Wander

Dark, cold, and empty, for the most part this is what space was. It was also the perfect description for the inside of Royce Wander’s heart. I sat, hands bound, in a cell blinded from the abyss that poured into the room from the lifeless expansion in which we drifted.

How long had it been since I had last saw the light?

3 days, 3 weeks, 3 months? Time was nonexistent in the absence of its purpose.

I am a prisoner aboard the infamous rebel Royce Wander’s spaceship, I was the only survivor among my original crew. But at times I feel like I died that day with my team and now I was trapped in some sort of limbo. Sometimes I would drift off in colorful memory of freedom past, almost feeling as if I were dreaming in an endless sleep. Occasionally I could not tell if my eyes were open or shut.

There was a water feeder directly in front me on the wall to which my arms were bound, and at random intervals a cube of Jell-O was dispensed. I would guess the color of the Jell-O based on what I could taste, it was the one thing I could do to keep me from losing my mind completely. Something to look forward to in a world without sight.

A noise broke through the deafening silence of the cell. I perked up and shifted around as much as the chains allowed. “Hello…” my own voice pierced my throat, I cleared it and tried once more. “Is anyone there?”

Light. White, hot, bright light shocked my nervous system, goosebumps rose on my skin and my eyes squinted to adjust. My head pounded and I felt out of breath, I rubbed my eyes with my fist and slowed my breathing down.

Slowly, I moved my hands from over my eyes and looked at my surroundings. A sense of comfort overcame me, and my goosebumps melted back down into my skin. I could finally see.

The cell was smaller that I had imagined it, outside the cell were stacks of storage and an assortment of random Ship pieces. Everything was coated with a thick layer of dust and grime.

Double doors on the opposite side of the room swing open to reveal a big burly woman with only half a face, the other half was made up of bubbled craters of skin and scab. Her boots pushed up dust with every step and her arms swung beside her, tearing through atmosphere with their weight. She was a living breathing weapon of war.

The woman slid a bucket toward the cell and sat, she leaned forward and spit a wet ball of mucus at my feet. “He should have killed you too.”

My words were trapped behind my tongue, scared to push forward through my lips. My whole body quivered dramatically; her words stung like frigid air. My body had grown tired and weak since I was captured, I was no longer the strong soldier I once was.

She laughed as she proceeded to stand and pull a lever next to my cell door. In the next instant my vision was stripped away from me again, the lights shut off.

“Have fun.” The woman’s hot breath swept through the bars with a whisper. With those words a piercing green light shot down on my cell from above. The ground began to shake, and the chains rattled around my wrist. My cell rose up from the ground on a conveyor, it squealed a sinister cry from the rust and rot of the chains. My heart dropped into my stomach and began to boil in its acids, the toxic gas of death ascending into my throat burned. Tears are what followed, every floor my cell passed was filled with mounted heads of fallen soldiers.

No eyes.

No tongues.

Their skin leathered and rotten in green luminescence.

Royce was known for his love of decapitation and mutilation… Was I next? Was I willing to die for my Republics cause? Why was I here?

I had loved training and bootcamp, the brotherhood between my comrades. But what were we all dying for? Young lives wasted in ancient wars.

The green lights faded underneath me as my cell passed the rooms.

I reached a shaky stop, and outside my dusty cell was a lavish living space.

The floor was made up of a grey and white sparking marble tile, there was a round bed floating in the corner covered in silver silk sheets. I could imagine myself melting into the bed.

I took a deep breath in through my nose and began to smell what can only be described as pure ecstasy. I turned my head and saw an elaborate display of food spread across a long stone table. My mouth watered at the sight of the golden-brown rotisserie; my stomach roared with a ferocious hunger. My eyes helped themselves to the basket of fruit, pouring over with bright green grapes, mangos, and pineapple chunks. My belly spoke once more, it screamed and begged for substance.

A loud splash broke me out of my hungry hypnosis, I quickly turned my head to see a long pool on the far side of the room. The water rippled and rose slightly, the wave dragged from one end of the pool to the other.

The beast himself emerged, water falling down his green scales. Royce shook the water off of him and whipped his thin tail behind him, the loud crack echoed through the room. I instinctively flinched and winced at the noise, and he knew this without looking. A devilish grin carved its way up his cheek to display a row of sharp teeth. He dropped down on all fours and slithered his way over to my cage. He grabbed tightly onto the bars pushing his face in as far as he could, yellow eyes burning deep into my soul. I saw a chain dangling about his neck and squinted in hopes my imagination had taken over. But it had not, 5 dried up human tongues swayed with his heavy breathing.

My stomach turned and shrunk.

Royce’s skin began to crack at the corners of his lifeless eyes, a white transparent film started to lift all over his body. I stared in disgusted awe at his transformation.

He took his hands off the bars of the cell, then dug his claws into his cheeks, pulling the dried skin off of himself. As he shed out of his old skin a mucus like slime coated his entire body, he dripped and glistened in all of his appalling glory.

Just when I thought it could not get any worse, he wiped his body clean with his old skin. He then cocked his head back swallowing it with one large gulp. I could see the balled-up mess struggle down his throat and into his belly. Royce shivered and let out a long sigh of relief, “I feel like a new man.”

Royce pulled my cell door open and walked inside, he bent down next to me. I could feel his hot breath on my ear. My chains came undone, and a weight was lifted off my wrist. I dropped to the floor of the cold cell and rub my wrist.

“Come with me.” He said in a voice softer than I imagined he was capable of.

He walked ahead of me and threw a red robe over himself. “Follow me.” He motioned towards the table and took a seat.

Confused but curious, I forced myself to stand. I wobbled over to one of the seats and sat facing the beautiful rotisserie.

“What do you want from me?” I asked.

“I thought you would never ask; I was beginning to think I had taken your tongue too.” He laughed at his own joke, while my eyebrows burrowed into each other with a nauseating hatred towards the man and all he stood for.

He cleared his throat.

“Well, I thought it was funny.” He began to serve himself a plate while he spoke. “I have a proposition for you.”

A deal with the devil is all I needed. What could he possible need from me, and what were the cost? Seeing as I was extremely weak and outnumbered on his ship, I would definitely have to go along with it. Just until I could better plan my escape.

“I saw myself in you that day we took over your ship. Young and afraid.” Royce almost seemed choked up, as if he was speaking from the heart he did not have.

“You are nothing like me, and I am not afraid of you.” My voice was sturdy with its lies, I was indeed afraid of him.

He nodded his head, “What most do not know about me is that when I was young, I too was drafted to fight for the Republic. It was only after years of witnessing all the death and despair they caused, that I became their biggest threat.” A tear rolled down his scaly cheek, almost instantly a long tongue whipped out of his mouth and wiped it away. I could have missed it if I blinked.

Royce Wander’s was crying in front of me. He was being genuine.

“What does this have to do with me?” I asked in a stern voice, I could not show he was breaking down my walls. A beast of his nature was capable of anything.

“There is an escape pod behind me, in the next room just passed that door.” He said as bit into a chicken leg. My eyes became instantly fixated on the door of my escape.

“You can leave now if you want, it is pre routed to take you back to the Republic where you will be placed back into a nonsense war. Or you can serve yourself a plate, dine with me. And stay here to help me find a way to end the fighting.” He looked at me again, but his eyes did not seem so lifeless, no longer were the cold and full of anger. There was now something pathetic about them, something human. I was shocked. He was going to let me live.

I looked over at the door and thought of the day I was taken from my mother and put into bootcamp. I thought of years earlier when it had happened to my father and they brought him home in a tiny wooden box. ‘He fought bravely’ they said, but fought bravely for what? Not for his family, not for himself, but for the Republic.

I looked down at an empty plate and a tear fell onto the white ceramic.

I reached out to the table and grabbed the whole rotisserie with just my hands, dropping it down on my plate.