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(Page 2 of 3) The Crave by Vasilis Afxentiou
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But in reverse. Instead of pushing, it pulled itself into the Earth.
There go the Rollses, the estates, the menservants. The neighbors are spooked. The garage's ready to cave in. My wife is...I don't know where. And I'm covered in paint....
When I left the garage I went into the house. I was running a hot tub and looking for clean clothes when the door bell caught me.
"Good evening, sir, Sgt. Dubinsky. This is patrolman Bowes."
***
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.
Running a new feeder down the pit will be no problem.
These overnight city jails leave a lot to be desired. The light switch is next to the bars. I take my slacks off and use the loose end of the zipper to unscrew the cap. I jump on the bunk, twist the juiced line into a hook, and hang my trousers by the old zip tossing a trouser leg through the bars.
"You all through?" grunts the guard.
"Yeah."
"Well, hand me the tray."
"Alright, alright. Toss me my pants."
He spots the trouser leg and reaches for it, "Hey, buddy, you go swimming in paint? Hold on, they're caught...."
A hundred and ten volts is seldom fatal. But it'll jar and juggle you enough to remember it for the rest of you're life. The guard never knew what hit'im.
***
In addition to all else, I'm now a wanted man.
Soon as I got to the garage I set to work. I climbed down to the transformer, reversed the polarity on the exotic circuit's, straightened the copper contacts Maggie fell on, and spot-welded a new feeder. The cable I used was thick gauge wire; didn't want the thing to shoot up without some kind of control line tied to it for quick adjustments. I left ample slack too.
Now, the fine-graded rheostat is at ten point seven kilovolts. One more click will raise the voltage to ten point eight.
"Click."
Nothing.
"Must be the impedance of the extra line," I tell myself. A few notches up.
"Click, CLICK--"
Jupiter! Everything's starting to shake!
The place is rattling, plaster's falling, dust and grit's spraying out of the pit!
Where's the rheostat?--I can't see a thing with all this smut in my eyes.
The rumble is God-awful. "Jesus!" The whole city'll be levelled--
The breakers trip. Silence and fog. The cable is almost all gone. It must've bored a thousand feet down. Not an inch up.
"Tommy, oh To-o-ommy."
"Ugh."
"Tommy, dear, this is Mr. Bludodle, he's a lawyer."
"I'm not going to fight it."
"Fight what, Tommy hon?"
"You've got the divorce--just don't expect alimony with me behind bars."
"There's some kind of mis-uh-understanding, Mr. Ancrum. Why, Mrs. Ancrum and I spent all last night trying to locate you. The Missing Persons Bureau told us that you had been `detained' at the city's co-oh-rrectional facilities."
"You mean Maggie didn't call the cops and have me nabbed?"
"Mr. Ancrum! Your wife had nothing but your best interests in mind. A ne-eh-ighbor had called, certainly not your wife."
You know then by now half the county is looking for me."
"Tommy sugar, you underestimate Mr.
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