Usuario:WeiryWriter/Metaphors
Steelheart
Chapter 2
“I might have just decided to do something very, very stupid. Like eating-meat-sold-by-shady-understreet-vendors stupid.”
—
Chapter 4
“A handgun is like a firecracker—unpredictable. Light a firecracker, toss it, and you never really know where it’s going to land or the damage it’s going to do. The same’s true when you shoot a handgun.
An Uzi is even worse—it’s like a string of firecrackers. Much more likely to hurt something, but still awkward and unruly.
A rifle is elegant. It’s an extension of your will. Take aim, squeeze the trigger, make things happen. In the hands of an expert with stillness inside of him, there’s nothing more deadly than a good rifle.”
—
Chapter 5
“There were choke points, tunnels that went nowhere, and unnatural angles. In some places electrical cords jutted from the walls like those creepy arteries you find in the middle of a chunk of chicken.”
—
Chapter 8
“Her expression was so frigid you could have used it to liquid-cool a high-fire-rate stationary gun barrel. Or maybe some drinks. Chill drinks—that was a better metaphor.”
—
Chapter 10
“Almost all of Enforcement was made of special-operations teams. If there was any large-scale fighting to be done, something very dangerous, Steelheart, Nightwielder, Firefight, or maybe Conflux—who was head of Enforcement—would deal with it personally. Enforcement was used for the smaller problems in the city, the ones Steelheart didn’t want to bother with himself. In a way he didn’t need Enforcement. They were like a homicidal dictator’s version of valet parking attendants.”
—
Chapter 13
“Abruptly we halted, hanging in midair, looking at Steelheart’s palace.
It was a dark fortress of anodized steel that rose from the edge of the city, built upon the portion of the lake that had been transformed to steel. It spread out in either direction, a long line of dark metal with towers, girders, and walkways. Like some mash-up of an old Victorian manor, a medieval castle, and an oil rig. Violent red lights shone from deep within the various recesses, and smoke billowed from chimneys, black against a black sky.”—
Chapter 14
“It wasn’t like blowing smoke. It was like . . . like singing. From my hand.”
—
“His words gave me a chill. I stared at that badge, and my mind flipped over and over like a pancake on a griddle, trying to figure out this man. Trying to reconcile the joking, storytelling blowhard with the image of a police officer still on his beat. Still serving after the city government had fallen, after the precinct had been shut down, after everything had been taken from him.”
—
Chapter 16
““Wow,” I said. “It’s like . . . a banana farm for guns.””
—
““I’m getting some things ready to show you,” Diamond said. He had a smile like a parrot fish, which I’ve always assumed look like parrots, though I’ve never actually seen either.”
—
“I had to study like a horse for every test I took.”
—
“I stopped as I noticed something different. Motorcycles.
There were three of them in a row near the far side of the hallway. I hadn’t seen them at first, as I’d been focused on the guns. They were sleek, their bodies a deep green with black patterns running up their sides. They made me want to hunch over and crouch down to make myself have less wind resistance. I could imagine shooting through the streets on one of these. They looked so dangerous, like alligators. Really fast alligators wearing black. Ninja alligators.”—
“Actually, a lot of the technology we now used had come with the advent of the Epics. How much of it did we really understand?
We were relying on half-understood technology built from studying mystifying creatures who didn’t even know how they did what they did themselves. We were like deaf people trying to dance to a beat we couldn’t hear, long after the music actually stopped. Or . . . wait. I don’t know what that actually was supposed to mean.”—
Chapter 19
“The blackness seemed to pool on the floor, writhing and twisting about itself. Tendrils of it raised the scanner up into the air in front of Nightwielder, and he studied it with an indifferent gaze. He looked to us, and then more of the blackness rose up and surrounded the scanner. There was a sudden crunch, like a hundred walnuts being cracked at once.”
—
Chapter 20
“My frown deepened. I hadn’t thought there was a flaw in my plan. I’d worked all those out, smoothing them away like cleanser removing the pimples from a teenager’s chin.”
—
““Let’s break it down,” Prof said, raising his arm and sweeping an opening on the wall, like he was wiping mud from a window.”
—
“He was right. I wilted, like soda going flat in a cup left out overnight. How had I not seen this hole in my plan?”
—
Chapter 21
“I wished I could explain that to her. But getting the words out of my mouth felt like trying to push marbles through a keyhole.”
—
“The buzzing was like the eager purr of a muscle car that had just been started, but left in neutral. That was another of Cody’s metaphors for it; I’d said the sensation felt like an unbalanced washing machine filled with a hundred epileptic chimpanzees. Pretty proud of that one.”
—
“Steel dust fell down around my arm, showering to the ground below like someone had taken a cheese grater to a refrigerator.”
—
““No,” I said. “It’s time you leveled with me, Megan. Not just about this mission, but about everything. What is with you? Why do you treat me like you hate me? You were the one who originally spoke up for me when I wanted to join! You sounded impressed with me at first—Prof might never have listened to my plan at all if you hadn’t said what you did. But since then you’ve acted like I was a gorilla at your buffet.””
—
Chapter 22
“Inside one was a tall column of green cylinders stacked on top of one another on their sides. Each cylinder looked vaguely like a cross between a very small beer keg and a car battery.”
—
Chapter 23
“She was like a soldier who believed a certain battle wasn’t tactically sound, yet supported the generals enough to fight it anyway.”
—
Chapter 24
“Giving up now because we didn’t know his weakness . . . it would be like finding out that you’d drawn lots for dessert at the Factory and been only one number off. Only it didn’t matter, because Pete already snuck in to steal the dessert, so nobody was going to get any anyway—not even Pete, because it turns out that there had never been any dessert in the first place. Well, something like that. That metaphor’s a work in progress.”
—
Chapter 27
““It’s okay,” I said. “I feel like a brick made of porridge.”
She looked at me, brow scrunching up. The van’s cab fell silent. Then Megan started to laugh.
“No, no,” I said. “It makes sense! Listen. A brick is supposed to be strong, right? But if one were secretly made of porridge, and all of the other bricks didn’t know, he’d sit around worrying that he’d be weak when the rest of them were strong. He’d get smooshed when he was placed in the wall, you see, maybe get some of his porridge mixed with that stuff they stick between bricks.””
—
“He was right. I was letting myself get distracted, like a rabbit doing math problems instead of looking for foxes.”
—
Chapter 28
“Idiot, I thought. I dropped my rifle and shoved my hand into my coat pocket. The flashlight! Panicked, I flipped it on and shined it right in Nightwielder’s face as he floated up beside my window. He was flying face-first, like he was swimming in the air.
The reaction was immediate. Though the flashlight gave off little light that I could see, Nightwielder’s face immediately lost its incorporeity. His eyes stopped glowing, and the shadows vanished from around his head. The beam of invisible light pierced the dark tendrils like a laser through a pile of sheep.”—
“I’ll bet I could drive one of these things, I told myself. It doesn’t look too hard. Like slipping on a banana peel around a corner at eighty miles an hour. Piece of cake.”
—
Chapter 30
“The tensor was missing two fingers, and the electronics had been shattered, pieces hanging off like eyes drooping out of a zombie’s sockets in an old horror movie.”
—
“I focused on the tensor, on the vibrations. For a moment I thought I felt something, a low hum—deep, powerful.
It was gone. This was stupid. Like trying to saw a hole in a wall using only a bottle of soda.”—
“I hunkered down again, assault-rifle fire sounding like firecrackers in a tin can. Which was, as I thought about it, kind of what this was. I’m getting better. I smiled wryly as I dumped the magazine from Megan’s gun and locked a new one in.”
—
“The ceiling melted.
I saw it distinctly. I was looking down the tunnel, not wanting to watch Megan as I shot her. I had a clear view of a circle in the ceiling becoming a column of black dust, cascading in a shower of disintegrated steel. Like sand from an enormous spigot, the particles hit the floor and billowed outward in a cloud.”—
Chapter 33
“I’d brought about the end of an era. They didn’t seem to blame me, but I couldn’t help feeling some guilt. I was like the guy who had brought the spoiled shrimp cocktail to the party, causing everyone to throw up for a week straight.”
—
Chapter 34
“Of course, I thought as I vaporized another section of the wall, Prof’s ability makes mine look like a piece of rice. And not even a cooked one. I was basically only useful in this role because he refused to take it. That dampened my satisfaction.”
—
Chapter 35
“I’d drop down, then try to sneak up on him, if it came to that. It would be like trying to sneak up on a lion while armed only with a squirt gun.”
—
Chapter 37
“A blast rocked the stadium, the sound traveling down the hallway and washing over me like stale cola through a straw.”
—
“There! I thought, catching a glimpse of a forehead and eyes peering out from the far wall. He looked pretty stupid, actually, like a kid in the deep end of a pool thinking he was invisible because he was mostly submerged.”
—
Mitosis
Chapter 1
“They make the city look like a big … chessboard. Um, one painted a lot of colors.”
—
“A true Chicago dog looks like someone fired a bazooka at a vegetable stand, then scraped the remnants off the wall and slathered it on a tube of meat.”
—
“Most of these people would have spent the last years outside of civilization, dodging Epics, surviving as best they could in a land ruled by nested levels of tyrants, like Russian dolls with evil little faces painted on them.”
—
Chapter 2
“‘Sparks,’ Tia said. ‘Like rats on a ship.’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Or glitter in soup.’
Tia and Abraham fell silent.
‘Have you ever tried to get all of the glitter out of your soup?’ I demanded. ‘It’s really, really hard.’”
—
Chapter 3
“It was like he was suddenly made of dough and the other self pushed out of his side.”
—
“It seemed impossible. But then, Epics have this habit of treating physics like something that happens to other people, like acne and debt.”
—
“Darkness grew at the edges of my vision, like a creeping mold.”
—
Chapter 4
“Something about this tweaked a part of my brain, like a piece of popcorn on fire because it cooked too long.”
—
Firefight
Prologue
“The overworked machine hung out over a plummet of many stories, dripping water like perspiration from the forehead of a suicidal jumper.”
—
“I lowered my popsicle and squinted at that strange red light, which rose like a new star above the horizon. Only no star had ever been that bright or that red. Crimson. It looked like a bullet wound in the dome of heaven itself.”
—
Chapter 1
“Downtown Newcago spread out before me, its surfaces reflecting starlight. Everything was steel here. Like a cyborg from the future with the skin ripped off. Only, you know, not murderous. Or, well, alive at all.”
—
“She looked at me, her electricity flaring to life—growing more violent, more dangerous, lighting the room like a calzone stuffed with dynamite.”
—
Chapter 4
“Discovering that Prof was both … it had been like discovering that Santa Claus was secretly a Nazi.”
—
Chapter 6
“Tia and Prof stood face to face, and both turned on me like I was a piece of snot on the windshield following a sneeze.”
—
“The answer was beginning to settle on me like a dinosaur upon its nest.”
—
Chapter 9
“I hadn’t imagined that a roadway like this could decay so quickly. Less than thirteen years had passed since Calamity, but already the highway was torn up with potholes and plants peeking up out of cracks like zombie fingers out of graves.”
—
“Cars lay like the husks of enormous beetles along the sides of the road;”
—
Chapter 10
“Sparks, this man was large. It was like one lumberjack had eaten another lumberjack, and their powers had combined to form one really fat lumberjack.”
—
Chapter 12
“He teleported in a burst of light—as if he’d become ceramic and then exploded, shards of his figure spraying outward like a broken vase and scattering along the ground.”
—
Chapter 14
“Exel unloaded his handgun at Regalia before being picked up and lifted, like a bearded balloon, in a ropy length of water.”
—
Chapter 15
“I hadn’t realized that this whole “water” thing was going to be an issue for me. I mean … half the world is water, right? And we’re all half water to boot. So stepping into the sub should have felt like a sheep falling into a big pile of cotton.
Only it didn’t. It felt like a sheep falling into a pile of nails. Wet nails. On the bottom of the ocean.”—
““Well, trust me,” I said. “I’m more intense than I look. I’m intense like a lion is orange.”
“So, like … medium intense? Since a lion is kind of a tannish color?”
“No, they’re orange.” I frowned. “Aren’t they? I’ve never actually seen one.”
“I think tigers are the orange ones,” Mizzy said. “But they’re still only half orange, since they have black stripes. Maybe you should be intense like an orange is orange.”
“Too obvious,” I said. “I’m intense like a lion is tannish.” Did that work? Didn’t exactly slip off the tongue.”
—
Chapter 16
“My eyelids drooped like angry drunk men stumbling down a street, looking for an alleyway in which to vomit.”
—
Chapter 17
“Groaning, I stirred in the overstuffed bed. It was like swimming through whipped cream.”
—
“Man, Prof could loom when he wanted to. Like a gravestone about to topple on a sprouting flower.”
—
Chapter 18
“The sun sank down like a giant golden pat of butter melting onto the corn of New Jersey. Or … wait. That abandoned city was kind of more like spinach than corn. So the sun sank down into the spinach of Jersey.”
—
Chapter 19
““Come on!” Mizzy said, appearing from the party like a seed spat from the mouth of a glowing jack-o’-lantern.”
—
““This,” she declared, raising her hands to the side to present me like a new washer and dryer, “is my friend David Charleston. He’s from out of town.””
—
“Lulu dragged me into the center of it all, and I wasn’t about to admit I’d never danced before. So I started moving, trying my best to blend in by imitating what everyone else was doing. Though I felt like a cupcake on a steak plate, the other dancers were so absorbed in what they were doing, maybe they wouldn’t notice me.”
—
Chapter 20
“I went and checked on Newton as surreptitiously as I could. The Epic still lounged by the bar, sipping her drink, standing out like a punk guitarist in a mariachi band.”
—
Chapter 22
“I needed to say something. Something romantic! Something to sweep her off her feet.
“You’re like a potato!” I shouted after her. “In a minefield.”
She froze in place. Then she spun on me, her face lit by a half-grown fruit. “A potato,” she said flatly. “That’s the best you can do? Seriously?”
“It makes sense,” I said. “Listen. You’re strolling through a minefield, worried about getting blown up. And then you step on something, and you think, ‘I’m dead.’ But it’s just a potato. And you’re so relieved to find something so wonderful when you expected something so awful. That’s what you are. To me.”
“A potato.”
“Sure. French fries? Mashed potatoes? Who doesn’t like potatoes?”
“Plenty of people. Why can’t I be something sweet, like a cake?”
“Because cake wouldn’t grow in a minefield. Obviously.””
—
Chapter 24
“Trying to remain stable with two shifting jets of water coming out from your legs was like trying to balance a pot full of frogs on the tips of two half-cooked pieces of spaghetti.”
—
“So, when water jetted from my feet, I shot backward like a fleshy speedboat.”
—
Chapter 25
“I needed to be more careful. Regalia was not only an Epic; she was also an attorney. That was like putting curry powder in your hot sauce.”
—
“I stopped in the water beside the building, frozen like a beetle who’d just discovered that his mother had been eaten by a praying mantis.”
—
Chapter 26
“The hallway was quiet except for some echoing sounds from farther down the dark stretch. Faint, with a rasping quality, they called to me like the ding on a microwave as it finished nuking a pizza pocket.”
—
Chapter 27
“Why, I thought, do I feel like a dog who just swallowed a hand grenade?”
—
“The words hit me like a slug from a .44 Special. I blinked, searching for a response.”
—
Chapter 28
“He steered the sub right toward a submerged building with a gaping hole in its side. It looked a lot like the place where we docked, but it was a different building. We passed into the opening like a big piece of buttered popcorn passing into the mouth of some decomposing beast.”
—
““Don’t worry,” I whispered over the line, “I’m an expert on stupid.”
“You’re …”
“Like, I can spot stupidity, because I know it so well. The way an exterminator knows bugs really well, and can spot where they’ve been? I’m like that. A stupidinator.”
“Never say that word again,” Prof said.”
—
“I’d stepped on a cluster of small objects that were growing from vines at the bottom of one of the trees. The bizarre plant tendrils grew out from under the bark like whiskers on a man wearing a mask.”
—
Chapter 29
“Now the water surrounding the building was pulling away, like … like people at a party leaving space around someone with bad gas.”
—
Chapter 30
“This time, unfortunately, I didn’t have one of Prof’s forcefields, and each time I came crashing down into the ocean porpoiselike, water hit my face like the slap of a jilted lover.”
—
Chapter 31
“Val regarded me carefully, and though her face was too much in shadows to read, I felt like the only rotten strawberry in a line of strawberries.”
—
Chapter 32
“A few stray strands of hair had escaped her bun and stuck out, like frizzy ginger lightning bolts.”
—
Chapter 33
“We got there without being spotted. I pulled her in, then shut the door, pressing my back to it and exhaling like an epileptic pilot who’d just landed a cargo plane full of dynamite.”
—
““Sorry. Uh, wow. Your powers are so lame. They’re like, about as useful as an eight-by-eighty mounted on a twelve-gauge firing birdshot.”
She looked at me, then started laughing. “Oh sparks. You’d have a real good view of the pheasant dying, though.”
“Up close and personal,” I said. “The way avian massacres were meant to happen.””
—
Chapter 35
“Silence hung between us like a dead wombat on a string.”
—
Chapter 36
“Charred beams and bits of other rubble jutted from the ocean like the broken teeth of a giant submerged boxer with his mouth open and head tipped back”
—
Chapter 37
“Moving against an Epic I barely knew? One about which I had no research, no notes, no intel at all? It was like jumping into a swimming pool without first looking to see if your friends had filled it with snakes.”
—
“Dust floated in the air, lit by fruit that dangled from the ceiling like snot from the nose of a toddler who had been snorting glowsticks.”
—
Chapter 39
“I flogged my brain like a dog who had made a mess on the carpet, but I came up with nothing.”
—
Chapter 40
“I spent the next hour or so slumped at Tia’s desk in the meeting room, the huge window looming over me like a roommate who just heard you unwrap a bag of toffee-pulls.”
—
“My thoughts kept turning back to her over and over, like a penguin who couldn’t be convinced that these plastic fish weren’t real.”
—
Chapter 42
“She was dressed in the same retro-punk style from before, a leather jacket with pieces of metal jutting out of it, like it was wrapping paper that had been pulled tight around a death machine.”
—
Chapter 45
““Just try to keep the radio from getting too wet,” Mizzy said. “Old technology doesn’t mix well with water.”
“Understood,” I said back. “I’ll treat it like a giant, angry, man-eating dragon.””—
“Here, translucent tentacles of water wove between the trunks of trees like the prehensile stalks of some enormous, many-eyed slug.”
—
Epilogue
““The theory makes sense,” I said, blushing. “It’s like oatmeal on pancakes.””
—