Dead Astronauts

by Jeff VanderMeer

  v.5.02

  3. BOTCH BEHEMOTH

  For a long time, the giant fish did not realize he was different. For a long time after, Botch roamed the holding ponds no different than before. Other than a lingering intent that clung to the gleaming scales, that teased gentle teased lonely along bold white scars.

  At dusk, a holy gloaming made Botch glow a deep, rich green. Brief beacon of the holding ponds. Before this quality extinguished as Botch stared at himself in the water. As if a presence had recognized the gleam, snuffed out the light so as not to be seen. Must not be gleaned.

  Reflection from a window of an old rotting house. In the distance, seen from a tunnel under a bridge. Tunnel. Bridge. A polluted stream swelling with rainwater. Aflame with oil amid the deluge.

  What was “house”? Buildings lived as hills and mountains, resided in Botch as dim dull shapes. But a house burned buried in his head now. On and off and on. Botch shook his head to dislodge tunnel, bridge, house. But failed. Was not residue, but inside his body, at the heart.

  Yet Nocturnalia receded in time. Night became flat and angular again. Receded the flush, the open nature of darkness. The air at dusk against Botch’s scales carried no heat. The green dried, flaked, fell away brittle.

  Splash of that relief, Botch returned to his old ways, the ways of rollick slaughter and slaughterous rollick. Lurking under mud flats, swallowing ballast to sink into mire and muck, mottled-muted until only eyes protruded, gold-rimmed … and when some creature hopped or crawled or crept to the water’s edge—

  Great and forever was the opening of Botch’s maw, the crunch between slick jaws the object of its desire, and every kind of creature he hoped would reside in the crux of that lethal architecture. In moan or squeak or scream; gullet-bound difference was heresy. Meaningless.

  The fish grew languorous and mighty. Until one day he molted away the name of Botch, which had become nothing but echo and falter. Lay at the heart of the shed skin, enraptured and disguised.

  Botch gave way to Behemoth. Loath to move, letting prey expend litheness into his jaws. That under the gloom of reeds and mud, beasts might enter that cathedral unaware. Months Behemoth might lie in wait. In a tunnel under a bridge. In the basement of a rotting shed filling with water.

  The holding ponds receded under the spell of drought. Plain became desert. The ponds huddled melancholy next to the Company building, deeper and wider than before. But fewer in number. Behemoth would dive deep, stay deep, learned to hibernate for long months.

  Learned the ping and the drift and ripple from the surface that meant food. Spread jaws to scrape the algae sides, moved up slow. Snapped shut in time. Snapped shut to capture time.

  Yet still the door to the Company raised up and out came more live pretty, pretty alive, confused, and ready to be convinced of extinction. Pulsed at the crux, unaware. Amazed of movement, cured of movement.

  Behemoth had fought much mightier beasts and won, faith and fated, shaped by scarring, a history of broken ribs, of fins turned misshapen like crooked oars, of a leer to the left side of the mouth caused by a claw ripping through and past. A great white pool of an eye, fissured in spirals, that yet could see.

  Leopard men and elephants and giant otters. Rhinos that had the heads of monkeys. Battled packs or herds of carnivorous undead blackened animals like charred driftwood that never had a name. Battled things that had fallen upon him out of the sky and lunged up from beneath the ground and came galloping like champions across the plain.

  Covered over in mud, become truth in the plunge. Into deep pond, into a place where the white shone so bright it illuminated the little fish that fed on Behemoth’s flanks. The little fish that sang out at dawn like birds and lived nowhere: not the present, not the past, not the future. Blissful in their eternity of nothingness.

  Singing and singing so close that Behemoth sometimes believed it was his body singing, of his fate. Strained to listen for instruction from the flesh. But could not understand the song, was troubled by this. By a burning shed. By a burning mind. Sometimes laden with mud to cool. Snapped at the night, lunged to eat stars, settled back down, still awake.

  The Company never sang to Behemoth, asked nothing of him except that he devour. In this way, Behemoth read the ripples he left behind, the rings. Knew thereby he was the lord of the water. Free. To eat. To sleep. To shit. To pull himself back and forth between the holding ponds. As if Behemoth had been made to describe such a path until the end of days.

  If sometimes Behemoth did not understand his dreams, Behemoth was at first untroubled, for he knew, somehow, that a dream was not real. Of a face resolving into a kind of living compass against the night sky. Of strange, green sky. Of stars not the stars in the same way the fireflies had not really seemed like fireflies. Too near, too far. The face both human and not.

  An eye that grew in the dreams, red and swollen and dark. An eye that appeared from a swirl of globes filled with tiny creatures, staring up at him. Asking something, but what? A question that bothered at Behemoth. Came even a hesitation, an extra moment between the sighting and the rending, no matter the manner of creature.

  But in the end, no rationing of meat could withstand the rationing of attention. Down the gullet they went, to join the ghosts. Even if Behemoth felt emptier, as if he feasted upon a thick mist, must gorge through the day and into the night. A weight pressing down that must be some new property of the sky. Or so Behemoth thought.

  4. CAN’T REMEMBER

  v.7.0

  Why was the blue fox always at play with something invisible to Charlie X? Why, out in the basin, amid the tired, bombed-out buildings, would he see the fox circling some sort of prey or objective—the word felt foreign in his mind and yet familiar—and yet … nothing? Nothing was there. The blue fox kicked up dust as it leapt away from attack by a ghost, a wraith, a memory. He thought the blue fox might be trying to trick him. Again. Although he could not remember the first time. Or even when he

  v.6.9

  He’d remembered something, encountered something. But it was gone again. There was only the City around him and the plain. The way he wandered and only knew his past by the steps he left behind. Which he knew there was a reason for—why sometimes the steps circled a blank spot of sand. But he

  v.6.8

  It escaped again, or he escaped, and he was by the holding ponds as they released the latest from the rusting door. Pushed. Falling into the mud-sands, shambolic, wide-eyed, unbelieving, some plunging into the ponds even though they could not swim. How they poured out from that door, human and inhuman. Shocking how he

  v.6.7

  Stuck. And tuck and luck. And other haunted words. But not the right word. But when he

  v.6.6

  Came again the dance he did, taken to move to the side, to encircle or circle as … nothing. As nothing passed. What ghost was there, he forced his mind toward, even the idea of ghost beyond him, snatched at, lost, and sometimes he clung to mist instead of ghost, as the only word that would cohere. No. Gone. Negation. Headache. Something he

  v.6.5

  Inside a room, staring out from a gaping wound of a win … a wuh, a space in the wall. He didn’t know the room, nor the building. Did not know all the terms. So there were walls, but nothing overhead, even though he couldn’t see the sky. Knew glass but not wuh-wuh. Stood there with an arm propped against a wall, reciting wuh-wuh-wuh, like a kind of panting speech, but could not form the word. Wuh-wuh-wuh. So must depend on the wall and the glass fragments along one edge to know that he might see out of that space. He

  v.6.4

  Circles could be windows. The word restored to him the next moment. In a wall. Maybe someone might have called the circles globes not windows. But to Charlie X they were always windows. Windows. The comfort of that architecture re-placed inside his mind, so he could stare out again. Such pretty windows. They’d spoiled him, those windows. With what they showed, what they held. The slow and the fast. The floating or the fluttering or the seeth
ing. That which left its suckered mark burnt against the globe. That which hissed defiance. That which cowered or huddled. There were days back then when, ecstatic, he

  v.6.3

  So beautiful the first time. The way the circles became globes became windows and then swirled as if caught in the sea and tumbled by the surf. How, later, beautiful and terrible, the ghosts of globes would spin off into the desert. Mistaken for dust devils. Mistaken for ghosts. But really the windows the windows the windows. Like nothing he had seen before. Like nothing he

  v.6.2

  The thing came off the ruined wall once he regained himself. The thing he should have seen if only he hadn’t been looking for the thing he couldn’t see. The thing about the thing that was the thing. The way it raked his back, got hold with claws, made him roll and scream and stab at his own back, and then the weight gone because the thing had left, camouflaged again. Had the Company sent it to torment him? He

  v.6.1

  Uck uck uck uck uck. Throat dry as twist. Dry as leathered. Dry as weather. Is the world what he can’t remember? Uck uck uck uck. The portal opens and closes and he’s tossed aside, washed up in the desiccated husk of surf trapped in amber. Fossilized there, wearing away in front of him. The wall of globes ruined, just an imprint on a floor, a stain of something heavy. The lisp of salt that cracked and fissured, all the tissue torn away. Uck uck uck. Charlie X in his burning house, no not his but what was the difference because he

  v.6.0

  Then he’d lost it: the journal. The place he stored all his secrets. Lost or stolen—could never tell. Stolen more than luck, fuck, tuck, muck, ruck, stuck. Stolen and nothing was ever the same. His treasure, his holy text. The way he preserved his memory from others. Lost or stolen? The question had grated at him, wore him down. Who to trust? And yet he’d only ever confided in the journal and he had entrusted the journal to the fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck and now he

  v.5.9

  Something invisible that wasn’t there forced him from his path for the tenth? For the twentieth? For a number of times that Charlie X couldn’t recall. He’d have it in a moment. No, he wouldn’t. No he wouldn’t. No he

  v.5.8

  By the time it came back to him as a burning shed, befouled, the magic gone, his soul written on by another, violated, and his mind ransacked, changed forever. This new person, brought to him with the journal. This Sarah. His masters untrusting. Why was it secret? Why had Charlie’s … Charlie’s … why had there been strife between those tasked with recovery? What was his plan? No defense. Nothing to be said. Fuck uck uck uck uck uck uck. Nothing he could do, no one he could turn to, no recourse and all he

  v.5.7

  The fox had come to him at the wall of globes. Charlie X remembered that. But how had the fox gotten in? How past the the the … the stuck the luck the tuck the the the stuck stuck stuck. For Charlie X knew the stuck the luck the tuck had been there too, with him most of his days. The the stuck. And this had been because he

  v.5.6

  The fox had gotten in through the stuck. The stuck the luck the truck the buck the cluck the stuck. Had the fox stolen the journal? No, no the one thing he hadn’t done. Could remember, but not stuck ruck oh fuck he

  v.5.5

  Someday, Charlie X would settle the fox. Someday he would have the fox as pelt. Someday the fox would stop watching him. Someday the uck uck uck. He

  v.5.4

  Felt the gaze from the corner of the eye, exploding through Charlie X like sonar he could feel in his bones. Hid in the cistern. A watcher as he ate at the scavenger he had killed. The stuck the stuck lurked there. Then it was gone again and he did not know by what trick he

  v.5.3

  The fox had suggested. The fox had nudged. No, the fox had never done that. It was Charlie X’s idea to make. To make the stuck. To use Sarah. Too beautiful to leave there. Or had too much potential. Or was just that something in the sprawl of limbs had been artistic. Splayed. Vulnerable. Needed to live again. But did not much examine his reasons, for by then what reasons did he need? Tasked and not tasked, he

  v.5.2

  Visited upon him the torment of the sketches in his journal, as punishment. Applied to him the features of a bat. Applied to him the throat-mice, which had been intended for someone else. Left him to drift, to drift, tore away the essence, left him left him left him to wander, took all his surprises and secrets, until he was the only secret left, that and the muck suck ruck fuck that even he

  v.5.1

  The white of bone that reminded him of Company men. The crease of dull red that reminded him of the salamander. Cast the salamander out. But it was in the journal already and thus in him. But his mind a burning building, a slow smolder. Unable to grasp, to grapple, he

  v.5.0

  Sarah walked through the ruins sometimes. And he felt her curse him. Felt the flame bathing his face. Screamed aloud. Screamed inside his skull. If only his head would come off. If only he could pull off this mask they’d given him. But it would not come loose and the more he tried the more he bled and the more he

  v.4.9

  The shame that would not leave. The name he could remember: Sarah. But also the other, and he could not overlap, could not overlap that name. To overlap was to admit. His mind would not admit that torment. Tear the head off some anonymous creature in the desert. Drink its blood. Move on. Wipe from memory what he

  v.4.8

  Nightmare was the repetition of the past. Out across the desert, sometimes, the sunset was a glowing constellation, an alien storm, the purples and reds and yellows painted across his face, the comforting rage of it. For a moment. Then the dark and he

  v.4.7

  Couldn’t hold on. A hole there because of the hole here. And from the hole the fox leered out. A hole as long as a century and short as a day. Fox. Not fox. Here today, gone tomorrow. And that the start of the trouble. Fuck muck ruck muck muck muck muck. If only he

  v.4.6

  The storm that put a hole in the roof. How the sun came in, shining down upon Charlie X’s ravaged bat face, upon the curled-up mice in his neck. Upon the wall of globes, revealed. Upon the animals there. Upon Charlie X’s soul, the warmth of it, and how, too soon, fixed, the darkness came back. Crept back in. And how he hated the darkness, even though underneath he was glad to be out of the light because the wall had looked so different. Streaked with blood and feces. Stacked with small dead bodies. Crushed bodies underfoot. Bodies overfoot. Bodies he hadn’t seen in the corners and Chen had looked at him, and he

  v.4.5

  There, the fox again, in the moonlight, trotting beside a dark figure. A woman. And trailing them the accursed little foxes and he turned on them, and he

  v.4.4

  There had been a magical garden once, hidden in a secret room, and he

  v.4.3

  The ugly luck the ugly truck the ugly tuck fuck fuck fuck, and life had been a glory, a triumph, a comforting calm and if only he

  v.4.2

  The fading thought that there had been no such moment with the globes, as much as he

  v.4.1

  Not at the beginning, the middle, or the end. That there had not been that radiant light, that he

  v.4.0

  Could not remember it because, if he were honest with himself, he

  v.3.9

  Eruption on the horizon and the bellows of leviathan down below. And he could see the outline of a dark bird’s shadow like a cloud descending and surging up toward the Balcony Cliffs, like a plague of locusts forming a shape—he could see it! Overrode the override. A duck a duck a duck a duck a duck a duck a duck a duck, that was it! A duck! His duck. His ugly duckling. He could not escape it. He

  v.3.8

  Three astronaut helmets hidden in the sand.

  v.3.7

  Everything came back to Earth.

  v.3.6

  Nothing ever really left.

  v.3.5

  Forgot again.

  v.3.4

  Fuck.


  v.3.3

  And he

  v.3.2

  5. LEVIATHAN

  Weight grew atop Behemoth’s head and with it the weight of dreams in which the Company watched from afar. Behemoth shook his head, tried to dislodge this new-old thing. The invisible invader. Bucked and shook, rolled in the mud, perilous to his bulk. But still the weight remained. No separation.

  Nocturnalia returned. Nocturnalia returned, and creatures behaved strange and tortuous and would not be devoured in quite the same way. Could not shake the thing on/in his head. Could not find a way through it. Festered. Spread. Conflagration. Instigation. Morass.