The light of the incandescent doorway danced gently on the boy’s face. Somewhere, far off it seemed, he could make out the echoing clang of pickaxe on rock, regular. Rhythmic.

“Oi! Sammy, you heard this?” The boy didn’t have to look to see Donald’s Cheshire cat grin.

“Whazzat?” wheezed Samuel, spluttering into the ring of his fist. The folds between his chins looked sore, red.

Dislodged dust collected and rubbed between the flesh creating large brown clumps that fell periodically. So far no pearl...

“Kinder… hey! Kinder!”

Clang.

“KINDER!” Donald’s fucking-answer-me-now call.

“Carter,” the boy replied. “It’s Carter.”

From around the corner he could hear Donald sniggering. But he wouldn’t be if he could only see the beauty of what stood before him. These kinds of opportunities came around once in a lifetime at best, and that was something that was exceptionally hard for Carter to digest. He didn’t want to repeat the words. They sounded ludicrous even to himself. Yet the wall kept swimming.

Clang.

“Thank you, Carter. Now, tell Sammy what you just told me.” If only they would come and see for themselves. Then again, it’s easy to hide in the twisting tunnels that lay miles beneath the surface.

“I’ve… found something.” Though really he mumbled, and all that Sammy heard was ervferndsmmmfin. He raised a skinny arm to rub the salt sting out his eyes. Still fresh to the job it would be a while before he adjusted to the heat. Samuel and Donald on the other hand, they were thick-skinned, used to the temp. Dry as a bone.

“Huh? Wot’d ’e say?”

Clang.

“He says he’s found something.” Snigger. “Carter, tell him what you’ve found”.

“A portal” – apprrddall...

“Huh?”

“A PORTAL!” Donald roared. Carter couldn’t understand it. Why wouldn’t they see for themselves?

The roar subsided, replaced by the heavy footsteps of Samuel. Though Donald held sway over Carter (he was his supervisor after all), it took a lot more to dissuade Samuel from a decision that he made. And this decision was to find out if what the boy was saying was true.

Clang.

Samuel was not disappointed. Even in the milky half-glow of the portal Carter could see the wonder written in the button eyes, sunken into Samuel’s face from uncountable years dwelling near the Earth’s core. Digging, digging, always digging.

Despite themselves they moved closer, hearing the gentle buzz of the blue. One more step and the whirring instantly magnified, a vacuum cleaner crossing carpet to lino. Somewhere in the movement of it all there was something barely audible, yet altogether distinct. There were voices.

“Don?... You migh’ wan’a see dis… It’s beeeautiful…” Samuel reached out a bloated finger to feel the hypnotic droplets. The portal – more like a door than any portal Carter had ever imagined – seemed to reach back, puckering at the point in which Samuel’s finger aimed to reach.

Only an inch now, quivering.

Clang.

A calloused hand grabbed their collars and threw them onto the hard ground below. Small dust mushrooms puffed in front of their faces before fading.

Donald stood silhouetted before the doorway, drinking in the beauty, its edges impossibly straight against the rough-hewn rock on which it laid. The sapphire hue seemed to shift and transform in an iridescent light show that glittered onto the faces of the three, melting to an angry red. It was almost as if it knew it was going to be violated. The clanging of the hundreds of other miners carried on, oblivious to the discovery. Donald’s discovery his eyes seemed to say as he passed a hungry look to Carter – the boy who hadn’t been lying.

As he turned back to the portal the voices grew. Through the swirling galaxies that formed the portal’s body he could almost see them. Following the voice of instinct he drove his head forward into the water and felt a thick, cooling sensation pass over him.

Samuel and Carter rose in a second, rushing towards Donald’s headless form. Taking a shoulder each they heaved backwards, pulling him slowly back to their side. His neck returned first, then his ears, until finally his head returned with a satisfying pop – a lollipop out of honey.

“Shit!” He managed to gasp, somehow managing to appear as though he’d walked through a waterfall, yet making it to the other side without a drop of moisture. He looked to the others with far off wonder in his eyes.

“Boys”, he sneered after a moment. “Raise the alarms. We’ve hit the big time.”

In a distant galaxy a family trudge on. The crumbled cobbles of the path that they follow blends with the ashen earth around their dragging feet. Against the dark palette of the planet’s surface little colour remains, even the plant life has wilted and died beneath the ever-night sky.

They mumble incoherently, each whispering through cracked lips. The smallest stumbles before collapsing on the black rock.

Their leader smiles, stopping at the face of a large rock that juts out of the barren ground. He turns to address the others who immediately flump to the floor with exhausted sighs, their eyes a milky white, before waving his crutch in a wide arc.

The family watch on faces devoid of hope as the leader drags one malnourished finger against the rock face, lines impossibly straight, until a chalky outline of a doorway is sketched against the stone. He sees the tiny fires rekindle in their dilating pupils as he utters one word and blasts the door with a light erupting from his crutch.

“Salvaaation…”

They all stand in unison, the family, a wondrous awe erasing age from their features as a whirlpool spirals into action. Wonder turns to gasps as the head of a strange creature pokes its way through, throwing even the leader off balance, his mouth flapping like a goldfish.

The creature speaks in its strange tongue and follows it with an unfamiliar sound. Were they to understand English they would hear:

“Fuuuckin’ hell!”

Clang.

Written by @kobur

Published by Hawk & Cleaver | A digital story production studio bringing you the best new stories for you to watch, read, sniff, and absorb.

This has been Episode 1.4 of The Other Stories | Sci-Fi/Horror/Thriller/WTF stories delivered to your Steemit feed every Monday morning.

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