by Al
On my home planet things are very bad—there is severe overpopulation and the governments are harsh and restrictive. If I had not become a Muse I would have been judged unnecessary and eventually eliminated. There is a trade pact between this world and my own and Muses are valuable commodities.
Something in me, of me, is being tapped, siphoned out by the cables and utilized. My emotions are being sucked dry, for a price. I have thought of running away but I have seen the crucifixion poles jutting through the yellow fog. I’ve seen what is done to Muses who run away. If anything, the governments of this world are even more ruthless than those on my home planet. If I did escape, where would I run to? There is, in fact, no escape.
There is much pain within me, but at least I am alive and can express myself, unlike the lonely monsters of this world.
Unlike Bates.
IV
Days have passed; I sit in my gray cylindrical room in my chair and Bates composes above me. He has begun another piece; he has been working at his usual pace at the normal console setting.
Someone climbs the stairs and enters Bates’ room and suddenly he stops. I can hear muffled voices through the ceiling. Perhaps it is Trevor, Bates’ business contact. The day, as usual, is bleak; sickly yellow mist drifts by the small window.
There are shuffling sounds above me; the visitor departs. Bates leaves his room and hurriedly descends the stairs.
I swivel around in my chair to face him as he enters the room. His silent eyes are bright.
“Trevor was here,” he says, holding out something in his hand. “He gave me this—a check for five thousand credits. He listened to the composition and wants me to write more, immediately. He especially liked the ending.”
“Bates—” I begin.
“He says that if I write a piece that’s like the ending of the other one all the way through he’ll double the number of credits I got for this one. He says there’s an audience for this type of music at the moment. We must start immediately.” His eyes stare through me.
“Bates,” I say, “I told you the other night it can’t be done. The contract doesn’t call for it. It’s a terrible strain on me.”
“I don’t care. If you could do it once you can do it now. I’ll make you do it. We’ll begin immediately.”
“Bates—” I say, but he closes the door behind him.
I swing around in my chair as he reaches the console upstairs. His stool grunts as he settles himself on to it, and I can hear him strapping the wires from the console to his arms and legs. The cable pads are hot on my temples. He has obviously turned the console to a high setting. He replaces the chip from the composition he was working on with a new one, and begins to urge me through the cables.
I try to hold it down but the console setting is strong. I begin to sweat. The urge increases to a forcible level.
Suddenly the dam breaks and a tide of feeling rushes out of me. The tones of the console above form a harmonic boom and then settle, after a moment of silence, into a slow, ominous crescendo. A theme forms, then another and another, and they begin to grind against one another, each building in intensity and each fighting against the others. I grit my teeth; the strain is unbearable. Tears burn my eyes. The room around me begins to tremble as the music builds to a feverish pitch. The three themes converge into a monstrous, tortured strain as my soul tries to tear loose from my body…
Hours later it is over. The ceiling above me rumbles quietly and I can hear Bates struggling for breath. The cable pads have burned my flesh and my arms and legs are very weak.
Just as I begin to calm down the pain comes again. Bates has put a new chip in. I hear him shout through the ceiling, to himself, “More!” The ceiling shakes; my arms fly about madly, uncontrollably. My head is thrown violently about.
He composes continuously for the next two days. I can barely catch a gasp of breath between cries of pain.
Finally he shuts down the console. I can dimly hear it wind down as the power decreases. I can hear Bates pull the wires from his arms and legs and stumble from his stool to the bed.
The room above me is silent.
V
Bates continues this type of work for the next four months. The days drag by. Occasionally Trevor visits him; after these visits Bates’ fervor climbs to an almost manic level. Even the console seems to plead for rest. My mind is driven to emotive heights for prolonged periods of time; I am forced to survive on bits of food and water fed to me by Bates at odd and infrequent hours—he will not even allow me to remove the cable pads in fear that I may do something drastic despite the threat of horrible punishment. I could not leave my chair even if I were allowed, my body is so weak. Bates, above, pauses only for food or snatches of rest. Composition after composition is completed.
One day Bates comes to see me. It is after a visit from Trevor, and Bates bursts into my room. He comes to my chair and stands before me. He, too, is wasted and yellow; nevertheless he smiles.
“Trevor has just left,” he says in a low, weak voice. “Everything I’ve composed has received tremendous acceptance.”
I stare at him mutely.
“Look here,” he continues, pulling small bundles of credit notes from his pockets. “And there’s much more coming. But that’s not what I wanted to tell you.” He pauses. “I’ve had your contract amended.”
My gaze is unmoved.
“There was nearly trouble. It’s been all right up to now, but for what I want to do next I had to be sure. I’m ready to do something larger.”
“Bates,” I say hoarsely, from deep within me. “Bates, it can’t be done. I haven’t eaten, slept—”
“I know,” he says, “but that can’t be helped. It’s in the contract and this thing must be done now. Trevor says—”
“To hell with Trevor!” I cry brokenly. “You’re destroying me. I can’t think anymore, Bates. I can’t feel. I need rest, time to think, time—”
~ * ~
“Never mind your needs! You work for me. Trevor says the public is ready for a symphonic cycle, something magnificent.” His eyes are aflame in his dead, blank face. “We must begin.”
“Bates—”
“You’re my Muse,” he snaps. “Amending that contract cost me a lot of credits; you won’t disappoint me. It’s time to begin.” He turns to leave.
I stare weakly at the curved gray wall framing Bates’ back. Words rise and die in my dry throat. Bates shuts the door and goes upstairs.
The pain hits me unexpectedly. Bates has done something to the console—some sort of modification has been made to give it even greater power capabilities. I am not even able to resist; the machine reaches right to the core of my emotions and begins to suck voraciously at them. Upstairs the console announces the opening of the work with a gigantic chord in brasses, and then settles immediately into a wrenching, twisting theme in the strings. There is an ominous percussive beat in the background, insistent, ponderous and funereal. The beat increases suddenly to a pounding, terrifying level, nearly excluding all other sound. The strings begin to lash at the beat, in staccato fashion. Now the horns join in. It is as if a hundred thousand instruments have been squeezed screaming into the console and are fighting each other and themselves to get out. The level increases, and I can hear Bates howl through my own agony. The cable pads have welded themselves to the red, raw flesh on my temples. Being, existence, is torn from me by the machine above.
I don’t know how much time passes. Existence itself is one continuous, emotive cry. The cable pads rip into me, and the console level, incredibly, is still rising. The music has become one immense, flagellating note, self-destructive and unstoppable. It is out of control. There is a roar of thunder, a burst of unbelievable pain—
I am thrown back against my chair; there has been an explosion in the room above. The wall shakes; the ceiling cracks and plaster chips flake down upon me. I lay, stick-like, broken, in my chair. There is silence.
Plaster dusts the room.
&nb
sp; After a few minutes I am able to pull myself up. The cables break away: the wires are fused. I walk, trembling, to the door. The hallway outside is twilit; I can see the dark outline of the curving stairs against the grayness. I slowly make my way up the steps.
The door to Bates’ room is open and unhinged—it has been blown outward by the explosion. Inside all is smoke. There is a sickly smell of burnt meat and wiring. I approach the console.
Bates is slumped over the typewriter, arms outstretched, charred. He is dead. I pull him back, away from the machine. Broken black wires hang from his arms and legs. His huge white eyes are turned up into his head. His fish-like mouth is open in a frozen, lifeless cry. His tongue is black.
Slowly, with effort, I pull Bates from the stool. He collapses and tumbles to the floor, twitching. I sit down, slowly, on the stool.
I am racked with sobs.
VI
Soon someone, possibly Trevor, will come and find me here. I will not be harmed; I am a valuable product. Bates’ contract with me will be destroyed and the chip he was working on will be sold—an unfinished work. The wrecked console, the debris, will be cleared out and another artist will move into this silo. A new console will be installed. The new artist may bring his own Muse; if not, he may contract me. Otherwise, I will be put back on the market. There is nothing else for me to do. The quality of my work with Bates will be a factor in my next contract—because of my sudden notoriety I may be able to contract myself to an artist who will allow me to work under better conditions. It is this or death.
Outside the window the day is bleak; the far-away sun makes this world sallow. I place a new chip in the console and turn it on to a very low setting. It coughs, then purrs haltingly. I hold my fingers over the keys and a tear beads in my eye and makes its slow, ragged way down my face.
I begin to play.
THE DANCING FOOT
By Al Sarrantonio
The stories had littered the newspapers for days—YOUNG GIRL, PROMISING DANCER, PUSHED UNDER SUBWAY TRAIN—and Lansing had collected them all, reveled in the large type of their headlines, relished his secret infamy. That the girl was dead did not matter to him; it was the fact that he had done something and gotten away with it, that an entire city wanted to get its hands on him but had no idea who he was that made him hug himself in satisfaction.
He sat smoking on his mattress in his apartment, remembering the crowded platform, the crush of the morning crowds piled four deep; then the roar and clatter of the oncoming train, the press of the mob toward the yellow safety line in anticipation; the train almost there; and then his foot, quick and silent, tripping the girl, causing her to fall over the edge of the platform in front of the metal beast, too late to stop; the scream of brakes mingled with the girl’s startled, horrified cry—
Lansing rocked himself and smiled, lingering on the sweet moment of impact, thinking of how he had glided silently away in the confusion after making sure to look down for a glimpse of the crushed body.
The papers had said that if she had fallen a few inches to the right she would have landed on the outside of the tracks and that her foot might still have been severed but that she would have survived. As it was, she landed directly under the train between the tracks, and her right foot had been cut off by the wheels, but her body had been dragged and crushed by the momentum of the front car screeching to a halt.
The papers had quieted down some about it in the past week, moving the stories and wild speculations to the inside pages, and though he had slept undisturbed for the first few days after the deed—working a full day just as he always did—he had begun to have bad dreams. He dreamed about the foot. He dreamed that the foot was following him. And what horrified him most in the dreams was the way it followed him, walking. Like some horrible cartoon appendage—like the way his mother used to walk her hand around him with little doll’s shoes on two fingers when he was small, dancing those two little feet before him like a little soldier after he was bad and then suddenly lashing out when he wasn’t expecting it, smacking him across the face with the flat part of her hand. She was doing it now, hitting him, smacking him—
He awoke, suddenly realizing that he had dozed off into the dream again. He was covered with cold sweat, and the room was dark now. He made a move to get off the bed and turn on the lights.
As he did so he heard a sound. He knew he was wide awake now, and he heard something moving around in the closet. Something walking around, pushing things aside, kicking things aside.
He thought, It has to be rats.
He pulled himself unsteadily from the bed, wiping the sweat from his face with the front of his tee-shirt, and lurched over to the light switch. He clicked it on and the sounds from the closet abruptly stopped. He threw open the closet door and there was nothing there. No rats. Nothing.
He slammed the door roughly shut and went to the bed, settling onto the old, creaking mattress. He took a deep breath. I’ve got to stop this, he thought. He was starting to be afraid to go out, of taking the subway, of doing anything.
This has got to stop.
He thought again of tripping the girl, saw her falling off the platform, and that made him feel better. He looked at the clippings pasted to the wall around the room—YOUNG DANCER CRUSHED—and was even able to smile. I got away with it, he thought. No one knows I did it.
He lay down and slept.
And dreamt, screaming, of the foot again.
~ * ~
The next day he arrived at work late. Walking by a shoe store something made him hesitate; there was a pair of dancer’s shoes, ballet slippers, in the window, and he found himself staring at them. As he looked they suddenly began to move—
He realized with a start of relief that it was just the shop owner, taking the pair of shoes off their hook to show a customer. But the image of the moving shoes lingered in his mind…
He didn’t say hello to Joey, the lobby attendant, like he usually did, but went straight to the locker room and put his maintenance man’s uniform on. Joey mumbled something as he went past, something like “Grouch,” with a laugh, but Lansing let it pass.
Morelli was waiting for him on the 15th floor, and yelled at him good-naturedly when he came off the elevator, for being late.
“Look at this, kid,” Morelli said suddenly, turning and holding up his right leg. “Look what I did shaving this morning.” There was a stump on the end, no foot—and then Morelli laughed and popped his shoe out of the pulled-down pants cuff.
“Got you that time, kid,” he said, and laughed again. “Go clean up that mess on 18, the workmen’ll be in early tomorrow to start. You okay, kiddo?”
“Uh, yeah, Nick.” Lansing nodded curtly and left.
The eighteenth floor was completely gutted for renovation, and he went there gratefully, happy to be alone. But soon the emptiness of the floor and the strange shadows cast by the boxes and crates lying around began to get to him. He heard noises, and imagined a dancing foot, a legion of dancing feet, kicking things around, marching right up to him—
He swung around as the elevator door suddenly opened. Nobody got off. After a moment the doors closed again, and the arrival light over the opening went out. There was dusty silence for a moment, and then as Lansing turned to get back to work something moved.
He distinctly saw it, a severed foot scooting around a crate by the elevator, and out of sight. He began to shake and his body went numb, as if two giant icy hands had grabbed him. There was a scratching sound, and then the sound of a moving ballet slipper.
Lansing went rigid. The shuffling got louder, and then he saw a foot with a slipper on it appear from behind the crate.
Suddenly the elevator doors opened again, and the foot ran behind a box. Morelli stepped out into the room.
“Hey kid,” he said, and then he saw Lansing standing frozen. “What’s wrong?”
“The foot!” Lansing said.
“What?”
“Don’t you hear the dancing?” He felt
as if he would faint.
“Kid, go home early. Right now. Whatever’s wrong, flush it out and come back tomorrow ready to work. I don’t want a sick guy on the job, makes me look like a lousy foreman. Believe me, you don’t look so good.”
“I—” He nodded. “Okay.”
He got in the most crowded subway car on the train and looked straight ahead all the way home. He was afraid that if he looked down he would see the foot in front of him. He thought he heard the rap-shuffle of it walking, but he refused to look. There was a light kick at the cuff of his pants just before his stop, but still he gritted his teeth and stared straight ahead.
He ran to his apartment and bolted the door, stuffing towels underneath the sill. He heard tiny footsteps outside. He slammed the windows shut, and double-locked the window leading to the fire escape, pulling down the shade. He sat on the bed in the corner of the room and pulled up his knees, closing his eyes tight.