Andromeda Expedition

by Carlos Arroyo González

  An arachnoid emerged from one of the tunnels. It was carrying what Fox immediately identified as Emily's favorite stuffed animal, that nearly mangled elephant she never parted from. It was as if they were bringing offerings to the heart of the monster. Without allowing himself to hesitate, Fox crawled down the slope. The arachnoid stopped and looked confusedly in the direction of that light that had appeared out of nowhere and was heading resolutely toward it. Fox shot twice, and did not miss. He turned the arachnoid over and cracked the lower part by hitting it with the butt of the gun as if he were cracking open a walnut. Then he opened it with his hands, and the carcass separated with a crunch. He pulled out the entrails and reached inside the arachnoid's body, which now had twelve legs. He crawled under the weight of that creature, which turned out to be much heavier than he had imagined, as blind as the guardian he knew was waiting for him a few paces away.

  “The blind little horse!” Emily had said to him one summer day, in the garden of the Bradley Falls house, climbing on his back, while she covered his eyes with her little hands and forced him to ride faster by sinking her heels into his sides.

  He wandered around the yard following a mental circuit forged over all the summers spent in Bradley Falls. The pool, the lawn, the stone path. But when a wasp stung him on the hand he couldn't help but jump and his daughter flew away. As she fell she got a good gash on her forehead against a curb, which would forever leave her with a white marker, like a small version of the driveway to the house. The girl cried a lot, and mostly she screamed. Fox remembered that he hadn't thought his daughter was capable of screaming like that. Then Jessica had looked at him like an insect that wasn't even worth saying anything to. This was only three months before Jessica had taken Emily, and barely a year before the real feats of the Vagabond Killer began.

  From inside the arachnoid corpse, Fox crawled in pursuit of the blind guardian's verdict.

  He had turned off the flashlight. With the lights surrounding the helmet, he could only see a clump of viscera clinging to the visor. In a way they were like the blueberry pudding that Valentina Caruso, a waitress at Stefano's Pizzeria, had once prepared. It turned out to taste good, maybe a little too sweet. So he ate it without taking his eyes off Tina's long eyelashes. He ended up scraping the plate clean.

  He moved forward on all fours, slowly, expecting at any moment to be grabbed by the monster. When he had gotten close enough, he heard the creature's heavy breathing (Tickle's, he reminded himself), something like the idling engine of a truck. He forced himself to continue. The monster's hand caught him and it was like being seized by the hydraulic clamp of a bulldozer. He shrank as best he could inside the carcass, clutching his knees to his chest, holding his breath, although the pressure of the monster's hand didn't leave room in his lungs for much oxygen anyway. It was squeezing him so hard he felt like his eyes were going to pop out of their sockets.

  The monster flipped him over and over, groping. He hoped it didn't check the lower abdomen of the arachnoid, because in that case he would be lost. Tickle emitted short, hesitant grunts. One of his claws scratched the stump at the end of Fox's right leg, and Fox had to bite his tongue to keep from screaming. Finally he saw the ground approaching again, and after briefly lifting his disguise to check where the exit was, he crawled that way. As he advanced, he stepped on one of the arachnoid's dead limbs and fell flat on his face against the soft ground, producing a noise that sounded to him like a slamming door. He heard Tickle twitch and let out a grunt of surprise, and Fox knew he didn't have much time. He got up, tossing the arachnoid carcass away, and ran for the exit dragging his mutilated leg, as the image of the blind creature ripping him in two and drinking his entrails as if squeezing an orange flooded his mind. He jumped onto the membrane and climbed toward its center.

  The blind monster grabbed his healthy leg and tugged at it with the eagerness of a man trying to pull a razor from his neck.

  When he reached the other side, the wolves were waiting for him.

  Martin S. Puncel, The Fairy Forest

  Fox shot into its maw, open like the beak of a yearning chick. The monster loosened its grip for a split second. Fox broke free and slipped through the exit. Behind him, on the other side of the membrane, the frustration of the blind guardian rumbled.

  In that place, the pumping of the monster's heart could be heard much more clearly. When he looked up, he saw Yun standing in front of him, already in his usual humanoid form. They were in a small antechamber with red and black striated walls. From the upper part protruded long, thin strands that moved simultaneously, swayed by a non-existent wind. Otherwise, there was nothing in the walls but a narrow opening like a birth canal.

  “I could have used a little more help, you wretch.”

  Yun took a small leap that barely separated him from the ground. His mock eyes wobbled up and down. Fox didn't know what it meant, but he preferred not to think too hard about it. At that moment he felt a great attraction to the trigger of his gun.

  “What now? We're locked in here. Good job with your secret path.”

  Yun stuck an arm into the opening and then his head, until he slowly slipped in there completely. Fox stuck an arm in, feeling it surrounded by intense heat, and then his head and the rest of his body. The duct squeezed him as Tickle's paw had done shortly before. He moved forward like a worm, making undulating movements. It was strange to think that only a few days earlier he had found himself in front of his old stove, reading some cluttered novel that Yun had gotten for him in the alley. None of his habits there comprised anything like crawling through choking ducts through the belly of a monster at the bottom of an alien mega-ocean.

  On one occasion, even before Tickle asked him for the toll to go to the restroom, he and Bruce played a game of who could crawl through the inside of a pillowcase the fastest. Bruce started. He went through it while Fox held one end and counted out loud. Despite Bruce's protests, they agreed that it had taken ten seconds and three “thousandths”. When Fox got about halfway through the pillowcase, it seemed the funniest thing in the world for Bruce to let go of the end. Fox was flailing desperately, unable to move backwards or forwards, struggling in anguish to leave that fabric womb while Bruce laughed. After what seemed like an eternity to Fox, Bruce grabbed the pillowcase again, and Fox came out, dripping as if he had walked through a storm.

  In the helmet visor, only the watery pallor of the duct. He realized that the more he tried to push himself forward the less progress he made, so he had to resign himself to a slow and desperate advance. But the worst thing was that he had no idea of the length of the passage. For all he knew, it could be miles long, weaving through the monster's gigantic interior. Besides, he didn't know what notion that imitation of Mr. Yun had about the chances of human survival. Perhaps none at all.

  Something grabbed him by the foot.

  Edelmann/Bruce's voice vibrated over the soft walls of the duct.

  “Gotcha!”

  It was a voice capable of tearing raw flesh with its teeth.

  Fox screamed and his helmet screamed back tenfold. He twitched his foot the few inches the tunnel allowed him, but of course it wasn't enough.

  In that tunnel as long and narrow as a dead man's finger, Edelmann/Bruce sank his teeth into Fox's calf, who felt his consciousness hanging by a thread of sharp pain. Even in there, the monster's heart thundered.

  Fox jerked in an attempt to free himself. He felt Bruce take another bite.

  “Yun!” he shouted. But of course no one (or nothing) came to save him.

  Edelmann/Bruce seemed to be picking at the wounds with his hands. Fox's field of vision was filled with spinning white dots. What little energy he had left drained out of him as if a hole had been drilled in a pitcher of water. In a titanic effort, he mustered the last drops of strength to free his foot and continue crawling. If the exit hadn't been just a few feet ahead, he knew he would have given up. He slipped out of the tunnel and fell like a calf coming into the world. He heard
Bruce's bellow close behind, a primal scream that filtered through the folds of the duct and was projected through the narrow opening transforming it into the rumble of a nightmarish instrument.

  It was the same visceral roar he had heard from him on the last day of fourth grade. They had received the grades the day before, and Fox's father had given him a model of an NWPD aircar. It took both hands to hold it. Fox was still unclear about the importance of money, but he knew that it had been very expensive, and that his father could not afford it. Tickle found it amusing to climb on top of the aircar, which sagged under his weight and was strewn across the concrete floor of the yard. That was the first time Fox felt blackness possess him. He lunged at Tickle ready to bite him in the jugular, although he didn't know there was such a thing at the time. He just wanted to kill him. Tickle, for an instant, looked frightened, and this further emboldened Fox, who latched onto his body and reached for his neck. Tickle shook him off and when Fox was on the ground, Tickle sat on his chest and began punching him. At that moment it was clear to Fox that this would be the end of him. And that's when he heard that scream from Bruce. The ground shook with his fury. He lunged at Tickle and tried to jab his thumbs into his eyes. He had an expression Fox had never seen on him before. It frightened him. It was like one of those horror movie masks. Miss Meyers pulled them apart and Tickle walked away “unscathed”, but never bothered him again.

  Edelmann/Bruce's head appeared through the hole. It looked like the monster was giving birth to a twisted version of a human being whose face was a painting of rage and visceral hatred. Edelmann/Bruce's jaw was unhinged in a murderous grimace from which blood still dripped. His beard was covered with the caked remains of Fox's leg flesh. At that moment Edelmann/Bruce, rather than screaming, seemed to be barking like a huge prey dog being shown fresh meat but still restrained by its chain. He stuck his head out straining every sinew in his neck, as if he could somehow reach Fox with it alone leaving the useless body behind, trapped in the tunnel. He lurched violently, like a river snake crawling through the mud at the bottom, and finally the hole spat it out with a snap. Fox watched that mask of ancestral fury, ready to meet his end.

  Edelmann/Bruce pulled the notebook out of his uniform pocket, dripping with slimy muck.

  “Last session,” he said as he wrote. His voice, wet and gurgling, seemed as swollen as his flesh. As he spoke he showed a set of blood-covered teeth. “Subject shows signs of resistance to treatment. We proceed to the final phase.”

  He pulled something from the back of his belt. Fox felt his blood run cold. It was the ten interdollar pocket knife with the black plastic handle and the gold ink logo that had almost completely come off. The dried blood was still there. After buying it, Fox had soaked it in watered-down bleach overnight. The next morning the water had turned a cloudy gray. The pocket knife never quite lost the smell of bleach. Sometimes it even seemed to him that the fruit he peeled with it acquired a certain taste of bleach and lemon.

  The blade cut the flashlight beam in a yellowish flash that blinded him.

  “Please,” Fox said. His tongue barely obeyed. His mind and eyes wanted to surrender to the obvious. “I didn't think, it was... it all happened so fast. I think I have a problem.”

  Edelmann/Bruce's laughter echoed the rhythm of the monster's heartbeat.

  “I'll fix you.”

  He threw himself against Fox and plunged the knife into his side. That jolt of pain sharpened Fox's senses, and he watched as Yun knocked Bruce down, and as they both fell and rolled on the fleshy floor.

  To one side of that dark room was a hole that showed an even darker blackness. He crawled toward it, listening to the hissing sound that each effort caused through the crevice in which the knife was sunk. A whistle similar to the one made by the candy whistles that Emily loved, and that he always bought for her even though he knew he would end up with a headache after having her walk around the house all afternoon blowing it.

  “Get on the train daddy,” she would say as she arrived by the couch.

  He followed her, bending down so he could put his hands on her shoulders, making train engine sounds and wishing the candy would burn out soon.

  He heard a noise back there. He thought he saw Edelmann/Bruce running toward him.

  Fox dropped into the hole. As he hit the surface he found thirty feet below, he lost consciousness.

  And remember: we will reach where no one else has gone before.

  Closing line of the chapters of Exploring the Galaxy

  It was half past two in the morning when Simmons entered the photographic studio located in the north wing of the Presidential Residence. It was crisscrossed by numerous curtains of highly saturated colors. Among the forest of cloths, one could glimpse classic furniture and heterogeneous decoration, from old sofas to grand pianos. The day it was set up, Simmons had spent all night practicing poses on every stage, using all the eccentric costumes and disguises in his collection. He loved losing himself among those curtains, prop columns, Persian rugs and delicious decadence. On some of those pieces of furniture he had placed the pictures he had liked the most. A cover of “Forward, Country” in which he could be seen posing in a white tuxedo and black bow tie, while he crossed over his chest a pistol made with his fingers. Simmons declares war on injustice, the headline read. Another showed him in front of a room full of people supposedly hunched over in front of a computer. He posed with his tie loosened and a cup of coffee in one hand: The scourge of precarious jobs. Dragging a shopping cart, with an unbuttoned red shirt revealing a good shock of black hair: Our president also shops at Mercabargains. He especially liked that one. He had managed to get an enigmatic glint from the flash in his gray eyes.

  Many others had not been sent to the press, but he kept them as small treasures. Moments of greatness in his solitude. Little by little he had managed to conquer absolute solitude in the Presidential Residence. First he got rid of the dozens of servants who continuously flitted around turning everything upside down. Now the cleaning service was limited to coming once a week to do a single thorough cleaning. Simmons used that day to dress up as riffraff and go to the movies or visit a museum of classic paintings to get inspiration for his photo shoots. He then reduced the security staff to the indispensable guards on the outer fence. He closed the presidential kitchen. He ordered a monthly shipment of food, mostly ready-made meals, which he managed himself as he pleased. All this allowed him pleasures such as running naked through the very long corridors of the mansion to the rhythm of some epic fanfare.

  On one occasion, while recording himself running with chase music blaring, with a hologram of a NWPD hovercar accelerating behind him, he heard the front door close. He stopped the music and took refuge in the first place he could find, which turned out to be a small, half-empty closet used to store junk that was never used. The boot steps of Janitor Jameson, the only person along with him who had a copy of the keys, passed him by and moved away down the hallway of the west wing. Then the shelf of the closet on which Simmons was crouched collapsed with a crash as if the building had collapsed. Jameson's footsteps approached again and Simmons realized he had nothing to do but wait. When Jameson opened the door and found him there naked, slumped among the broken shelves and junk, nothing was said. Jameson returned to the driveway with his eyes lost in some unknown infinity and drove away. He never went back inside without at least an hour's notice.

  In front of the costume closet, Simmons began to imagine a dramatic effect. That morning the Old Europa uniform he had ordered had finally arrived. He took it off the hanger. Dark gray cloth, stiff, matching his eyes, like a cloudy spring day. He caressed it and tasted that perfect hand-made hiss. He draped it over his shoulders and looked at himself in the mirror. Better than he expected. It brought a delicious drop of ruggedness to him. He put on the full uniform and walked among the curtains selecting the perfect spot for that session, in which he would probably reach the highest photographic summit he had ever reached.

&
nbsp; Ever since he was a kid, back in the slums of the Western District, he loved costumes. They allowed him to escape by improvising new characters. Characters that didn't do the terrible things he did like getting a nine on a test instead of a ten. Characters who did not make their mothers cry for not having placed the dishes exactly the right distance apart. His favorite for a long time was that of Gabriel Harrisman, the pioneer explorer of Mankind whose feats were broadcast every Friday on Channel Two until the wee hours of the morning. That character allowed him to plunge into supreme evasion. The fascination of an entire universe to discover. It also allowed him to receive the occasional slap in the face that left him lying on the floor, with a dull ringing in his ears, for slipping away to watch the last minutes of his program, which were usually also the most gruesome, those in which finally showed the appearance of the abominable creatures that inhabited the planet that Gabriel had visited that week and that would populate Simmons' nightmares until the following Friday.

  Reaching the corner where the only furniture consisted of a holovisor he selected an image of a city during a bloody war. Over that, he superimposed a fragment of an illustration depicting a mountain of parasite corpses. He set the camera at an intermediate aperture, and placed a sepia filter that he felt would instantly give the right epicness. He straightened his uniform and cleared his throat, as if somehow that might improve his appearance. He decided that something was still missing. He added a cutout of a woman with her clothes half shredded, raising a pleading arm from the ground. Finally, he camouflaged a small stool among the image of parasites. He glanced around, and once everything was to his liking he set the timer to ten seconds. Resting one foot on the stool, he stretched out a hand towards the dying woman, while trying to compose a heroic grimace. In each of the camera flashes he offered a different point of view of the situation. He turned his face and raised his eyebrows in an expression of tenderness. He lifted his chin skyward, his gaze resolute. He smiled at the young woman. He gave a look of disdain to the parasites lying defeated at his feet. He uttered a silent cry of despair for all that cruelty.