(Page 1 of 3) The Crave by Vasilis Afxentiou
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SUMMARY: As I eat my tasteless stew (or thick soup), sitting on the bare fibreglass bunk in my cocoa-brown, canary-yellow, lizard-green shirt, and pants to match, I get the urge.
The Crave
I get this craving you see, a hell of an urge really, to get to tinkering in my garage.
About eight last night the crave tore at my gut.
"Better get it out of your system," I said, and jimmied--quiet-like--out of the easy-chair, then shimmied--quieter still--out the back door. Since the old garage burned down I kinda kept a low profile.
Against the dusk the new garage favoured a stark Gothic bastion. My shield from Maggie.
"Tonight'll be different." No sooner had I uttered it than my hand recoiled from the garage door. But not before a bolt of charge crackled across to my fingertips from the round brass knob.
"What a portent!"
***
At ten the house lights went out. Maggie was in bed.
I gave a husky twist on the screwdriver till metal creaked against metal. Finished.
The transformer had been extracted from a junked WW2 navy vessel in Phily. The bulk cost more to ship than to buy. It weighed twice what Maggie did. Anyway, it looked hefty enough to take the voltage.
I cleared my throat, "Well, Thomas Ancrum, give it life!"
I slip-shod back. I couldn't afford another garage. And Maggie would....
But then There was a way to control ill fortune.
I wired a rheostat after the switch.
I set it to zero.
"Lordy, Lordy," I consoled the craving, and pushed the blades down.
A deep muffled whirr.
"Give it juice," I whimpered.
I stepped the voltage up. The multivibrator next to the box with the exotic circuits started buzzing while the transformer on the floor began to roar.
Three thousand more volts left. The winding wasn't responding to the Earth's magnetic flux--
Slammed it to ten thousand volts.
The concrete floor quivered. The light bulb on the wall undulated--
"It's happening," I shouted, "gravity is being nullified!"
I dared not breathe, lest it send the massive hunk bursting through the roof.
I hung there by a hairspring, frozen. I dreamed. I lost myself. The riches, the frill, the savoir faire....
Ebony Rollses, vast estates, and heaps of menservants scurried through my head. Maggie, she'd stop her weird stares. She'd bow to a husband second to none.
"Tommy!" Maggie's voice drilled the night, "Stop talking to yourself. I wanna sleep!"
"Not for long, dear," I countered, "I'll be talking to the world tomorrow!"
***
Last night the world was mine.
This morning I'm filthy, behind bars, and have a well in the garage.
The dumb move was to step the voltage up to eleven thousand volts all at once. That oversized anvil dropped sparking through the floor--concrete, reinforcement and all--like hell-fire through butter. The racket woke half the neighbourhood.
If that wasn't enough, Maggie comes acharging in the garage door and drops dead-bottom into a hole she never suspected. One of her nine lives must've quit on her just then. She moaned a bit, then sobered grappled wild-cat like to climb out, all two-hundred-and-fifty pounds of her.
I lowered a step-ladder and left. If anything was hurting it was the navy transformer under Maggie.
***
It didn't make sense.
The set-up did nullify Earth's gravity.
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