Burya 4: Chapter 6

Access all chapters of Burya 4 here.

Shipment

“What are you doing here?” Anatoly asked, wiping the blood from his hands.

There was no blood. He looked down at his hands as he scrubbed them violently, then he stopped. He looked at Kolya’s bare feet, then up his face.

“I could have had you disciplined for this, comrade…,” he spoke.

It was then that Kolya saluted the captain and stood straight, only with the matryoshka doll in his hand. He said, “Comrade Captain.”

“What are you holding in your hand?” asked the captain, who reached for the matryoshka.

Kolya gripped the doll for a moment before releasing it. Anatoly inspected the doll briefly.

He said, “I could have you disciplined for this.” 

But then, as Kolya stood firm and speechless, Anatoly thought of his most recent experience with Comrade Allan. He shook his head and pressed his hand to his temple for a moment. He swallowed and moved his lower jaw from side to side, and his jaw cracked. His mouth was dry, and his fingers were trembling. When he looked at Kolya, he saw Kolya’s face distort. It was a strange thing; his face looked like butter that was hardening, but not in the right position. His eyes were sunken, and they were not level; his nostrils were elongated, and his mouth opened wide on one side and closed on the other.

“Contain yourself, comrade!” he screamed at Kolya, then he handed him the doll. “What manners do seamen have if you will let your face move that way? You are dismissed. Do not let me see you wandering like that again!” He waved his arm and walked past him, and there, their shoulders touched for but a second.

The mere touch spread pain along Anatoly’s arm. He felt as if his shoulder had been sliced open. It was a pain unlike any that he had ever felt before in his life, and it was for just a second. Pain turned into a burst of anger, and he turned sharply and swung at Kolya, but Kolya was nowhere near him. He was perhaps a hundred yards away, perhaps a thousand. His figure was identifiable, but his limbs had grown longer, and they had grown from where they should not have.

The alarm sounded off, and the figure of what Anatoly thought was Kolya at first became clearer; it came closer, and then vanished further, and came closer again. The corridor twisted sharply and warped into impossible geometry, and the pain in his shoulder spread to his arm and down to his fingers. Under the flashing red light, he saw blisters spread rapidly down his wrist.

It was not the blistering in his arm, the aching in his head, or the flooding underneath his feet that made him run. It was Kolya. From across the impossible corridor, Anatoly heard a screech, and he saw the figure of Kolya twisting into an uncanny figure before him. He saw the figure’s mouth open, and he ran. He ran as fast as he could, turning right, then left, then right again, and right again, and right again. He leapt across the gaps that had formed, but the tentacles of his former comrade followed him across the impossible corridor.

“Here!” he heard a voice, familiar to his ears, shout. And a door opened to the left.

He entered the room and shut the door behind him, just as the door across the room shut. It was another corridor that he had not seen before. The room could not have been more than two square meters, with two doors on each side, as if it were meant to be some decontamination room.

Anatoly fell to his knees as a surge of pain spread into his shoulder. “What is happening?” he repeated as he held onto his shoulder and removed his shirt to see his skin had turned gray on the shoulder and darker yet down his arm. In the skin, there were tiny holes that patterned symmetrically with each other like honeycombs. He groaned and moaned, screamed and screeched until he lost consciousness.

“What is in the box?” the teacher asked.

“A cat!” Anatoly answered eagerly.

The teacher turned his head, pointing at the box, “Do you think that there is a cat in here, comrade Anatoly?”

Hesitant, Anatoly decided to shake his head. His voice softer and quieter, he said, “No.”

“Then what is in the box?” the teacher again asked. He looked familiar.

Anatoly began to raise his hand, but he was too hesitant. His young arm lowered again. His words knotted in his tongue, “Is it a cl-cl-clown?”

“A clown? A clown?” the teacher howled.

He walked towards Anatoly, who shrank in his seat.

“Do you think there is a clown in this box?” The teacher held the box in the palm of his hand.

As the teacher came closer, his features became clearer and clearer. They looked like they were drawn on his wooden face, and his movement was stiff as a puppet. With unchanging features, he approached the boy Captain.

“What is in the box?” the doll teacher repeated, “What is in the box? What is in the box? What is in the box?” 

Anatoly shrank further, his eyes filled with tears, and the knot in his throat prevented him from even breathing. He choked and coughed.

As he coughed, he held onto his throat. His face was pressed to the floor of the ship. He was no longer in the classroom, but the knot in his throat did not vanish with the realization. Instead, it made him gag; his face turned purple. As a final desperate measure, he reached into his mouth with his fingers, and there, he felt it. A smooth object was stuck in his throat. With the touch of his fingers, it moved. Saliva and mucus came out together from his mouth and his nose, along with colorless slime, and a ball-like object fell out. He gasped for air that finally filled his lungs and fell to his back, panting, tearing, his face covered in liquids.

For a moment, Anatoly lay still, only breathing, and then he turned to look at the object that nearly took his life. When he looked at it, it looked back at him. It was an eyeball covered in slime. But then it rolled away, disappearing into a vent hole. Anatoly sat up and wiped his entire face with his sleeve. He leaned back against the wall to rest his back. There were many tangled thoughts that he was trying to decipher, but most of all, he knew that he would not be able to do so in his current location, locked in a room.

He stood and straightened his back. A captain needed to retain a certain level of respect. He needed to carry himself in a manner that alluded to dignity and pride. When he stood, he realized that there was no alarm. He walked to the door from whence he escaped, but as he tried to open it, the door did not budge. He walked to the other door, and there he managed to open it. He was weak, almost frail, as if he had not eaten in days.

As the door opened to a short corridor, he stood in shock as before him lay the bodies of his comrades, twelve bodies were on the floor and the floor and the walls were covered in blood. Some of the bodies looked like they had gotten into a fight; one was holding a pistol; another had a knife stuck to what remained of his skull. The captain covered his mouth as he walked past the bodies. He wondered if he was hallucinating once again. He wondered if the alcohol that he shared with Allan was much too much for him, but he did not fret. He continued to walk past the bodies to the following door that led to a small staircase. He followed the stairs that led him to what he thought was a storage room.

All along, Anatoly had known about the shipment, the dozen boxes that they were to leave behind on their journey back. And there, he was standing in front of the black boxes. They were made of steel, with no opening lids, no locks, just cubes of steel. They were all the same size, 40 cubic centimeters each, and they were stacked neatly in designated spots on the floor, three by four. Anatoly passed the first line, the second, and there, by the third, he saw something that terrified him a little. He saw a chip on one of the boxes, a tiny crack, one that should not have been there. Something was leaking from the crack, and the faintest of hues to fumes that spilt from the minute crack.

“No, no, no,” he repeated as he knelt by the box.

When he reached to touch the box, he saw his hand become another’s; a tainted hand, a bloodied one, and on his fingers, he saw the skin crack and boil. But he stopped in his tracks as he heard the footsteps coming from the top of the stairs behind him.

Written by Amr Abbas.

Cover illustration by Amr Abbas.