"Metabolism - a short story by Scott Nicholson" - читать интересную книгу автора (Nicholson Scott)

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