face heats. You have got to be fucking kidding me.
“Yuh long way from home ma friend.” Gombe is getting closer. Niko hears the man’s footsteps crunching on the unseen ground.
“Maybe Gombe jus take yuh shoes an send yuh on yuh way. Yuh play yuh gig barefoot like de bluesman hah?” Gombe laughs.
Once more orange light smears the distance like a comet’s ghost and now Niko sees Gombe there before him. The man’s skin glistens with crawling shapes. He is covered head to foot with enormous roaches. Their crawling traffic on his naked body is unceasing, even about his face, but Gombe pays no mind. Now Niko hears the aggregate rustle of millions of jointed cockroach legs picking their filthy way, millions of fat and glossy cockroach bodies brushing, millions of brown thin wings beating. Gombe steps forward and the ground crunches underneath his naked feet. Niko’s mouth tightens with nausea as he realizes that for some time now he has been walking on a living carpet of the filthy creatures.
Gombe sees his face and laughs. An enormous cockroach crawls across one eye. “What the matter mon? Yuh don like how Gombe dress? Maybe soon yuh and him have the same tailor huh. Or maybe yuh give old Gombe yuh shoes an he let yuh go with the res.”
“I’m sorry,” Niko says and hears his voice’s tension, “but I think I’m gonna need them more than you.”
Gombe grins. “Now what yuh be needin fuh to wear runnin shoes here mon?”
“Watch,” says Niko. And runs. The rhythmic crush beneath him is sickening, the rapid crunch behind him spurs him on. Within a hundred yards the yelling pursuit begins to fall away, which is good because although Niko is in great shape he is no track star and certainly no spring chicken. The crushing beneath him lessens as well, gives way to hard pounding on flat stone. Niko slows to a stop, breathing heavily. Why aren’t they pursuing? Could they who do not breathe grow winded?
He feels a tickling on his ankles as he bends panting with hands on knees, a tickling climbing his shoes and calves. Suddenly he drops the hardcase and scrunches up his pantlegs and compulsively slaps at his ankles and shins and calves, goes on to his thighs, his rear, his stomach. Takes off his coat and snaps it before him like a rug. Hears soft bodies patter onto stone. Another shudder convulses him, and he hurries on his harried way.
NIKO WALKS DISCONSOLATE along the midnight plain. Soon the flat ground becomes cracked and broken like the parched skin of the Bonneville salt flats. Earthquake fissures run dark and jagged like frozen lightning shadows. Niko has encountered not another soul although he hears their lamentations in the distance. It’s a lot less crowded here than one would think. Then again it’s goddamn huge and he is only on the outskirts. How big, how long his traveling to come? This geography is not physical or mappable. Cartographers of this sullen abyss might light black candle and cast bone and carve rune and paint in chicken blood on parchment skin and still not fix it for the eye to read because it is not fixed. There ought to be a word for such a notion, for the cartography of Hell.
Hadeography.
From far off comes a freight train rumble. Niko peers across the dolorous distance and faintly sees a giant living thing glide stately on the cracked and broken ground. No, not living. And not gliding either. Sinuously twisting, bottomlit and lifting itself up at points like a woman in a hoopskirt stepping high across a puddle, touching down again capriciously, a tornado heaves across the tortured landscape toward him. The gloom alive with static sparkings like a plague of fireflies. The churning funnel owns the landscape like an Old Testament god, vengeful and malign and bent on wrath and thunder. The locomotive roar of its approach grows deafening as it stoops and gathers writhing clots of feckless damned to bear them up and dance them doll-like in the air around its undulating body in
“Yuh long way from home ma friend.” Gombe is getting closer. Niko hears the man’s footsteps crunching on the unseen ground.
“Maybe Gombe jus take yuh shoes an send yuh on yuh way. Yuh play yuh gig barefoot like de bluesman hah?” Gombe laughs.
Once more orange light smears the distance like a comet’s ghost and now Niko sees Gombe there before him. The man’s skin glistens with crawling shapes. He is covered head to foot with enormous roaches. Their crawling traffic on his naked body is unceasing, even about his face, but Gombe pays no mind. Now Niko hears the aggregate rustle of millions of jointed cockroach legs picking their filthy way, millions of fat and glossy cockroach bodies brushing, millions of brown thin wings beating. Gombe steps forward and the ground crunches underneath his naked feet. Niko’s mouth tightens with nausea as he realizes that for some time now he has been walking on a living carpet of the filthy creatures.
Gombe sees his face and laughs. An enormous cockroach crawls across one eye. “What the matter mon? Yuh don like how Gombe dress? Maybe soon yuh and him have the same tailor huh. Or maybe yuh give old Gombe yuh shoes an he let yuh go with the res.”
“I’m sorry,” Niko says and hears his voice’s tension, “but I think I’m gonna need them more than you.”
Gombe grins. “Now what yuh be needin fuh to wear runnin shoes here mon?”
“Watch,” says Niko. And runs. The rhythmic crush beneath him is sickening, the rapid crunch behind him spurs him on. Within a hundred yards the yelling pursuit begins to fall away, which is good because although Niko is in great shape he is no track star and certainly no spring chicken. The crushing beneath him lessens as well, gives way to hard pounding on flat stone. Niko slows to a stop, breathing heavily. Why aren’t they pursuing? Could they who do not breathe grow winded?
He feels a tickling on his ankles as he bends panting with hands on knees, a tickling climbing his shoes and calves. Suddenly he drops the hardcase and scrunches up his pantlegs and compulsively slaps at his ankles and shins and calves, goes on to his thighs, his rear, his stomach. Takes off his coat and snaps it before him like a rug. Hears soft bodies patter onto stone. Another shudder convulses him, and he hurries on his harried way.
NIKO WALKS DISCONSOLATE along the midnight plain. Soon the flat ground becomes cracked and broken like the parched skin of the Bonneville salt flats. Earthquake fissures run dark and jagged like frozen lightning shadows. Niko has encountered not another soul although he hears their lamentations in the distance. It’s a lot less crowded here than one would think. Then again it’s goddamn huge and he is only on the outskirts. How big, how long his traveling to come? This geography is not physical or mappable. Cartographers of this sullen abyss might light black candle and cast bone and carve rune and paint in chicken blood on parchment skin and still not fix it for the eye to read because it is not fixed. There ought to be a word for such a notion, for the cartography of Hell.
Hadeography.
From far off comes a freight train rumble. Niko peers across the dolorous distance and faintly sees a giant living thing glide stately on the cracked and broken ground. No, not living. And not gliding either. Sinuously twisting, bottomlit and lifting itself up at points like a woman in a hoopskirt stepping high across a puddle, touching down again capriciously, a tornado heaves across the tortured landscape toward him. The gloom alive with static sparkings like a plague of fireflies. The churning funnel owns the landscape like an Old Testament god, vengeful and malign and bent on wrath and thunder. The locomotive roar of its approach grows deafening as it stoops and gathers writhing clots of feckless damned to bear them up and dance them doll-like in the air around its undulating body in
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