Andromeda Expedition

by Carlos Arroyo González

  He walked carefully with every step, scrutinizing the darkness of those hundreds of holes that watched him like hollow eyes.

  A little hair caressed the inside of Fox's nose. He gesticulated, wrinkling his nose and twitching it from side to side. He continued to move forward, clenching his fists, trying to divert his attention.

  The sneeze exploded inside the helmet. When the echo was finally absorbed by the surrounding fleshiness, he understood that he no longer heard that murmur of chewing that had accompanied him as he entered. He remained motionless, like a statue on a world millions of light years away. Then a clatter of wet clicks erupted. He ran toward the exit at the back, about twenty paces away. The beam of his flashlight was shaking to the rhythm of his run, and in its erratic trajectory it illuminated the shapes of some beings that came out of the holes and crawled towards him emitting high-pitched whistles that pierced his eardrums. They looked like whitish worms with a swarm of sharp appendages at their front end, which they waved in front of them as they advanced at full speed. Fox was about to reach the opposite exit when an army of arachnoids gushed out of it like dirty water gushing out of a hose. Fox paused, awaiting the inevitable.

  The arachnoids lunged voraciously at the creatures that had emerged from the holes, digging their proboscises into their gurgling abdomens. At once a sinister concert of screeching and sucking ensued.

  Fox ran toward the tunnel through which the arachnoids had entered. He got lost through multiple forks and twists and turns until he stopped at a small junction of three roads. He leaned on his knees to catch his breath. He checked his oxygen levels and knew that his reserves would not last much longer.

  In the center of that junction was a small sinkhole into which the multiple tributaries of fluids oozed everywhere. When draining through that hole, they emitted a sound similar to that of the arachnoid's proboscis doing its job.

  The image of the shattered helmet of Edelmann/Bruce's companion appeared clearly to him, superimposed over the sinkhole, as the beast's heartbeat echoed through the endless corridors, like a foreman's drum beating out the rhythm to the monster's lone oarsman.

  Since he had started following the arachnoid, the intensity of the monster's heartbeat had been increasing, so he decided that was where he was headed. In any case, a bad plan was better than no plan at all, at least that's what the chess gurus said. He left the intersection oriented by the intensity of the echoing heart of the beast. So he took a pinkish tunnel that descended into an area from which a certain clarity seemed to emanate. He heard something similar to the murmur one hears when listening to a conch shell. He made a hasty calculation, since he was not sure he wanted to know the result, to obtain the approximate number of miles that the labyrinth would have, taking into account the size of the beast. He decided to immediately erase the numbers that began to take shape in his mind.

  The tunnel ended in a kind of alveolus of about fifteen feet in diameter. Through the thin skin that formed it, a very delicate, almost imperceptible light filtered through, drawing multiple bluish veins around the structure. From the center, like a living lamp, hung an irregular pulsating sphere.

  As he turned around, his flashlight illuminated something that seemed to have been following him. A bulbous creature watched him from the threshold. Its anatomy was a mockery of human structure. It was more like a hodgepodge of lumpy protrusions stuck together with a yellowish, leathery substance. What were supposed to be its eyes were two white balls on which it looked as if a child had painted an iris and pupil.

  Fox drew his gun.

  The monster opened a slit in its misshapen head and in a lumpy voice muttered something Fox couldn't decipher.

  “What?” he said. His finger halfway to the trigger.

  The creature turned around slowly and walked into the passage. It advanced with sloshing steps and emitted something resembling a wheeze, as if it was taking a lot of effort. Nevertheless, considering the circumstances, it was moving rather quickly. He dropped out of sight at a turn in the tunnel.

  Fox walked after it.

  Arriving at the junction, he saw that the monstrosity stood at the entrance to another tunnel, staring at him with its fake eyes, painted with the coarse skill of a child. The light from the flashlight was tearing glints in the wet roughness of its body. The eyeballs, on the other hand, looked dry, like two huge aniseed balls. He reminded him of a deformed version of Mr. Yun, the chestnut seller in the alley where his apartment was located.

  “What are you?” Fox said.

  Yun stood there, breathing laboredly, or at least doing an imitation of labored breathing.

  Finally he answered with a low gurgle. A stream of goo dripped from the crevice through which he spoke and flashed against the light of the flashlight. He turned and strode down the tunnel, toward the monster's heartbeat.

  As he went, Yun was leaving a yellowish slimy trail that marked the way like a jagged path. Fox followed a few paces behind. That version of Yun moved as if he was not quite used to standing upright on two legs. He moved forward pulling with his chest, or at least its equivalent in its monstrous frame, as if it were this part of its body pulling the rest, like a muleteer pulling his mule.

  “I'm going to the heart of the monster,” Fox said. “Do you know where it is?”

  Yun did not answer.

  As he walked along following that sinister reconstruction of Mr. Yun, he reflected on how easy it had been for him to make the decision to murder again. It had been like flipping a switch. One that had seemed to get looser and looser. After all, what had the man done to deserve death, other than annoy him during the trip? Break a very expensive toy that Fox had grown fond of? Then he knew that erasing the memory would not be enough. That blackness would always be with him, ever stronger, like a dark heart pumping its venom taking over his mind and limbs. He was only a murderer and always would be. Did erasing that fact from his memory diminish that fact even one iota? The Vagabond Killer. That was him. A dangerous guy. Someone you don't want to get close to. Someone who solves his problems with knives from a flea market and throwing the remains into a hole. That was Fox Stockton, and no cortical implant would fix that. Maybe, after all, the best place for him was in those dark, endless tunnels, deep in an ocean millions of light years from Earth, where he couldn't hurt anyone.

  Yun turned as if to check that Fox was still following him. He stared without looking with his prop eyes, his breathing always quickened, as if he were running even though he was standing still. Air passed through his slimy slits emitting a soft hissing sound.

  He started to walk, waddling with his impostured legs. Fox followed him, but not before casting a glance over his shoulder to check if Edelmann/Bruce was following him.

  His burden seemed to get heavier and heavier as he went, and the Leviathan's heart reminded him of it with its thunderous pumping. He wasn't entirely sure, but it seemed to him that Yun quickened his swaying pace and his agitated breathing quickened even more. Fox quickened his pace, as if in pursuit of his putrid conscience and by catching up with it he might be able to appease it.

  He came to a fork. The entrance on the left seemed to lead into an elongated room from which several tunnels led off in multiple directions. The path to the right was a narrow downward conduit from whose walls emerged what looked like spikes and small tentacles that waved, probing the darkness.

  Yun went down that path. He molded his body as he advanced to adapt to the irregularities of the passageway. The tentacles probed his body, seeming to stick briefly and then detach with a snap.

  Fox wriggled through the spikes, making sure he didn't get a hole in his suit. The tentacles wrapped around his legs and arms and Fox cut them off with the knife. The leviathan didn't seem to mind.

  “If you are my conscience, what else must I do to please you? Is it not enough to have let myself be swallowed by the beast, and follow you through this nightmarish maze?”

  Yun emitted a gurgle that expressed something vaguely remi
niscent of happiness.

  As Fox reached the end of the passageway, a last tentacle grabbed his ankle. Fox was bending down to cut it off when the floor opened up beneath his feet. He slid through a gigantic funnel about three hundred feet in diameter, which ended in a hole full of teeth that opened and closed eagerly to receive whatever had just fallen into its realm. The surface of the funnel was covered with a liquid that kept falling, making it that much more slippery.

  He turned around and tried to crawl up the funnel, sticking the limbs he had stolen from the arachnoid. The funnel throbbed, as if laughing at such a pitiful attempt. Fox pulled out the knife, but as he tried to plunge it in, it slipped out of his hand, smeared with the oily substance that covered everything. He turned away. The jaws waiting just a few feet below opened. They trembled slightly, as if eager to receive food. Fox tried to think of something, but in the three seconds that separated him from the end of the fall he could only briefly regret. His right foot sank into the hole between the jaws, which closed with a dry CLACK! And he felt a bright orange pain, the most intense he had ever felt until then. He heard the thing chew on his foot. Fox fainted.

  In the blackness the chorus floated in his mind, riding the waves of pain. Until he realized that he had stopped hearing it in his head, and that a distant real murmur was coming to him. He realized that it was the dripping voice of Yun, whose silhouette left behind him a deformed, elongated and staggering shadow. The song he sometimes mumbled as he alternated stirring chestnuts with gulps of his seven interdollar vodka.

  Fox looked at his stump. It was awkwardly stitched, but it seemed to be holding.

  “Thank you... Yun.”

  He advanced through the dank corridors of the monster spawned by his own subconscious, to the rhythm of the monster's heart pumping ever more intensely.

  “Is the one chasing me a real human being?”

  Yun Gurgled.

  “If this Bruce, Edelmann, or whatever, comes to Earth,” Fox continued, “would he be the same person? Have I resurrected him, or is he still in his hole, or at the bottom of the ocean? What if I kill him again?”

  As he walked, Yun watched him silently, rocking in his agitated breathing that made him look like he was running on steam. One of the wings of his nose was sinking with each breath in, as if it wasn't thick enough to hold its shape. The wing fluttered, like a silk curtain shaken by the impetuous wind that announces a storm.

  The trail continued across the deep, black waters of the river.

  Martin S. Puncel, The Fairy Forest

  The path ended on a short surface like a narrow balcony over a small square. Down there, in front of a huge membrane, of a deep blue color that he had not yet seen in there, on which swirled striations and protuberances like bas-reliefs representing the unnamable dreams of the beast, there was a creature like a ball of fat folds, with yellowish skin and mottled with green. It had four arms ending in thick fingers with broken and dirty claws. Its mouth was a large slit at the top of the ball. No matter how hard he examined it with the flashlight he couldn't see anything resembling eyes or anything that the creature could see with. It was just standing there, picking something out of its claws.

  One of those worms he saw in the egg-shaped room appeared in one of the surrounding tunnels, perhaps lost after the battle with the arachnoids. The monstrosity guarding the door stopped its cleaning and became alert. As the worm passed nearby, the guardian grabbed it with one of his huge hands, and with the other three he felt it. It emitted a guttural roar and tore the worm in two, which wriggled in the monster's claws as it drank the contents of its body. It threw it into its mouth and after briefly chewing it, swallowed it. A powerful belch put an end to the operation. Of the worm, only the remains were left, dripping from the maw of the monster.

  Next came an arachnoid. It was the one carrying the neural catalyst. The creature grabbed it, and after thoroughly feeling it over placed it back on the ground. The arachnoid advanced to the membrane and passed through it.

  That scene reminded Fox of an episode at his school when he was seven years old. There was a boy, at least three years older than him, as fat as a hippopotamus, who stood at the door of the toilets every day. When any boy young enough approached, he would ask him for “the toll”. Parker, a boy in her class, tipped off the teacher about Tickle's business, and Tickle somehow found out about it. The next morning, Parker showed up with half of his face bruised. Shortly thereafter, when the dust settled again, Tickle returned to his post in front of the restroom door. It was the only one where they were allowed to enter. Once Fox tried to go down to the one on the first floor, and Mrs. Meyers took him to Principal Matheson's office, who gave him a blunt lecture about that he couldn't do as he pleased.

  Another day he simply let it happen. He let himself go and released his bladder, feeling first the warmth and then the cold and discomfort. They called his parents to come pick him up, so the humiliation was even worse. He remembered Laura, the girl he liked, looking at him like a Little Boy while she ate a bag of chips. Even the purple bear in the bag seemed to be laughing at Fox.

  He had come to learn Tickle's schedule well. Nine o'clock was a safe time. One o'clock too, but only on Tuesdays and Thursdays, the rest of the week it was better to bet on twelve o'clock. But one day during Miss Meyers' math class he had an emergency. One of the big ones. One that if he released he'd better not show up there again in his life. So Miss Meyers gave him permission to leave. And as he turned the corner of the hallway he looked toward the restroom at the back. And there, of course, was Tickle, in his ankle-tight sweatpants and denim jacket, practicing a new signature on the back of his scarred hand. He saw Fox appear and gave him a warm smile through his chubby cheeks, plump as two pillows squeezing his face. Fox approached taking short steps, clenching his buttocks as he walked. Having an accident there, in front of the number one fifth grade spokesperson, now that would be a good problem.

  He tried to walk past, and Tickle stopped him with a finger on his chest.

  “Where are you going, worm? The toll.”

  “Please,” Fox's tears threatened to spill over, and that didn't bode well either. “I need to get in.”

  “And I need an hoverbike, and my folks say that the government doesn't give them enough money. And what's my fault? Let's see, how much do you have on you?”

  Fox had remembered the loving look of his mother giving him a two-interdollar coin, happy because she knew her son would enjoy spending it on candy or stickers. When he imagined that bully handling that coin, he felt his soul break.

  “Don't tell me you're going to cry. Ha! That's a good one.”

  Fox felt that he couldn't contain the situation much longer and that he had to go in now. The countdown had gone from two digits to one. So he handed him the coin on which were probably still his mother's fingerprints and maybe even some of the warmth of her hands. Tickle's fingers were icy cold. Fox came in and sat on the dirty toilet and let the tears flow. He sat there, even after he had relieved himself completely, staring without reading at the phrases written on the peeling wood of the door, in all colors of ink. He imagined exactly what he would do to Tickle when he came out. How he would punch him in the stomach, and when he bent over, how he would punch him in the nose, and how he would drip blood all over his denim jacket.

  He walked out of the bathroom and planted himself in front of Tickle. Then he saw his eyes and reality evaporated all the feats he had planned. He knew that if he touched him, Tickle would shatter him. And he knew he had already done it more times, many more.

  “Were you going to hit me or something?” Tickle said, somewhere between amused and surprised.

  Fox bent his head and turned away.

  “You little shit!” Tickle shouted behind his back.

  That day when he got home, Fox lined up his action figures. Captain Drekor, a figure representing a fully equipped New West soldier, did not want to give him the toll. Or he didn't have it, which, for that matter, was the sa
me thing. As Fox dismembered him he felt no relief for the betrayal to his mother that morning, but continued anyway.

  “That'll teach you, you little shit,” he told him.

  And he dropped his torso into the bottom of the toy bin, where it was forgotten forever.

  The blind guardian, Fox realized, was a deformed version of Tickle, which for some reason his mind had found it convenient to place there. It might even have found it amusing.

  Tickle was scratching by tucking one of his huge claws between the folds of his greasy abdomen, if that could even be called an abdomen, since it made up his entire body. As he scratched there was a sound like sandpaper tearing a several days old beard.

  “What do we do, Yun? How do we get through?”

  Yun descended a steep slope. His slimy descent seemed to alert the guardian, who interrupted his scratching and stood in an alert position, like a soldier who had been caught by a superior doing something improper. Then Yun, as he approached the membrane, was transforming, unfolding his bulbs into eight slender legs and hiding his fake human eyes under a shiny black shell.

  The guardian picked him up and felt him thoroughly. It seemed as if something didn't add up for him. So he started again. Shell, paw, joint. Finally he let him go and Yun passed through the membrane. Fox stood there, wondering what the hell Yun expected him to do next. What would happen if he shot that thing and it turned out that its skin was an impenetrable shell? He remembered the worm split in two, being slurped up by that monster. Maybe when it finished slurping his guts, it would say “that'll teach you, you little shit”.