The Hand That Welcomed

The Hand That Welcomed
By RomeDome.

Etienne Aguinaldo had been called “Eighteen” since cadet school, though no one aboard the Fearnought remembered why. Some said he had been the eighteenth child in a sprawling Filipino-French family. Others said he had once survived eighteen minutes in an airlock whose seal had failed. Eighteen himself only shrugged whenever asked. Dumb.

The Fearnought had docked at Mavrika that morning, its hull still frosted with the pale residue of interstellar travel. Mavrika was a port-planet: an entire world engineered around docking rings, freight elevators, customs vaults, shipyards, and the endless commerce of beings who had too much money, too little time, or nowhere else to go.

For the crew, it meant leave.

“You can spend three whole days praying in the berth if you want,” said Bron, the ship’s broad-shouldered engine mate. “But if you came all this way and never saw the redLED district, why even sign onto a starship?”

The others laughed, already flushed with the first drinks of the evening.

Eighteen managed a smile. “I didn’t say I wouldn’t go.”

“Then come on.”

His parents’ voices surfaced in memory as clearly as if they had been transmitted across the light-years:
Avoid places of sin, Etienne. Some doors do not open both ways. The consequences may be ones you regret forever.

He had nodded solemnly when they said it. He had meant it then.

But Mavrika had a way of thinning resolve.

The first bars were bright, noisy, and harmless enough. He drank something sharp and blue that burned down his throat and made the dockside lights melt into friendly streaks. The second drink made the unfamiliar faces around him seem less alien. By the third, the unease that had followed him off the ship had loosened, drifting behind him like discarded tether-cable.

So when his shipmates pushed farther into the redLED district, Eighteen went with them.

The streets narrowed.
The clean cargo avenues gave way to dripping alleys and stacked walkways slick with chemical rain. Neon tubeLEDs buzzed overhead in feverish reds and purples. Every doorway promised something: luck, bliss, oblivion, resurrection, company. Gambling clubs displayed spinning star maps on their walls. Get-high bars exhaled sweet smoke through vents shaped like open mouths. Strip joints flickered with pixelated silhouettes that moved a fraction too slowly, as though their dancers were being projected from somewhere very far away.

At each entrance, doormen barked invitations.

“Fresh sailors! First hour’s on the house!”

“Come in, heroes—leave with stories!”

“Your ship won’t miss you!”

Eighteen laughed once, too loudly, trying to keep pace with Bron and the others far ahead. His boots struck metal grating. He felt warm, lightheaded, fearless.

Then he passed a narrow doorway beneath a red neonLED sign whose letters blinked in an unfamiliar alphabet.

A chubby man stood there in a dirty jacket and crooked tie. His face was splotched with pale patches, and his smile revealed one large broken tooth. He looked almost human. Almost kindly familiar.

“C’mon in, young lad,” the doorman said, extending one broad hand. “Let’s see what we can do.”

Eighteen had been raised to return greetings. To shake hands. To meet a stranger’s eyes.

Before thought could catch up to instinct, he clasped the man’s hand.

The grip tightened.

Eighteen tried to pull away, smiling at first as if it were a joke. “Sorry, mister—I think my friends are—”

The doorman did not let go.

His palm softened.

No—that was not right. It unfolded.

The fingers lengthened, splitting into pale, wet tendrils. Small rings opened along them, each lined with trembling needles. Before Eighteen could shout, the tendrils curled around his wrist and pressed into his skin.

Pain flashed white through his arm.

Needled suction cups punctured his palm.

He looked down in horror as dark blood welled around the thing’s grasp. The poison entered almost gently: a coldness flowing under his skin, moving through his veins with patient certainty.

His breath stopped.

His knees weakened.

“Eighteen?” Bron called from far ahead, already half-lost in the crowd. “You coming?”

Eighteen opened his mouth, but his tongue would not move. The words were trapped behind a rising paralysis. His fingers twitched uselessly against the creature’s grip.

The doorman’s broken-tooth smile widened.

Behind him, the doorway was not a doorway at all. It was a dark, pulsing passage that seemed far deeper than the small building could contain. Something breathed within it. Something vast shifted against the walls, and the redLED light above the entrance blinked once, twice, then changed into a symbol Eighteen understood without ever having seen it before:

WELCOME HOME.

He tried to scream as he was drawn inside.

Outside, the redLED district swallowed the sound beneath its music, its laughter, and its endless invitations.

And somewhere far above, in Docking Ring Seven, the Fearnought prepared to depart without him.

About the Author : RomeDome came out the other side a mess.
About the Artist : Romeo Esparrago says Spot On!