When gravity ceased to apply as we knew it, nobody expected it wouldn’t kill us immediately. The laws of physics didn't collapse; they took offense. The Earth simply stopped wanting us. It refused to hold us. Everything not bolted to bedrock—cars, dogs, loose stones, and unanchored people—fell up, straight into the sky. So did oceans and icebergs. No need to worry about them melting, at least.
Since then, we have been living like bats. Bat-men in a world turned upside down. Ceilings became floors. Those deep underground Cold War bunkers suddenly came in handy. Sidewalks are now ceilings across which we crawl using steel pitons driven into the concrete. The sky beneath us… or actually above us, but who can distinguish amidst such vertigo? It is no longer blue. It is The Grey of only one shade. An infinite, milky void where those whose grip fails fall forever.
My name is Karl. I am a mold harvester on the southern overhang of the Old Town Hall. I’d make for a great gargoyle! My job is to hang head-down over the abyss, secured only by a rusty hook driven into my shin, using a spatula to scrape off the purple lichen that has begun to form on monuments. That lichen is the only edible thing. It tastes like leaking batteries, but it keeps you alive. Barely.
Today is Toesday. Toesday is the worst. On Toesday, The Grey wakes up.
While I hang and scrape, I smell the air changing. It begins to reek of burnt caramel and formaldehyde. From the milky emptiness beneath me, They begin to emerge. They are not aliens. They are neither angels nor demons. They are Hands. Titanic hands, the size of apartment blocks, with waxen skin and perfectly manicured nails. Thumbs up!
No one knows where they came from. Those verminous plutocrats, rotting safely in their sewers, claim we’re just tripping in the mold fumes. Some of us Outsiders believe that we worshipped the invisible hand, that modern golden calf, for so long that it finally became visible and came for us. Jeez, that calf doesn't seem so bad anymore, does it?
"Watch out! They’re coming!" someone screams from the adjacent ledge.
I look down. A gigantic right hand tears through the clouds. Its index finger seems as long as Wenceslas Square. The Hand doesn't attack immediately. It hovers, elegant and slow. Lethal pantomime. A sound emanates from its pores. It isn't a roar. It is music.
From the massive palm, the jingle from a 1990’s laundry detergent commercial drifts into the silent, post-gravitationally inverted city. A cheerful, optimistic melody, distorted by decibels until it makes your ears bleed. And your rugs shine.
"Whiter than white, cleaner than clean…" booms through space as the Hand slowly closes its fingers around the towers of the Týn Church. Its vaults are fancy mansions now, screw you, Tycho Brahe, and other mummies. Long gone. Oh, my! The Hand crushes the stone to dust. One tower crumbles and falls up into the sky, toward nothingness. Was it the mold-rich one?
We, the survivors, press ourselves against the walls of the buildings. Post-gravity pulls us toward the maw of the heavens, but our pitons hold as if they had their own sheer willpower. As if they had more self-preservation instinct than we do.
This Toesday ritual has its rules. The Hands don't just want to destroy. They crave currency.
The problem is, money no longer exists. Not even Monopoly money. “Symmetry…” echoed when they appeared for the first time. “Symmetry!”
"Karl! Do you have it?" hisses Berta, a woman hanging on a rope two meters away. Berta used to be a gymnast. Now she has titanium claws instead of feet to hold onto the façade. Emaciated; just like Death hanging by her side. You could hardly tell them apart. Unlike other sculptures of the Clock, Death remained, grinning upside down. Berta’s made friends with it. She says it's better than talking to poor old me. Guess she’s right!
"I have it," I reply, reaching into my vest pocket. I pull out a vintage matchbox. It reads: Solo.
Inside, there is no gold. Just human eyelids. Two pairs. Perfectly symmetrical.
The Hands love paired organs. Eyes, ears, kidneys, even ones with kidney stones, lungs. If you don't sacrifice something to them on Toesday that has a perfect counterpart, they will crush you to the tune of advertising jingles. The Black Fryday Market for paired organs is the only industry that still functions. Don't ask how I got these eyelids. There’s always a cost.
The enormous Hand approaches us. Its fingertips are soft. Veins as thick as oil pipelines pulse beneath the skin. It stops five meters away.
"Think different! Impossible is nothing!" deafening slogans blare from the palm. It is a demand. The Hand opens. The palm is covered in thousands of tiny mouths, all smacking their lips.
I watch Berta make her offering. Two testicles wrapped in newspaper stiff with dried blood. They fall down, toward the Hand. The mouths on the palm catch them, chew them up, and the Hand purrs contentedly with the sound of the Windows 95 startup chime.
Now it is my turn. I pull out the eyelids. The Hand waits eagerly. Post-gravity tears at my ankles. The hook in my shin burns like a war vet’s clap. I wind up for the throw… and then I realize.
One eyelid slips. Slips away…
It is just a flash. A small piece of skin flutters in the wind, but it doesn't fall toward the Hand. The wind carries it aside. Out of reach. Into the irretrievable. I am left with only one.
Loss of symmetry.
The Hand freezes. The advertising jingles fall silent. A silence follows, a hair-raising, cold-sweat-squeezing silence. The palm slowly turns toward me. The thousand tiny mouths unite into one massive sneer.
"Error in the matrix," booms a voice like an automated translator. "Surcharge required."
I know what that means. I have nothing else on me in a pair that I can spare. I need my ears to hear the approaching Hands. Eyes to see the lichen. Hands to scrape with.
Only my legs remain.
I look at my ankles. They are the only things holding me to the earth. If I give It my legs, I fall into the sky. If I don't give them, It crushes me.
The Hand taps an impatient giant finger against the façade of the Town Hall. The walls crack. Thick, pink liquid begins to ooze from its pores, smelling like cheap bubblegum.
"Offer valid for a limited time," the Hand announces.
I pull out the knife I use to scrape lichen. It isn't sharp, but it is serrated. I look at Berta. She looks away. She knows what I must do to satisfy the demand. But she is wrong. I am not aiming at my legs. I still have guts. The asymmetric, old-fashioned guts.
I look at the Hand. At that absurd, grotesque thing. And then I look up, into the abyss where cars and people fall.
"You know what?" I scream into the wind. "I am canceling my subscription!!"
And with a calm that terrifies even me, I reach down to my shin. With a single yank, I rip out the rusty hook that held me to the world.
Post-gravity rejoices.
The moment I fall upward into the milky Grey, the Hand snaps at me. Gigantic, slow. I am faster than the market. I fly toward infinity. And as I disappear into the clouds and the frost begins to burn my skin, I hear one last sound.
It isn't a commercial. From that Hand, for the first time in ten years, comes a genuine sob. It’s whining because it lost a customer. A lifetime customer.
And I, in that endless, freezing fall, begin to grin. I stopped wanting the Earth.
via Pixabay