Aspera Echelon

[Image Credit: Ivan Bandura]

I stagger from the Malone, all nerves and hollow. Collapsing onto the gleaming sand, I take in the coastline. A thudding heart swells high and tight in my chest.

My mind’s familiar scrabble rises and falls against the crashing surf, gradually matching it, breath for breath. No menace lurking under the chop, only the remnants of a distant, murky mystery.

Sandy-chinned, I blink into the realization that I’d been trying to remember something. Something important, or so it had seemed. But what? 

I’d known it so clearly before, back when I sealed the hatch and set out with a singular, fiery purpose. Where had that been, and when? Had I made it? 

Was I there yet?

Twinkling stars puncture a mauve cloak of sky. I stare, silent, letting my thoughts clot. Off my hands and knees now, weight trickles back into my toes. I suppose I’m far enough away that what I’ve forgotten doesn’t much matter now.

Old Malone, my trusty vessel, remains, heavy in the tide’s rising lick. No bullet holes or teeth marks disfigure the hull. I try to look around, but for a few seconds I’m lightheaded. Then my pulse slows and my vision thickens. I ease my suit’s zipper down my neck. I walk up the shore.

Sparse, craggy ridges of rock rise before me into the dusk, continuing to the horizon in every direction. Trudging through the sand, I see a circular opening hewn into the rock, washed colorless in the fading light.

The entryway surprises me: a thin, rusted frame is bolted around the edge. Inside looms a modest cavern, plainly empty. Somehow the hazy twilight persists even here.

Squinting at the burnished walls, I pick out a dull mirror, blackened with time.

My stomach registers what my eyes will not believe: my body has been shot clean through.

I touch, gingerly, but feel no pain. I feel nothing at all. I twist to each side and rotate my arms in wide circles. No damage is evident; if anything, I move more freely than before.

I rise, taller than I’ve ever been, and looser too. I drift to the far corner, wondering if, perhaps, someone was supposed to meet me. 

But there’s nobody here.

The shadow hides another hallway, as narrow as the entry. The opening at the other end beckons, haloed by what dim light remains. The echoes of the waves sweep over me, refreshing, as I step back onto the sand. 

The stars shine clearly now. The black sky melts indistinguishably into the dark, frothy water.

I look for Malone on the shore for one more trip, away from these abandoned boundaries between land and sea, between night and day, up toward that space between all interminable and final remembrances.

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N. D. Rao is an emerging writer based in Oakland, CA. Rao is focused on speculative fiction, metafiction, and Indian-American identity.