Searching For Andromeda

"So that"s how you got here," Samuel said as he and Ephraim hid into the large, broken stuffed toy floating onto the grimy waters. Ephraim had been telling him as quick as he could about his journey to the dungeon"s fiery doom down to the dragon granting him the vessel. Ephraim can"t say he didn"t expect Samuel to be surprised. But here he was—taking everything so fluidly, as if everything was natural.

"Well, you"re not surprised?" Ephraim asked. It was a bit of a dumb question, considering how many things the two of them had probably gone through. Ephraim didn"t tell Samuel all of what had happened down to the most minuscule detail. He had given him a two-minute type of story as they run away from the monster.

"Well, no," Samuel answered, "I"m more surprised why you"re telling me this in the middle of getting killed."

Ephraim chuckled. "It"s an a.s.surance that I"m real, Sam."

"Oh," Samuel grimaced. "Right. You told me this is just a manifestation of my own fears. Meaning some of these are actually illusions. And you might be too,"

"I"m not an illusion," Ephraim repeated. "I told you the story so that you"ll be able to move forward and face your fears."

From the distance, Samuel and Ephraim could hear the stuffed bunny"s enormously loud footsteps. The ripples being created by the vibration were one of the signals if the doll had reached nearer to their hiding spot.

"It"s getting nearer," Samuel exclaimed.

Ephraim explained to him that the doll won"t be able to find them easily because it was not omnipresent (far from what Samuel had initially thought). The premises were made from Samuel"s deepest fears—dolls, darkness, and even common objects (?) . . . Samuel didn"t know he was scared of the sofa until now. But then again—everything looked sinister-looking, regardless of their origin.

Ephraim told him that he needed to face his fears. Of course, this wasn"t new. He had been thinking the same for the past couple of minutes—or hours—he was in this strange abyss. He had been thinking about how he could face his fears. It seemed like facing the doll head-on wasn"t doing it. So a literal application to such context is out of Samuel"s list for survival.

Figuratively speaking, facing one"s fears would mean many things. Does he have to go and discard the fact everything around the place looked sinister? Does he have to insult the doll and make it shrink like IT Chapter 2? How in the world will he face his fears?

Even if Samuel considered himself as a super genius, he before long, already knew he had his own limits.

And one of them is his freakishly short lifespan.

"Samuel!" Ephraim exclaimed, dragging Samuel away from the doll"s bamboo-thin stretched arm. From a smile carved on its lips—became a vicious scowl the moment it had seen Ephraim. Its face warped and twisted while its neck unleashed a scrunch—like the sound of a twig getting stepped upon; bones cracking with its limbs moving inhumanly. But then again—this being was a DOLL.

Nonetheless—despite knowing these certain facts, Samuel managed to get freaked out from the irregularity of the doll"s body movements. Samuel began to run to whatever direction he had seen fit; the darkness began to shroud and envelop him like grey clouds dimming the night sky.

"Sam!"

Samuel turned to Ephraim, reaching to grab his hand. But then what had awaited him was only what seemed like an ent.i.ty that had been lurking his mind for years— darkness; only that never-ending limbo surrounding the entirety of the s.p.a.ce like a smoke of mist engulfing what it had touched.

Samuel did not stop running, though. He continued to run. Now Ephraim wasn"t even in his line of sight—and he might also be dead now. If he stops running, he could die too.

Coward.

He wasn"t one. He couldn"t come back to the darkness—

Samuel stopped in his tracks, and then gritting his teeth, he turned and began to amble back to the darkness.

Before he could even get back to Ephraim, the upside-down face of a doll appeared before him, smiling fervently. Samuel drew back as he clenched his trembling fist. His electric-blue eyes met that of the doll, who had now gradually rotated its porcelain head back into place.

"Samuel, SaAamMmuel, let"s plPLpLAaAY,"

"N-no," Samuel gritted his teeth and stood firm to his ground. "No. I don"t want to play!" He repeated.

"SsAamUel," it says, "mMmAmAM?"

Samuel"s heart was impending to burst. The doll had shuffled forward towards him in a sinister manner, its limbs cracking into irregular places as it sauntered towards him forward. It leaned its head to Samuel"s, continuously mumbling phrases that made no sense.

"sSsSamMuEl,"

Samuel wanted to push the doll and ran—but his instincts told him the doll would attack any moment he would budge. He had to keep still and eye the doll head-on. He had to or else he would die.

The doll"s slender fingers caressed Samuel"s cheek. "SsAmMuel, don"t you miss Mama?"

Samuel"s eyes widened—and then as he blinked and reopened his eyes, a different scenery awaited him.

That familiar garden—the same ladybugs climbing the leaves, the smell of roses, and the faint scent of sweetgra.s.s. Samuel turned his head left and right—looking at the familiarly peculiar place. His eyes widened in utter surprise. This cannot be right. He was certain this was yet another illusion he had conjured—but the sunny disposition of the weather and the sounds of the chirping birds kept him back to such reverie.

"Where . . ." Samuel stopped. "Where—"

He couldn"t speak—no, it"s not that there"s no voice coming out of his mouth; he was blabbering NONSENSE.

"Bweh—" He exclaimed, no—he meant "where!" "Bweah—"

"h.e.l.lo, baby brother," says a conversant, sweet voice. "Are you here to catch ladybugs again?"

Samuel couldn"t believe it. The voice he hadn"t heard for years.

Sister—"Swissah!"

"Oh, what was that?" She said, "you need to work more on your vocabulary, Sam. But then again, you"re still three."

Three? He"s a full-fledged teen!

Samuel"s eyes widened when Samantha lifted him up to her arms. The sun had blocked her face with its unusually bright rays. Samuel reached to touch her cheeks, and upon doing so, he sees his own chubby hands reaching up to her.

Samantha Albrecht chuckled and held Samuel"s little hands.

And then it played—that au fait melody of a music box, singing from the distance. Samuel turned anxiously, looking for its source. But it seemed to be ringing everywhere, like it was playing inside his head.

"Oh, you"re scared again," says Samantha. "Hush, Sam. I"ll play the song of the music box for you."

Samantha began to sing—her voice angelic and sweet. She swayed Samuel in her arms gently as the softness of the melodies inside Samuel"s head began to join his sister"s singing. For an unknown reason, much beyond rationality, Samuel began to feel drowsy. For a moment he began to yearn being cradled, secured in such loving arms.

"When I"m no longer here, Sam," says his sister. "You have to face your fears all alone, even without the company of the song I made you."

"Sister?"

The next thing Samuel saw is his sister in a coffin, him wearing a black suit, and the rain damping the grounds into a sickening-looking mud. Samuel trembled and shivered from the cold and fear.

That"s right. This was his fear. It wasn"t the dolls that scared him—that music box playing softly was his real fear.

The fear of his sister leaving him.

"Samuel, you don"t want me to die, do you?"

Samuel, upon hearing these words, opened his electric-blue eyes. The moment he did so, a repulsive force emanated through him, sending the doll back to the ground. He eyed the doll—who had now imitated the face of his sister. A shiver runs down his spine as his heartbeat sped up like horses galloping across the stables.

"You don"t want me to die, right?"

"No, I don"t . . ." Samuel answered.

His sister let out a menacing grin. "Then, you fear of me dying, don"t you?"

Samuel thinned his lips.

"Your sister does not have the means to survive anymore."

"She"s only being supported by machines,"

"A pull from her life support and she"ll be eased of the suffering."

"She will die soon, Samuel. She"s been like this for several years now."

From a minute of silence, he eyed his sister. "I do fear you dying . . ."

A sinister smile crept up to the face of Samantha— "But," Samuel exclaimed, "I know it"s long hopeless from the start, Sis. You"re my greatest fear. You, dying. But now . . ."

Samuel sauntered towards the doll, who now, kept on crawling away as fear began to lace all over its face. "No—"

"Now, I know you"re just suffering," Samuel said, and then as he blinked, a wholly different setting awaited him; the scenery he had been seeing every day.

His sister on her bed, comatose. The fresh lilies on the vase at the hospital nightstand, and the windows capturing the sunset.

"Sister," Samuel slowly walked towards his sister"s life support—and then as he wrapped his fingers through its wires—a soft melody had him frozen on the spot.

The sound of the music box.

"Don"t fear, Sam,"

Samuel"s fingers trembled as the music box grew fainter at every possible second—like his sister"s heartbeat, slowing and growing weary at every pa.s.sing year.

"Face your fears, Sam, when I"m no longer here."

Samuel tightened his grips around the wire—pulling them away, making the scenery shatter into shards and smithereens. Samuel bowed his head down and frantically started to wipe the inevitable tears streaming down to his cheeks.

"You won," Ephraim exclaimed from the distance.

Samuel grinned with unshed tears in his eyes. "Yeah."

**

From the unsuspecting look of the nurse changing the dried flowers into yet another fresh lilies; the sunset"s rays had illuminated the once unmoving finger of someone bedridden for several years.

One of the lilies fell into the ground, making the nurse kneel too pick the fallen flower. And then through her unwary eyes—she sees a miracle on flesh.

The fingers that did not move for years had extended open and close—and eyes that long slumbered slowly opened as electric-blue eyes welcomed the sunshine of the impending dusk.

"Sa . . . muel,"