Descending Road - WHERE IANA HAD FOLLOWED ME by Dana W. Paxson

WHERE IANA HAD FOLLOWED ME

1560 4D

The inside of a body disposal bag is what you’d expect, except for the smell: metallic, probably from the nanocleansers everyone used to get rid of the filth. It was clean, pitch-black, hot, and stuffy, and it was painful since the three women were lugging me like a wet sack of meat. Which I was at that time, having been paralyzed so completely that the drool running down my throat didn’t even make me cough. It was like drowning slowly. To make matters worse, all my sphincters had let go, and the metallic smell was rapidly giving way to the sewer-odor of the deepest City shafts. Not that it would matter.

They were going to dump me down the shaft where Iana had followed me, and there’d be a long falling float in the dense air, followed by some glancing smashes against the stair edge on the way down, and then the grand and final dive into the sea of sewage and decay at the bottom. It looked as if my job worries were over.

I remembered some of the words I’d preached to the people whose coins I took. Maybe those words were good, even if I wasn’t. I wondered whether the words had gone out and come back to me to help me somehow, but all I saw was the inside of that bag, and all I heard were footsteps and low voices, and all I smelled was my own toxic emissions. Tears leaked from my eyes and ran up to my forehead as my head dangled.

I hit the stone floor, hard, face down. Shouting and cursing. Once, then twice more, boots trampled my back and legs, back and forth. My left kneecap shot pain through me. More yelling, then running feet, then I passed out, the air in the bag finally reaching the point where it would not sustain life.

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


	WHERE IANA HAD FOLLOWED ME 1560 4D The inside of a body disposal bag is what you’d expect, except for the smell: metallic, probably from the nanocleansers everyone used to get rid of the filth. It was clean, pitch-black, hot, and stuffy, and it was painful since the three women were lugging me like a wet sack of meat. Which I was at that time, having been paralyzed so completely that the drool running down my throat didn’t even make me cough. It was like drowning slowly. To make matters worse, all my sphincters had let go, and the metallic smell was rapidly giving way to the sewer-odor of the deepest City shafts. Not that it would matter. They were going to dump me down the shaft where Iana had followed me, and there’d be a long falling float in the dense air, followed by some glancing smashes against the stair edge on the way down, and then the grand and final dive into the sea of sewage and decay at the bottom. It looked as if my job worries were over. I remembered some of the words I’d preached to the people whose coins I took. Maybe those words were good, even if I wasn’t. I wondered whether the words had gone out and come back to me to help me somehow, but all I saw was the inside of that bag, and all I heard were footsteps and low voices, and all I smelled was my own toxic emissions. Tears leaked from my eyes and ran up to my forehead as my head dangled. I hit the stone floor, hard, face down. Shouting and cursing. Once, then twice more, boots trampled my back and legs, back and forth. My left kneecap shot pain through me. More yelling, then running feet, then I passed out, the air in the bag finally reaching the point where it would not sustain life.