As the Manhattan bridge is washed in the blue light of dusk, a train ambles out across it. The thunderous steel wheels are heard up and down the East River. The rumbling bounces and dodges down the Engine’s streets as if the streets were built to manufacture echoes and pour them out into the sky in a territorial roar. The cry washes out over the water and bounces off every surface. There is the hum from the FDR to compete. Then the sound of a helicopter in the distance whirs one part of a swarm and dissonant harmony. Here and there is the high pitched scream of a 747 banking toward La Guardia. A million sounds are made and wash into one another until all that is left is the call and cry of the Engine. Her teeth are piled and cracked within Her massive maw and with horrid odor She heaves a sigh of desire. A sigh for more. Night has come and gone in an instant because she has seen so much time, and She is still hungry. The sigh, the morning flush of steam from manhole covers comes from being tired of being hungry.

The sun is coming and the excellent creature begins to stir, to open Her many eyes, Her veins and pores to the sky to collect the light that even now creeps across Her eastward facing side. She collects moisture in little puddles that form in deep wrinkles in Her skin. She breathes in deep with heavy fans. She drinks the water through many mouths, all covered in metallic connected teeth. She exhales through giant blowholes, long and tall, and through flat gills that crisscross Her skin. She stirs. Much of life wakes because She is waking. And everywhere she sends running Her sucker fish and skin mites. Though She has not really slept and not really dreamt, it is time for Her to come to vigilance again. When She finally arises Her will will stretch steel digits and tentacles across more land, more water, oh more, more, more. She is hungry. She was hungry all night, but Her bees were not so busy. Today, again, they will busy themselves and add to Her in so many ways. Bigger buildings, bigger spaces, bigger hopes, bigger attention, more talk, more action, more, more, more, more! So hungry. She reaches, She grows, and the sun has woke Her again this morning. She hates the Sun. Deep inside her there is a rumbling: I am old. I am a God. I will consume even the Sun. Given time—something she has so much of—even the Sun.

 

And She waits. Some believe it is all that She can do, though that is hardly the case. But still, in the morning light, She waits for his visage to appear in a window in Brooklyn—to feel the calming glow of his gaze upon an appendage. She waits for him to only know that he is there, to know and track where he is, for soon… soon he will come to Her. And he will finally reveal all Her secrets.

Read the whole thread: The Hunger Engine

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