judgmental of you. I didn’t get it right away either. And I suppose that brings my story right up to the close of the Darkness—when I realized what I was. It’s not that the epiphany meant much to me. I was too busy being what I was to really care about what I was, if that makes any sense.
“Anyway, my family and I were hunting the hollows of an old paper mill, where I knew lurked a thing made from meat and metal and paper and old ink. I’d seen it cross the black sky, one night. It flew on membranous paper wings, written all over with black pen. Besides being made from paper and black script, it was apparently also a creature of habit, making the same trip every time I spied it. After I watched it for the umpteenth time, I followed it as it sailed the skies on its written wings, dripping the sweetest-tasting ink you can possibly imagine.
“We were quite practiced at hunting by that time, but by no means had we grown so accustomed to hunting and killing and eating that we were bored with it. If anything, our song had become stronger, louder, and fiercer. We were all smiles and saliva when we crept up the elevator shaft. I remember our claws sinking into the steel walls, sounding like an army of madly-ticking clocks. When we reached the top of the building, where the roof had been smashed open to reveal the sky, all we found was this little frightened man. He lay face down, all tied up with rubber bands, inside what looked like a gigantic paper nest. His skin was covered in tiny messages, all of which were written in ballpoint. One of them written around his neck read, Twist counterclockwise and lift up.
“For some reason, he was barely visible to me. I’d known far more bizarre things by that time, so it was no cause for alarm. There was a hunger in him, but it was different, somehow. I didn’t think much on it. After all, meat was meat. As it turned out, I was wrong. The instant my teeth pierced his skin, I nearly threw up.
“I demanded the little man tell me what he was. Begging not to be eaten, he told me he had been a banker, but now he was just scared. In fact, he was terrified—he still didn’t understand what had happened to the world.
“That was all I needed—it just clicked. I understood, finally. I knew why I hadn’t gone insane like everyone else, and why I was able to eat—I was a leftover from the old world. I was designed to indulge myself and grow fat, complacent, and stupid. I was the need to devour the Darkness—to guzzle molten potential like it was animal grease. My life—my ordinary, rote little life—was too filled with ordinariness, you see?
“I was proof against the Darkness.
“And like anything one can’t understand, I wanted to destroy the Darkness—chew on it, swallow it into my guts and feel it scream and squirm and die. That’s why I became blind—the Darkness meant nothing to me.
“I let the little man go. He was useless, after all. He apparently wasn’t quite ordinary enough to grow an appetite like mine, and he wasn’t quite imaginative enough to work within the indoor rollercoaster industry, or even secure himself a job as an usher within one of the popular underground movie theaters. Most importantly, when I bit into him, he tasted awful. He tasted like he would have if I’d bitten into him before the Darkness. So, off he went.
“The Paperman never did come back to his nest of piled newspapers, but that hardly bothered me. I was too busy thinking about what I’d figured out. That’s not to say my realization shook me at all. Like I said before, it was all just so much kindling.
“Do you finally see, Family Man? It couldn’t be more obvious—all things glittering are not always gold. And to think, you had a mind to admire me. Me!
“I dreamed your dream, little killer. I saw how you pictured me and my kind. Do you still feel that our dead eyes are filled with oceans of precious spring rain? And that concoction you made out of one of my slaves—what a joke! It was just a bunch of bones and weeds tied around a dead woman. Did you know that the woman you decorated once got herself pregnant, only so she could experience what it was like to eat her own child as she was giving birth to it? She only stopped gorging long enough to belch and laugh. And here’s another bit of trivia about your muse—she regularly slept where I so often squatted-out the remains of my many meals! And you think you made some kind of deep, meaningful art out of her? You really should quit the art business, Family Man. Your future lies in comedy.
“Oh, and one more thing I forgot to tell you—one last bit before I conclude my tale. I heal incredibly fast.”
Miss Patience’s claws quickly became unwelcome tenants within the various rooms of my body, calling forth no small amount of blood. The cavern wall I flew into was particularly uncomfortable. I coul
d feel a number of my weaker bones crack and snap, which is to be expected when bones pick a fight with stone.
I wasn’t stunned by the impact, but my inaction seemed to convince my opponent I was a bit more injured than I really was. In actuality, I was still processing all the queen had said to me. Could she even be trusted with the contents of her own story? Did she really know what had actually happened to her? Or might she be so pure and beautiful a monster that she lacked even a fiber of reality woven into her fabric?
For the most part, her beauty lived in her appearance, if not her appetite—at least not the philosophy behind her appetite, as she presented it. I speculated that her strict diet of Darkness-infected meals was the means by which she acquired her most conspicuous and attractive features, as the Darkness must have progressively seasoned her soul with its protean flavors of nightmare and wonder. If my thesis was correct—and I had no reason to doubt that it was—then Miss Patience would be better classified as a shadow, rather than the exclusive product of the Great Darkness or the Deadworld. This effectively rendered her the offspring of both. Granted, all of us contain shares of death and darkness, but with much less impressive potency.
I was sure of it—Molly Patience was a hybrid of the Great Darkness and the Deadworld. This fact nullified the cannibal’s previous contention that the Darkness meant nothing to her, thus causing her blindness. Having untied the philosophical knots Miss Patience proffered, it was finally time for me to kill her.
The giant cannibal lumbered after me with far less energy than she had previously demonstrated. She may have healed quickly, but not completely. It wasn’t terribly difficult for me to evade her clumsy lunge and leap atop her back. My sisters weren’t long at their task of removing her eyes, and it took them only a few additional seconds to slide into the bleeding pits that remained. However, the size of the monster’s head made it difficult for them to complete their job, as her brain was tucked away quite deeply within her enormous skull. Her awful claws were upon me again, raking across my back and shoulders, tearing me from my perch.
The Red Son Page 14
