Descending Road - TO LAUGH AT THE MAN by Dana W. Paxson

TO LAUGH AT THE MAN

Electric dawn approaches. I stretch my arm out before me into the corridor dark, luxuriating. The skin of my upper arm tightens and thins out where it becomes one with the wall in which I am embedded. It tightens and thins, but it refuses to break. Damn its strength!

Every so often in the slow-walking years I tried to rip it, tear myself free with these long heavy fingernails, and walk out into this darkness like those people who pass by me once in a long time. Jono is my name, the name I forgot for too long. Jono, who took so many men and women and hollowed out their skins and stuffed them lifelike and put them back in their places in life to be found making little endless movements and shedding endless tears.

Twelve thousand years imprisoned here, and no one remembers me, except to descend two or three hundred levels in this ageless underground City, to laugh and point and wonder at the man locked in the stone wall.

I will make them all remember me again.

I thrust my neck and jaw forward, straining against the bond between my toughened skin and the stone wall around me. This time I will stay uncaught, and I will take many human insides and make of them a single flesh creature, tubes and bags and vessels and cords and muscles and bones and nerves, a great heaving sentient thing to be left in the fountain at Aswal Narr. A living, sobbing memorial to my long power and skill as a maker. My ancient vats are waiting.

I count the days in this underground world by the brightening and dimming of the corridor ceiling lights, synthetic memories of the sun seven hundred levels above this empty street. The last passer-by here, maybe ten years ago, an andro woman laughing and drunk with hallucins, left a shard of cryssteel on the floor. Since then, four thousand synthetic dawns have passed in this dusty stone hallway, and each day I reached for that tiny shard and came just short. Until today.

Story List	SURPRISE ME	Author Page
USER SURVEY	PUZZLE ME	MAKE ELM MARK

HOVER Lucida Bright BARE	HOVER Lucida Bright FULL	HOVER Palatino Linotype BARE
HOVER Palatino Linotype FULL	HOVER Times New Roman BARE	HOVER Times New Roman FULL
PAD Arial BARE	PAD Arial FULL	PAD Lucida Bright BARE
PAD Lucida Bright FULL	PAD Times New Roman BARE	PAD Times New Roman FULL


	TO LAUGH AT THE MAN 6303 Arcus Electric dawn approaches. I stretch my arm out before me into the corridor dark, luxuriating. The skin of my upper arm tightens and thins out where it becomes one with the wall in which I am embedded. It tightens and thins, but it refuses to break. Damn its strength! Every so often in the slow-walking years I tried to rip it, tear myself free with these long heavy fingernails, and walk out into this darkness like those people who pass by me once in a long time. Jono is my name, the name I forgot for too long. Jono, who took so many men and women and hollowed out their skins and stuffed them lifelike and put them back in their places in life to be found making little endless movements and shedding endless tears. Twelve thousand years imprisoned here, and no one remembers me, except to descend two or three hundred levels in this ageless underground City, to laugh and point and wonder at the man locked in the stone wall. I will make them all remember me again. I thrust my neck and jaw forward, straining against the bond between my toughened skin and the stone wall around me. This time I will stay uncaught, and I will take many human insides and make of them a single flesh creature, tubes and bags and vessels and cords and muscles and bones and nerves, a great heaving sentient thing to be left in the fountain at Aswal Narr. A living, sobbing memorial to my long power and skill as a maker. My ancient vats are waiting. I count the days in this underground world by the brightening and dimming of the corridor ceiling lights, synthetic memories of the sun seven hundred levels above this empty street. The last passer-by here, maybe ten years ago, an andro woman laughing and drunk with hallucins, left a shard of cryssteel on the floor. Since then, four thousand synthetic dawns have passed in this dusty stone hallway, and each day I reached for that tiny shard and came just short. Until today.