Filaria Read online

  “The sky? Did you mention the sky?” The words resonated inside Mereziah. Where had he heard this word before? Perhaps a client had mentioned it, a lifetime ago, in association with a story about the top of the world. For he knew that the sky was the very top of the world.

  “All I’ve ever seen,” Joseph said, “are ceilings and walls.”

  Crystal put her hand on Joseph’s knee. “Me too,” she said. “Where I come from, there’s a ceiling overhead, so low we can touch it. I’ve never seen open space like this place.”

  Mereziah stared at her hand, pale on the other man’s leg. Displeasure prickled at his own offended skin.

  “You know,” Crystal continued, recalling, “we have a car, where I’m from, an old car that sometimes talks about the sky, and about outside. But I don’t know what they mean. No one does, not even Reena.”

  “Outside?” Mereziah did not know this word at all. He told himself to remember it, that it might be important, but all he could do was look at that hand, resting on that dark knee.

  Joseph said, “The soldier looked me in the eye. It saw things there, or thought it did. And grabbed me. They have not found anyone who belongs here. No one. Only confusion in the world. Some men ran away. Me, I go with, so they don’t take my son, or wife. They put me in that strange room, inside that tube. Where you came, large-eyed man. Skinny white man.”

  After a long pause, in what he hoped was a thoughtful manner — since parts of the story had drifted through him, like the mists — Mereziah said, “Thank you, Joseph,” and he turned to Crystal Max. He wanted to tear her hand from Joseph’s leg. “Did, did they look into your eyes too? To see if you belonged here? You didn’t tell me anything about that.”

  Crystal batted her lashless lids, smiling coyly, and showed blackened gums. “My eyes? How could they not peer into them? Actually, old man, I did try my charm on the soldiers. But it didn’t work. I thought I could sleep my way to freedom.” She laughed. “Really, the soldiers didn’t say much to me . . . I was taken long before Joseph here. For three days they kept me in that thing, tossing food down at first, then tossing people down. I was the first one in there . . . Except for two little freaks joined at the shoulder. I forget their names. Jan and Dean? Stan and Jim? I don’t know. Anyways, me, I was walking down a hallway, down home, minding my own business. Having a good cry, actually, when they took me. From behind.”

  Feeling a twinge of arousal at the unfortunate turn of phrase in Crystal’s story, Mereziah stammered, “I want you to know that we’re going up. Towards the sky. Where the suns are. Have you heard of them? Where warmth and light and health is. We’re going up.” He felt his limbs quivering. “Do you hear me? We’re going up.”

  Crystal said, “But I wanna go down. That’s the other way. The soldiers told me I was from the bottom of the world, so I wanna go down.”

  “To where the dead fall? That’s your home?” Mereziah was about to ask Crystal if she had ever seen his parents, waiting for him down there, waiting for him to join them, but he held his tongue.

  Crystal said, “The dead? What the fuck? I don’t know anything about the dead. There’s no more corpses down there than there are up here. I only ever seen one my whole life, and that was some poor kid who died of the Red Plague when I was seven.”

  “Why were you, why were you crying?” Mereziah asked, as quietly as he could in the din.

  “What? When?”

  “You said you were crying when they found you. Why?”

  “Why do you care?”

  Mereziah glanced surreptitiously at Joseph, who had apparently lost all interest in the conversation. If he had ever had any. The man had regained his meditative pose. Crystal’s hand, thankfully, was gone from his knee. “Why were you sad?”

  “Shit, I was high. Like I am now. And I’d had a fight with my boyfriend.”

  “You have a boyfriend?”

  “You’re surprised?” Crystal’s grin showed those dark gums again. “That’s a little insulting. But I really don’t see the point of this.”

  “Of course,” Mereziah muttered. “I knew you would have a boyfriend. Of course you would.” But daggers, once more, stabbed at his heart. He clenched his fists, best he could, picturing the boy: young — a mere teenager, perhaps — attractive, muscular. Vapid. How he hated that youth. How he wished the boy were dead, mangled. Had he kissed Crystal on the mouth? Put his hands inside her shirt? Been warmed by her flesh? Had he touched her? “Uh, what, what was the fight about? The fight between you and your lover?”

  “Lover?” Now Crystal Max was no longer smiling. Her eyes had hardened. “You’re getting a little nosy, aren’t you, pops? I thought these questions were supposed to be about survival. The fight, if you must know, concerned another guy. It was about this little twerp called Phister who was always trailing after me, bugging me. We used to go out, me and him. But he probably doesn’t remember that. Simpson Lang thought I still liked him. And I do. I do still like Young Phister. What do you think of that?”

  Mereziah was unaware of the precise moment that he had decided to lean in and kiss Crystal himself. All he knew was that he had finally transgressed everything he held dear, broken through that last barrier. Her open hand stung hard against his skull and snapped his head to one side, setting his ears to ringing even more. Attempting to sit upright, stunned by her quick defense and by his own inability to comprehend his motives, a second slap stung him and he raised his arms to ward off further blows.

  Joseph grabbed Mereziah’s arms and pinned them tight while Crystal Max managed to hit him again, and again, until a wiry man in a grey uniform rushed over, crab-like, to restrain her.

  “You shit,” Crystal said, panting. “You disgusting old bastard! Whydja kiss me?”

  Mereziah tried to apologize but his upper lip was already swelling and he tasted blood on his tongue. One eye was beginning to shut.

  “What the fuck did you think you were doing?!”

  “I wanted . . . I thought . . .” He looked away, mortified. “I’ve never kissed a girl. I thought maybe you wanted . . . I’ve never kissed anyone.” Not a lie, since he and Merezath had refrained from touching lips, all those years ago. He looked down at the catwalk, through which he saw mists below, and he wished he could fall through the grille, fall down to be with the dead forever.

  But then he would have to face his parents.

  He did not want to weep but tears stung his eyes. My goodness, he thought, I’ve lost my mind. “Look,” he said. “I’m sorry, Crystal. I don’t have an excuse.”

  He looked up.

  No one was listening to him.

  No one paid him any attention whatsoever.

  His arms came free easily from Joseph’s loosened grip. The entire group was looking in the same direction —

  There were four. Two abreast, the soldiers filled the nearby bend in the catwalk. Looming. The catwalk creaked under them. Without a doubt, these huge humanoids were the captors Crystal Max had told him about, standing silent in their dark uniforms, eyes glimmering red in their black faces. Their weapons were long, sinister, and raised.

  “Hello,” one said, in a bass voice.

  The four of them seemed to exude chuckling.

  “You people have crashed the wrong party. We’re going to send you back through the hole you crawled out of.”

  Mereziah tried to get to his feet. “Do not harm these people. As representative — ”

  Flames erupted slowly, surreal, an upward curving tongue that made little noise, merely a popping sound at first. From the muzzle of a gun, the fire reached out to gently lick at the large lady — who was quiet now, of all times, as if at peace — and immediately burst from her clothing, engulfing her. Yet she remained silent, ironically, throughout this, until, with a groan, she pushed herself to her feet — showering sparks, ablaze — as if she’d just remembered a chore undone. Then, forced to reconsider, she sat back down again, in the roar of fire, to land on a pillow of sparks.

 
The stench of her death was horrific. Through those flames, which were already waning, Mereziah watched the woman’s skin char and crack and seep forth all the boiling liquids that had once given her life.

  When her corpse toppled, the soldiers advanced, perhaps to incinerate another victim, but they were too large for this narrow place of floating paths and steam. Too substantial. They jostled and rocked, out of their element. More flames arced up before them, glowing, throwing off intense heat.

  Behind Mereziah, someone scrambled to their feet and started running but Mereziah did not have a chance to turn and see who it was because from beneath him came a terrific rending sound, the sound of the world tearing apart, and the catwalk snapped, spilling its contents.

  With ancient reflexes, Mereziah threw his arms out to grab hold and cling to the chain railing as the entire catwalk swung down. There was a sickening jolt, and it felt as though both his arms were torn from their sockets, but he found himself hanging painfully, swaying.

  People plunged past him: the veiled woman; the burnt corpse of the silenced screamer; Joseph. As he searched in panic the chaotic and upended surroundings for Crystal, a giant fell from above, where it had somehow been holding on, making an awful racket as it passed him, clattering and flailing to be swallowed by the steam far below. It left a vaguely human-shaped hole in the mist that soon closed over.

  Dangling, Mereziah grimaced. The fire lingered, but inside him now, destroying once and for all his old heart and lungs.

  Detritus clanged, bounced noisily past, tumbling into the abyss.

  The catwalk swung forwards and back. Everyone had vanished. Mists closed in.

  Mereziah was alone again.

  TRAN SO, L14

  In circumference, the duct was hardly larger around than his torso, pressing up hard against ribs, shoulders, elbows, belly, knees. After the initial blind ascent, he’d calmed, and slowed, wormlike, and even had a quick, fitful sleep within the snug cocoon — though how long he lay inside, unmoving, he could not tell.

  Now, on a horizontal stretch, the duct had narrowed — though that perception might have been an unpleasant trick Tran so’s mind played on him. He was certainly starting to feel vestiges of primal fear nibbling.

  The entire time he had been moving through these confines — all night? a full day? — he had seen only one dark glimpse of detail, when a wire of dull light shone straight up through an empty rivet hole. He had seen nothing else, nothing up ahead. None of the junctions, turns, dents that he slowly inched his way through. Only felt the cool, smooth surface, pressing against his body, smelled the metal and dust. Tran so had to trust that he could keep going. There was certainly no way to back up. He had little choice but to persevere, try to ignore the aches, the cramps, the onset of claustrophobia. Ignore the thoughts of, at some point soon, encountering a dead end.

  Which, for him, would be literal.

  He also needed to piss but could not bring himself to urinate in his own clothes and drag his body through the hot puddle.

  Occasionally, stubborn animals squeezed past him, or tried to, forcing their way between his body and the walls of the duct; he felt fur a few times, scales twice, and, once, something slimy and foul rubbing against his cheek. He broke through many cobwebs. Breaths of warm, nasty air were exhaled into his face and sporadic, ambient sounds came at him from muffled locations unseen, beneath or above, from all around.

  For now, everything was quiet.

  He had stopped to rest.

  Was he safer in here? Had it been a good idea to enter this labyrinth, scrambling in a panic up through an overhead panel, while the dark god clawed at him, trying, in its fury, to plunge in, those huge fingers inches behind his feet as Tran so frantically pushed himself forward? He had asked himself these two questions a hundred times as he wormed forward over the next many hours. No one could tell the future, no matter what they claimed. He was still alive, at least. Maybe in an hour, he told himself, I will be in an open space, on my feet, eating, or emptying my bladder with great relief.

  Or perhaps I will be wedged tight, waiting for death.

  Eventually, moving once more — as the dire thoughts became harder and harder to stave off — through the darkness of the tangy-smelling duct up ahead, he perceived, at last, a source of dim light. His eyes watered. He had to fight to remain calm. Anxiety might make him move too fast, get stuck, just metres from a possible exit.

  Then he heard the muffled voices.

  This new development gave him pause. What if he had come full circle? Was the angry dark god waiting for him to emerge? Were others there, about to cut off his passage? He tried to think of a plan but wanted so badly to stretch, to move with elbowroom, to breathe clean air, that frustration at the idea of being captured after all this caused surprising tears to sting his already bleary eyes.

  Shimmying slower, he was soon able to confirm that the light ahead was coming up through a grille set in the bottom of the duct. This proved that, despite his earlier ascent, he was still travelling through a ceiling. One room’s ceiling is another room’s floor. He suspected he was a level above where he had started.

  Increased illumination was becoming uncomfortable, but his eyes eventually adjusted somewhat, and he began to see dusty details: the cobwebs, the old grille, flakes of rust.

  And now a rather pleasing aroma drifted into the duct, the likes of which he could not identify. He waited, a metre or so from the lip of the grille, listening, blinking, tingling all over. His muscles sung with tension. His elbows had been at his sides for an eternity.

  The voices again. To his relief, one was a woman’s. These were not dark gods, waiting to trap him. This woman was talking, in low, placid tones, with what sounded to be a child, though it became evident to Tran so that the child might be chastising or instructing the woman. Odder still, the younger voice rang with tones of familiarity. Unable to hear clearly any of the words, he shimmied a little closer to the grille, trying to be as silent as possible.

  Soon he was able to peer over the lip:

  He discerned little, except glare. He managed to rub the corners of his bleary eyes with dusty knuckles, one at a time, and, as his vision cleared further, he saw a room beneath him, a sleeping area, similar, yet more opulent and spacious than those he knew back in Hoffmann City. There was one large bed, covered by a thick red duvet and red fitted sheet. Plumped up by the ornate headboard, two red pillows. The entire structure of the bed was elevated off the floor, and the walls were decorated with designs that moved and undulated as he watched. How he wanted to bust out of the grille and lie supine on that bed, limbs outspread.

  Despite the decadence, Tran so detected a general patina of age over everything down there, an overall yellowed tone of disuse and neglect.

  Positioned directly over the bed, Tran so could not see the full extent of the room, nor could he see the persons — if they were indeed people — who had been speaking. He thought he heard them moving, but they were no longer talking.

  The floor was a pale brown shag. Tran so had seldom seen carpeting before; it was a luxury where he came from, a sign of wealth and corruption —

  The woman came into view. Bent over the opulent bed, she brushed at it with her hands. Looking down, Tran so could not see her face, but he knew immediately that she was young, and beautiful beyond words.

  Just the cant of one arm, as she flattened the duvet, the shape of her leg as she placed it down to steady herself, was too much. Mingled with arousal was a familiar, bittersweet sadness: pining for Minnie sue, for vanished passion, for concepts as great as his own aging and mortality.

  She was twenty years old, at most. Black skirt and black top, with a white apron over it all that had seen better days. A uniform of some kind? He thought at first she was also wearing a helmet but soon realized netting had been tied around her brown hair, containing it, holding it away from her breathtaking neck.

  Tran so Phengh saw no one else in the room. Unprepared to move his head out too fa
r over the opening for fear of being seen, or maybe moving dust or other debris forward with his body so that it rained down on the girl and gave his position away, he watched as best he could for a long while.

  Her collarbone, exquisite, her smooth skin flawless and translucent. He imagined her body, lurking in the clothes that only hinted at its form.

  Could she perceive him, he wondered, even if she did happen to look up from whatever strange toil it was she performed down there, to that soft bed?

  He was getting a hard-on. He had not been aroused by a woman other than Minnie sue for a long time. He squeezed his eyes shut and mouthed a silent apology to his dying wife, yet grinding his own body against the ductwork all the while.

  The woman below started to hum an innocent tune.

  Scents he had earlier detected wafted up again. These were coming, he saw now, from a tube that the girl gripped in her left hand. He had not seen this apparatus at first but he regarded it clearly now as she raised it to spray, in a fine mist, the red linen of the bed. This dispensing hose led back to a tiny buggy on wheels, which she pulled now, and the buggy creaked farther into the room.

  Tran so’s eyebrows cocked upwards.

  “Can you smell the mildew?” the girl asked, her voice throaty, oozing a sensuality that intensified Tran so Phengh’s arousal. “I don’t think it’s much better. It only masks it, you know.”

  She straightened to push at her back with the palm of her free hand, so that Tran so finally saw her features: she was gorgeous. As he had sensed. So beautiful that he caught his breath and his eyes moistened with longing —

  “Just you wait a minute,” the trolley said. “Let me adjust the lavender ratio.”