Page 100 - Psychoceramics and the Test of Fire

The Vorax

only commerce he noticed was a regular delivery of recyclable trash,
brought in by a private collection service and dumped in bins on the
loading dock. Sonny had some experience gathering bottles and cans
to sell by the pound at government processing centers, and this did
not look at all like that sort of operation. If nobody went into and
nothing came out of the place, he wondered, how could the business
afford its electricity bill? One day, walking through the alley behind
that warehouse, he glanced up at the power lines crisscrossing above
him between utility poles and metering boxes on the sides of
buildings. According to the often-inebriated Mr. Feckler, the lines to
that warehouse were disconnected; it was therefore not being served
by the city’s power grid. That impossibility agitated him, and he
became determined to see what went on inside the place. He knew a
way to get up on the roof of the adjoining structure, and from there
approach a row of third-story windows. That he did on a moonless
night, and found a tiny corner of one window imperfectly painted
over. He peered inside. From that point his account veered from the
track of tall tales and chronic prevarication into the mirrored hallways
of paranoia and hallucination, ending, the reporter implied, in a
padded cell.
“It was the Devil’s workshop!” he had raved. He saw row upon
row of stalls, reminiscent of a commercial dairy, in which crablike
creatures about the size of a dachshund were aligned, each on a
treadmill. A man in overalls trundled a wheelbarrow in front of these
monstrosities, tossing them bits and pieces of broken patio chairs,
plastic dishes, clothing, beverage containers, radios, lampshades, and
the like—and without breaking stride the disgusting things grabbed
the objects with pincer-like limbs, chopped them into small pieces
and fed them into an incessantly masticating maw. Might Freckler,
were he telling the truth, have seen something that sent him over the
edge? If so, what it was will never be known: he started fires at every
possible exit of the building, leaving no trace of its inhabitants or
their activities. A plume of black oily smoke hung over the site for
days.

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