Mattix

Everyone has to explore their psychological frontier—how else will they know what they’re made of?

The words ring hollow throughout my skull, bouncing against the walls of its frail cavity. I’m trying to get my bearings. Somehow, I’m still strapped to my chair, suspended several feet off the ground. I try speaking, but drool runs down the side of my cheek to the rim of my chin. Where am I? What the hell happened? Where is everybody? I wag my head, hoping to snap out of it. With the wagging, my body jerks, and whatever thin yarn of a seatbelt breaks. I plunge, smacking against the ground like an egg thrown at a wall.

When I wake up, I’m flat on my back. Warm gray earth is under me. Nearby, smoke billows like high pillars holding the sky. While around me, everything’s obliterated beyond recognition, except for metal ripped apart. This shithole world looks like it tore its black veins, bleeding wires, gears, and steel. And I lay here, the cockpit towering over me—the only sign of life. We are the anomaly: the half-wilted grass blade springing through concrete.

“Come in, John.” I start forming words.

“Come in, John… over,” I call on the open channel. ­­

“J-J-J-John… come, come i-i-in,” I gulp. “Over.”

Radio silence. The realization creeps in. At best, he’s unconscious, along with everyone else. At worst… well, it goes without saying what the worst could be. So, after minutes of no reply, I rock my body and roll over to my side. I struggle to bring my knee in and tuck it under. Then I try getting up. Pain radiates through my bones. I’m sure something is broken. But I press on. I stand up.

From this position, the wreckage is worse than I’d imagine—the shuttle’s reduced to scraps, littering the entire crater and the surrounding sandpits. Fuck, how did I survive this? The thought ricochets between my ears. Then, the sinking feeling: they must be dead. Ain’t no fucking way. I judder the idea, but it persists. Where the hell is everybody?

Often, it’s best to leave curiosity alone because that shit does more than kill the cat; it kills the dog, too. And it doesn’t stop there. Nah, it also kills the kid, the mom, the dad… the fucker in a business suit, the priest, the preacher, the politician. It kills every bastard. And it does so unremittingly, without a fucking care. It’s killing me while I wipe my visor. With every crunch under my boot, curiosity stretches its nimble fingers around my brain and strangles it.

“Guys?” I whisper into the radio. The static, monotonous, and remote.

Again, the realization. This time, arresting my breath. Well, maybe the realization or maybe the smoke and ash— maybe the stench of finality, but something garrotes me. I perceive it now. My feeble brain registers it. Before me, a hand attached to an arm that isn’t connected to a body. It’s sprawled as if giving a high-five to the grime on the floor. Panic coagulates my blood. Icy needles drum my skin.

“Guys, come in. Quit fucking playing. John. Em.”

Dread washes over me as the smoky curtain rips open. It’s not just one arm. It’s another. And another. And a leg. And a torso. All still in their spacesuits, although charred and mangled. Mixed with the rubble, the remains pepper the dusty, tarnished silt. Fragments of bodies, memories, and futures pulverized into soil and dirt. My pulse pounds in my skull, beating out the truth: I’m alone. The only one left in this fucking wreckage… my luck, my life, my lament.

The tears stream.

My hands jitter. Oh, fuck. I haven’t checked myself this entire time. Are one of these arms mine? Are one of these torsos mine? The irrational idea laughs at me. It points a twig-like finger at my despair and brings me to audience before terror, trepidation, alarm, horror.

I run my hands over my suit, checking for missing parts. All intact. Lucky me.

Goddammit, get it together. I sob on my knees.

The sky, tinged red by the bloated sun, dismisses me. It’s worried about the cosmic rays shredding the atmosphere. And the lead-colored sand offers no solace. It’s preoccupied with the heat searing its particles.—Should I look to heaven? What god is there? On Earth alone, we’ve worshipped over 18,000, historically. To which should I call? Sigh. I’ve been to several solar systems with hundreds of thousands of deities. Should I cry to one of them? Maybe to hell. Perhaps, there I’ll find a devil kind enough to listen, maybe even offer a shoulder to cry on before ramming his dick up my ass.

Or maybe, there’ll be nothing but silence. That’s it, right? No one’s at the controls, no signals, just void. The engineer said fuck it and went AWOL, abandoning us to this mechanical clusterfuck we call the universe. This machine – the universe – it’s massive, full of gears, belts, levers, all clanking and grinding together like a cosmic Rube Goldberg device. And us? We’re not even cogs in the system. No, we’re just screws. Insignificant, fallen screws, dropped from somewhere high up, and now we’re tumbling down, smacking into everything on the way down.

Because we’re bouncing around like this – bumping into belts and gears, getting tossed from one lever to the next – we think that somehow makes us free. We mistake the randomness of our fall for free will. We think the universe gives a shit, that we can choose our path. But it’s all mechanical. We’re just following the route we’re forced down, riding out the momentum as we plummet.

It’s all designed, just not in a way we recognize. We’re heading in one direction—down. That’s what happened to us. We hit this floating rock hard, and only I survived as the butt end of the joke….

Shut the fuck up, Mattix. Says his voice sharply.

Startled, I peer over my left shoulder.

“C-C-Captain….”

Time lapses… the warm morning deforms into a scorching noon. How long I’ve been on my knees, I’m not sure, but the heat’s roasting my skin, so I pick myself up. In the process, I kick a piece of metal that clatters across the ground. Then I stumble over something hard, and for a second, I think it’s another shard of the ship. But when I crouch, it’s not metal. It’s plastic. Worn, beaten to hell, but unmistakable. A toy, split in half, a soldier or something. The kind you’d give to a kid along with false promises. It’s gonna be ok: except it’s not. Not now. Not ever.

I yank it from the sand, my fingers trembling. It’s out of place. No kids were in our tripulation or mentioned in the briefings. Here it is, though, in my hands. Undoubtedly, the symbol of someone’s hope; their hope to make it across this hell to reach their heaven.

I squeeze the toy in my hand; my throat’s tight. What the hell am I supposed to do with this? The plastic warps before my eyes, recapping every life lost and every guarantee failed. John’s face flashes—bright, laughing, then bent in fear. I told him we’d be fine; it was under control. Bullshit.

I swallow hard, trying to force down the lump in my throat. Mind’s playing games again. Fuck, this isn’t me. I don’t break down over a toy. I’m Mattix. I survive. I always survive. However, this time… what do I do? What’s left for me here? A pile of shit and a reminder that I couldn’t save the people I cared about?

I toss the toy, watching it spring off the rubble. It lands face down in the dirt, half-buried in a drift of sand. Part of me wants to dig it out, but what’s the point? It’s all meaningless, the same as this mission. We were supposed to survive, explore, discover—whatever bullshit they sold us when we signed up. Instead, we got this: a dead planet, a dead crew, and a dead dream.

I keep moving, stepping over the charred remains of our equipment. My body’s on autopilot, scanning for anything useful, but my mind’s stuck. Stuck on him. Stuck on that last fucking moment. The way he looked at me right before it all went to hell. There was something in his eyes, something I can’t shake. Regret? Fear? Or maybe it was a question I couldn’t answer.

I slam my fist into the side of a broken console, the pain barely registering. It’s all pointless. I’m the only one left. No one’s coming to save me. No rescue ships, no signals, nothing. Just me, stranded on this godforsaken rock, surrounded by ghosts and shards.

My breath hitches, and I think I might scream for a second. But what good would that do? No one would hear me. No one ever hears. So I swallow it down, bury the pain, the guilt, the shame, deep inside. It’s the only way I know how to keep going. Grit your teeth; keep moving; survive.

I glance back at the toy, absorbed by the dirt, and something curls in my gut. I tell myself to leave it. Walk away. But I can’t. I squat, pick it up again, and shove it into my pack. It’s stupid. It’s broken. Just like me. Maybe that’s why I can’t leave it behind.

I move forward, one step at a time, through the wreck, through the ruins of everything I thought I could control. I don’t know what’s out there, don’t know what the hell I’m supposed to do next. Yet I’m still alive. That has to mean something, right?

Or maybe it means nothing at all.