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| • about • excerpt • author • media • contact • buy • john-shirley.com • infrapress • |
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Scene: In the holding cell of a police station ...[Billy Krup] ran for the door. "Hey!" he shouted. "Hey, get me outta here!" He tried the knob. It was locked, the bastards had locked him in. He pounded on the door. Then he froze, his hands clammy on the metal surface of the door. He stood rigid, listening.There was a noise. It was a noise like the squealing of a train's wheels as it comes to a stop. Or like a city bus hitting rakes short on brake fluid. A noise that was a combination of squealing and grinding, with an undertone of growling. The noise was coming from the drain, behind him. He tried to find his way to calmness, so he could think, decide what to do. But the only thought that would come into his mind was: They won't send the pet of the Head Underneath. I'm too far above-ground here. It can't come up here. But the Blessed People could. He remembered fragments of the chant: These are Blessed, for they have become part of Him. The growling from the drain became a roar. Krupp recommenced his pounding, shouting, "What the hell are you doing out there?" ...become part of Him; Ahim Ahriman Maz; these are Blessed, who eat when He eats, for they are His mouths... A bubbling made Krupp turn around, and look. The mouth of the drain was erupting red foam. Rusty water? But it had a phlegmlike cohesiveness, and came in frothy dollops. No, not rust. And now there were red buckets of it, geysering like a burst water main, higher, a column of bubbling red high as his waist, bringing with it another noise, a noise like a soundtrack run backward at high speed. ...for they are His mouths, and they speak as He speaks, and by His hand they are transfigured, they who were once only men... The crimson geyser subsided; the floor was inch-deep in slimy red liquid; the air choked him with the stench of a thousand dead rats. Gagging, he fell to his knees, trying to remember the invocational words, hoping to gain favor. He couldn't remember a thing. "I didn't tell them anything!" he shouted. The red muck on the floor congealed in seconds, as he watched, becoming something like a layer of gelatin; gagging, shouting without words, he tried to climb onto the desk. He couldn't reach the desk; he couldn't move an inch. The stuff had hardened around his shoes, had moved up to grip his ankles. He screamed and tried to jerk his feet loose -- Krupp tripped and fell face down. The stuff felt awful against his cheek, and under his fingers, it was like gelatinous skin. He held his breath so he wouldn't have to breathe the stink of the red membrane. His head was only two feet from the drain; his body pointed toward it. His arms were outstretched in front of him, close together, as if he were diving into the drain; he lay flat, hardly moving for a moment, gasping, laughing now and then (why? at what? he didn't know). The right side of his face was pressed to the red slick, the living mucilage; he could not tear himself loose; the contact burned, and he could feel patches of his skin sizzling where it touched acidic pockets. "Uhhh..." was all he could manage. The membrane moved. He was being drawn toward the drain. He tried to lift his head; he managed a half inch, and felt sections of his face ripping away as he made the effort. The red membrane spread out around the drain like a monstrous, ugly poppy petal; the floor sloped slightly toward the drain, and the membrane entered the hole in the floor evenly, leaving a round gap in the middle, like the female part of a flower. A great, stinking flower of flesh drawing him toward its stem, as if closing itself for the night. And just the way a bubble appears in the chamber of a bubble pipe, growing from within, the glossy top of a head appeared in the drain, expanding from within the pipe, emerging even as the red membrane drew itself downward; it was as if the withdrawal of the membrane caused the extrusion of the rubbery head. Krupp knew that it was the top of a head, because he had seen the Blessed People once before, conjured by Tooley at the edge of the hidden pond--the pond in which He lived. The Blessed People were the issue of His blessing. Flexible, semitransparent, hairless and slick like the head of an oversized tadpole. ...they who were once only men, they move like quicksilver to do His work, they squeeze sleekly through the city's veins... Krupp had just a glimpse of the thing's eyes before the membrane sucked him flat again. Sucked him flat, and began to flow over his face, to shut off his breathing. He had a distorted view of the room as the slick crimson skin covered his eyes; he saw the little room and the desk, untouched by the membrane, all wavery and red-tinted through the translucency. Krupp knew the shape of the emerged once-man, one of the Blessed People rippling quicksilvery by, its boneless, see-through body moving like a whiplash, its head snaking on the stretchable neck, the neck extruding farther and farther from the body like the stalks of a snail, its fingers moving independently of one another, bending themselves backward; curling up against the knuckles, impossible boneless wrigglings. After that, the red membrane gave a great shudder, and righted itself over the drain so that it was as if he were standing on his head, arms outstretched, feet pointed at the ceiling, suspended vertically, the membrane wrapped around him, upthrust like a tropical bloom closed for the night. And after that he couldn't tell one thing from another, because all shapes were absorbed into the white-hot crackling of pain as the red skin, its texture somewhere between artificial plastic and natural skin, tightened and closed, tighter, tighter, squeezing inexorably, twisting itself like a wrung towel, and descending. Screwing itself down into the drain. Breaking everything hard in him. He heard a sound like the note an opera singer makes that breaks glass, but more abrasive. SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEE. Pop. The red membrane screwed itself into the drain, taking the pulped, liquefied remains of Billy Krupp with it. |