The Transient

[Worm of Despite]

Here's a very short story. It's optimistic, for a change. I'm thinking about expanding it to something longer but not quite sure.





The Transient,

by David Williams


No cars honked, and the road was clean and white and he thought that Communism was not over. But then he found the bottle on the ground and saw nobody on the clean streets, and the utility of the buildings, as if somebody had given them a cut across the top, to make them level, and he remembered he was in Mother Russia. It took some time to stand, and the breath on his hands warmed his fingers a little, and he cursed as he saw the beer bottle empty, its liquid spilled by the sidewalk. Several hours, long hours seemed to pass in his mind, and he wanted a populous to see the detritus he had reamed about himself. Try as he might, though, no thought could quite reach anything but fever.

Snowflakes walked; or they on him. He could not remember the last time so much pain; much concreteness stabbed him. One beer bottle; or was it hunger? It could not be a beer bottle, to carve such destitution up one’s composition, one’s comradeship in the great city of promise and might, where in light it looked all colors, all washed whites and spirals and greys and greens and dreams; but always clean, right?

Never at night, he thought dumbly. The sitting wakefulness tries to attain speech, and if you do they come in bands, break down doors and upend chairs, tables, clatter so much you must awake from bed and answer their questions; if you are political, they keep you drugged and take you to a small black square, and there’s no use. You answer everything but are not there, and in a month’s time you are drinking the white of a new clime called Siberia; not here, not the city; you think you are elsewhere, and you wake up and are shoveling and are destitute and expendable.

The snow lies; forges vanity; beauty, it proclaims, just as the city shows ordered lines, but both are truly white, truly blurred extremes that make us shake, says hell’s everywhere, whispers stasis but jerks the second it is poked; here man is divided from himself until his own thoughts are straws pulled among others, and you—

‘You there.

‘What are you doing on the street?’

‘I came to eat.’

‘You point over there but that’s no eatery.’

‘I’m just hungry.’

‘So you’re a transient?’

Got you, the man’s eyes seemed to say.

He looked anxious to reply to the comment, though he was always anxious. He kept that hidden, half the time by shaking at the cold. He’ll not get me, this time, and he turned—

You there! The words clacked and he found his feet hard on the ground, running past his beer bottle and down the empty sidewalk.

Try as he might, the young guard was faster. His lungs already burned, his smoker’s breath wheezy and his eyes watering and the feet old and blocky, and the guard’s arms were large, resilient, and the wall to his back was too solid for his flesh. He sagged at it, wept, and the guard held up his scanner.

‘Domin Void,’ said the guard, the scanner beeping, and he laughed.

‘Your name is Domin Void?’ he asked.

Domin Void nodded, beer rushing off his tired breath.

‘This scanner says you’re Void. Get it? You’ve a funny name!’

Domin lay against the wall, pinned on the wall, the guard’s arm considering something, as if the situation and place were distant.

‘You’re worthless. A worthless whelp and I should pop you.’

Domin looked at that giant arm, a beast in itself, and he shook.

The guard smiled.

‘I know now. I know what you need. You’re too old to work.’

Domin heard his words, thought of Siberia and breathed relief, though it appeared just like any steam off his mouth.

‘You’re going to the hospital.’

Domin cried.


2

Rest easy, Mr. Have a drink. The young ones will look after you. And night came and he was resting by the side of the road, or rather in pain, remembering from the forced clarity of a hangover that he was—

‘Old,’ said the guard. Not the same guard that pinned him; another.

The guard saw Domin’s face, standing in front of his desk, and then he looked down at his desk at Domin’s face on a screen: two years younger, cleaner but still worn; a smudge lined the jaw and he wiped it off the glass.

They beat me senseless last night. Grabbed an empty beer bottle, entertained them with a drink, but they kept punching, laughing, pissing, and I lay in the sink of the road and drank up snow. And I woke up and this man said

‘Old,’ repeated the guard, his voice rapping in low key over his head.

‘Can you read?’

‘No,’ said Domin, eyes on floor tiles.

‘You’re new to the city?’

‘I’m just working.’

Domin stared at the dust around a waste bin. The desk was white, glaring like a yellow moon, and the man looked at him, as if about to vent his rage. The fluorescent bars of light calmed him somewhat. They buzzed, and he saw an elevator behind the man open, two other guards, husky and anonymous as the day they were born.

‘So you’re in this situation,’ said the guard, ‘and you make sure you work for the city, and if not we find you. We found you. Which are you.’

‘Huh?’

‘It’s a question that needs an answer.’

Domin felt his thoughts flatten, the old feeling that he was stale and bitter; or rather that bitterness had itself become bitter and hobbled away, in its place removing all concern for anything.

‘Do you not have an answer?’

Domin scrunched up an invisible hat in his hand, squeezed it for security. The two guards behind the desk shifted impatiently.

‘I’m just a transient.’

The guard smiled.

‘You’re fucked.’


3

Later, they were laughing and eating tacos and kicking him in the face. I don’t know the answer, he thought, and the dark gloss of the tiles, the lightless tiles, told him he was awake. There was nothing more, he thought, and the blood trail seemed to answer him as they pulled him up, dragged him past the desk and up the elevator’s shaft. He saw the little squares of the floors light up: 12, 13…

Here’s something more than I’ll ever have. He wondered what that meant, but the hangover was pressing like a lodestone, and he tripped.

The guards laughed.

He can’t even stand, said one.

I’ll let you know.

The door pinged, split at its half.

We’ll take it from here.

They pushed him in the shoulder-blades and he stumbled forward, tripped again. He felt laughter behind him; saw that the room was blindingly bright. They were gone. The door closed.

He looked around the room.

From tear-stained eyes he could see white control panels to the left of him. White walls, a small room: glass squares, silhouettes standing behind them. To his right he saw two guards, and between them a white, plastic table, a white tube. They were grinning.

Their voices came at last to his jogged senses:

‘You need a scan, Mr. You’re in bad health.’

Yes, giggled the other one.

‘You’re going to lie down and keep that way.’

He held up his hands, offered no answer, and they dragged him toward the white slab. He lay down on it, feeling it cold and metallic, his feet and legs scrunched together, his arms and back crossed over his chest. He heard the men laughing over his head, and he saw the ceiling but could not move his head back.

Insert him.

He felt like a soft bullet of flesh as the slab rolled toward the tunnel. It was something he had never seen before. It was dark and not well-lit, and he had a feeling a light inside it was broken. The tube was six, seven feet long perhaps? He felt it engulf his whole being as he slid into it. He kept counting the seconds, waiting for something to happen, and thought, Thank God I am hungover. I hate this city. It fucked me. Fucked me.

There was a loud bleeping outside, from where he thought the control panels were. He remembered the bodies standing behind glass panels, strangely opaque.

It came—a buzz intensifying until it layered in waves, changed in thirty variations. He saw the capsule but closed his eyes; felt tears would fulminate, would explode and he would fall, caked in sound. His stomach was swirling from hunger, a hunger no drink could deny. He felt dryness, the long tube in the darkness and the sound that would not abate; only increase, sustain its yawp and seem to return to itself, numb him, and its thirty ways were one; he crept along it, hunger deteriorating him, and he forgot how to ignore things, how to sleep; and he kept the pieces of his self guarded closely, looking in the confines of the tunnel, and he felt the baking of the sound under his back, watching his veins harden to lines, his arms become smaller, and his eyes were staring at several low, curling sounds; and the capsule remained exactly the same, and he was screaming several times, asking to be let out, but he could not move his legs nor look up, and the white tube seemed to circle around him, seemed to be the only point, the only geometry only universe.

The slab rolled back out.

The men were laughing, looked at his stunted frame.

I think he’s dead.

Why did we leave him here?

I was bored.

I think he’s dead.

Put him in the dumpster.

Okay.


4

His head twitched, eyes distant on the tube: how long in it? Thirty—an hour? I keep thinking but it won’t stop.

He laughed.

Laughed

Inside the dumpster, he lay like a rag of stick and bone, and he was too weak to open the top. The bottom of the dumpster was lined with lots of mannequins, rubber limbs, and they felt very real.

He tried to push the metal top over his head, but it was trapped shut. Someone had locked it.

LET ME OUT.

There were several feet walking away, very casual as if they did not want to go back to work, and he heard the sound of laughter, laughter from another planet, and he felt the jungle of torsos and stiff hands and arms, all identical beneath him. His new earth! And he was no longer hungry, just warm and tired, very tired of thinking. And he tried to breathe and found he could. It was the only thing that he knew how to do anymore. He kept his eyes on the dark, and forgot he had eyes and died at 4:00 PM.

[Tulizar]

Here's a very short story. It's optimistic, for a change. I'm thinking about expanding it to something longer but not quite sure.

I think it works well as a short story.

The various POVs seem to mesh. The brief dialogue sheds some light on who's screwing with Void, despite Void's confusion. If you do make it longer, don't add too much background to Void's character. I like not knowing his past. Besides with a name like Void, the reader deserves to know as little as possible!

[JazFusion]

If you do expand it, don't do too much. I think it's awesome as is, though.

You ever going to get published one day? I'd totally buy your stuff.

[sgt.null]

i like it as is. no need to expand. but maybe a story or more about this place? an anthology type of approach?

[Worm of Despite]

I like to keep mystery in my stories, but if you must know...

Spoiler

I like alternate histories. This is a Russia set in the 50s/60s, but it's a Russia that somehow has advanced technology, like scanners/computer interfaces. They kill Domin using an MRI machine. All they do is leave him in there for several days.

I have done nine short stories set in a near-future, and this story may be a prequel to them. I really haven't developed it enough to say.

[sgt.null]

i like it even more with the explanation.

[wayfriend]

I liked it. It captures disorientation and a certain fatality endemic with a downtrodden people. But I think it is, if anything, a bit too long. Oh, and "dark and not well-lit" popped out for me -- playing with odd sentence constructions is powerful, and something I enjoy, but you can blow it with a badly chosen phrase that seems ill-written rather than odd. IMO.

[Worm of Despite]

I liked it. It captures disorientation and a certain fatality endemic with a downtrodden people. But I think it is, if anything, a bit too long. Oh, and "dark and not well-lit" popped out for me -- playing with odd sentence constructions is powerful, and something I enjoy, but you can blow it with a badly chosen phrase that seems ill-written rather than odd. IMO.

Yeah, that sentence doesn't make much sense. I was in the nadir of my insomnia. Perhaps take out the "not well-lit," as a broken light is mentioned right after.