Just to See Hell

by Chandler Morrison

  “Glad to hear it, Tim,” the voice said. “I’m going to sever the connection, now. If you need anything, press the red button on the wall and…”

  “Yeah, I know. The red button on the wall. Got it.” I could really use a tall glass of scotch, Tom thought. Or maybe a bottle of Southern Comfort. Yeah, and some gin and tonic to wash it down. Fill me up, Scotty. Put it on my tab.

  “Okay, pal, make yourself comfortable, and enjoy the ride.”

  Tom looked down at his trembling hands and thought, Oh, I’ll absolutely enjoy the ride. Yessir, three days in a ten-by-ten room and not a drop of liquor in sight…that really does sound like a hell of a time.

  Shutting his eyes and lying down, Tom reflected that it was, at the very least, nice to be alone. The shuttle was operated entirely by an automated internal computer that would take him on a pre-charted course around the solar system and return him to Earth in exactly seventy-five hours and twenty-one minutes.

  Tom looked at his watch, did some quick math in his head, and determined that it had been exactly ninety-eight hours and fifty-six minutes since his last drink.

  Margaret pulled the covers over her bare breasts and watched Eric button his shirt.

  “Eric?” she said, “do you think I’m beautiful?”

  After zipping his jeans, Eric sat down on the side of the bed and kissed the corner of Margaret’s mouth. He smiled warmly at her, tucked a lock of her dark brown hair behind her ear, and said, “Yes, Mags, of course I do. You are beautiful.” He kissed her again, softly upon the lips, and asked, “Why would you even question that?”

  Margaret looked at Eric’s smooth, unlined face. She was more than twenty years his senior, and when she looked at him, she saw something wonderful and extraordinary that was, for all its tangible beauty, not going to last. She knew she was in good physical condition, especially for a woman of fifty-one, and there were women at her gym who were far younger and looked like shit. Still, age was not something she could stave off forever.

  “Maggie?” Eric said, frowning, his forehead creasing with worry. “Are you okay?”

  Margaret nodded. “I’m fine,” she said, touching the side of Eric’s hard, muscular neck. “It’s just…Tom never tells me that I’m pretty. I can’t remember the last time he gave me any sort of compliment.”

  Eric glanced over towards the nightstand, where lay the picture frame that Margaret turned over whenever he visited. He had never once seen the photograph within it.

  “He just…doesn’t have his priorities straight. He knows how beautiful you are, I’m sure of it. It’s impossible not to notice you, Mags.” He kissed her forehead and reached under the blanket to run his fingertips over her thigh, sending a tremor up her spine. “When I look at you, you’re the only thing I see. Everything else is irrelevant. I believe with everything in me that Tom sees it, too.”

  Looking into Eric’s eyes with a sorrowful, willful kind of determination, Margaret said, “If this space therapy thing works, if Tom gets cured, you and I will have to stop…doing this. I love my husband, and if there’s any chance I can fix our marriage, I’m going to take it.”

  Eric nodded gravely. “I know,” he said, and then quieter, “I know.”

  “But if it doesn’t work…”

  Eric smiled and put a finger to Margaret’s lips. “One thing at a time, Mags. Right now, just hope for the best.”

  After a long pause, Margaret said, “Anymore, I don’t think I even know what’s best, so what is there to hope for?”

  As Mars was slowly passing by outside the window, Tom was hugging his knees to his chest and rocking back and forth on the bed. His teeth were chattering, and his T-shirt was pasted to his skin with cold sweat. Time lulled by in a dazed stupor.

  “I’m in s-space,” he stammered, looking out at the vast red planet. “I’m in s-space and I’m s-sober and I want to d-die.” He felt paralyzed with fear. Everything had settled in; he was in a fucking spaceship, and he’d never been farther away from a drink in his life. He’d never been farther away from anything in his life.

  He’d never had a panic attack, but he figured this was probably something like it.

  A fierce shudder wracked his frame, and he collapsed off the narrow bed onto the unflinchingly hard metal floor. He lay there for a moment, trembling and blinking up at the ceiling, and then he broke into a fit of harsh sobs. “Shit,” he whimpered miserably. “Motherfucker…goddammit…somebody please help me.”

  As he pleaded to whatever unknown entity might be listening, Tom felt disgusted with himself. He was pathetic, and he knew it. This was not the man he was supposed to be. There had been a time, long ago…too long ago, that he had been in control. He had been Major Tom Thibault, a confident, organized man who had his shit together, not to mention a Medal of Honor and two Purple Hearts. Those days, however, were so far behind him that they almost didn’t seem real, as though they were a hazy delusion of an irrevocably insane lunatic.

  I used to be afraid of the future, Tom had once said to Margaret when lying in bed with her, not long after their honeymoon. But with you, there is nothing that scares me. No matter what happens, no matter what madness the world may throw at me, you’re always there. I can look into the future and see you, always you, constant and unchanging. Hell or high water, widespread fires, plagues of the worst kind…none of it would matter, because you’re always there. I could break and fall victim to the most mind-shattering horrors of life, but you would be there, and everything always comes back to that. You keep me real, you keep me alive. You rearrange me till I’m sane.

  That memory, briefly hanging in Tom’s mind with startling clarity, disappeared all too quickly and was replaced with a vision of a more fantastical sort. He saw himself lounging on a tropical beach, a martini in one hand and a dark, European beer in the other. In the midst of this vision, he realized that this was it. This was the end of the line, the last stop. He was very certain, more certain than he’d ever been about anything in his entire life, that he would die up here. The solitude that had at first been comforting was now an all-encompassing void that would whittle away his sanity long before he returned to Earth. He could not take three days of this without his dear friend Mr. Bottle to keep him company. The shuttle would land and they would find him dead on the floor, his throat filled with congealed vomit and his ribs splintered from the roiling tremors.

  Pound on the red button, a voice within him commanded frantically. Tell them to turn the shuttle around and take you back. Pretend that you’re having a heart attack, that you’re going to die if they don’t turn this thing around right fucking now!

  Almost immediately, though, Tom rejected this notion. He was not the first booze-addled addict to get launched up here, and he was sure they’d heard it all before. He’d done the rehab scene, and he knew that these people wouldn’t be any different than the coldly apathetic orderlies at the clinic. No, he was in this for the long haul.

  He closed his eyes and waited for the maddening pain in his head to seize him from consciousness.

  * * *

  The nagging persistence of the doorbell roused Margaret from her slumber, and she sat up in bed, rubbing her eyes groggily. The clock on the nightstand said it was a little past three in the morning, so the fact that someone was ringing her doorbell (and now hammering on the door, as well) was reason enough for concern. Eric worked the graveyard shift as a janitor at a research lab, so she knew it wasn’t him.

  Covering her nakedness with a bathrobe, Margaret hurried to the front door and peered through the peephole. Standing on her doorstep were two men in charcoal-colored suits with matching red ties clipped to their white shirts with shining gold tie bars. Each of them had NASA identification badges hanging around their necks, as well as identical cropped hairstyles and pencil moustaches. Their faces were grim and uneasy.

  Without removing the security chain, Margaret opened the door a few inches and said to the men with a quavering voice, “What’s this about? Is ever
ything all right with Tom?”

  One of the men, the shorter of the two, said “May we come in, ma’am? This is a serious matter that would best be discussed indoors, preferably with you sitting down.”

  With quivering hands, Margaret slid the chain off the door and beckoned the two men inside. She took a seat in Tom’s leather armchair while the two NASA men sat down awkwardly on the couch. She crossed her legs, feeling uncomfortable in her state of relative undress, but the men were professional in that they kept their eyes locked with hers.

  “Mrs. Thibault,” the shorter man said, “My name is Ken Leroy, and this is Anthony Blake. We…have some unfortunate news that may come as a bit of a shock to you, but we must assure you that we are doing everything in our power to correct the situation.”

  “What situation?”

  Blake and Leroy exchanged a nervous glance, and then Leroy said, “Everything was going smoothly, at first. Then, about six hours after launch, the computer system in your husband’s shuttle malfunctioned.”

  Margaret blinked, folder her hands tightly on her lap, and bit down hard upon her lip. “What do you mean it malfunctioned?”

  Another nervous glance, and this time, Blake spoke. “We are currently unaware of the cause of the glitch. All we know is that the shuttle suddenly increased significantly in its velocity, veered off course, and then disappeared from our tracking system. All attempts to establish communication have been unsuccessful.”

  “Are you saying…you lost him? How the fuck could you lose him? There was nothing about this in the packet. Nobody said anything about ‘disappearing.’ Is this some kind of sick fucking joke? Am I on camera?” She was distantly aware of tears running down her face and an edging hysteria in the tone of her voice.

  “Ma’am,” Blake said, “this has never happened before. We share your frustration, and we’re just as confused as you are. Our tracking system covers the entire Milky Way, and since your husband’s shuttle is no longer on the tracking system…”

  Leroy threw a quick, sharp look at his partner, and Blake clamped his mouth shut.

  “So…you’re telling me he’s not even in the same fucking galaxy as us?”

  “Well,” Leroy said tentatively, “we don’t know that for sure. Our tracking system could be experiencing…technical difficulties, if you will, but that is highly unlikely. All of the satellites and space stations are still showing up where they’re supposed to be, which means that, yes, your husband could potentially be another galaxy.”

  Margaret leaned forward and buried her face in her hands. “This isn’t happening,” she said in a muffled voice. “This can’t be happening.”

  “We have a team of our best technicians working on this,” Leroy went on. “And we’ve sent for a group of Russian space engineers, as well. They’ll be arriving within the hour.”

  “We’ll get this straightened out,” Blake said in a voice that was meant to sound consoling, and Leroy gave him another sharp glance.

  “What Anthony means to say is that, while we cannot make any promises, we are doing everything in our power to try to get this straightened out. Right now, we ask that you remain patient. We will provide you with frequent progress reports, as well as with anything you may need to maintain some semblance of comfort.” He paused, and then finished by saying, “I’m legally obligated to advise you to speak with a lawyer. Once you have done so, you can refer said lawyer to our legal department, which will provide him or her with the necessary details of the scenario.”

  Margaret nodded and wiped at her leaking eyes with her palms.

  “Are you going to be all right by yourself, or should we send for a grief counselor?” Blake asked, genuine worry in his voice.

  Margaret started to say no, she did not need a fucking grief counselor, but her voice cracked and she broke into a fresh series of shoulder-hitching sobs.

  With you, there is nothing that scares me, Tom had once said to her.

  You keep me real, you keep me alive.

  You rearrange me till I’m sane.

  Margaret covered her mouth with the back of her hand and wept.

  * * *

  Tom opened his eyes.

  Before anything else, he noticed the glaring intensity of bright light. The lighting in the shuttle’s cabin had been rather dim, but now he had to hold up a hand to shield his eyes from what seemed like…felt like…warm sunlight.

  While he waited for his eyes to adjust, Tom stood up, leaning against the wall to steady himself. His head still throbbed, and his stomach churned with nausea, but he felt slightly better than he had before.

  Before what? he thought to himself, finally managing to blink away the worst of the dark splotches in his vision.

  This was when he noticed the gaping hole in the side of the shuttle.

  What had once been an untarnished silver wall adorned with a refrigerator and a steel, built-in wardrobe was now a wide, jagged opening in the hull of the spacecraft. Coils of wires trailed from the edges of the hole, spouting golden sparks and hissing loudly. Outside, Tom could see nothing but miles of flat, empty desert terrain.

  Holding his breath and taking slow, wary steps, Tom lurched forward and climbed out of the ruined shuttle.

  It was warm, but not unpleasantly so. Looking up into the pale white sky, Tom counted three huge, burning red suns, each of them appearing to be at least ten times the size of the Earth’s own sun. He knelt down and took a handful of soft white sand, letting it sift slowly through his fingers. Unlike the sand to which he was accustomed, the grains of this particular sand did not cling to his skin, nor leave behind the dry, sandpapery feeling he’d been expecting.

  He looked over his shoulder at the smoking, smoldering heap of metal that had once been his shuttle, and then looked back at the unending stretch of land before him.

  “Jesus,” he breathed. “Jesus fucking Christ.”

  For the second time in mere hours, Tom lost consciousness.

  When he awoke, the day was still bright and the suns seemed not to have changed position. He looked at his watch, but it had stopped ticking. Not that it would have mattered, anyway; he seriously doubted that time pertained to this place in the same way it did to Earth.

  When he sat up, he gasped sharply and went rigid. Standing before him were three figures, all cloaked in burgundy robes with hoods that veiled their faces in shadow. They were tall and lean, all three of them being about six inches taller than Tom’s six-one. One of them said something to the others in a language that Tom couldn’t even hope to understand, as it sounded like little more than a jumbled mess of clicks and groans.

  “Who the hell are you?” Tom said, hastily getting to his feet and taking several steps backward. “Where am I?”

  Another of the figures spoke in the strange language, and then the three of them made a noise that could have been laughter, if one stretched the imagination far enough.

  “This is a mistake,” Tom continued, taking another step back. “I’m not supposed to be here. I…I don’t mean any harm.” He held up his hands as a sign of peace, but the robed figures gave no sign of reaction. Tom figured they could probably understand him about as well as he could understand them.

  One of the figures took a long stride towards Tom, reaching into the folds of its robe as it did so. Tom cried out and held his hands higher, expecting the red-clad thing to procure some sort of dastardly weapon. Instead, it held out a tall crystal bottle, taking another step forward and offering it to Tom. The flesh on its hand was a creamy shade of white, with the faintest tint of pale blue. It had six nail-less fingers, all abnormally long, with tips that were slightly pointed.

  Tom eyed the bottle suspiciously. He normally had a rule against accepting strange drinks from hooded creatures on foreign planets, but he was maddeningly thirsty, as much for water as he was for alcohol. Inevitably, that thirst got the better of him, and he walked slowly towards the shrouded thing and took the bottle from it. He examined it closely, turning it over in his h
ands. The liquid within was thin and clear and looked like water, so he uncorked the bottle and took a long, gulping swallow.

  Whatever it was, it wasn’t water. It had absolutely no taste, and not in the way that water is without taste. No, this was something else altogether. He couldn’t even feel it in his mouth, wasn’t even sure he had actually swallowed anything, so he took another swig, longer this time.

  Still, there was nothing.

  And then there was something.

  His legs turned to jelly, and he collapsed onto his back. His whole body was flooded with a giddy sense of warmth, and there was a distinct tingling deep within his chest. He smiled broadly, lying there in the sand with the suns beating down upon his face, basking in the sudden explosion of unexpected ecstasy.

  “What is this?” he asked, but his voice was garbled and far away. He lifted his hands, heavy as his arms were, and held them close to his face. He felt quite certain that they were…melting…but they appeared to be intact.

  They’ve killed me, he thought. That thing, that drink…it’s killed me, and I’m okay with that. I really couldn’t care less.

  He wasn’t sure how long he lay there, completely still, watching the world fade in and out at irregular intervals. Eventually, he became mildly aware that he was being lifted from the ground and carried. Carried…or floating…he wasn’t sure.

  Taking a deep breath, he let himself go.

  He was standing, tall and confident and upright, on a long stretch of cobblestone road underneath a moonlit night sky. Trees loomed overhead on either side of the road. Off in the distance, there was a peculiar sound of chugging machinery.

  Tom looked down at himself and was bemused to find that he had taken on the form of some androgynous being, nude, bone-thin, and ghostly white. He touched his face and found it to be flat and unmarked by any such human features as a nose, eyes, or mouth. Further examination revealed his ears to be noticeably absent, as well.