The Spectator, chapters 4 and 5
By TheDeerMan
- 333 reads
Chapter Four: The Locked Doors
The blaring alarms on the sides of the hallways started up and pulled me back into reality. Neither of the two maps were in my hand or in my various pockets. I figured that I should check back at my footlocker where I found the first one. I nonchalantly begin to walk towards my room, acting like none of this happened and it definitely had nothing to do with me. Even as the fear and concern was still very visible on the pallid faces of my associates. Just as I was passing through the second to last hallway to my quarters, a small group of rather large men brusquely approached me, all of them wearing a tight plain white t-shirt and sporting the nasty snarl that went with it. The obvious leader of the group at the head seemed to direct his cohorts to investigate what I was doing. I tensed up, preparing for some sort of unwanted harassment and a possible fight. Surprisingly, the leader opened his mouth to reveal a soft, almost caring voice.
He said with a smile “Hey buddy, me and my friends thought we’d go around making sure everyone was okay, do you need anything? We have drinks and snacks. Do you know where you're going?”
He motioned to one of his buddies who brought out a crate full of supplies and a great big smile on his face. The leader continued to kindly barrage me with all sorts of questions about my situation. I alternated replying yes and no, depending on which one got me out of there quicker, until I couldn't do it anymore.
I politely said “Excuse me, I'm fine with how I am right now, could you please bother someone else? I have somewhere to be.”
His face went from ‘freakishly caring’ to ‘you just spit on my mother’s grave’ in a split second. He looked back at his friends, who too donned the new facial expression, and they nudged him as if there was something he was forgetting to say.
The leader turned back to me and, in between sniffles, tried to say “um, do you wa-”
Before he could finish I said “No, really, I am fine”
I then had to awkwardly walk past them, after a few moments of feeling 5 people looking at the back of my head, I began to hear a few mumbles of how they just wanted to help. Maybe a little too much I thought to myself…
I finally reached my room, went to pull out my key and couldn't find it. I checked every pocket and tried the handle multiple times. It was at that point that I remembered that the station had voice and face recognition locks on certain doors. I had to make sure mine had one to combat my poor memory. Luckily, I remembered that to activate that software you have to tap the pressure plate at the bottom right corner of the door with your foot. After you do that a holographic face appears in front of yours. You tell the hologram where to move until it is completely over your face, the direction part is secretly the voice lock. The door swings open and I continue my mad dash to the footlocker, I slide over to it, now on my knees I carefully opened it, peering into the darkness hoping to see the maps. Thankfully, both of the pieces of parchment were there, how they got there I have no idea but I'm happy they were in that foot locker. I had no idea what these things did and I was already guarding them with my life.
Now that all of the denizens of Little Wonder were back to business as usual. Well, business as unusual in this case, I began to think of the legends of the Yekim that my mother reiterated from when my father told her. I don't think there was ever a story involving two maps so I eliminated the possibility of some kind of prophecy. Then I thought that it could have something to do with the three Yekim sons, of which I was one. But I only had one map so unless I came to the conclusion that it couldn't be that. I spent the whole afternoon examining the two maps, looking for any kind of clue or similarity between the two. Well, I found one, a symbol that bore a resemblance to a door. This symbol also displayed the old fashioned lock and key symbol over it. Their respective places on the map nearly mirrored each other. So perhaps if I unlocked one, the other unlocks too. Unfortunately, that was all I figured out about the map pairs, I wasn't sure what they were a map of, what they led to, and who made these and why. I had to find someone who could decipher these hieroglyphics, there was nobody aboard the ship that could so I had to eagerly await the next fusion refueling centre.
We had finally made it to the next refueling centre and that meant that we could go out and stretch our legs, so to speak. All kinds of different shops and oddities lined the path to the actual fueling centre. The shop owners stood proudly beside their shops hoping to soon line their own pockets with credits from the crews that stopped by. Normally we just walk by them as they had nothing we wanted but today was very different, I needed someone very particular. I had seen her around one of these places before, she was always the most interesting person offering nothing else than cryptology. I believe she went by the name Eleno. Surely one that knows how to encrypt something could go backwards and decrypt it, or at the very least tell me what these symbols mean. I began my search as soon as the blast doors opened, immediately scanning the first few rows for a tall woman with eyes the colour of the space that surrounds us. When I had asked a short man if he the name Eleno rang a bell he showed a look of disdain, clearly her reputation wasn't very good around these parts, just what I needed.
Chapter Five: Boundless
I continued to check the various shops, but simply whispering her name brought everyone’s eye upon those who would dare to say it. I could tell I was getting closer to someone that knew her because with each mention of her name brought fewer and fewer eyes upon me. A small shop, maybe one of the smallest at this station, sat alone on the borders of the station. It was nearly engulfed by the space surrounding the station but it was as if something inside the shop, something magical was keeping it away. I shrugged off that silly idea, and approached the dilapidated building. There was no sign on the outside of it, no person, no guard, and with all those factors I felt like I had found what I was looking for. As I was about to knock on the crumbling door, it opened right before my eyes. I stood there with my fist floating in the air and peered inside, nothing but an augur of darkness was there. I searched around for my flashlight, took it out and bravely shone it, scattering the darkness away. Once again I found myself out of my comfort zone, something which had happened a lot.
“E-Eleno?” I stuttered, no response.
I started to move in, after my first step I heard a squishing sound, again after the second. I dared to not flash my light downwards, if I was stepping on something grotesque I did not want to get a good look at it, or them. I continued forward when I saw a spiral staircase leading down. I once again offered my voice in hopes of hearing a response.
A high pitched fast voice answered this time “Fancy meeting you here”
I spun around, flinging my flashlight every which way looking for who said that.
“Down here, bright guy” he replied after seeing me spin around like a madman.
I looked down and my flashlight revealed a horde of tiny black spiders all but one scurrying away from my light. This one did not look like a normal spider, it actually looked like the one I saw in my hallucination, but that was impossible that thing wasn’t real. Just like in the hallucination he grew up drastically in size until he matched my own, and again after a flash stood a man, same as before. The horde of spiders climbed up his suit jacket until his arms were laced with them.
He excitedly said “Hi again, remember me?”
A few seconds passed until I could hold back my puke enough to actually respond.
“This is impossible, I imagined you!” I stammered
“Oh, indeed you did! You imagined me right into reality!” He said with a giddy happiness.
I had to pause, I was split. I needed information on Eleno’s location but I really don’t think this thing is who I should be talking to.
I changed the subject “Do you know the woman ‘Eleno’”
“Oh my oh my, it has been awhile since I have heard that name, wherever did you hear such a thing?”
“So you do know her?!” I said
He flatly replied “Indeed, it has been some time since I had talked to her, wonder how she’s doin, poor ol’ girl has no bloody eyes”
“She what?” I shouted
“Oh! Yes, I do believe these are them right here as a matter of fact.”
He whistled and a group of spiders journeyed from his arm down into one of his pockets, 2 groups emerged with an eyeball on each one. They plopped them into the man’s hand, with a look of pride on his face he examined the two eyes that were the colour of the space around us. He tossed them high in an arc towards me, I was too focused on making sure I caught them to be looking at the man. They too fell softly in my hands and I looked back to where the man was and did not see him.
I heard his voice however, “That should help you with your little map problem, you owe me one”
Bewildered by what had just happened I decided to not go down the spiral staircase that I had been frozen next to for the past 5 minutes and instead opted to run out of the small building with supposedly Eleno’s eyes in my pocket.
I was the last one back on the ship which was of course no surprise to the rest of the crew. I was however, the first one back to my quarters. I had to examine these things and see if they could actually be used for something, or if you need the whole person with them, I had a feeling I would find out soon enough.
- Log in to post comments