The Starry Sphinx

by V X Lloyd

  He felt alive and the world vibrated for him a way he had never encountered.

  He wrapped himself around Deb and tackled her.

  A loud crack.

  Deb's warmth against him. Her face pressed against his chest.

  A second crack.

  A sharp sting in his arm.

  The two of them hit the floor.

  Moony pivoted to face the Gypsy, her hand still outstretched, gun pointing at him. Muzzle smoke.

  He saw Perry karate-chop the magician's arm and press into him with a chokehold.

  Something clicked. It was the gun, which Moony cocked. He looked at The Gypsy with squinted eyes. Heath raced towards her from behind holding the knife.

  He felt Deb's hand gripping his shoulder.

  The Gypsy's eyes glanced down at Deb for a split second, and her facial expression changed. Something in her eyes softened just a shade.

  He felt Deb's grip go slack.

  Loud yips like digital coyotes or wolves.

  Just as Heath approached her, both Heath and the Gypsy dissolved in whitish light.

  Like that, they were gone. To the Qualids, no doubt. Already in distant spaces.

  Blood pooled from a bullet hole in Deb's neck.

  She had no words, just her body’s expression of shock. She went limp.

  His heart broke. Tears fell hot from his cheeks.

  He shut her eyes and tuned into the Sphinx, wishing her a safe passage to her soul's next station.

  *

  Though that had been the climactic scene, many audience members had surreptitiously spilled out from the theatre and toward the security of their automobiles.

  "Wow, this is authentic!" said someone in the crowd.

  "Authentically fake, you," responded another.

  "How bold!" said someone to himself.

  Sitting there looking at the reality of Deb's death, Moony thought of what Heath had said about Shane bringing Moony to his darkness. This felt far more dark. He made up his mind to try and blow it away. He held the gun to his temple and pulled the trigger. The crowd did what crowds had to. They all let out a sigh when they realized there were no more bullets in the chamber. Most of them were relieved that they would not a witness a suicide.

  Moony did not know he wasn't dead. He said his last words (“I think I'm dying”) and allowed himself to fall. He saw clouds and fireflies. He had taken a course of action, though he did not know if he took it for the right reason. Perhaps there are no reasons but in actions.

  The remaining audience leaped to their feet with exultant praise.

  Kitty stepped onto the stage, walking towards Moony and Deb. She waved her hand at the audience like a queen at a parade, though more joyfully.

  *

  "Now is the time," Moony said, holding the checkered potion. The audience gone, it was just he, Celia and Perry. Deb’s body had been taken away. The magician was handcuffed in a back room somewhere. The gunshot wound in his arm was wrapped in gauze for the time being. It was painful, but he could stand and move around all right.

  "The Gypsy's influence is diminished. The time window has arrived for the Steward to quaff the checkered potion and bring hope to humanity."

  He once more uncorked it, eyeing the unreality of the checkered potion.

  He took a deep breath.

  Perry and Celia watched expectantly for him to say something ceremonial.

  He swigged a bit of it.

  It tasted at first like chalk, but citrusy. The taste eroded, though, and at once he regretted not just gulping its entire contents in a single go. The flavor of burnt plastic and rotten eggs filled his mouth. He shuddered, but willed himself not to retch. No way on earth was he going to let his no-good stomach chuck this up. Not after all he'd been through, after Deb had sacrificed everything. This was the potion that was to save the world.

  But it was bad. Never in his life had he imagined anything this difficult to stomach. He gritted his teeth against the glass of the vial and chugged another gulp of potion.

  Ack, was it bad. His pores opened and he broke out in a cold sweat, as if his body was trying to do anything possible to rid itself of the potion, to sweat it out.

  He didn't want to, but more than anything, he needed to slow down. His throat closed. His tongue fought against him and refused to allow any more of the serum down his throat. This had the effect of keeping the fluid in his mouth longer, which made it even worse. Anything in creation would have been preferable to this feeling.

  He shuddered and shuddered, his stomach clenching. It took all his willpower to keep from retching. He had to reach deep to fight with his stomach at this level of revulsion. His stomach knew he was patently going against nature to imbibe this liquid.

  He wanted to stop, to take a breather. But he knew it would be impossible to resume if he let himself pause.

  If only he had been able to control his sense organs like in the old days, this would have been no problem. He could simply have turned down his sensitivity and made the beverage go inside his body. But those times were long gone.

  He swallowed but realized that his throat wouldn't permit itself to open. Despite the movements of his tongue, his throat wasn't having it.

  He gulped, gulped again, and mustered all his strength to open his throat and let the chalky potion squeeze on downward. Cold sweat was pouring from him. Tears flowed from his eyes.

  Seeing the glass bottom of the bottle, the remaining warm grey goo slid into his mouth.

  Only the bit in his mouth remained.

  It really was the last swallow that was the hardest of all.

  He would have preferred to be blinded by hot iron pokers. He would have preferred to have his fingernails pried from his fingers. If someone had made him the offer in that final moment that they would forever make this whole incident go away perfectly and completely, never to have happened, in that moment, he would have taken it.

  He gulped, and it was all gone.

  He sat there panting and gasping, his hands gripping his stomach.

  Eyes wet with tears, he stared at the empty bottle. It was a curious sight. The potion had left no residue behind. He really had emptied the bottle completely. It was as if it never had existed.

  He wished he had taken a picture of it.

  A vague wave of euphoria that might have just been relief in the form of an adrenaline rush from all the nausea.

  He stared at his hands, half expecting them to change in some way, to morph before his eyes.

  So far, he felt no different.

  A hand appeared in front of him. Celia's hand. Holding something.

  "You want some gum, Sweetie?"

  Moony nodded, took several pieces, and shoved them into his face.

  At the taste of cinnamon, his eyelids drooped in ecstasy. His mouth began to feel as fresh as the planet's first dawn.

  Always a relief, his Celia.

  With relief, he acknowledged two things:

  1. He had finally quaffed the checkered potion.

  2. He hadn't died.

  Checking, he sensed that his telepathy was still there, though it felt pretty dim. His orientation with it was different than before. The ability felt like it was truly his, though none of the familiar cerebral pathways worked to access it. It was a skill he needed to learn to cultivate all over again.

  Something in the air around him felt lighter than ever before.

  Kitty smiled at him.

  *

  The air vent on the Quadruple A Autos rental car kept wolf-whistling. It had begun to do that after the previous night's torrential rain storm and subsequent accident.

  Celia was driving them back to the airport on a suddenly windy and rainy April day, pursing her lips and blowing a kiss at the vent to tease an admiring stranger. The sun was nowhere to be found, tucked behind clouds and the few tall buildings in the area. As she drove, she wondered at the wild turn of events that had led her to a duck pond outside Seville near a theatre where her property manage
r lover had been shot and killed. To help her with the answer, she watched the flawless orange of her fingernail polish.

  Kitty had given her a bottle of her favorite nail polish. They had chatted for some time, just the two of them, while Perry made arrangements regarding Deb and Moony got some discreet medical attention.

  Celia had complimented Kitty on her orange nails, mentioning how that color reminded her of the cookware her eccentric grandmother used in the 1940’s at her Missouri cabin. This led to a 20-minute conversation on the associations each woman had with Bakelite, eccentric women, and different colored objects. While they tossed chunks of bread to the quacking ducks, Celia came to notice that Kitty was not just a charming woman who happened to be the Gypsy's sister, but she possessed an immense wisdom and grace that felt comforting to Celia as nothing before ever had.

  "What do you mean by me becoming a stand-in steward?" asked Celia, wadding a slice of bread into a dough-like ball.

  “Stand-in means that you take someone else's place,” Kitty clarified. “I could switch places with you.”

  “That’s not possible, is it?”

  Kitty paused. “I believe so.”

  “Wow. You switch bodies with someone so that you’re living their life and they’re living yours?”

  From across the pond, an eavesdropping man slapped his forehead.

  “What I mean is that I will transfer lineage to you.” Kitty said. "Gradually, over time. You'll become Earth's next Sphinx."

  "Oh, I see. Well, if you think so, I'd be honored." Celia thought for a moment, then frowned. "I sure hope that I don't have any sisters. Especially any sisters I have to go to war against."

  Kitty smiled, and asked Celia to see to it that Moony would not get himself into any trouble, and that if he wouldn't mind, to please arrange things with We Rain and other companies to discontinue the use of nano-3, which anyways now had been rendered no longer parasitic by the fact that the chosen one had drunk the checkered potion. She offered the use of the Exaggerated Conglomerates private jet, which was fueled and ready for their departure.

  Before leaving, Kitty ceremoniously tossed a handful of what looked to be bullets into the pond near a placid duck. They slid smoothly into the water without making much of a sound or many ripples.

  6. The Awakened Return

  Sure enough, the Exaggerated Conglomerates jet was waiting for them at the airport. Because it was a private jet, and because the pilot apparently knew how to do such things, they made it to Tulsa without anyone have to show passports. This was good, since Moony's passport was still with his pants in the secret Masonic cave under the mansion full of gamblers.

  Flying in a private jet was the strongest contrast imaginable to the glorified city bus vibe of a commercial flight. The ride had been so comfortable that they all arrived bright-eyed and well rested, except for the fact that they were grieving the loss of Deb.

  Deb was the sort of person who lit people up when she was around. She had always been able to coerce difficult groups to get along with each other. She loved it when everyone was happy and moving toward what they want. Everyone missed her.

  They also knew that wherever her presence was in transition towards now, she was well-equipped to look after herself.

  *

  Perry and Moony surprised We Rain's board of old constipated Republicans by gracing them with their presence.

  They further surprised them by giving the worst sales presentation anyone had ever seen. It was so bad that none of the board members would even let themselves remember it, lest they have to re-experience it.

  They unanimously declined the additive, and categorically refused to do any business with Exaggerated Conglomerates in perpetuity.

  How did they pull that off, you ask?

  Wearing sport coats over soiled Broncos jerseys didn't help. Their lack of any hard figures or any notion as to a coherent presentation didn't help. The fact that they had both forgotten their own business name didn't do much, either. But I'll tell you their secret ingredient: They did their best to come across as entitled upstarts with nothing to show for it.

  They got politely dismissed from the room in a matter of minutes.

  *

  Instead of riding with Perry on the jet the rest of the way to Denver, Moony and Celia chose instead to rent a car and take the scenic route.

  Out the window of their rented Ford, a man held up a cardboard sign with the peace symbol, nothing else. It was soggy from the rain. The man, wearing a poncho, seemed content. He gave them a thumbs-up. Moony wondered at the man's existence, and as he wondered, his gawk became more dignified, slightly stoic.

  Celia, fantasizing about being a robot with the world’s smoothest joints, dripping with oil, pulled up to the pump at Quik Trip. Moony hopped out to fill gas.

  The man with the cardboard sign approached. He said. "I'm with the API, the Association for Poor Indians. If you have any donations they'd really help us out." He extended a Styrofoam cup. Moony shook his head and looked down. "Oh, OK, well thanks anyway. Could I get a cigarette -- does your lady friend have a cigarette?" Celia stepped out of the car heading toward the Quik Trip. "Ma'am, you have a smoke? I'm with the Native American Peace Alliance and every dollar counts." She shook her head and looked down, adjusting her jacket tighter. "Thanks all the same, you two have a lovely day." He walked away into the rain without an umbrella.

  Moony thought about what he and the API/NAPA man had in common. He thought about what they did not have in common. The pump clicked off at a price of exactly fifty dollars. Moony pressed the button that declared no, he did not wish to have his car washed today, then jogged inside. His business suit shed water marvelously. The gun felt heavy in his pocket, and it looked very much like a gun, but since he did not want to draw attention to himself by feeling uncomfortable, he pretended he was carrying several rolls of quarters and walked naturally, as if into an arcade. He loved the consumer smell of convenience stores the way terrestrial humans loved the smell of rain.

  Taking a leak, he thought about how nice it would be to get a yacht. Maybe he and Celia could sail to someplace third-world. The bathroom was out of paper towels, so he didn't wash his hands. He purchased some potato chips on the way out of the store, making an extra effort to be kind to the cashier, whose name was Ted. Ted was overweight, Moony noticed. He wondered what that was like.

  "You mind if I drive?" Moony asked.

  "Be my guest," she answered.

  Moony thought about growing a big beard, a full beard. He could do it, if he could tough it through the period of uneven stubble. Celia might mind. Maybe he would be away for several days, and he could surprise her with a beard. Moony with a beard. He hoped she wasn’t sleeping with someone else anymore. If she was, he decided, they could talk about it.

  She reclined her chair after giving him directions to the Interstate. Moony turned down the radio’s volume and was attentive to the sounds of her sleep. The clock on the stereo read 2:20 PM. He had been awake all night, but more than anything he did not want to lose this day to drowsiness. Things had happened he felt would drift away unless he took them into himself, deep in his psyche.

  He made it to some town in Kansas which he figured was halfway to Denver from Tulsa. Celia had contented herself to lay in peace and silence during the drive. When he pulled into another gas station to tell her he’d like to switch, she kissed his cheek and proposed that they just get a hotel, since there was no rush. He said he’d rather get back, if she felt comfortable enough to drive. She asked “Are you sure?” and Moony nodded.

  Moony fell asleep and had terrible dreams. He was haunted by one in particular, where there was a heavy iron chain, green with moss extending deep into a warm lake. In the dream, he was a camera following the chain down to the bottom. It was dark, but he could see that it was fastened into the earth somehow. Down at the lake’s bottom, he was intrigued by the multicolored earth and became aware that the water level was rising. After waking, he wondered what
the dream might mean. Celia’s idea was that it was “weird,” the same idea Moony had about it. He thought back to how the Sphinx had told him that alien humans were basically born into a path of darkness. He wondered if drinking the checkered potion had in some way redeemed his soul. How would he know?

  It was morning when they got back to Sod Hill. Perry was in the yard picking up trash. He smiled and waved. He looked good doing what he did, Moony thought, and waved back.

  *

  In an hour, the Satanist knocked on Moony’s door. Since it was before 10:30 in the morning, it took several rounds of knocking.

  Moony opened the door, audibly scratching his balls. Yawning, he asked “What?” and tried to be polite.

  “Here’s the thing. See, normally I’m the one cleans the pool, but not anymore. I’ve been demoted since I suck at it, Perry says you do yard work now and get free rent.”

  Moony closed his door and fell asleep face-down on his couch.

  *

  He awoke from his sleep and looked out the balcony window at all his miniature flags, but instead of his balcony, he saw the coruscating patterns of the Hall of the Stewards.

  He breathed a sigh of relief. It was like coming home. The earth made no sense anymore, less now than it ever had. But something was different here, too. Something about the Sphinx carried a different vibe, very familiar to him, though different from the sense he had about her the last time he had been in her presence. Though, to be sure, he had a hard time knowing when really was the last time he had been in her presence. What had really been so different about the Sphinx and Kitty? The sense of gold and preciousness, the swimming musicality perfuming the vast chambers of the Hall of the Stewards. The unmistakable waft of cedar, with unmistakable hints of new Gap clothing. He stopped his reverie.

  "Celia? Is it --- are you--- how to put this?"