"Paul Di Filippo - The Short Ashy Afterlife" - читать интересную книгу автора (Di Filippo Paul)

I could feel my consciousness pulling instinctively back from the pain. I had an impulse to gather myself
into the deepest core of my being, to escape the torture.
But before I lost touch with the outer world, I caught the arrival of Sparky and a brutish-looking stranger
dressed in a suit with roguishly wide lapels. I forced myself to focus on their sotto voce dialogue, as they
conversed in what they deemed utter secrecy.
"I gotta hand it to ya, Sparky baby," said the thug. "This land is gonna make a swell spot for Central
City's new casino. But ain't'cha being a bit, well, pre-ma-tour with the choppin' an' the bulldozin' an' all?
The permits an' licenses from City Hall ain't exactly a shoe-in. Mayor Nolan ain't too keen on gamblin'.
And her copper daddy will bust a gasket if he learns who your backers are.'
"You just leave Commissioner Nolan and his brat in City Hall to me, big boy, and concentrate on what
you do best.'
"Lovin' and killin', right?"
"Right, Jules."
The conniving pair went into a clinch that violated every element of the Hays Code, but I could spare no
further attention for their reprehensible licentiousness.
Loud creakings and groanings were issuing from my numb nether regions, which either I or the oak had
protectively desensitized. With grave misgivings, I noticed that I was beginning to cant and tip.
My ultimate downfall followed swiftly. The final fibers holding me upright parted, and I crashed toward
the ground. The thundering impact was titanic, and I lost consciousness for some time. When I came to, I
could feel my proud branches being lopped. In short time I was hoisted by a newly arrived crane onto an
accompanying flatbed truck and carted off.
Huddling deep inside myself, I realized then that my fate most likely involved a quick trip to the sawmill
and a swift transition into planks.
But such was not the case. Apparently I was destined for stranger ends.
Whether subconsciously or not, Sparky had chosen a fate for my wooden corpse meant to humiliate.
Even in death I would be denied utilitarian dignity.
When I felt a cessation of motion, I pooled my dwindling organic energies and tried to apprehend my
destination. I saw a sign that read CENTRAL CITY SCHOOL OF ART AND DESIGN, and quickly
intuited my ignominious lot: to become practice billets for budding, ham-fisted sculptors. The best I could
hope for was to grace a tobacco shop as a clumsy wooden Indian.
Sure enough, I was trundled into the school's carpentry shop and, once callously stripped of my bark,
rapidly dismembered into several largish sections of trunk. With each cut I pulled my ectoplasmic bits of
mental being out of the severed section, retreating and retreating, until finally, with the last slice, I found all
my fading identity concentrated in one portion of trunk.
For a long time I existed only in a state resembling hibernation, as I cured in a storeroom. What became
of my nonsentient bits I cannot tell. After an unguessable duration, the portion housing my ghostly self,
roused by motion, eventually rode a dolly to the atelier of a youth possessed of handsome Mediterranean
looks and clad in leather apron and work gloves. I heard him addressed as "Gino" by the delivery men.
Gino wrestled me upright into position on a platform, then stepped back to survey me. "Hmm, I see
hidden in this dumb wood a straining heroic figure, fighting against injustice. Perhaps I'll call this
masterpiece 'Samson Rages Against the Philistines.'"
Much as I appreciated Gino's noble goals for my dessicated flesh, I still cringed to imagine the first blow
of his chisel. Trying to avoid his blow, I concentrated my essence far away from his anticipated strike.
But then, at the last moment, he shifted position and cleaved off that very block of matter containing all
my soul!
I fell to the floor, ignored in the white heat of artistic creation.
But at day's end, to my surprise, Gino picked me up and carried me home.
The young sculptor lived in an Italian slum on the far side of Central City. Apparently he shared his dismal
cold water flat only with his father, a cheerful old fellow with an aura of deep wisdom about him.
"Poppa, look," Gino called out as soon as he entered. "Some raw material for your hobby."