The Republic of Wine

carved on the desk. Their knees moved away slightly when we entered the shack; one of the women pressed a button on the wall, causing a door to open slowly. An elevator, apparently. After they carried me inside and closed the door, I saw Vd guessed correctly. The descent was meteoric, and I followed my body down the shaft, like a kite being tugged by its string. Down and down we went. A coal mine, I thought admiringly, which meant that all the activity would be underground. I was convinced they could have built an entire Great Wall underground if they had wanted to. The elevator shuddered noisily three times - we had reached the bottom. A blinding white light filled my eyes as I was carried into a sumptuous grand hall on whose watery smooth marble walls human shadows danced; the relief patterns on the ceiling were illuminated by hundreds of exquisite little lamps. Flowers and potted plants were arrayed around four enormous angular columns with marble facing. The sight of scabby goldfish swimming in an ultra-modern aquarium made my skin crawl. The girls placed my body in room 401.1 had no idea how the number 401 was arrived at, and wondered what kind of place this was. Manhattan’s high-rises stretch up to Heaven; Liquorland’s reach down to Hell. The girls stripped the shoes off my feet before laying me on a bed; my briefcase wound up on a tea table. They left. Five minutes later, a cream-colored serving girl opened the door and walked in to put a cup of tea on the table. Some tea for your honor, I heard her say to my body.
    My body did not reply.
    The cream-colored girl wore heavy makeup; her lashes were as thick as hog bristles. Just then the telephone at the head of the bed rang. She reached out and picked up the receiver with tapered fingers. The room was so quiet I could hear a man’s voice on the other end.
    'Is he awake?’
    ‘He hasn’t moved. He’s scary.’
    ‘See if he’s got a heartbeat.’
    She laid her palm on my chest; a palpable look of disgust on her face.
    ‘He’s got one,’ she said.
    ‘Give him some sobering-up tonic’
    ‘OK.’
    The cream-colored girl left the room. I knew she’d be right back. She returned with a metal syringe, the kind veterinarians use. Since the tip was made of soft plastic, I didn’t have to worry about an injection. After inserting the tip between my lips, she forced some medicinal liquid through the syringe.
    Before long, I heard the sounds of my body coming to and saw its arms move. It said something. It emitted a powerful force that tried to snag me. I struggled, turning myself into a sort of suction cup on the ceiling to resist being drawn downward; but I sensed that a part of me had already fallen prey to the force.
    With difficulty, it sat up and opened its eyes, staring blankly at the wall for a long time. It picked up the teacup and drained it thirstily before falling backwards on the bed.
    Quite a while later, the door opened softly and a barefoot, bare-chested boy wearing only a pair of blue shorts walked in; about fourteen or fifteen years old, he had scaly skin. He was light on his feet, making no sound at all as he approached me, like a black cat. I watched him with considerable interest. He looked familiar; I’d seen that boy somewhere before. A knife shaped like a willow leaf clenched between his teeth gave him the appearance of a black cat with a fish in its mouth.
    I was scared, believe me, scared for that half-dead body of mine. At the same time I was puzzled over how a demon like that could have found his way into this hidden underground spot. The door closed by itself, creating a silence that pounded against my eardrums. As the scaly boy drew up next to me, I smelled a fishy odor, that of a scaly anteater that has just crawled out from under a rock. What was he going to do? His hair, matted and filled with burrs, smelled like little snakes, which slithered into my nostrils and headed straight for my brain. My body sneezed, sending the little demon crashing to the carpeted floor. He scrambled to his feet and touched my throat with his claws. The knife in his mouth emitted a cold blue glint. Oh, how I wanted to warn my body, but I couldn’t. I wracked my brains - squeezed them dry is more like it - to recall how, when, and where I’d done anything to offend this little demon. He reached out again, this time to pinch that area called the neck, like a master chef preparing to slaughter a chicken. I could feel his terrifying, hard claw, and