The Great Lover Read Online Free PDF

lot of naked muscularity under thin skin. Now I make out the legs of the others; a ring of giants. The spear is a long metal stylus; the crouching figure holds its point against the iron and the flattened end aloft, the others strike with chiming long-handled sledges one after another with perfect syncopation.
    In black ice below my feet I see a ring of white figures from above their arms flung up to me swaying like seaweed. They wriggle together then fall, spelling out PLOT SUMMARY with their bodies. I start sliding along the surface as I bend to look at them, like there’s no friction. They’re spelling out other things or saying them I think but this glide is taking us away. A ribbon of gold-white fire is pouring into the trench from a vessel deep above in the dark, and as the trough begins to fill its glare intensifies. Naked giants show legs braced, body flexing back, arms fully extended, their hammers’ heads nearly scrape the ground behind them and then fly like lightning never missing the end of the stylus, ring against its metal, scatter a flock of sparks. Their flanks sequined with perspiration they swing the hammers weightlessly back and forth. The moment one hammer lands it rebounds up and the next instant the hammer of the one next clockwise strikes and rebounds. The one holding the stylus draws it smoothly back and forth in curves and crosses, the others adjusting their blows with uncanny skill to its constantly altering position. Tense concentration, pain, exasperation, rage, and fear on their faces, and I’m still sliding along on imaginary skis giggling and choking. One by one, rosy streaks drop from sky vessels into the trench and now, overhead and between them, in the dark a vast pointing hand. The finger moves and points, and without looking up the kneeling figure moves the stylus to and fro, and the hammers follow with unbroken rhythm — the finger points, the stylus is moved, and the rhythmic hammers follow.
    I pick up speed and leave the ground. Just in time, as the channel overflows its banks and thrashing metal froth boils into the cuts of the stylus. The updraft gives me a boost and I look on curiously. Blazing liquid fills the grooves tracing a subway map. The air is igniting, burning billows flare against me in soft pulses of parching heat. Blood drains bitter and dirty into my mouth nose eyes ears and down the thick arm into my chest — the knife is gone but my body sense comes back with unbearable pain like a many-angled diamond-hard object wedged in my chest. My laughing and choking turns to hacking cries of distress and bewilderment that I hear from somewhere else. Bubbling plumes of fire orange and white flash over him too fast yet to ignite his clothes, running in subway tunnels — if you look, you can see a dot there moving on the map, leaving a thinning streak of red. The sky is strung like a harp with cables of liquid iron or white-hot nerves.
    I am leaping up the steps from the tunnel to the platform edge, a filthy tramp, comically rushing for the train — running for the first car, pinwheeling his arms, uttering shouts of alarm, the conductor shakes his head as he passes seeing blinding letters on black iron. I board the first car, dancing in place with my hands clapped to my eyes yelling “Ow! Ow! Ow!” — With two tones the doors clamp together, I double over blinded as the car begins to roll — passengers start back in alarm. I can’t hear them over the noise of smashing hammers and the steel wheels of the subway car gnash as it changes tracks with a burst of azure sparks. The shifting of the stylus tracks the massive veer of the car right to left as it changes tracks with clattering wheels like crashing hammers — distracted I turn and crash into a stream of molten steel I forgot was there, my clothes catch fire and fire stitches into my chest wound, gold-white fire crawls in my veins and belly-dances on my nerves. I panic and flail and claw, fall screaming to the floor