Harlan Ellison - Web of the City

“Now, look, man, I don’t want no trouble, ya dig? I mean, I don’t know what kinda business you got goin’ and all, but I had nothin’ to do with it. I’m just a guy minds his own—”

Rusty brought out the knife.

It had come to be more important to him than the pencils and pens and inks which he had used for mechanical drawings, with which he had thought he would build a future. It had slowly come to mean more to him than his brain, or his eyes, or anything. It was the only tool that seemed to work in the streets. The only one they understood, and the only one they respected. He had not wanted to use it ever again—he had wanted to throw it away, but they had forced him to resort to it, again and again. It was his lone companion against them all. It was the only mouth-opener in the world. The only thing that could find for him the things he needed and the information so vital to the location of Dolores’ murderer.

“Now I wanna know where you get your dream-dust from, scummie. I wanna know right now.” He stood silent, then, letting the shaft of the shank talk for him.

Boy-O lay there and his mouth remained closed. His life was the dust. It was the only thing he had, as Rusty had the knife, and if he lost it, he was less than nothing. The neighborhood despised him. They would put up with him only so long as he brought them the vital narcotics. Rusty could never make him speak.

The next hour was short for Rusty, terribly long for Boy-O. But they reached a stalemate.

Rusty stood over Boy-O, and what he saw was the end of all the violence he had known. He knew now that he could never raise his hands to another person. It had all been futile, of course. Boy-O lay flat on his back, his chest heaving up and sucking in with great effort. His eyes were closed and his face was a mass of broken veins, welts, sticky blobs of blood and stripped flesh. A gash had been opened along the right side of his neck, and a warm pulse of blood pumped steadily. He was not deeply hurt, but the pain that filled him was a living thing. Yet he had not uttered a word. Moans and screams, perhaps, but not a word.

Rusty sank down against the wall of a coal bin. He could no longer hold his fists up. They were black with blood, and he was certain he had broken his thumb—or at least thrown it far out of joint. Desperation and futility and horror at what he had done mingled in his brain, and he laid an arm across his eyes to block out the sight of Boy-O, lying in the dirt and the dim one-bulb light. He had to make the junkie talk. He had to find out the next link.

“Who d’you get your dope from?” he asked for the hundredth time, really expecting no answer. There was only silence.

How to make the pusher talk? How to get that name from him? Rusty was up against a steel wall. But whatever happened, he was not going to hit Boy-O again. He gagged on a rueful chuckle, as he realized he was too late. He had sunk all the way back to his former level. He was nothing but a street bum again. The web had claimed its own.

What a stinking mess he had made of things. His sister was dead, all because he had gotten her into the Cougie Cats, and his mother was sick. He had alienated everyone in the neighborhood. His record at school was ruined and Carl Pancoast would be perfectly justified in having nothing further to do with him. He had beaten up strangers, that Mirsky kid, and people he knew. And where was he? Nowhere.

“G-give—up—bas…bastard…?” Boy-O croaked from the floor. His face was pale, still, and his eyes, despite their junkie weirdness, were filled with pain. Rusty dug his hands into the fabric of his jeans, pulling at the flesh of his thighs. Damn it, damn it, damn it! He had to make Boy-O talk.

He rose, to start again, and the terror-filled eyes of the junkie filled his world. They filled his world and they gave him an idea, a new idea, a payoff idea that had to mean success. Because if it didn’t, he was finished.

He bent down, slapped away the feebly moving arm of Boy-O, offered in resistance, and began searching the junkie. After he had found three dozen little white packets of dust in pockets, and another half dozen in hidden flaps in the clothing, he realized that he would have to strip the junkie down.

It took him longer than he thought it would, for the pusher dredged up a supply of strength from somewhere, and caused him trouble in removing the filthy rags that were pants and shirt and jacket. But finally, Rusty had the junkie lying naked to the flesh on the basement floor. He took the dope and the clothes and put them high up on a pile of furniture in the farthest corner of the basement.

Boy-O watched it all with mounting fear. Every few seconds his eyes strayed to the dead-silent furnace. It was summer, and no one would come down here to the basement, but if Rusty tried to shove him in there—

“Wh-what’re ya g-gonna… do…?”

Rusty sat down again, back to the coal bin and crossed his arms. He shook his head. “Nothing. Not a goddamn thing. I’m gonna sit and wait.”

Boy-O was bewildered. What was Rusty talking about? He was confused and in pain and bewildered, but he knew one thing: he would never talk. Because if he talked, just as sure as the street was hell, he would lose his junk, and that would be the end of him.

He had to have his junk to live.

And Rusty knew that, too. Unfortunately.

Cold had come crawling. It was bitter. Not only the cold of the moist basement floor, but the cold from within. Boy-O was shivering, lying huddled like a foetus, knees drawn up and hands thrust into armpits for what little warmth there might be. His face, beneath the grime, was strained and peaked, and his lips quivered. Nerves in his upper arms and temples jerked spasti-cally, giving him a constantly moving, restless appearance. He moaned softly from time to time and every few minutes a shudder would run down his body.

He was not cold from the air. He was junkie cold. He was dream-dust miserable. He was cut off from the dirt that counted and Rusty watched as he got worse. Much worse. The first hour it hadn’t been so bad, till Boy-O had realized what Rusty was trying to do. Then he had started to crave it more than he would have ordinarily. He had hungered deeper than ever. It had been a long time since that spoon had been out, that dust had been soaked down, that needle had hit the big vein on the inside of his arm. He wanted!

“Gimme! Gimme!” Boy-O half-rose up from the floor, his mouth stretched flat on his face, in a weird grimace. His scream rattled across the hollow basement and Rusty got up himself from the floor as Boy-O tried to rise, tried to fall to the pile of furniture where the dope was secreted. He grasped the junkie by his forearm and thrust him back. Boy-O’s flesh was clammy with sweat, his limbs quivered. He was a ghost human, warped out of shape and sanity. Rusty quivered as much, inside. But he let the feelings within him wither. Boy-O would sweat away the monkey till he squawked and gave out the poop Rusty needed.

The junkie fell back, lay in a sweating heap, his head buried in his thin arms. His black hair was tumbled out of its crude duck’s-tail, and lay in a triangular shape over him. His body shook, his sobs climbed in intensity. “Oh god, god, gimme, don’t be a b-bastard, gimme some, gimme a shot, g-gimme a pop. Please, I swear to god I don’t kn-know nothin’, please ya gotta, ya g-gotta help me, HELP ME—” his voice rose out again, ending in a high, womanlike screech. He clawed at his face, dragged bloody furrows down his cheeks. He was going insane from lack of the stuff.

But he was not ready to talk. Rusty waited, his mind closed to the screams, his eyes shut to the hideous sight that had been Boy-O, writhing in the dirt.

It took only four hours.