Fantastic Metropolis

“Just one.”

“Will you make any more?”

“Not like that,” said the knifemaker. And he wouldn’t answer when the boy asked him why not. (The knifemaker did not hate children, but a killer had abducted his daughter recently, and threatened to dice her up unless he sold one of his special knives to a little boy. [The killer did not tell the knifemaker why the boy should not die, or that he would not be returning his daughter. Or that he would be coming for the knifemaker as he Must Needs Do So for everyone until it is all Done.])

Neither of the boys could believe he was selling this knife for two dollars.

The boy had to hide the knife in his pants, and when he got home told his parents he didn’t buy anything and had saved his money. Luckily his friend’s mom had not seen him buy the knife, but he had to let his friend hold the knife whenever he wanted to, or his parents would find out. His parents had often told him they were Not A Family That Keeps Weapons In the House.

We woke up in the middle of the night, between moon and rain, birds and traffic, between water pipe rumbles in the walls. He woke very hard, without sitting up, and won’t ever remember because he felt like a different person—like he had lived a very long time.

He said into the night, “I am real.” Which had no significance at all to the moment or the story that was his life.

He had cut his finger on the knife while hiding it under his mattress.

This is one of the ways to begin an ending.

 

There is a commercial on network television. Just once. Meticulously, laboriously, lovingly hand-drawn (but smooth as digital animation), dark owls appear on their gnarled midnight tree and peer their uncanny eyes straight into the souls of everyone watching and everyone not watching, dreaming or not; and hum the rising music of Greig’s “In the Hall of the Mountain King” from Peer Gynt Suite. The final kettle drum/cymbal crash down beat slams the company logo across a black screen:

Jack’s Ginger Beer
The beverage with a bite of truth.
Brewed in Gnaw Bone, Indiana.

It does not matter if the word soul makes you wince, or if you refuse to believe in the existence of what the word generally implies. They can still see what they are looking for.

 

There is one monster in all the world. It has thousands of teeth, and eyes that burn the color of hate within a sharp ring of anger. The monster eats babies and kittens and peanut butter and honey locust thorns and boysenberry syrup warmed by the cupful. It lives in a different closet every night. Its tail is made of shark skin and earwig butt and hedge apple and pineapple and dull scroll saw blades and dead bee legs, and it drags it around behind its completely indescribable body like a tiny mountain, smearing its waste because it is always hungry, always eating children and itself, always tired and always eating, born without a stomach, always shitting. It lives under the bed too. It has eight arms; six of them real, three with needle claws. It knows prayers and curses in every language ever spoken. It knows the song you have which is your own, kept inside, which you cannot whistle or tabulate even if you are a composer. It has no taste buds. It is most hateful because it doesn’t like its own name. You’d be none too happy either if your name was Fear.

 

This is the last story before the end.

 

There is a job open. They do not care which school you attended, or if you finished your degree. They do not care if you a People Person, if you believe the customer is Always Right, if you’ve had one-point-five years experience Or Equivalent. Do not bother with a tie, or to shave, or remove the earrings. They see you as you are. They are not an equal opportunity employer. You do not need to go in for the interview, they can see you from here.

Do not try to lie to them by pretending to be excited about and solely devoted to the position that is open, that you can smile on your feet all day, or that you believe neck ties are a symbol of anything at all whatsoever.