Fantastic Metropolis

Someone please think of me! Think me! she cried out without uttering a sound. Already she felt the remembered currents of air again beginning to course through her head.

If only the telephone would now just ring! she shouted soundlessly. A voice trying to sell her another credit card, a trunkful of magic food supplements, anything...

There was that feeling in her head now that her brain was turning into a Swiss cheese. An army of mice was now tunneling through the labyrinth of wormholes that perforated her body, enlarging the tunnel walls, and the holes widened out till barely a thin skin was left to keep them separate. And then, one by one, down went the fragile remaining partitions under the quiet, busy gnaw of mouse-teeth.

Vera rushed again into the bathroom in a final attempt to arrest the avalanching process. She had nothing to lose. When she had the strength, she knew how to stare it to a halt. Strength? Disappointments like this evening’s, when she had allowed herself to hope for reprieve through companionship of a sort, managed to devastate her meager reserves, leaving her so much more vulnerable.

Vera faced the mirror with clenched teeth and eyes narrowed into a defiant, imperious stare. Pride and despair blinked back at her out of the expanding blur. And she herself was that blur in the mirror, beckoning to the blur beyond. Vera felt a sudden snap, like the lid of a jewel-box closing. And then nothing.

Nor was there even the blur where her face had just floated.

As to Vera Unruh’s body…

The only images that the bathroom mirror reflected were the white shower curtain and the edge of the tub that a moment ago had stood hidden behind her.

The fact that Vera had been standing there, however, was confirmed by the crumpled fluff of negligee spread out like a cloud on the sky-blue floor tiles just below the sink.

This story was first published in Puck #10 (June 1993). It was republished in Dan Pearlman’s collection The Best-Known Man in the World & Other Misfits (2001).