Metabolism - a short story by Scott Nicholson



      Metabolism
      a short story by Scott Nicholson
      illustrated by Paul Marquis

      The city had eyes. 
      It watched Elise from the glass squares set into its walls, walls that 
      were sheer cliff faces of mortar and brick. She held her breath, waiting 
      for 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 that 
      would roll her into the city's hot jaws at any second. The parking meter 
      poles were not needly teeth, eager to gnash. The city would not swallow 
      her, here in front of everybody. The city kept its secrets.
      And the people on the sidewalk- how much did they know? Were they enemy 
      agents or blissful cattle? The man in the charcoal-gray London Fog 
      trenchcoat, the Times tucked under his elbow, dark head down and hands in 
      pockets. A gesture of submission or a crafted stance of neutrality?
      The blue-haired lady in the chinchilla wrap, her turquoise eyeliner making 
      her look like a psychedelic raccoon. Was the lady colorblind or had she 
      adopted a clever disguise? And were her mincing high-heeled steps carrying 
      her to a midlevel townhouse or was she on some municipal mission?
      That round-faced cabdriver, his black mustache brushing the bleached peg 
      of his cigarette, the tires of his battered yellow cab nudged against the 
      curb. Were his eyes scanning the passersby in hopes of a fare, or was he 
      scouting 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 traveled 
      these streets voluntarily.
      Best not to think of the past. Best to pack the pieces of it away like old 
      toys in a closet. Perhaps someday she could open that door, shed some 
      light, blow off the dust, oil the squeaky parts, and resume living. But 
      for now, living must be traded for surviving.
      She sucked in her cheeks, hoping she looked as gaunt as she felt. The wisp 
      of breeze that blew up the street, more carbon monoxide than oxygen, was 
      not even strong enough to ruffle the fringe on the awning above that 
      shoeshop. But she felt as if the breeze might sweep her across the broken 
      concrete, sending her tumbling and skittering like a cellophane candy 
      wrapper. 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 thinks 
      itself invisible.
      What a perfectly blatant masquerade. The city was rising from the earth, 
      steel beams and guywire and cinderblock assembling right before their 
      human 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 know 
      what 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 good 
      city dweller is supposed to do. Count the cracks. Blend in. Be small.
      Ignore the windowfront of the adult bookstore you pass. Don't see the 
      leather whips, the rude plastic rods that gleam like eager rockets, the 
      burlesque mockery of human flesh displayed on the placards. And the next 
      window, 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 us 
      have our little amusements, then we wouldn't flee. We'd stay and graze on 
      lust and drunkenness, growing fat and sleepy and tired and dull.
      She flicked her eyes to the sky overhead, ignoring the sharp spears of the 
      building-tops, with their antennae for ears. The low red haze meant that 
      night was falling. The city constantly exhaled smog, so thick now that the 
      sun barely peeped down onto the atrocities that were committed under its 
      yellow eye. Even from the vigilant universe, the city kept its secrets.
      Elise felt only dimly aware of the traffic that clogged the streets. Not 
      streets. The arteries of the city. The cars rattled past, with raspy 
      breath and an occasional growl of impatience. In the distance, somewhere 
      on the far side of the city, sirens wailed. Sirens, or the screams of 
      victims, face-to-face with the horrible thing that had crouched around 
      them for years, cold and stone-silent one moment but alive and hungry the 
      next.
      Can't waste pity on them. The unwritten code of city life. Inbred 
      indifference. Ignorance is bliss. A natural social instinct developed from 
      decades of being piled atop one another like coldcuts in a grocer's 
      counter. Or was the code taught, learned by rote, instilled upon them by a 
      stern master who had its own best interests at heart? 
      And what would its heart be like? The sewers, raw black sludge snaking 
      through its veins? The hot coal furnaces that huffed away in basements, 
      leaking steam from corroded pipes? Or the electrical plant, a Gorgon's wig 
      of wire sprouting from its roof, sending its veins into the apartments and 
      office towers and factories so that no part of the city was untouched?
      Or was it, as she suspected, heartless? Just a giant meat-eating cement 
      slab of instinct?
      She had walked ten blocks now. Not hurriedly, but steadily and with 
      purpose. 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 the 
      jagged skyline. Maybe out to the theater, for an early seat at a 
      second-rate staging of Waiting For Godot. Not like someone who was trying 
      to escape.
      No. Don't think about it.
      She hadn't meant to, but now that the thought had risen from the murky 
      swamp of subconsciousness, she turned it over in her mind, mentally 
      fingering it like a mechanic checking out a carburetor.
      No one escaped. At least no one she knew. They all slid, bloody and soft 
      and bawling, from their mother's wombs into the arms of the city. Fed on 
      love and hopes and dreams. Fed on lies.
      She had considered taking a cab, hunching down in the back seat until the 
      city became only a speck in the rear-view mirror. But she had seen the 
      faces of the cabbies. They were too robust, too thick-jowled. Such as they 
      should have been taken long ago. No, they were in on it.
      And she had shuddered at the thought of stepping onto a city bus, hearing 
      the hissing of the airbrakes and the door closing behind her like a 
      squealing mouth. Delivering her not to the outskirts, but to the belly of 
      the beast. They were city buses, after all.
      Walking was the only way. So she walked. And the night fell around her, in 
      broken scraps at first, furry shadows and gray insubstantial wedges. 
      Lights came on in the buildings around her, soft pale globes and amber 
      specks and opalescent blue stars and yellow-green windowsquares. Pretty 
      baubles to pacify the masses.
      She felt the walls slide toward her, closing in on her under the cloak of 
      darkness. Don't panic, she told herself. Eyes straight ahead. You don't 
      need to look to know the scenery. Sheer concrete, double-doors drooling 
      with glass and rubber, geometrical orifices secreting the noxious 
      effluence of consumption.
      She thought perhaps she was safe. She was thin. But her sister Leanna had 
      been thin. So thin she had been desired as a model, wearing long sleek 
      gowns and leaning into the greedy eye of the camera, or preening in 
      bathing suits on mock-up beaches in highrise studios. So wonderfully 
      waifish that she had graced the covers of the magazines that lined the 
      checkout racks. Such a fine sliver of flesh that she had been lured to Los 
      Angeles on the promise of acting work.
      They said that she'd hopped on a plane to sunny California, was lounging 
      around swimming pools and getting to know all the right people. Elise had 
      received 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 a 
      movie, not much but a start.
      Elise had gone to see the movie. She sat in a shabby, gum-tarred seat, the 
      soles of her shoes sticking to the sloping cement floor. There she'd seen 
      Leanna, up on the big screen, walking and talking and doing all the things 
      that she used to do back when she was alive. Leanna, pale and ravishing 
      and now forever young and two-dimensional.
      Oh, but putting her in a film could be easily faked, just like the 
      letters. A city that could control and herd a million people would go to 
      such 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 a 
      sanitation 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. But 
      never heard from again. Some of them overweight, some healthy, some 
      muscular, some withered.
      So being thin was no guarantee. But she suspected that it helped her 
      chances. If only she was light enough that the sidewalk didn't measure her 
      footsteps.
      She'd reached unfamiliar territory now. A strange part of the city. But 
      wasn't it all strange? Alien caves, too precise to be man-made? Elevators, 
      metal boxes dangling at the ends of rusty spiderwebs? Storm grates 
      grinning and leering from street corners? Lampposts bending like alloyed 
      preying mantises?
      The faces of the few pedestrians out at that hour were clouded with 
      shadows. Did the white arrowtips of their eyes flick ever so slightly at 
      her as she passed? Did they sense a traitor in their midst? Were they 
      glaring jealously at her tiny bones, the skin stretched taut around her 
      skull, her meatless appearance?
      The smell of donuts wafted across her face, followed by the bittersweet 
      tang of coffee. Her nostrils flared in arousal in spite of herself. She 
      looked into the window of the deli. Couples were huddled at round oak 
      tables, the steam of their drinks rising in front of them like smoke from 
      chemical fires. They were chatting, laughing, eating from loaded plates, 
      reading magazines, acting as if they had all the time in the world. They 
      had tasted the lie, and found it palatable.
      She tore her eyes away. They traded pleasure for inevitability. Dinner 
      would one day be served, and they would find themselves on the plate, pale 
      legs splayed indignantly upward, wire mesh at their heads for garnish. 
      Well, she had no tears to spare for them. One chose one's own path.
      Her path had started about a year ago, shortly before Leanna left. Not 
      left, was taken, she reminded herself. Elise's understanding had started 
      with the television set. The TV stood on a Formica cabinet against the 
      sheetrock wall of her tiny apartment, flashing colorful images at her. 
      Showing her all the things she was being offered. Brand new sedans. Dental 
      floss and mouthwash. The other white meat. The quicker-picker-upper. The 
      uncola.
      The television made things attractive. The angle of the lighting, 
      eye-pleasing color schemes, seductive layouts and product designs. 
      Straight teeth cutting white lines across handsome tan faces. And behind 
      those rigid smiles, she had seen the fear. Fear masquerading as 
      vacuousness. Threatened puppets spouting monologues, the sales pitch of 
      complacency.
      She had found other clues. The police, for instance. Never around when one 
      needed them. Delivery vans with unmarked sideboards, prowling at all 
      hours. Limousines, long and dark-glassed. advertisements for conspicuous 
      consumption. Around-the-clock convenience stores and neon billboards. A 
      quiet conspiracy in the streets, unobserved among the bustle and noise of 
      daily life, everyone too busy grabbing merchandise to stop and smell the 
      slagheap acid of the roses.
      But Elise had noticed. Saw how the city grew, stretching obscenely higher, 
      ever thicker and more oppressive and powerful. And she had made the 
      connection. The city fed itself. It was getting bloated on the human hors 
      d'oevres that tracked across its tongue like live chocolate-covered ants.
      When one knew where to look, one saw signs of its life. The pillars of 
      filthy smoke that marked its exhalations, the iridescent ribbons of its 
      urine that trickled through the gutters, the sweat of the city clinging to 
      moist masonry. The gray snowy ash of its dandruff, the chipped gravel of 
      its sloughed dead skin. The crush of the walls, squeezing in like cobbled 
      teeth, outflanking and surrounding its prey. And all the while spinning 
      its serenade of sonic booms and fire alarms, automobile horns and fastfood 
      speakers, ringing cash registers and clattering jackhammers.
      Elise had bided her time, staying cautious, not telling a soul. Whom could 
      she trust? Her neighbors might have an ear pressed to the wall. The city 
      employed thousands.
      So she had hid behind her closed door, the TV turned to face the corner. 
      Oh, she had still gone to work, leaving every weekday morning for her post 
      at the bank. It was important to keep up appearances. But, once home, she 
      locked herself in and pulled the windowshade. She turned on the radio, 
      just in case the city was using its ears, but she always tuned to 
      commercial-free classical stations. Music to eat sweets by.
      Her workmates had expressed concern.
      "You're nothing but skin and bones. You feeling okay?"
      "You're getting split-ends, girl."
      "You look a little pale. Maybe you should go to the doctor, Elise."
      As if she were going to listen to them, with their new forty-dollar 
      hairstyles every week and retirement accounts and lawyer husbands and City 
      Council wives and panty hose and wristwatches and power ties and 
      deodorant. Elise only smiled and shook her head and pretended. Took care 
      of the customers and kept her accounts balanced.
      And she had plotted. Steeled herself. Got up her nerve and slung her 
      handbag over her shoulder and walked out of the bank after work and headed 
      downtown. She kept reminding herself that she had nothing to lose.
      And now she was almost free. She could taste the cleaner air, could feel 
      the pressure of the hovering structures ease as she drew nearer to the 
      outskirts. But now darkness descended, and she wasn't sure if that brought 
      the city to keen-edged life or sent it fat and dull into dreamy slumber.
      She passed the maw of a subway station. A few people jogged down the steps 
      into the bright throat of the tunnel. She thought of human meat packed 
      into the smooth silver tubes and shot through the intestines of the city.
      She walked faster now, gaining confidence and strength as hope spasmed in 
      her chest like a pigeon with a broken wing. She could see the level 
      horizon, a beautiful black flatness only blocks ahead. Buildings skulked 
      here and there, but they were short and squat and clumsy.
      The road was devoid of traffic, the dead-end arms of the city. The 
      streetlights thinned, casting weak cones of light every few hundred feet.
      Her footsteps echoed down the empty street, bouncing into the dark canyons 
      of the side alleys. The hollowness of the sound enhanced her sense of 
      isolation. She felt exposed and vulnerable. Easy meat.
      Her ears pricked up, tingling.
      A noise behind her, out of step with her echo.
      Breathing.
      The spiteful puff of a forklift, its tines aimed for her back? A fire 
      hydrant, hissing in anger at her audacity? The sputtering gasp of a 
      sinuous power cable?
      Footsteps.
      A rain of lightbulbs, dropping in her wake? The concrete slabs of the 
      sidewalk, folding upon themselves like an accordion, chasing her heels? A 
      street sign hopping after her like a crazed pogo stick?
      Not now. Not when she was so close.
      But did she really expect that the city would let her simply step out of 
      its garden?
      She ducked into an alley, even though the walls gathered on three sides. 
      Instinct had driven her into the darkness. But then, why shouldn't the 
      city control her instinct? It owned everything else.
      And now it moved in for the kill, taking its due. Now she was ripe fruit 
      to be plucked from the chaotic fields the city had sown, a harvest to be 
      reaped by rubber belts and pulleys and metal fins.
      Elise stumbled into a garbage heap, knocking over a trash can in her 
      blindness. She fell face-first into greasy cloth and rotten paper and 
      moldering food scraps. She felt a sting at her knee as she rolled into 
      broken glass.
      She turned on her back, resigned to her fate. She would die quietly, but 
      she wanted to see its face. Not the face it showed to human eyes, the one 
      of glass panes and cornerstones and sheet metal. She wanted to see its 
      true face.
      She saw a silhouette, a blacker shape against the night. A splinter of 
      silver catching a stray strand of distant streetlight, flashing at her 
      like a false grin. A featureless machine pressing close, its breath like 
      stale gin and cigarette butts and warm copper.
      Its voice fell from out of the thick air, not with the jarring clang of a 
      bulldozer or the sharp rumble of tractor trailer rig, but as a harsh 
      whisper.
      "Gimme your money, bitch."
      So the city had sent this puny agent after her? With all its great and 
      awesome might, its monumental obelisks, its omnipotent industry, its 
      cast-iron claws, its impregnable asphalt hide, its pressurized fangs, it 
      sends this?
      The city had a sense of humor. How wonderful!
      She thought of that old children's story, the "Three Billy Goats Gruff," 
      how the smaller ones had offered up the larger ones to slake the evil 
      troll's appetite. She laughed, filling the cramped alley with her cackles. 
      "A skinny thing like me would hardly be a mouthful for you," she said, the 
      words squeezing out between giggles.
      She felt the city's knife press against her chest, heard a quick snip, and 
      felt her handbag being lifted from her shoulder. The straps hung like dark 
      spaghetti, and the city tucked the purse against its belly. The city, 
      small and dark and human.
      Now she saw it. The human machine had a face the color of bleached rags, 
      dingy mopstrings dangling down over the hot sparks of eyes. Thin wires 
      sprouted above the coin-slot mouth. Why, he was young. The city eats its 
      young.
      "You freakin' city folks is all nuts," the city said, then ran into the 
      street, back under the safe sane lights.
      Its words hung over Elise's head, but they'd come from another world. A 
      world of platinum and fiberglass, locomotives and razor blades. The real 
      world. Not her world.
      As the real city awoke and busied itself with its commerce and caffeine, 
      it might have seen Elise sprawled among the rubble of a rundown 
      neighborhood, flanked by empty wine bottles and used condoms and milk 
      cartons graced with the photographs of anonymous children. It might have 
      smelled her civet perfume, faint but there, which she had dabbed on her 
      neck in an attempt to smell like everyone else. It might have heard the 
      wind fluttering the collar of her Christian Dior blouse, bought so that 
      she could blend in with the crowd. It might have felt the too-light weight 
      of her frail body, wasted by a steady diet of fear. It might have tasted 
      the human salt where tears of relief had dried on her cheeks.
      It might have divined her dreams, intruded on her sleep to find goats at 
      the wheels of steamrollers, corrugated snakes slithering as endlessly as 
      escalators among gelatin hills, caravans of television antennas dancing 
      across flat desert sands, and a flotilla of cellular phones on a windswept 
      ocean of antifreeze, an owl and a pussycat in each.
      If the city sensed these things, it remained silent.
      The city kept its secrets.

      text © Scott Nicholson 1998; art © Paul Marquis 1998 
      "Metabolism" was a Writers of the Future contest finalist, was published 
      in L Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future Volume XIV (1998) and is 
      reprinted in Scott's collection Thank You For The Flowers. 
       
      Elsewhere in infinity plus: 
        features - about the author. 
        contact - e-mail Scott Nicholson. 
      Elsewhere on the web: 
        Scott Nicholson at Amazon (US) and at the Internet Bookshop (UK). 
        Scott runs a writer's website with a free quarterly newsletter delivered 
        via e-mail. 
        Scott's ISFDB bibliography. 




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