Regers was contemplating such thoughts, tapping on his helmet to stave off his maddening wooziness when the Zikri came out of nowhere. Slashing with his knife, he hacked off a foot of writhing tentacle, then he blasted the thing’s face off. Croaking with heedless satisfaction, he kicked the thing and stomped on its ooze-gushing guts. He was a fucking superman! But he had not seen the other rooms yet. And so, while he stomped, he missed the slinking shape that slid from behind him, out of the shadowy doorway. Until it was too late.
A fleet-footed thing with a flurry of tentacles pinned Regers’ blaster. His first shot went awry, the bright flare smacking into a nearby tank, releasing its human occupant. Cursing, Regers slipped on the greasy liquid, as did the Zikri, offering him an instant of opportunity to break free and tear away from the loathsome sting of its pulsing electricity. He cut at it with his knife, swatting flapping chunks of bloody tentacles away from his faceplate.
Dark blood splashed everywhere. The Zikri chittered in obscene fury, loosing an awful racket. Regers laughed again. He battered the thing with fists, and knife. But such an injury which would have disembowelled any other assailant did not stay the thing’s advance. It was larger and more resilient than the others. His attacks only served to provoke the monster more. Now it lashed out, pulling Regers in closer with its repulsive tentacles until his ribs began to cave. His helmet cracked, his protective suit rippled to the abominable pressure, and the Zikri air flooded into his suit.
Regers gasped, unable to prevent gulping the foreign air, but it was neither toxic nor corrosive to his lungs, only riddled with a stagnant odour of dust, moulder and old, neglected places.
The tentacles gripped tighter and Regers’ spine began to buckle. His left ulna snapped, then two of his ribs. He howled in anguish. He could barely move in the crushing grip.
The ravaged Zikri dragged Regers’ struggling body to one of the larger tanks. Flicking off the tank’s cap, it heaved Regers up and over with a mighty toss into the ghoulish water.
Regers felt his body sinking like a stone. He stared, blinking with dismay, unable to stop himself, as he choked on the foul, briny, putrid water, paralyzed from toe to throat.
The shark-like creature that moved around in the greenish fluid was at first curious, its wavering fins dragging at the water to push it closer to the strange human who sank and choked. Regers’ lungs filled with water. Slowly he drowned... but he was strangely alive.
The fish-mammal he had called a heptadoria nudged him with its beak, then it curled its flexible body around him and wrestled with his body, until he could feel nothing but arching pain. Yet new life was coming, springing, surging through his limbs and nerves from the alien fluid. He felt the tug of mandibles, teeth tearing at his hand which hung limp as it gnawed at tendons and gristle, relishing its appetizer, not so much out of hunger as boredom.
The Zikri, chittering in new interest, swayed like a serpent outside the tank, but then it jerked to a new stimulus. It ripped at one of the ferns that had curled about its lower tentacle. A small pod had formed there at the frond’s end. The writhing, red-green plant twisted in the Zikri’s slimy grip, trying to escape. To no avail.
Almost in mockery, the Zikri surged toward the glass and pulled off the tank’s cap and tossed the angry pod inside, resealing the top. It sat back again on its rubbery haunches to watch the interplay.
The pod sank in a stream of bubbles. A miraculous thing occurred.
The pod cracked open, given new life in the warm greenish bath and the Zikri shuffled forward in a sudden, new fascination.
Even as the mutant heptadoria snapped and gulped down the plant and pod, its single eye bulged and its mouth opened wide, as if retching. A remarkable life form had birthed in the Mentera witch water. A fantastic, grotesque creature, some iridescent butterfly with fins and tail, glided out of the monster’s mouth and finned about, a new Lord of the domain, something of a cross between a butterfly and a fish.
The butterfly came to pause inches from Regers’ own goggling eyes, its eyeless face somehow peering with wonder, curiosity, and a sense of deep peace into Regers’ own.
The hypnotic stare bore into Regers’ soul. The insect’s wings outspread like a tiny avatar.
A cosmic understanding passed between Regers and butterfly, beings from worlds apart, and Regers drifted in some kind of surreal dream, his mind spinning through the kaleidoscope of misdeeds committed in his crime-ridden life, and for the first time he entertained the thought that there must exist a higher form of retribution in the universe.
* * *
Yul recoiled, his scalp prickling at the gruesomeness before him. Some insectoid thing was suspended in the greenish water, human size. Perhaps Mathias would pay extra fare for this absurdity, he thought cynically. Somehow he thought he would not be seeing Mathias anytime soon...
Yul gazed in macabre curiosity. If the
