The Black Seas of Infinity (38 page)

Time passes in uneven gaps, breathlessly fast
one moment, receding to a crawl the next. How long have I been
here? Hours? Days? It’s hard to think straight, to grasp onto
anything tangible. I feel dizzy... a massive head rush... but there
is nothing... no end...

I wake up with a dull pain in my head. My
eyelids unclench slowly. Something is pulling on me. I feel the tug
on the shirt around my shoulders. There’s a... blur... hanging over
me...

“You think you’re fucking funny?”

“What...”

My words slur. I’m still drunk.

“I said, ‘Get the fuck up’!”

“No... Who....”

My vision is resolving into a sinewy, very
angry former skinhead.

I vaguely remember lobbing a slur his way
earlier. It didn’t even amount to anything—and he started it! My
vision goes black for a minute, and pain shoots up my nose.

“Little fucking punk!”

Where is everybody? I passed out in a bed
upstairs, but other people stay here...

Pain shoots up my nose again, spreading out
in piercing throbs through my cheeks. I feel a cool trickle running
from my nose... I’m bleeding. I glance to my side. Snuggled up in
the covers next to me is a sword cane, the blade partially
exposed.

“You want to stab me, punk? Huh? Go for
it.”

“No... Get off me...”

He’s kneeling on my chest, pulling me up by
my shirt. Bigger, meaner, and way more sober. A dim blur, a shock
of agony, and blood shoots out. Again. And again. Reality blurs...
It almost doesn’t hurt anymore...

Then his huge friend is pulling him off, and
I stumble out of the lower bunk bed, spotting the door jam with my
blood as I round the corner.

I start to fly down the steps, and they
dissolve. Darkness washes over me, and I fade out...

I’m in a beat up Honda Accord. It’s twenty
years old, held together by stubbornness and rust as much as
anything else. My girlfriend is crying. After three years together,
I didn’t even have the guts to break up with her. She had to ask,
and I offered a tepid reply that said nothing. But my face said
everything. I feel like my heart is about to break. This is the
best girl I’ve ever known...but she just isn’t the one for me. I’m
biting my lower lip, running a screenplay of the last three years
with her through my head. I can’t do this...It’s too hard...but I
can’t go on living like this. Like a coward, I look down. I can’t
watch her sobbing without breaking down myself. My throat is a
knotted lump. I feel overheated and awkward. I want to be anywhere
but here. Her tear-stained face starts to fall away at the edges,
my vision collapsing into a smaller and smaller tunnel...but the
pain stays. Even as reality fades.

CHAPTER XXII

LET’S TRY AGAIN

Where am I? How long have I been here? Am I still in
the same body? I feel sensation, but I can’t see anything.
Something hard, like a floor, grounds my feet. A weak source of
gravity holds me down. I start to walk forward and immediately bump
face first into something. I run my hands along the invisible
barricade. It’s a smooth, solid wall, stretching out as far as I
can feel. I back up and punch it. My fist slams into the obstacle.
Not even a scratch, and completely soundless. I open my hand and
run my fingers along the surface. No depression, totally smooth. I
keep my hand stretched out and walk. A good ten minutes go by, my
fingers dragging along the wall. I step back, turn around, and
walk. A few feet, and I encounter more of the same. For all I know,
I’m going around in circles. I turn away from the wall and head in
the opposite direction, making it a few feet before I bump into
another barrier. I brush my fingertips up and down the barricade.
It’s more of the same. I drop my hand and wait. Time passes. It
seems like an eternity.

Light sparks in front of me, and a figure
materializes. It’s an Al’lak, probably a hologram. They all look
similar to me, but this one looks very close to the creature that
sent me into the wormhole.

“Are you coping with all this?”

I’m almost positive this is the same
creature.

“Yes, I am.”

That answers that.

“What of our trade?”

“It looks like you killed a few of our men,
stole a ship, and stranded yourself inside the [indecipherable] of
a wormhole. Is that [indecipherable] part of the trade?”

“You weren’t exactly upfront. Where does this
put us?”

“I have a new proposal for you.”

“Is it anything like your last one?”

“Much better.”

“And that is?”

“We’ll drop you back on Earth.”

“What are the stipulations? What do you
want?”

“No one has ever lasted very long in your
body. You seem to have survived all of [indecipherable.] If we
could understand why, it could be worth the effort.”

“So, you monitor me, and maybe eventually
pick me up again.”

“You could look at it like that. Or you could
look at it like an opportunity to return to your home world and
exist however you choose.”

I don’t trust this thing. I’m convinced he
has a hidden agenda. Unfortunately, I don’t have much of a
choice.

“You will have to choose quickly.”

“Why?”

“The [indecipherable] aren’t for you to know,
but if you take too long, this will be out of my hands.”

“Why Earth?”

The tone changes, as if he’s annoyed.

“You need a familiar environment. It’s your
best chance.”

“Chance for what?”

“I’m done. Yes or no.”

“Yes.”

And with that, the figure disappears, leaving
me in isolation once again. Time passes. I have no idea how long.
Maybe hours, maybe days. I start to fade, dreams becoming
reality.

I’m fourteen and arranging green army men
inside a concrete block, another block behind sealing it like an
oven. I pour gasoline over the soldiers and light a match. Standing
back, I watch the figures slowly melt. My military dad opens the
back door, and I scramble to hide my little game, tugging the
blocks down with me as I hide below the wooden porch.

I’m with the first girl I ever had sex with,
twisting and turning in her bed, uttering infantile gibberish. I’m
hoping it comes across as playful banter, but I know deep down it
really isn’t working. Anything is better than admitting my lack of
experience. She seems to be indulging my childish behavior in
anticipatory passion, her eyes half-closed, her groping fingers
pulling at my shirt.

I’m slipping a military can opener out of the
inside pocket of my Member’s Only jacket. I flip it around in my
fingers and try to pop open the plastic display encasing a Def
Leopard cassette. An obvious store plant keeps passing, his
sidelong glance a transparent attempt at surveillance. I’m too
slick for him. This would probably be the fourteenth cassette I’ve
stolen. And that’s not counting all the other stuff.

CHAPTER XXIII

BACK WHERE I STARTED

A burst of light, a deep gurgle, and my vision opens
up into a watery floor, the sand crusted up around my eyes. I pull
loose, hoisting aloft with a tremendous cascade of flying water. A
shrill sucking enfolds me, and I glance up just in time to see a
saucer-shaped ship disappearing into the clouds. I am in a forest.
The trees appear South American.

A flash arcs across the sky, crackling out of
the billowing clouds like lightning. Everything grows still. Not
even the insects chatter. Suddenly, the sky erupts in a brilliant
flash, followed by a thunderous concussion nearby that rocks the
ground. Treetops sway fiercely, the leaves moaning in discomfort. I
struggle to my feet. A centipede, a full six inches long, is
crawling on my forearm. I flick it off, bound out of the sunken
stream, and start jogging toward where I think the noise
originated.

I leap over a fallen tree trunk, tear through
a mass of underbrush, and come within inches of plowing into a
screaming, white-faced monkey. The animal’s shriek throws me off,
and as I attempt to avoid it my feet slip in mud. With a failing
attempt at equilibrium, I crash into the root-choked soil, my
forward arm pulverizing the rock in front of me. Scrambling to my
feet, I keep running. Through a thick grove of spindly trees, I see
a light piercing the distant underbrush. I head toward it,
thrashing through the foliage in a mad dash. A tree frog jumps onto
my swinging forearm, the sticky toes maintaining a tenuous balance.
It refuses to leave, the glossy eyes staring at me as its pallet
balloons and shrinks in a methodical rhythm. I shake my arm, trying
to dislodge the creature, but it stubbornly stays aboard. I slow to
a walk, holding my arm aloft. The animal groans and makes an
indignant leap toward a passing branch. Then the croaking of
hundreds of frogs reaches my ears, the volume growing louder by the
minute. I start running again. The scrubby trees part, the ground
in front dropping away into a shallow creek.

Clear water drifts over smooth pebbles, the
sidewall a muddy bank bursting with webs of root. I leap into the
water, my feet scraping to the bottom with a tremendous splash, a
dark creature wriggling away in panic. Sloshing over to the
opposite bank, I grab some vines and hoist myself up. Just ahead of
me, through the thick underbrush, I can make out a flattened locus,
the cleaved tops of neighboring trees skewed at a slanted angle. I
hack my way forward, tearing through the entangling mesh. Bugs
swarm around me, gnats angrily buzzing about my torso, aphids
spilling off the leaves as I pass. Centipedes and beetles scatter
before my feet, flocking over the ground with a legion of insects.
What is chasing them all out? This is bizarre! The strange thing is
they are all moving backwards, fleeing whatever lies ahead.

Pushing through a hanging curtain of fern, a
cleared out swath of forest greets me, the trees chopped almost to
their roots. Emitting a train of slowly rising smoke, an Al’lak
fighter sticks diagonally out of the ground. Something has hit it
hard, a huge chunk out of the right side testifying to this, the
slashed wing showcasing a dangling bundle that resembles veins. A
greenish goo oozes from the tattered cusps. I slow down, warily
approaching. The smoke is billowing out of some rupture on its left
side. The forest is absolutely silent. Nothing moves, nothing
breathes. The only sound comes from the soft drift of smoke. I
don’t even know how I can sense this, but something stinks. It’s a
pungent, acid-tinted odor that for all the world smells like a
squished palmetto bug.

I have no idea what this means. Is this a
natural accident? Has someone else entered the picture? Is it the
same race that the Al’lak were struggling with? For a moment I
debate looking in the crashed vessel. But that might open up a
whole can of worms. Whatever is going on here, I want no part.
Turning my back, I take off running, slower at first, then breaking
into a mad dash as I plunge into the forest depths.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Born in 1972, on a small army base in the
south, Dan Henk grew up on a diet of science fiction and horror
books. Playing soldier and building tree forts on the abandoned
training grounds of the bases his dad was stationed at, everything
was good until he got into metal and punk rock in his teens. That
didn't settle well with his super religious father, and at eighteen
Dan Henk was kicked out of his house. He spent the next eight
months homeless, often living in the woods. Six months later, he
was in the passenger seat of a car that flipped and his face broke
the windshield. Soon after that, the tendon on his thumb was
severed in a fight with a crackhead.

Despite the obvious obstacles, the next six
years were fairly productive, involving gallery showings,
illustration work for Madcap Magazine, Maximum Rock and Roll
Magazine, and a slew of bands and clubs. He was doing artwork on
the side and finally attended art school, moving to NYC to make it
a full time career.

Dan went on to be in more galleries, do more
band artwork, and paintings for Aphrodesia and several Memento
books. Magazines started to feature his tattoo work. But things
continued to be difficult. Dan came down with brain cancer, and his
wife died in a hit-and-run accident. He moved across the country,
finished his first book, The Black Seas of Infinity, and had it
published in 2011 by Anarchy Books. He started illustrations for
Black Static Magazine, This Is Horror, and Splatterpunk, book
covers for Deadite Press, a splash page for an issue of The Living
Corpse, and still more work for Memento. He also began a regular
comic strip for Tattoo Artist Magazine, and a series of blogs for
them as well.

Damnation Books picked up his second novel,
Permuted Press picked up his debut book for a re-issue, and he's
writing a regular column now for Skin Art Magazine. If he’s not
dead and all of this isn’t an illusion, things might be picking
up.

“The world is indeed comic, but the joke is
on mankind”—HP Lovecraft