Of Wondered Wanderers

“Aduna, they’re calling you…”Gabriel briefly whispered into my left ear.

“Wouldn’t it be amazing if sharks could fly? They’d be the ultimate predator” I thought in one of those moments where your brain decides to just stop working. “Did the teacher say something? Probably. Let’s get real for a second though, he doesn’t really expect us to listen to everything he says, does he? But back on the flying shark topic…”

“Aduna! Do the class a favor and go wash your face!” The teacher seemed a bit pissed at me, I realized he had asked me to answer something. I turned to see Gabriel, who proceeded to give a faint smile before slapping his forehead with the palm of his hand.

“Gabriel, you suck, why didn’t you tell me they were calling me?” I whispered at him. He stared me down as if I were some kind of idiot. It then hit me that he had warned me. Nothing to do, I stood up from my chair, then walked out of the classroom. My faculty was nothing more than a remodeled storage facility. As such, there weren’t any hallways or anything of the sort. You literally just headed out, took in the pale beige walls, then walked 4 steps to the next closet of a classroom entrance. I proceeded to skip over several empty classroom hoping to find Bruno in one of them.

Together, we were great friends, if I do say so myself. Mostly because all of our interests sort of aligned with one another. For example, I was more of a stereotypical geek who enjoyed anime and comic books. I enjoyed practicing martial arts, mostly to calm my asthma. Now Gabriel, he was a tall, hairy man who was more of a Star Conflicts kind of geek. Something funny about him? Well, he had hair in every part of his body, except his head! Lastly, the guy I was looking for, Bruno, was a skinny guy with long curls who was gamer at heart; he enjoys League of Myths and Super Crash Siblings. They were like brothers to me; we didn’t really get along with our real families, so life just threw us together, and I made them my own. It was almost a shame we had slowly grown separate due to different schedules, friends, and other life nuances.

I peeked into classroom 102 and indeed saw Bruno’s boney, yet tall body laying completely still on top of the teacher’s desk. I poked his face with my finger; he let out a snore that sounded more like a cow getting digested. I let him be, as all three of us were going on that weird expedition once class ended. I walked out of the room and felt my shoulders turn heavy. You see, dear reader, after laying down, I had spent the better part of my night trying to get my Marine Christ, a necklace inherited to me by my recently late grandfather, to fit around my neck without falling all the way to my bellybutton (the chain was too long). The point is that I was feeling somewhat sleepy, so I sat down against the wall and proceeded to let Morpheus give me a pleasant ride. No homo.

This is where you’ll probably start wondering why I’m telling you this story. Hell, I don’t even know if anyone is going to get to read this, but hold on for a bit; all will be made clear soon. Where was I, though? The dream! Right! I had a weird nightmare as soon as I dozed off. In it, I saw a giant mechanical doll with a giant green pearl in the center of its pale face destroying an entire city. Its mug itself didn’t have many defining features; it looked more like a mask that had been carved with a lot of care, but without knowing what it was trying to create. For example, the eyes were too low, and the mouth was too wide; it was as if the being that had carved it had never seen a human face, and was just trying to imitate it based off of descriptions. I wish I could talk about it more, but Gabriel woke me up, if I recall correctly. Apparently, class had finished and I had been asleep for about an hour. I looked up and saw him alongside Bruno gazing at me with small grins on their faces.

“What? You two got a crush on me or what?” I defiantly asked them. They let out a small chuckle and waved off my mockery.

“You ready, brah? “ Bruno asked. “We have gold to find!” they both shouted in unison. I sighed and put up that smile I had practiced the night before. I wasn’t keen about looking through grandpa’s stuff in the morning, nor did I think we’d find anything worthwhile. That being said, it was rare for us to do anything together lately, so I put up the best of my dispositions; I didn’t want them to think I didn’t want to spend time with them. We joyfully exited the building with hope in our hearts, then slowly walked to the parking lot where my transport was stationed. We got in my car, a 1999 white Chevrolet Malibu I had built from scratch myself, turned it on with a bit of effort (it was an old car, what did you expect?) and tried to make our way there as quickly as possible.

If I recall correctly, the discussion we were having on the way was about their favorite topic.

“Aduna, just admit that Nightlyman would beat the shit out of Stellarman” Bruno said while still giggling. I looked out the window and saw a car with two cute girls. I tried looking cool when they turned to see me, but they just began laughing before speeding away. At the moment, I didn’t know Bruno and Gabriel had drawn a penis on my forehead, so I was very confused. Admitting my failure, I turned to look at Bruno and argued back.

“Dude, come on. If Stellarman were to fight seriously, he could just fart on Earth and eradicate all life; the only reason Nightlyman has beaten him has been because Stellarman has just been fooling around. Nightlyman would get jizzed all over him if he were to fight a serious Stellarman.” I appealed to logic, and just when Bruno seemed to stop to consider my argument, Gabriel shouted out “But he is NIGHTLYMAN! He would totally have a plan!” Bruno nodded in agreement and I sighed in stress; there really was no end to this fight. The rest of the trip was rather uneventful. Bruno burped, I tickled Gabriel and he farted. You know, dudes being dudes. They hadn’t stopped laughing at me yet, though.

We arrived at our destination soon enough. The place was not very big, I’d say smaller than your average hospital: two floors, no more than 40 rooms per floor including operation rooms and waiting ones. The place was a dump, to be honest; trash and rubble everywhere. The walls were no longer painted, instead letting the bricks used to construct it see some fresh sunlight. Additionally, the hallways seemed to have been mopped with a stray cat or something; the floor was covered in some sort of dried out liquid that could well have been blood, puke, or beer. Gabriel put his hand on the bald spot in his head as we entered the desolated place.

“Where should we start?” Gabriel inquired. Bruno pointed towards the depths of the building, the far end of the main hallway, and we accepted. Though he had been the one to suggest it, Bruno did not move a muscle until we had started moving ourselves. The place was dark, and crumbling, so I assumed he was too frightened to go first.

Now, I’m not going to lie to you: this was boring as fuck. We didn’t really do or find anything of relevance for about 45 minutes; we just wandered around pointing the metal detector Gabriel was holding at random bunches of junk. When we thought we had found something of value, it just ended up being garbage, like that expensive scarf that turned out to be a dead raccoon. Boredom ended, however, as soon as we entered the room that was labeled “137-C” on the second floor. A door of destiny, I guess.

All three of us walked in slowly. The room had a destroyed bed with graffiti all over it and tons over tons of dust and rubble. Gabriel swept the floor with the metal detector, which instantly began beeping quickly when he passed it through a bunch of junk not more promising that all the other bunches of junk we had found. I remember thinking “great! Another used syringe to add to our growing collection!” Bruno sparked joy and threw himself to the floor to begin digging in that crap. Gabriel and I both looked at each other with anticipation, as if infected by Bruno’s optimism; “Maybe this fool’s crusade would give out something good after all”, I thought.

I saw him dig endlessly, scratching the floor like an animal, The sight was funnier than it was efficient, to be honest. We all made smalltalk for a brief moment, until something got caught in the corner of my eye. While Gabriel ranted about his work in the movie theater, I suddenly tuned out of the conversation while I looked at the door. Before I turned, I could’ve sworn I saw something similar to a black tentacle slither away from the entrance. Though this would scare anyone, I didn’t feel frightened. If anything, I felt allured, as if invited to go look for it. I stayed idle, glancing at the entrance. I felt my foot move forward towards it, before my shoulder suddenly felt a hand on it. I snapped back to reality and saw Gabriel looking at me.
“You alright there?” He asked me. Blinking several times, as if waking up, I nodded.
“Yeah, yeah… I just thought I saw something, is all” I said trying to regain my composure. Gabriel continued looking at me as if trying to guess what afflicted me. Though Bruno was my best friend (I had known him since I was 15), Gabriel was a more emotional individual who actually tried to help others as much as he could, hence why he was looking at me trying to guess if I was alright. He raised his eyebrow, then proceeded to get on his knees and help Bruno dig, nodding suspiciously. From there, nobody spoke for a bit.

“Hey guys!” I said trying to break an awkward silence that had grown between us while Bruno dug in all that rubbish with the grace of a newborn pup, “don’t you think that sharks would be the ultimate predator if they could fly?” Bruno stopped digging for a second and turned to look at me dead in the eye.

“That’s stupid. Sharks need water to breathe.” I agreed with Bruno’s statement, disappointed that my idea had been shot down that easily. I remember thinking maybe we could outfit them with water tanks (instead of oxygen tanks) just before shit hit the fan. Gabriel turned to face me while I was thinking.

“Maybe if you gave underwater sharks beamsabers they could-” his sentence was interrupted by a horrified scream coming from Bruno. As soon as we turned, a green light consumed everything around us. A burning sensation ran through my hands and face as I heard my brothers shout their lungs out. After this, I can only remember very little. I remember feeling adrift in the air, as if I had free fallen off a skyscraper, not that I had ever done that, though I imagined the sensation must’ve been similar. There was nothing but a blinding light around me, accompanied only by voices, specifically our own. They were saying things I couldn’t comprehend. I distinctively remember Gabriel mentioning a “rebellion” and a “dimensional gate”, then Bruno laughing like a maniac. Now I know those voices didn’t exactly belong to them, but let’s not rush ahead. The sensation was most abstract: as if our bodies were being undone, torn apart little by little, yet without feeling any pain. I would dare say the sensation was similar to floating in a pool. Towards the end, I distinctively recall hitting a solid surface, probably a rock, and everything going black.

I woke up chained to a wall, and not in the kinky way. Bruno and Gabriel were chained besides me, both still unconscious. My red Stellarman shirt had a hole on the side now, something that pissed me off immediately. It was my favorite shirt, after all. I believe I got it on a Wal-Shop sale. Ah, Wal-Shop, convenient place, I really appreciate the… wait, no. I was talking about something. Right! I believe there were at least 100 people looking at us. They all stared with disbelief, as if we were some kind of freak show. Ironic, since we were chained to a cave wall; cavemen were looking at us funny. A robed individual walked to the front, then stopped right in front of me. His smell was rather intoxicating, like opening an old bag of trash and taking a good whiff from it. He looked rather familiar, but I couldn’t quite put my thumb on it. The slightly chubby build, yet slender arms, the overgrown teeth and wide open eyes. I couldn’t for the life of me identify him. That is, until he spoke.

“Today, we save another dimension from suffering the demise we faced! Today, we get justice!” He took a knife out of his pocket, followed by him pointing it at my chest. That’s when I realized something was definitely wrong…and who he was. His voice was exactly like Raymundo’s. He was an old friend of ours with whom we shared a few classes. He was a major geek though, not exactly ritualistic cult leader material. I mean sure, he would get salty whenever he would lose at fighting games, but he was nowhere near murderous if I recall correctly. I looked around in anxiety trying to find a way out of what I envisioned as my sure grave. What I saw under me when I faced downwards was very haunting. Corpses. A pile of rotting corpses laid in a hole under us. I examined one thoroughly and saw it looked just like me. They were little by little being eaten out by maggots, worms peeling off the skin from some of the exposed bones. My asthma began acting up. The shock made me choke for a bit, and I began breathing heavily. This seems to have caught Raymundo’s attention, as he immediately walked closer to me to put the knife against my throat.

“Aduna! You will not poison another world with your greed and ideals. May the blood that spills from your neck be the salvation of many!” Raymundo stared upwards, as if searching for someone. I looked up for a second. I noticed two more people in robes sitting in a sort of balcony above us. I saw one of them nod to an inpatient Raymundo. He quickly nodded back, and pierced my eyes with a defiant stare. I saw no hesitation in his eyes. This was it for me, it seemed. As I desperately gasped for a bit of air to flow into my lungs, I closed my eyes accepting my fate. It was a strange feeling of relaxation, if I can be frank. As I felt the knife get closer to me, I could feel the end draw nigh. If felt odd to realize I was dying without understanding how I had gotten to where I was, but it mattered little. I could probably go to heaven and apologize to some people. I wasn’t even that depressed at the moment, but the scenario felt more relieving than sad. Accepting, I shed a small tear.