Just wanted to Share this - a flash fiction experiment in the second person - hope you all enjoy! D.T. STAR BEAST
You squeeze yourself into the cold metal storage cubical, barely a Riptic square. Attempting to control your ragged respiration, you risk a glance through the grill in the door. The thin metal is the only thing separating you from the ship’s dank cargo hold. From whatever it was out there, somewhere. Stalking the ship. The computer had spotted the dilapidated Cruiser three days ago, incessantly pinging out it’s distress signal. Needy and unending. You should have left it be. It smelt wrong enough at the time, but that would have been against protocol. The computer would have reported it and the crew would have lost a fair sum of the commission they were owed. That company rule book was only there to swindle you all. It hadn’t taken long to search the ship. Empty. It had been Tarix’s idea to take it for scrap and cash it in on the way home. That you could get away with that at least. You hadn’t protested and the tractor beam had easily brought it into the cargo bay. Empty, or so you all thought. Ronzon, the medic, had been the first to go. You’d discovered him in med bay, unzipped on the cold floor, his entrails decorating the ceiling above. At the time, it had been the most grotesque sight of your short life, but then you’d been a lot more innocent back then. Seen much less. At the crew meeting, fingers had been pointed. Tarix and Ronzon had never been friends. Tarix had accused the doctor of cheating him at Ghralt. Said he needed to pay up or else. Then the doctor was dead. Pretty obvious. Tarix had been thrown in the brig, ready for court martial. All very straightforward, until you had taken Tarix his breakfast and found him dead in his cell, multiple laser wounds still fizzling. That’s when things started to get pretty tense. Understandably so. Nervous, edgy eyes all around. Accusations, threats, scuffles and death. More and more death. One by one they dropped, stalked by the unseen bogeyman. Was it one of your colleagues, or something much worse? The uncertainty. The fear. The suspicion. It had almost driven you mad. Now you knew the answer. It had been none of them. All too late though, with the rest of them dead. Dwindling away until it was just you. You and whatever monster was on board. Drifting in space. A long, exhausting game of shadows across this lumbering rig. It was here. You knew it really. Knew that this was the end. The running was done. Still, it was a shock as the door before you was ripped away, metal screeching. You recoiled in horror at the terror before you. It was as you had dreaded. Your worst nightmare. The scourge of the galaxy. Savage, merciless and despotic. A thing of avarice and death. Merry in slaughter and plunder. You were done for, just like the rest. It was one of them. A Human.
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BlogThis is where I will put semi regular musing about things that interest me. I cannot guarantee they will do the same for you guys Archives
May 2022
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