The Starry Sphinx

by V X Lloyd

  He went into the bedroom and massaged Celia's shoulders. She was watching a show on television about some sort of makeup that was so durable it could even be applied underwater. The weirder thing about the makeup seemed to be that it needed to be applied underwater.

  "You want to go on a little adventure?" he asked her.

  She smiled up at him. "Oh yeah?"

  Ordinarily, he would scan into her cerebral activity and use what he found there to judge what she meant. But he decided it was best to use his telepathy only when absolutely necessary until he knew that it was safe and ethical and all that.

  "I'm saving the world, so a bit of playing detective is involved. I'll give you the details later. Come on, it'll be fun. You can be my moral support."

  She squinted at him in her highly nuanced way that sent him the message, "I know you're awkward, but I love it when you make romantic gestures like this."

  Moony stared at his feet for a few moments, then decided it was best to just be spontaneous. Yeah, maybe he could make it romantic somehow.

  The two walked silently across the parking lot.

  When they arrived, Moony knocked on the door to apartment A112.

  No one answered.

  Moony knocked again, harder. He rang the doorbell.

  The door opened. A man, about Moony's age, with thick glasses and urban caveman hair, stood and regarded Moony with disgust.

  "Julio home?" said Moony.

  "Who the freak wants to know?"

  The apartment was a role-playing game fanatic's dream. The walls were lined with grey steel shelving units where dragon figurines fought hoards of trolls beneath vast quantities of house dust. Posters of elf girls in chain mail dominated all available walls and ceiling. With some uneasiness, Moony made note of the assortment of stones and crystals sitting on display on some of the room's shelves. He resolved not to touch any crystals, no matter what.

  The near-sighted Cro-Magnon grinned at Celia for a moment and let them in.

  "My sources tell me that Julio has a serum that is very valuable to the dark forces," said Moony, like the detective he fantasized about either hiring or becoming.

  “Well, I don’t. I don’t serve any dark forces. I wouldn’t know about that kind of thing. But if rumors are true, you’re not really someone I should trust. You’re not known to my people. And you came here asking for dark magic. That’s a bit fishy. I’d say Heath’s more of your type of guy. Anyway, he gets them from some place in Spain. Not us,” he said. “You need a receipt?"

  Moony looked around the apartment, wondering if a receipt would be enough to go by. The place looked like a ferret cage. He reached in his pocket and pulled out a couple hundred bucks, handing it to the guy. He figured it couldn’t hurt.

  The caveman stood up and took the money, but his facial expression didn't change the slightest bit. Celia raised her eyebrows and hugged Moony's shoulder as if perhaps the comfort that would afford might also give her clarity about what the hell was going on.

  "Go ahead, give Heath a call," said the caveman. "Like I said, we don't have anything, and no interest dealing with the Gypsy anymore."

  Moony was about to confess that he didn’t have a phone, but he stayed detective instead. Using his powers of deduction, he would put the pieces together. Maybe Heath didn't have a telephone either. "Oh yeah? No serums here?”

  He laughed. "If we were playing the 'hot or cold' game, you'd be an iceberg. You're years behind on the quest. The Gypsy knows what people like you are up to."

  "The hell she does."

  There’s only one way to know where your loyalties lie, and that’s by giving you a test. People like me, we guard the way, preventing anyone but the worthy from nearing our mother’s sacred bosom. If you’re not the enemy of light, you have nothing to fear from me.”

  The caveman, head high, expressing dominance, looked at Celia, who wore a cute green sweater and grey skirt. Celia shot him a glance that said clearly Please don't.

  He offered them something to drink.

  Moony, seated on a couch littered with shredded newspaper, drank the glass of water the man brought him. It tasted bitter and metallic and smelled like peaches. Something about it really quenched his thirst, though, and like an imbecile he drank half the goddamned glass before giving it a second thought.

  His second thought was interrupted by a rumbling noise from the bathroom. Out came a man with black hair, a black moustache, all black clothes, a black cape, and no shoes.

  Julio.

  “Moony. Pleased to see you again,” said Julio. “You and I will be performing soon at El Mundo del Espiritu. I do magic.”

  “I’m not much of a performer,” said Moony.

  "Is that right?" Julio asked Celia with a wink. She rolled her eyes. She got it. She understood that Julio was being cheeky, trying to insult her boyfriend by insinuating that Moony had confessed that he was not much of a performer sexually. The joke here was on Julio, as you know. Although Moony was not as creative as you or me, he was earnest and his body was built to satisfy.

  The magician lit a cigarillo by snapping his fingers. He offered Moony one.

  "No thanks."

  "One for the lady?"

  "No thanks."

  "Suit yourself."

  Moony found that he began feeling swimmy and strange and chalked it up to the fact that he was in the presence of a caped man. Only now did it dawn on him that the caveman had dosed him with something. The test he was supposed to be given had quite probably been delivered to him already in the glass of foul-tasting water he had drunk.

  "Oh," he said to himself. "I'm a dummy." He reached out to the Sphinx and felt a glimmer of sunlight in his heart.

  [New Bookmark Added]

  It was a stanza of poetry in Cosmid Coagula Romantrix, Volume 37.

  The one before you holds no key

  but blocks the path –

  You have bested him.

  The nectar will purge

  dark shadows from your soul.

  The caveman eyed Moony with curiosity as Julio went through a series of minor sleight-of-hand routines. "That's amazing. What I gave you... It was concocted to act as a poison to servants of the dark one. And to a normal human, that dose was strong enough to launch a horse to the outer limits of the asteroid belt. It would do that to a human. But not an alien human chosen by the Sphinx." The caveman's glasses had slid to the end of his nose. He did a strange wiggle-sniff motion which raised his glasses back up again. The rumors are true about you, aren't they?"

  "Only the good ones."

  "They say that alien humans can see through time, that they can foretell the future."

  "Aliens?" Celia asked.

  Yeah, Moony remembered. He had been meaning to raise the issue with Celia at some point. But now was hardly the time.

  He pondered the Sphinx's message. It sounded pretty clear in that what he had been given was going to help him in the long run, but gave no sign that the serum he wanted was to be found here.

  Moony stood up and slapped his hands together, deciding that his work here was done. He’d come here for the serum, but everything pointed back to Heath.

  The caveman bid them farewell. "Should you want to practice your far-seeing abilities, let me know. I'm a believer."

  *

  Moony patted his stomach. He felt fine. The Sphinx was with him. Clues would continue to reveal themselves. So far, so good.

  He and Celia went to King Sooper's to pick up some groceries. He figured he could figure out a way to tell her that he was an alien at dinner tonight. The two had planned on making frozen pizzas tonight. Celia had been watching a lot of cooking shows.

  "We should get some more houseplants, honey," Celia said.

  "Another ivy?"

  "A cactus!" She smiled at him sweetly.

  "Let's get a few of them." They kissed. An onlooker looked on, possibly jealous, maybe judgmental. You know how people get.

  King Soopers' color scheme was yellow
and bright red. The store smelled like fish and fruit. Celia picked out miniature cacti while Moony browsed a long aisle stocked with pasta sauce. He was fairly sure they were in love.

  Moony felt a little sick, then a few aisles later, much sicker, more exhausted. The world was such a rotten apricot to him. His eyes were no longer concerned with negotiating solid shapes; he began seeing a swimming yellow and vivid red, and dropped to the floor convulsing. His body struggled in contradictory impulses to curl into fetal position and break apart, skull first. In desperation, he called on the Sphinx. Feeling only waves of increasing darkness, he vomited and passed out.

  When Celia came around the corner, cactus in one hand, the other hand rubbing a peach’s fuzz on her lower lip, she had no clue what to do, except to hug him and call for help. His eyes were wide open, helpless; she saw all the constellations in them.

  Moony, meanwhile, wasn’t in communication with the surface world at all. He could hear the song playing inside Celia’s head – it was a song by George Harrison called Ding Dong, and it sounded like it was being played on vinyl. He was really out of it, so he took each new unconscious moment to be more real than the previous one under the energy-saving bulbs of the grocery store.

  Where he was now, a medium-sized auburn dog of mixed breed stood in a grey plastic room.

  Moony was the first to speak. “Who’s a good boy? Come here – who’s a good boy!” He extended his hand, but there was nothing in it but affection. He held it there, lightheaded.

  After a minute, he came back to the world. He had no idea what to remember. It seemed that only a moment ago, the auburn dog was headed toward his hand, which was a nice gesture of companionship between animals. And now a female was near him. He learned from the female that he cared for a familiar-looking girl named Celia, and then he even remembered his name was Moony. The rest of the day's events had escaped him. He learned he could trust her. When he stood up, he looked down and discovered he had wet his pants. That was a first. Leaving the cactus in the aisle, she led him to her car and he got inside, feeling nothing if not a vague gratitude for life. He had been repressing his enjoyment of love.

  *

  A semi-shiny green 1978 Chevrolet Caprice Classic sped into the left lane next to Celia's Celica. It was Perry, happy as hell to see the couple on the road. He listened to the R&B station on the radio. The volume was at a decent level for the deaf.

  Excited honking ensued.

  "Pull over! Pull over! Hey buddy! Celia!"

  The horn stuck down, and the honking continued in a resounding, solid 12-volt Chevrolet note.

  "Shit!" Randomly frantic, he turned down the volume on the radio. "Shit! Uh. . ." He realized that he could pull the fuse for the horn. Then he realized he was driving his car 47 mph down the road, then he noticed that the road was Broadway Ave. Then he found that he had strayed onto the median. His final decision was to wait until he pulled over to get into the fuse box.

  Celia slowed down and followed his Chevrolet when he turned into the Home Depot parking lot, horn blaring. Moony, head bumping against the car window at every turn, moaned a nonexistent jingle for Rug Doctor carpet shampooers.

  "Sorry about that," Perry explained, exiting his car energetically, carrying his fourth Red Bull of the day.

  Celia was visibly put out. "Just fix it," she said. He reached below the dash and pulled out a fuse, a second fuse, another fuse, a fourth and fifth fuse, and the horn stopped.

  "Well, my brake lights don't work now, so do me a favor and follow me to Sod Hill? I don’t want to get rear-ended.” Perry gawked at Moony. “You guys party hearty or something?"

  "Uh, he got sick." She took this personally.

  Smacking on Chiclets, Perry looked into the car at Moony, who gazed back behind heavy eyelids. A cattle truck passed by, leaving the stench of cow shit.

  "Moony." Perry knocked on the glass. "Moony, I need a favor. Let me borrow your car tomorrow. I need it to impress a lady. Mine, the passenger seat occasionally there’s a glue residue when it’s hot, sticks to your pants." His words left a fog on the window that wouldn’t wipe away.

  Moony nodded.

  "She's a hot one."

  "Hot."

  "We should double-date."

  "Date." Moony laid his head back and closed his eyes.

  Celia said "He's not himself. Your date... it's not Deb?"

  Perry finished his Red Bull and tossed it onto the pavement. It chuffed into a small drift of snow. "I'm learning to multitask."

  He tapped on the glass again. "You're going to like her. She's the head of this fancy cloud seeding company in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Yeah, maybe you've heard of it?"

  Moony sat up.

  "Perry."

  "Yeah, buddy?"

  "You're going on a date with Amethyst?"

  Perry tugged at his earlobe thoughtfully. "Well, yeah. It just sort of made sense for her to fly out here. I said we’re working for Exaggerated Conglomerates and we wanted to chat before the official meeting. Pretty cool, right? You and me, we're like double agents now. Cool, right?"

  *

  Exiting Home Depot, Heath spotted Celia and said, “What Would Jesus Do?” Deciding it was to throw stones at the car, he searched for a rock which spoke to him. Patiently listening for a half hour, the group was gone by the time he found one, so he put the rock in his pocket.

  “I am your friend,” said the rock. Heath had never been happier.

  *

  Moony and Celia sat at opposite ends of his small dining room table. The room felt strangely silent with just the two of them.

  "Yeah, like I said, I guess I was just born this way," Moony said. Celia dished more food into his plate. "The Gypsy did the job of awakening me, and the next thing I know, I'm different. But it turns out that guys like me are actually a blight on the planet, you know? We read minds and drain the world. That's what the Gypsy says. So I'm on a quest for the checkered potion." He sighed. "I mean, you know how it is." It was all of of the stupidest things he could have said, in the stupidest order.

  She frowned. "It doesn't matter to me what you are or where you're from, I just want to hear you say it. I just want to be absolutely sure that you're ... you know, that you're happy in this relationship with me."

  Celia chewed her lip in a way that he found incredibly attractive. He wanted to be that lip, and to kiss that lip, and to chew that lip with her.

  "Are you listening to what I'm saying?"

  Moony had to take a minute to recall what they were talking about. "I really am trying to sort all this out."

  "I know."

  Moony wondered how she knew. He didn't sense any recognizable method of telepathy from her.

  "Listen, is there something you're not saying? Are you wanting something to change between us? Something we should do differently?"

  She shook her head.

  "I'm so sorry for not mentioning it to you. I just never knew how. I think that it will work out for the best. I know we're meant to be together."

  "And how can you be so sure?"

  "Because we love each other. And I want to always be open with you," he said.

  Celia looked at her spaghetti.

  It was tempting, but he resisted telepathically scanning her.

  "What? What'd I say?"

  She pointed her fork at him. "Well. You weren't exactly open with me about how you're an alien. Just didn't think that was something you wanted to mention? Or were you sworn to secrecy?"

  "I'm sorry. I didn't want to keep it a secret," Moony heard himself say. "I'm just thick-headed. For a long time I lived like I was stuck in my own world, my own mind. I felt so different, I didn't know how to relate."

  She shook her head and laughed. "You are thick-headed. But I like you."

  "I like everything about you."

  "Do you really?"

  Wow, these questions were hard. What was it about women that they could think of them so quickly? They caught him completely off guard. "Yeah, I like everythi
ng about you." It sounded wooden, but he meant it. Celia was charming, graceful, funny, self-contented, elusive... everything he wanted.

  A moment passed -- one of those heavy moments that just couldn't be ignored.

  "You have a lot to learn about how to sweet-talk," Celia said.

  Moony tried to think of something clever.

  The clock ticked.

  Eventually the two of them made their way to the bedroom and engaged in the mostly-horizontal activities they could always rely on to resolve anything that arose between them.

  *

  The following evening, Perry stood looking into Moony's bathroom mirror, straightening his bowtie. Moony had not yet begun to dress. He entertained himself playing Medal of Honor. He believed that, ever since he had gotten sick from Jon-Jon’s apricot water, he had improved at game playing. It was almost like he was able to merge his consciousness into that of the machine. It was completely engrossing.

  "Hey asshole!" said Perry, telepathically. "Get off your ass." He grinned at Moony. To the tune of Auld Lang Sine, Perry clapped and sang the words “I only look after number one,” over and over again.

  A knock on the door.

  Deb was not an expected guest, though she carried a bottle of wine and was dressed seductively.

  "Oh God. . ." said Perry, guilty as Lassie eating the family ribeye. There he stood, dressed to kill with a shiny belt buckle, sporting the bad posture of one caught offending a loved one.

  "Perry!" said Deb. Deb, you see, had not come to Moony's apartment in search of Perry, but to welcome herself to a threesome with Celia and Moony for the evening. She dropped the wine bottle. It bounced its bottom against the carpeted floor and rolled slowly down the hallway as she thought of a story. "I've been looking for you! But you're dressed already. I thought you were going to stand me up."