The Searching
by Gary McMahonA short, stocky man in a powder blue suit was crawling on all fours on the pavement outside Mickey's Bar & Grill, inspecting the cracks in the concrete. His face was drawn, pale, and his eyes were distant and dreamy. He seemed to be looking for something on the ground, and was lost in the act of hunting for whatever that item might have been.
Presently, another man - this one young, slim, and dressed in jeans and a tight T-shirt - stopped to enquire what was going on.
"I'm looking," said the first man, distractedly.
"For what?" asked the other.
"Just looking. Don't worry, I'm sure I'll find it soon."
"Here," said the young man, dropping down on all fours himself, "let me help you."
And the two of them scurried about like that for quite some time, inspecting random pieces of dirt, looking inside discarded drink cans, and picking at loose bits of paving slab.
Soon they drew a small crowd; then, a larger one gathered. People of all races, beliefs, and political leanings formed a loose circle around the two men, as if their antics were perhaps some form of avant-garde street theater.
"What is it?" cried a huge African tourist. "What are you seeking there, my friends?"
"We're just looking," replied the young man in the tight T-shirt. "Don't worry, we'll find it soon."
And with that the African tourist joined them on the ground; and he was followed by others. Before long, there were scores of people looking, just looking.
Just as dawn approached, and the sky grew grey and misty, a policeman arrived on the scene.
"Now, now, what's all this?" he enquired, his large belly hanging over his pants, and his red nose dripping. The policeman had a severe cold, and was in no mood for nonsense.
"We're looking," said the African tourist.
"Don't worry," added a heavily pregnant woman, who was scrutinizing the bottom of the external wall of the Post Office. "We'll find it soon."
The policeman lowered his bulk onto the path, and began to pick at the rubbish in the gutter. "What is it, exactly, that we're looking for?" he asked. No one replied, and soon he was caught up in the search and didn't care either way.
They looked all through the night, scrabbling through the city on hands and knees, wearing thin jeans, suit pants, or silk stockings.
Nothing was found, but still they hunted. For they knew that they'd find it soon, whatever it was.
Night turned to day, and the golden sun burned a hole through the clouds that had drifted in overnight. The temperature soared, and commuters invaded the streets like locusts.
And one by one they joined the search. Probing the nooks and the crannies, sticking their fingertips in the secret places, and sniffing the walls and the doors behind which anything at all could be hidden.
Eventually a middle-aged man found a fist-sized tear in the asphalt road beneath the rear nearside wheel of a low white van.
"Over here!" he called. "I think I've found it."
The man stuck his fingers into the crack, managing to squeeze his hand inside.
"There's - there's definitely something in here," he said, frowning and squinting his eyes.
"It feels like a - feels like - " but his voice was cut off before he could finish, and abruptly turned into a high-pitched scream. The man's face went white as a sheet. His eyes, tired and bleary after hours of closely inspecting the surface of the city, widened, glittering with tears.
When at last he pulled back his arm it was missing the hand; only a smooth pink stump emerged from the hole. No blood was shed; the miraculously healed-over stump shone like plastic in the early morning light. The man slowly titled over to one side, banging his head on the side of the white van as he fell to the ground.
This set off a chain of screams. Everyone awoke from whatever spell they'd been under and climbed stiffly to their numbed feet. They ran into the road, some falling over because of too many hours spent on their knees, and stopped the morning traffic. They shot into offices and coffee shops, clutching at strangers. They clawed at seamless brick walls, and banged on locked wooden doors.
The small, stocky man in the powder blue suit said nothing. He didn't even halt in his quest. He just kept on crawling, kept on looking, crept on into the shimmering sunlight.
"No," he could be heard to mutter. "No, that isn't it."
The day opened up like a corrupt flower, its petals peeling back to reveal a dark and rotten core. And the search continued, just as it always did.
©Gary McMahon
Over the last few years, Gary has sold many stories to various small press magazines and anthologies. His most recent appearances include stories in the World Fantasy Award winning Acquainted with the Night, Poe's Progeny, Midnight Street, Bare Bone and Bernie Herrmann's Manic Sextet. A 35,000-word novella called Rough Cut will be published by Pendragon Press in 2006, and a collection of short fiction, Dirty Prayers, will follow late the same year from Gray Friar Press. Gary was lucky enough to receive two Honourable Mentions in The Year's Best Fantasy & Horror 18, and will receive four more in volume 19. His latest project is co-editing (with Gary Fry) the Gray Friar Press themed anthology Paging Mr Hitchcock. Gary can be found at www.garymcmahon.com.