The Gate

by Jennifer N Hibbert

  On her bed, tucking in her bedsheets with its two front legs, was a colourful, boggled-eyed lizard. Carrol screamed in shock and almost fainted. She clamped her mouth shut and stared avidly at it. It looked like the same lizard she had seen in the hotel at Station X and at the Channel of Exchange. It was standing upright on its hind legs, using its tail for support. Carrol stared and the lizard quickly moved towards the bathroom wall and disappeared, just as the lizard had done at Station X.

  Carrol stood, holding the door halfway open, terrified to close it. She wondered if she should tell someone what she’d seen but quickly dismissed the idea. They’d laugh at her; as it was, they already thought something was wrong with her.

  She closed the door, looked around and waited before moving towards the toilet. She looked inside but nothing was amiss. She lifted her hand and pressed it against the wall she’d seen the lizard disappear into but it was solid. Curious, she returned to her bed and checked the bedcovers.

  Everything looked normal and the room was quiet. Did the lizard work on the ship? After much contemplating, she ended up with more questions than solutions. Her imagination started to run wild. Who actually operates the ship? Are they humans? Or are all the other staff lizards as well, or some kind of creatures from space, like aliens? She realised that she’d never seen the commander and his crew or most of the people who worked on the ship, except the cooks who were visible in the kitchen. Who knew if they were human?

  Her thoughts continued to race: How does everything stay so spotless? Despite this many people moving around for months, it all looks exactly the same as when we first boarded. Our meals are always on time, the bedrooms are cleaned regularly and everything is ready for use every day. And it’s all a mystery. She spent most of that afternoon wondering about these mysteries. Finally, exhausted, she fell asleep on the bed.

  She woke later to find the lizard throwing a cover over her. She lay motionless, paralysed with fear. Her stomach churned but this time she didn’t shriek. When the lizard noticed that she was awake, he quickly turned to run over to the toilet wall, no doubt intending to disappear again.

  ‘Please! Please, don’t go,’ Carrol said. The lizard hesitated in the middle of the room before turning towards her slightly. ‘Please wait,’ she said again politely.

  The lizard turned to face her. She sat up in bed, her eyes wide open to get a good look at it. It stood about three feet tall and its tail stretched to another two. It had a crest of vivid royal-blue, comb-like scales extending down the centre of its back and tail. The rest of its body was covered in the most beautiful shades of orange, yellow, green, black and white. Its stomach was just one colour, a light grey, and it looked silky smooth in contrast to its textured back. It blinked every so often and its eyeballs rotated each time.

  Carrol continued gazing at it in amazement, admiring its colours. She was astounded to be in the same room with an extraordinary creature that might be from another planet. Close up, its big eyes weren’t so scary; in fact, it looked kind of cute.

  It stood still for a few minutes, looking at Carrol. Her stomach felt fuzzy inside. She wanted to speak again but she was speechless, her mouth dry. After waiting for a few seconds, the lizard turned to depart.

  Carrol regained her composure. ‘Please don’t go,’ she said again. ‘My name is Carrol.’ The lizard turned back. ‘I’m Carrol. What’s your name?’

  The lizard didn’t reply; it just stood there, blinking every so often.

  Carrol hesitantly extended an open hand as an invitation for a handshake but the lizard didn’t reciprocate. ‘My name is Zatol the Dragon,’ it said.

  Carrol was taken aback by the word ‘dragon’. She looked more closely at the lizard; it didn’t look like a dragon but she didn’t argue – the last thing she wanted was to anger the creature. She still didn’t know whether it was dangerous or not. She nodded before asking, ‘Are you the same lizard I saw at the Station X hotel?’ She realised too late that she’d said ‘lizard’.

  ‘Point of correction: it’s dra-gon, not lizard,’ he said slowly, before moving closer.

  Carrol climbed to her knees on the bed.

  He said, ‘Repeat after me, dra-gon.’

  Carrol quickly and politely did as he asked. ‘Dra-gon,’ she repeated, pronouncing every syllable accurately and trying to imitate his accent.

  ‘Correct! Now, where were we?’ he asked.

  Carrol cleared her throat before speaking again. ‘Are you the same dragon I saw in the hotel room at Station X?’

  ‘Wait a minute! I thought you’d seen a lizard, not a dragon, so it couldn’t have been me. As you can see, I’m a dragon!’

  Carrol was puzzled. She was sure this was the same creature she’d seen three times before. ‘But . . . but . . . you look the same to me,’ she stuttered.

  The lizard started laughing. He rested his hands on his stomach. ‘Yes, I’m the same lizard you saw,’ he replied.

  ‘You are? I thought you said you weren’t a lizard?’

  ‘Yes, that’s what I said. I’m a dragon lizard – not just an ordinary lizard. So, I’m still a dragon! Right?’ he asked with a hint of stubbornness. ‘Of course, it was me. You should’ve seen the look on your face,’ he said, still amused by his own joke.

  Carrol smiled weakly but she had loads of questions. ‘Do you work here?’

  The lizard was licking his fingers. ‘Who? Me? No! Not at all. Why do you ask? Was it because I was tucking in your bedcover the other day?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ she replied softly.

  ‘No, I just like things to be in their right places. Besides, I sneaked onto the ship,’ he said and continued his preening.

  ‘What do you mean sneaked?’

  ‘Oh, you know, I slipped in when no one was watching. I moved from wall to wall during the documentation control process at the Channel of Exchange,’ he explained, nodding his head as though he considered this a great victory.

  ‘Where did you come from?’ asked Carrol, who was feeling a little scared now that she knew he wasn’t supposed to be on the ship. She wondered if there would be trouble if anyone saw her with him. They might think she’d brought the lizard and had been hiding it. But they’d know that was impossible, because I would have no place to hide such a massive lizard – or dragon. She relaxed.

  ‘Well, I wanted to get to Mars. When I found out about this programme, I hatched a plan to hide myself and travel with this ship,’ he explained nonchalantly.

  ‘But why do you want to go to Mars? And I’m sorry to ask, but are you male or female?’

  ‘Can’t you tell? I’m a male, of course. Look at all these beautiful colours on my spine and tail,’ he said, proudly lifting his right arm so she could see – but he couldn’t lift it far because his arms were so short compared to the length of his body. Realising it wasn’t working, he spun round to show off his scales. ‘Females don’t have such flashy colours; they don’t need them. Anyway, can’t you tell from my husky voice?’ He asked this question in a deeper tone.

  ‘Of course,’ she said and moved on quickly. ‘Why do you want to go to Mars so badly?’

  ‘I’m not telling you,’ he said, now licking his arm.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because it’s a secret. I just met you. You can’t tell all your secrets to strangers. How do I know you can keep a secret?’

  ‘You can tell me anything. I promise I won’t tell anyone. I don’t speak to anyone else,’ she said, looking at him eagerly.

  ‘Oh yeah, about that. I noticed you don’t talk much to others. Why? Don’t you like them?’

  ‘How do you know I don’t talk to people?’ Carrol asked, feeling a bit sorry for herself.

  ‘Well, you just said so. Besides, I have eyes, you know! I’ve never seen you speak to anyone, apart from some occasional pleasantries. Don’t you have any friends? Or acquaintances? Or do you prefer being on your own?’

  ‘I don’t hate talking to others, it’s just that I don’t g
et on with a lot of people.’

  ‘Why?’ he asked sympathetically.

  ‘Because before they even know you, they make a judgement and form an opinion of you, whether it’s right or wrong,’ she said.

  ‘How old are you? And where is your family?’ Zatol asked.

  ‘I was twenty-three years old last month. My family is at home on Earth, where I left them to go on this stupid trip. I miss them, despite how awful they were to me. Sometimes I wish I’d never left, even if it meant falling out with my siblings every day forever. I thought things were going to be different on Mars. I wanted to start my life over.’ She looked up to see if Zatol was still listening. He nodded. ‘But this has turned out to be boring and sometimes dangerous, so I spend most of my time alone in this room. Anyway, it’s my own fault. I shouldn’t have got angry and left,’ she said.

  ‘What happened at home?’ Zatol asked softly.

  ‘I’d rather not talk about it,’ Carrol replied quickly. ‘It’s all in the past now. I can’t return home, even if I wanted to. What’s the use of worrying about things when you can’t change them?’

  ‘Would you like to return home?’ he asked.

  She was silent for a few seconds and then answered, ‘Sometimes yes and sometimes no.’

  ‘What does that mean – sometimes yes and sometimes no? You want to return or you don’t. Which is it?’

  ‘What I mean is that, right now, I don’t mind a change of environment – but I also wish I had the option to see my family again. My decision to participate in this project was a drastic one. I should have travelled to another town on Earth, or to another country. Lived there for a while to see how I felt before taking the leap to another planet.’

  ‘Humans are meant to love their families no matter what may come between them, or so I was told,’ Zatol said.

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it anymore. Please, can we change the subject?’ Carrol said.

  ‘But why? Why change the subject? I’d like to talk about this,’ he said persuasively. Before he could say any more, there was a knock at the door.

  Carrol sat speechless as Zatol immediately vanished into the wall. She rushed to the door and opened it. A kitchen assistant stood outside; Carrol had seen her clearing the food pans that were empty and replacing them with more food.

  ‘Hi,’ Carrol said with a slight smile.

  ‘Miss, the kitchen will be closing soon. Are you coming for dinner?’ Before Carrol could answer, she continued, ‘You have to come now otherwise it will be too late.’

  The kitchen assistant elongated her neck, trying to look into the room to see who else was in there. Carrol realised she must have heard their voices so she stepped forward, holding the door close to her body so there was no gap to peer through.

  After the assistant left, Carrol waited in her room for at least ten minutes to see if Zatol would come back but he didn’t. She made her way to the canteen and ate a small sandwich. It was 9:50pm and too late to eat anything heavy. She’d completely lost track of time. There were very few people dotted around the canteen.

  When she’d finished, she rushed back to her room hoping to continue her conversation with Zatol. He wasn’t there when she entered. She waited a few minutes but nothing happened. She called out quietly, ‘Zatol? Zatol? You can come out now. It’s just me.’

  Time ticked away and still he didn’t come out. Carrol drifted off to sleep and the next thing she knew it was morning. She stayed in her room before breakfast, hoping to see Zatol before she left to eat, but he didn’t materialise. She came back after only an hour but he was nowhere to be found.

  Carrol went into the toilet to check but he wasn’t there, either. She paced the room feeling anxious and disappointed. For once she had found someone – or something – who wasn’t judgemental and accepted her the way she was. The fact that he was willing to listen to her, and to think that he was taking care of her, meant a great deal.

  She decided to distract herself by reading her e-book – or at least pretending to read it. Her mind kept wandering and soon she started to think that she might have imagined the whole thing. She decided to conduct a search of what type of lizard it was and she soon found something that matched its description.

  The lizard belonged to one of the spiny-tailed lizard families and seemed like a hybrid breed between the Uromastyx and the Ctenosaura Similis. The body looked like the reptiles sold by Deer Fern Farms, which were indigenous to Morocco. The Uromastyx was a genus of African and Asian agamid lizards; the same family included the bearded dragon and frilled dragon, clown agamas and many other familiar lizards. These were also known as dragon lizards.

  At least there is a creature that matches the description. That means I am not imagining things. Look, it also says dragon lizard, too. That means he was right, she concluded. I desperately hope that he will return. But I shouldn’t be too selfish and think about myself. I wonder what happened to him? Might he have got into trouble? She didn’t know much about that; Carrol was the kind of person who never got into trouble.

  After a few more hours with no sign of Zatol, she worried that he’d been apprehended. What if they’ve captured him and find out that I was seeing him? she thought. Well, okay, I only spoke to him once. But still.

  She realised that Zatol must have had a strong reason to risk his life by sneaking on board. She felt sad that she hadn’t heard his reason. He’d said it was a secret, but Carrol was convinced that he would have told her if they hadn’t been interrupted.

  She spent most of the next morning in her room. She went to lunch at the usual time and hoped not to see the trailblazer group, let alone have them sit at her table again. She didn’t dislike them; if anything, she was scared of them after witnessing their behaviour – except for Martin, whose behaviour still confused her. She recognised some of their traits as the early stages of bullying and she’d seen enough bullying to last a lifetime. It seemed like her best option was to avoid getting involved with them. Years of bullying had left a bitter taste in her mouth; the nightmare never completely went away. Carrol relived these moments over and over in her mind, as though they were happening right there and then. She’d come on this trip to get away from bullying, not to find more of it.

  She scoured the dining room to make sure the boys were nowhere in sight, then sat in her usual place and ate her lunch uninterrupted. Afterwards she decided to walk around the decks to get some exercise and see if she could spot Zatol. She desperately wanted to believe she would see him again. She hoped she was not holding on to something that wasn’t real.

  Carrol walked around most of the communal areas. A movie was about to start in the cinema and she decided to watch it; it was about alien activities on Earth and their interactions with humans. She entered the theatre, which was half empty. She took her seat, which was the tenth row from the front. Soon after the movie started, she was distracted by a man walking up the aisle. After refocusing on the movie, she heard the man’s voice whisper, ‘Hello.’

  ‘Hi,’ she responded, turning to find him standing next to her.

  ‘Is this seat taken?’

  ‘No, no, not at all,’ she stammered, hesitating. ‘Not at all.’ The words left her mouth before her brain had time to compute. The young man sat down beside her and began avidly watching the movie.

  Carrol felt very awkward and her mind was racing; she was hardly able to follow the film. This was the first time anyone had sat next to her in the cinema the whole time they’d been in space. She wondered who he was and why he hadn’t chosen one of the other vacant seats, of which there were many. She couldn’t see his face well in the dim illumination of the screen. She even thought of leaving – but he was sitting between her and the aisle, so she would have had to distract him and everyone else in the theatre to get out. She stayed put.

  The minute the movie ended, Carrol stood up. The man immediately moved aside, allowing her to whizz past and leave the theatre. She had barely walked away from the hall before sh
e turned to look behind her. As she did, she realised he was already alongside her. Shocked, she stopped to let him pass but he stopped, too. Carrol gulped nervously. Sweat was forming on her palms; she was frightened and wondered about his intentions.

  He was tall and lanky and looked shy, yet there was a mischievous glint in his soft, beautiful eyes, which were peering sheepishly at Carrol through his spectacles. ‘Hi there,’ he said, facing Carrol, who didn’t have any idea how to respond.

  She stared at him for moment before replying, ‘Hi.’ She backed away so that she wasn’t standing too close to him.

  He opened his mouth to say something but closed it again without making a sound. He looked down and tried to avoid her gaze. Carrol felt sorry for him. ‘It . . . it was a very nice movie. Didn’t you think?’ she stammered, blushing.

  ‘Yes, though the action in the movie made me feel very squeamish,’ he answered gently.

  ‘Yeah, very,’ she responded.

  ‘My name is Jerry,’ he said. He smoothed his hair away from his face and looked around nervously.

  ‘I’m Carrol,’ she said.

  ‘I see you around the canteen sometimes. I’ve always wanted to talk to you but I never get the chance. I’m always with my parents. Do you like going to the movies?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, I like movies but I don’t go often,’ Carrol replied. She looked up at him and wondered where he usually sat in the canteen.

  ‘How do you spend your time, then?’ he asked.

  ‘I like to read e-books and watch TV in my room.’

  ‘Are you travelling alone or with your family?’

  ‘I’m alone,’ she answered, dropping her eyes.

  ‘You’re lucky. I’m travelling with my mum and dad. They’re always trying to tell me what to do. They don’t understand that I’m an adult. I was twenty-five last week and they still treat me like a child.’

  Carrol tilted her head to look at his face, recognising his frustration. ‘Oh, I’m sorry to hear that,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t get me wrong. Sometimes I’m happy that I have people to share this experience with, but sometimes I feel like I should have come alone. I‘ve spoken with them about it and they’ve agreed that I can have my own house on Mars,’ Jerry said. ‘Anyway, that’s enough about me. Are you going to come to the cinema tomorrow afternoon? Maybe I could wait for you outside the theatre,’ he blabbered nervously.