The City Stirs

by Jonathan Wood

In its sleep, the city stirred.  Beneath its streets, muscles rippled.  Flagstones were cracked.  Buildings trembled.  Lives were endangered.  “These are events outside the record of history,” the citizens  told their crown-prince.  “Something must be done.”

The prince’s advisors, the chymick Airtran, and the physick Elben, consulted.  Never had  the two seen eye to eye, but it was Elben that answered first.

“Our city wants,” he said.  “It yearns.  It struggles to approach its desires.”

“What does it desire?” the prince asked.

“That we must ascertain,” he replied.

Children were brought up to the city’s great ear.  They stood upon the plateau of its pinna and sang into the pit there—sweet nothings to lull the city back to slumber.

The city stirred and a dozen lives were lost—spilled into the abyss.

Adventurous souls with little to lose clambered down the great crags of the city’s face.  Barrels of liquor were roped down.  The whole city seemed to sweat and groan at the heave of their descent.  Finally the liquid was introduced to the lips of the city, and was heard to gurgle deep in the city’s bowels.

The city stirred and the citizens found they had no way to drown their sorrows.

A madwoman went south, to the city’s nethers, with lecherous claims for a solution.  She never returned.  Still the city stirred.

Then Airtran loosed his tongue, saying, “Too much time and too many lives have been lost.  There is a simpler solution.  If the city desires, then we simply remove the organ of desire.”

Elben spoke against such words, but the weight of the people was with Airtran.  And so men dug.  With picks, and spades, and blades they dug.  Blood filled the hole but they pumped it away and dug on.  The city twitched.  Lives were crushed.  They dug on.  A thunder came from the pit.  A crashing sound that deafened those who worked in the meaty depths of the hole.  Still they dug,

Then at last they came to it.  The great crashing, pulsating organ: the city’s heart.  And Airtran, the chymick, descended and plied his trade, even against the horror of it all.  And the heart blackened, and the heart slackened, and the heart died.

The city lay still.

The people cheered.  Weeks passed.  And slowly the scent of rot filled the air.