Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-33904527-20181104232254

My name is Private Aaron Alcott, and I’m the last one left. It got Peter first. I remember seeing his cable snap as soon as he left the ship, just after we arrived. I tried to force my gaze away as he thrashed around noiselessly, desperately trying to manoeuvre himself away from the vast expanse of space to no avail. It was like watching a car crash. Terrible, but you can’t look away. I can still see his lifeless body in the distance, gently floating in the void, his skin cracked and shattered like a porcelain doll. He looks peaceful. The others soon followed. As they panicked, our ship was swallowed by a shapeless being darker than a black hole, disappearing into the abyss as I drifted away, safe and sound. Like something from the deepest holes of the Mariana Trench. A quick, painless demise for them, I’m sure. How lucky they were.

These words come to you from a cramped escape pod in a vacant pocket of deep space. Or so we thought. The star outside my window reminds me of the pictures I saw as a kid. Past the solar system. The first manned voyage outside the observable universe. All the training, all the turmoil had led up to this. What we were promised was the chance of being pioneers. What we received was something from a nightmare.

All the screens and monitors are gone. Smashed to pieces. Their shards litter the metallic floor. I don’t know why. I’m sure they weren’t when I detached from the ship. My memories of these events are hazy. Some things are missing, others feel added in. Like a book with half the pages torn out. In a way, I’m blind. No idea what the oxygen levels are. The navigator is fizzling and sparking like a loose electric cable. The coms are in pieces. Just me and whatever lurks outside the windows. No fuel, either. Something brushed against the bottom of the pod, and it all spilled out. A river of pale blue, flowing gently as an ocean current. I didn’t notice until I realised none of the controls worked anymore. Like I could figure them out anyway. It’s like trying to decipher an ancient Egyptian code. Just a bunch of symbols and no instruction manual. At least the lights run on a different power source.

I suppose this is the part where I tell you all about my wife and kids isn’t it? Well, lucky for me, I don’t have any. Always been a bit of a loner, I guess. I wouldn’t consider myself an outcast, though. Just an introvert. Never been a fan of people. You always get told how different everyone is, and why that’s a good thing. I don’t like different. It scares me. Everyone’s too different, like algorithms. There’s always something that makes them tick along just nicely. Mess up a key element and things are thrown off balance. Sometimes I wonder whether it’s better or worse that no-one will miss me when I die up here.

Sometimes I try and sleep. Some part of me thinks I can. It’s not like I would be able to anyway. These spacesuits aren’t exactly comfortable. This existence, it’s almost a type of sleep itself. Immobile. Alive, but in a vegetative state. It’s a dream without the promise of waking up right as you hit the ground after falling off a cliff. Hunger and thirst are elusive creatures. They come and go in waves. Exhaustion is constant. Watching over my shoulder. Like someone standing on my chest. I’m losing my sense of past or present, but I think writing all this down is helping slightly. Time ceases to exist. I haven’t a clue how long I’ve been here.

I think I mentioned the star outside my window. Except it’s not a star. It just looks like one. A gargantuan sphere coated in an orangish haze would be enough to convince you it is, but look hard enough and you can see it pulsate and squirm like a living thing. Sometimes it’s bright enough to melt your eyes, other times it flickers like a cheap night light. Once, I swore I saw two concave holes near the top, gazing down upon me like a curious child stares at a bug.

If I could somehow open the door, I would leap out of this vessel with open arms. Weightlessness in space has been shifted from a constant source of entertainment to a leisure activity to be regulated and assigned. I hope someone shoots the man who discovered how to perfect artificial gravity. And I hope the company that installed it on every existing space vessel goes bankrupt. Spoilsports. I think that’s what I want to do most right now. Not to go home, just to fly.

The star moves. You don’t see it move. You see it one second, and then you don’t. You blink, and it’s outside the window behind you. I’ve tried identifying a pattern for its movements, but I don’t think there is one. For whatever reason, I don’t feel scared. Calm washes over me. Maybe I’ve just become numb. Numb and tired. Like I’m coated with frostbite. It hurts to feel, anyway. My head hurts. I’m going to stop writing now. I’ll be back soon. - I’m back. It feels like years since I last wrote, but the ink on the page is still wet. That’s what I mean about how time moves here. If I set a record of what happens in these notes, I could get some sort of order in place. Do I miss them? Peter and everyone else? I can’t tell. It seems like I should. There’s something I can’t put my finger on, like a new emotion. Or perhaps one I’ve forgotten. Is it regret? Is it grief? Have I really dissociated so much, I can’t feel empathy for my peers? What have I become?

I want to believe they all went to an afterlife. They deserve it. They were good people. We were all good people in the end. Not just to each other. Peter had a family. They’ve either heard the news, or they haven’t. They’re either suffering emotional torment or living in ignorance of their dead father and husband. I’ve met them. A sweet blonde lady and her cute little redheaded kid with glasses. Living in a small house in the suburbs. About to become a little smaller. And a whole lot sadder.

I can feel my thoughts slipping away from me, one by one. I have to remember. I won’t let myself forget this.

We grew up together. In an orphanage, someplace rural. Me, Peter, Jim, and Horace? No, Harry. I think. It was quiet. We took care of ourselves. There was an elderly lady in charge of the orphanage. What the hell was her name? Mildred? Mabel? Something beginning with M. Me and Jim got in a fight once. Over a toy. He pushed me into a bush, I hit him with…something. He went to hospital. Got better. We made up. The orphanage was small. We didn’t like the other kids. Snobs, the lot of them. Harry got laughed at for reading so many books. I read a book with him once. Of Mouse and Man or something like that. Probably my favourite book. Me and Jim beat up this mean kid called Jesse. Somehow, we got away with it.

More. There has to be more. We made a treehouse from old sticks and a few discarded wooden boards. I carved my name into it. Harry fell out and Jim laughed so hard he almost threw up. Good times. Peter played football a lot. I got in trouble for throwing a book at a teacher I hated. Wait, no, it wasn’t me. It was some other kid who blamed me. That little brat. Peter got a really bad haircut in the summer and we were hysterical. He wouldn’t talk to us for a week. Harry told me about his parents once. I remember crying over whatever he said.

I think that’s just about everything I can retrieve from the deep cracks of my memory. It feels good to reminisce. It feels worse to know that I’m the last of us left. We had a name. Like a group name, that we’d call ourselves to sound like a bunch of badasses. The name escapes my grasp, but I can feel it just out of reach of the end of my - I’m back. Again. Sorry for trailing off at the end of the last entry. I think I passed out. I don’t really know what from. It could’ve been from any number of things, realistically. I’m going to try and go over any other stuff I missed before I collapse again.

So, where did we leave off? I feel like a teenager again, writing stuff down in a stupid old diary. Though, to be fair, the subject matter has changed a bit. How I wish I could travel back in time and rip out some of those cringeworthy poems I wrote. Or the list of all my hormone-induced crushes. I’m sure we all have embarrassing stuff from our teens. At least I was lucky enough to have the common sense to keep it all to myself. God, I miss being young. I’d trade it for being a lonely spaceman any day.

There’re things I’ve been shunting out of my memory purposefully. Stuff I’ve been postponing from writing down. Like I’m scared that the very idea of putting words on paper will somehow taint my existence in this limbo. I’m still going to do it, of course.

The creature outside my window is persistent. I almost wish there was some sort of scientist or textbook-writer to document it more professionally. I’m sure most people would be thrilled to be the first to discover life outside of Earth. What they don’t realise is that this means that these things are everywhere. When mankind inevitably sends up more spaceships, they will find these creatures again. Anywhere they go. Possibly even worse ones. That’s what scares me. It twists and bends like a rubber band, and floats by the windows like a plastic band in the wind. Its body mass detaches and reform at will. It is never distant. It knocks. I do not answer. It bangs and thuds against the pod walls. I shut out the noises from my head. It never leaves. It rarely stops.

The creature outside my window is persistent. - I’ve been thinking about my journey here. The good and the bad. I hated the interviews. All the media cramming their mics down my throat, desperately trying to get a question answered. I suppose that was my brief taste of being a celebrity. How awful. I pity anyone who has to put up with that daily. Training wasn’t too bad. I probably would never have become an astronaut if we weren’t all in it together. For some reason, I would often find myself stuck with a looming sensation of oncoming disaster during those periods. As if one of us would hurt ourselves, or we wouldn’t pass all the tests, and everything would fall apart. But none of that ever happened. Through all odds, we persevered. I still ponder how exactly it happened. It wasn’t just that one day we all made some bizarre pact to become spacemen. I suppose we all just kind of drifted onto the same path and went for it. Got good grades, studied for years, lived in our own apartment for a while. Things lined up so perfectly. It felt like everything was being organised by some sort of otherworldly source.

The initial launch was insanity-inducingly nerve-wracking. We all lay with our backs against the seats, silently praying we wouldn’t all die in a fiery explosion. The countdown began, and I braced harder than I ever did in my entire life. Then, the shuttle took off. Pushed against the rocket while we travelled thousands of miles per hour out of Earth’s atmosphere. People cheering, NASA rejoicing. Everyone was so happy. So, so happy.

I don’t even remember what the point of the mission was. - I’m getti ng worse. Every mi nute is a battle for keeping my consc iousness. I just spent the last 10 minutes curled up on the floor. I’m so tired I can barely m ove my wrist to write all this down. My skin is cl ammy. My face feels numb and my eyes are bl urry. Everything looks cloudy and distor ted.

Cold. It’s so cold. The ship is dyi ng along with me. Heat systems mus t be failing. But that isn’t possible. There should be enou gh power left on board this thing to la st for a year.

What. What if. What if the power is. Getting absorbed. Like, it’s all being sucked up by. An external source. Through a straw. But not just. The ship’s power. What if. My energy is being absorbed too. The star. The fake star. What is it? What could it be? Why are the screens smashed? How. Was I the only survivor. Why. Didn’t anyone else evacuate the ship. Nothing is write. Write. I have to write. Must keep righting.

I fear death is approaching. The scattered glass on the floor is becoming more enticing with each passing second. - music. i hear music. it’s been so long since i heard. music. beach boys. My favour. Ite.

♪ wouldnt it be nise if we were ol der♪ ♪then we wouldnt haveto wait soo long♪ ♪wouldnt it bee nice to liv toge ther♪ ♪in thekind ofplace where wee belong♪

Ahahaha it sounds so good

im scared. Very scared. Maybe ever’body in the whole damn world is scared of each other.

there are no monsters under your bed or in your closet. there is no boogieman lurking in the shadows. there are no demons witches vampires or ghosts. no evil spirits too.

all the monsters are outside my window.

i can see my corpse floating next to peters. my body is coated with flames. his is too.

so hungry I swallowed the glaass. wasnt as good as it looked. stomach hurts. now all I taste is pennies. mouth is sandppaper.

there are cracks on the window and cracks on my head. blod. lots of blod. not very filling but it will do. skin is turning blue. and purple.

ears hurt. Creature won’t stop stop stop stop stop STOP STOP STOP screaming. at least I cant see anymore.

I cant see. I cant see. how am I writing this down I cant see. all I see is the star. so bright. so warm. take me.

take me.

where did I get the pen

where did I get the paper - there never was a pen

there never was any paper

there never was an aaron alcott

there was only ever the star.

the sta

A mighty rumble pushed across the ship, knocking him onto the floor. The equipment shook, the windows rattled, and for a brief moment, everything seemed as if it was going to collapse around him. Alarms blared loudly for a few seconds, and flashing red light filled the hallway. Finally, the movements ceased, and he stood up, dumbfounded.

Jim burst around the corner, a panicked look on his clean-shaved face.

“Aaron just jettisoned.” He spoke franticly, pointing towards the escape pod bay.

Peter did not speak, but instead quickly turned the corner to see a woeful-looking Harry staring out of the window, his mouth hanging open slightly with his hands pressed up against the glass. Peter walked up next to him only to just catch the isolated vessel collide about a quarter of a mile away with a nearby chunk of meteor. Everyone gasped as the ship tumbled over and a few sparks jumped out from the console within. Aaron could just be seen lying motionless on the floor as a large dent appeared from the back of the pod.

Everyone stood for a few moments in awe, completely speechless.

“Harry, what the fuck just happened?” Peter spoke up eventually.

“He…was just staring at something. Out of the window. I asked what, and he didn’t reply. I tapped him on the shoulder and he started screaming and babbling nonsense about a star or something. When I tried to calm him down, he punched me.”

Harry turned his head to reveal a sizeable mark on his left cheek.

“I fell back, and he just…jumped right into the pod. I couldn’t do anything.”

Silence fell upon the room.

“I don’t see any star.” Said Jim, taking a lengthy gaze through the window.

“There shouldn’t be any stars here. Or meteors. Ground Control said the area was empty.”

“They must have been wrong. Maybe an error with the navigators?” Harry mentioned.

“More likely something wrong with Aaron. Jim, take care of Harry’s wounds and tell Ground Control about the situation. I’m going to go out there and see if I can’t save him.”

“What if he’s in an unstable condition?” Harry piped up again.

“He most likely is. But there’s a spacesuit on board that pod. I might be able to get him to put it on and bring him back here to fix up any wounds. We’ll give him a full mental evaluation too. I’ll get the cable ready.”

Soon enough, Peter was floating through the vast expanse of space with a lengthy cable connected to his back. His bulky space suit allowed little movement but succeeded in providing ample protection. The square-shaped craft in front of him was slowly spinning around, occasionally showing one of the windows.

Aaron was still on the ground, unmoving, as Peter got close enough to touch the hull. Luckily, it didn’t look like there were any breaches in the tough metal casing of the pod, despite the powerful impact of the meteor. His unblinking eyes locked onto the edge of the ship as it gradually revealed another window.

Standing perfectly still, in the center of the ship was Aaron. The two spacemen locked eyes with each other, Peter’s bulging and wide-open, Aaron’s empty and dead. Aaron’s hands hung limply by his hips, like a standing corpse. His head was tilted ever so slightly to the right.

Peter barely dared to move an inch before his coms lit up, jarring him from Aaron’s strange trance.

“Peter, this is Jim. Harry’s injuries have been stabilized. How are you faring over there? Over.”

Reaching out a gloved hand, Peter knocked firmly on the vessel. No response. Aaron didn’t budge a muscle. Neither did Peter for a few seconds.

“Copy that, Jim. Aaron is unresponsive. I’ll update you on any activity. Over.”

Mouthing a few words proved to be futile. Peter was running out of ideas.

Without warning, Aaron opened his mouth wide and twisted his face into a strain. It was a terrifying sight. No noise could be heard, but Peter knew exactly what he was doing. Aaron was screaming. With his face contorted and bent, Peter could see just how manic Aaron appeared. His jet-black hair was ruffled and dirty, and his skin was pale as a vampire’s. Aaron’s bloodshot eyes were practically bursting from his face in a sickening, stomach-twisting manner. Peter was dumbfounded.

Knocks turned into thumps, and thumps turned into desperate banging as Peter shouted for Aaron to stop in vain. But his pleas fell on deaf ears. He kicked the pod hard, and Aaron suddenly stopped and turned away, facing outside the opposite window.

As Peter was about to climb over to the other window, he felt himself being pulled towards the ship very firmly by the cable. He glanced over, only to see that the cable’s auto-pull action had been initiated. The pod became smaller and smaller, until it was simply a dot in the huge void.

And then he saw it. Just for a second, but a second was long enough. The star. A behemoth, lingering in the distance just past the pod where Aaron was staring, lurking in the darkest of the shadows. And then it was gone, in the blink of Peter’s twitchy eyes.

He was stunned. Only when Jim pulled him out of the airlock did Peter snap back to his senses.

“Jim!” He cried out, picking himself up and wriggling with the spacesuit to get out.

“Peter, I’ve activated the thrusters. We can’t stay here. Our power is getting leeched by something outside. What happened with Aaron? The coms went down as soon as our power started to drain."

Peter could only splutter out exhausted half-sentences.

“Jim…the star, I…saw…it. Out there. But only for a moment…Aaron was staring…at me…then the star…he was screaming, Jim. Screaming. Don’t…look…”

Jim opened his mouth but did not respond. His attention seemed diverted by something outside the window.

Peter realized just a moment too late.

Jim pushed Peter aside and ran out of the airlock. Sprinting after him, Peter prayed he would be able to catch up.

Harry was already inside the pod bay as Jim burst in, shouting and yelling gibberish at the top of his lungs. Peter leaped at him and grabbed his ankles, only to be kicked in the nose with a considerable amount of force. Harry caught wind of the situation, and was promptly grabbed by the throat and thrown into the second escape pod.

Peter only just made out the mumbled words “we will burn together” as Jim slammed the eject button with him too inside, sending another wave of rumbling through the ship. 