Filaria - Brent Hayward [68]
“Mingh straw!”
First one claw came free, then the other worked loose, talon by straining talon, as Deidre knew it would.
Liberated, Mingh straw floated for a moment, the suns’ light playing through her hair. Suspended beneath the angel in a position that implied impending and beautiful somersaults, or some other motion defying any rule of cold physics or of nature, as if plunging down to meet death were an act of free will, a conscious decision she had decided not to take — not for this delicious instant — Mingh straw looked at Deidre, her blood-smeared face wild and flushed with ecstasy.
The inevitable plummet, the white angel, even the distant dirigible, all vanished as Deidre shut her eyes. Pain and horror mingled inside her, magnified by the image of the girl’s tumbling body.
One last shriek made her jolt awake, disturbing her from that comforting place to which she’d been travelling, so she could glimpse, through rolling eyes before finally passing out, where they were headed. Oblivion did close in at last, leaving her unconscious, unfeeling, bleeding her life out, but the awful image of Mingh straw’s death plunge had been replaced by another, an almost redeeming vision, for Deidre had seen, in that final instant, a hole piercing the sky, beyond which appeared pale and beautiful blues like none she could have ever imagined. Coming through that aperture, a calm shaft of light had enclosed her body, pulling her, with the black angel, upward along its axis. A luminous spear had been thrown down to pierce the world. Angel and girl rose towards an impossible, celestial opening.
MEREZIAH, L8-9
Gears within gears. Cogs and wheels. Whirling thick shafts, crooked, grinding, hissing steam, throwing off blue sparks as the din rose to a deafening pitch and then fell to a low, throaty moan. Sweat prickled Mereziah’s face and ran down into the collar of his already damp uniform. On the catwalk’s wobbly chain railing his palms were slick. His lungs ached from exertion. Needles of pain jabbed the length of his left arm. His knees creaked and cracked and knocked together.
In this ethereal place, the air was hot and pressing and he felt old, certainly, and out of shape, but truth be told the primary reason for his growing discomfort was the proximity of Crystal Max, who was walking, in all her tempting glory, directly behind him. Mereziah could no longer deny that he was suffering a ludicrous, juvenile crush. Crystal had become the manifestation of his illicit and suppressed desires. Physical want was another ache. He needed a companion. He needed her. In these strange, autumnal days, in this strange setting — before he fell dead to the bottom of the world — he needed to be with Crystal Max.
Where, he wondered, was the dignity in this?
A greasy piston, pumping heartily up and down in its housing, goading him rudely with its motion, loosed a burst of pressurized steam toward his face, and Crystal Max said loudly, directly into his hairy ear, her breath as hot as the steam, “Where the fuck are we, old timer? Any theories?”
For maybe the tenth time he wondered what her scent might be. Lingering on her skin, insinuating, burrowing deep into his dried out old sinuses; it made him dizzy. “I believe we are, in fact, inside the actual — ”
“Do you know where you’re going or don’t you?” She pushed him between the shoulder blades, so hard that he stumbled. “Where are you taking us, old timer? Where the fuck are we?”
Us. Taking us. Crystal was right. He winced to be reminded of the plurality. There were twelve in the entourage, all following Mereziah at his own slow, pained pace, walking single file along the catwalk. A dozen people, suspended high above a roiling pit of steam and moving parts and mysterious machineries both seen and unseen, following him.
His stomach roiled.
These shaky catwalks had been underfoot, in some form or other, for hours now. For the love of his departed parents, Mereziah had never seen or imagined anything like this place. Not in his hundred years of living. Crystal was right again: where had he brought