Drabble Wednesday: It’s Lonely in Space

Today Drabble Wednesday travels the spaceways, the great void between worlds where anything can happen...

Lost

Can you remember?

The planetary existence, the warmth of a sun?

There is no warmth out here, the stars are cold, distant. Dangerous. Like most everything. Even the smallest thing can kill you. Yet they send us out, and we go. Sometimes I wonder why. What appeals to us about black void of space? Wouldn’t we be safer huddled beneath the gentle stars, oblivious of the fate that awaits?

I wish I didn’t know. About the alien armada.

I wish I wasn’t surrounded by outlying stars, floating in an escape pod.

And most of all, I wish I didn’t remember.

~*~

Skitters

Can you hear it in the walls?

The scratches and the chittering between the bulkheads. Something’s in there, poking around. My lieutenant thinks I’m imaging it, says it’s just the older electronics on the station acting up. What does he know? He’s a newbie off fresh Earth Station, no real deep space experience.

Just listen. Down there by the open vent shaft. You’ll hear it good there. That’s it, right there.

You can hear them now, can’t you. All up close.

Please stop screaming. Someone will notice.

I’m sorry., but they said if I feed them, they’ll leave me alone.

~*~

Stasis

I wonder what day it is? Or what year?

It’s hard to keep track in this metal prison.

I can hear the hum and whir of the machinery, even feel the ship’s vibrations. I think. That might be my imagination.

Most people dream in these stasis pods, blissfully unconscious and unaware. But one percent stay awake. Unable to move, open their eyes, or scream. Trapped in their own bodies, marking time as they go insane, a perfectly preserved physical specimen until the pods opens.

Guess which category I fall into?

Stuck for fifty years as a living corpse.

Lucky me.

© A. F. Stewart 2017 All Rights Reserved

Drabble Wednesday: Hidden Things

In today’s Drabble Wednesday, I delve under the surface of reality, to find the secrets…

Butterfly

Such a delicate thing. Its wings fluttered on the winds, their white-tipped, crimson pattern vivid against the sunlit afternoon. It danced against the clouds, before settling on a shaded branch of an oak tree.

There it waited, its insect antennae twitching.

Golden hair, and a sunshine smile, the woman passed beneath its tree. She laughed as it landed on silky skin. For a moment, it perched, wings outstretched. She gasped in awe.

“Beautiful.”

It quivered. Minuscule fangs punctured skin, injecting poison into her bloodstream.

“Ow!” One breath, before she convulsed and died.

Such a delicate thing, such a deadly touch.

~*~

The Long Path

“Only a fool begins the long path. Only Death will end it.”

That is the saying among my people. If any remained alive they would call me a fool.

A thousand years I walked this road, past war, past famine, past all I loved. The summer rains have drenched me, the winter snows have chilled my bones.

Yet, I walked.

I was your name whispered on the wind, that shadow on the wall, the ghost in the graveyard. I have strode the path between worlds, and I am at its end.

I stand in the grove of night awaiting Death.

~*~

First Kind

I am the last of my kind. Eons ago we swarmed the skies, the earth, the seas, and fed on the giants that lived here. Then the giants died, and we turned on each other. Only I survived, hibernating all these long years.

I am the last of my kind.

Or I was, until I met the human. This new breed that inherited our domain. Puny, but he served his purpose.

Now my eggs are buried deep under his decaying skin and tissues, feeding off his corpse. Soon they will hatch, and we will feast on more of his race.

© A. F. Stewart 2015 All Rights Reserved 

Drabble Wednesday: Violets and Aliens

We head to space today on Drabble Wednesday, with a very colourful voyage…

Purple Haze

See the universe, it said.

That damn poster.

Join the Galactic Space Corp.

I should’ve never let it draw me in.

Now I am stuck on this backwater world. Stuck in a dumb menial security gig at the spaceport. And worst of all, I am stuck where everything—and I mean everything, the sky, the clouds, the rain, the soil—is a damn, rotten shade of purple!

Sighing, I lean my body against the bar and signal for a shot of Reposado. The bartender pours and slides the glass over to me.

Oh, frak! Even the damn tequila is purple.

~*~

Falling Petals

“She loves me.”

He yanked the oversized petal free of the plant, and smiled at the accompanying screech.

He let the violet frond fall from his fingers. It floated softly earthward.

“She loves me not.” Another yank, another screech, and smile. Another petal drifted free.

Repeatedly he took this action, ripping away sections until one last petal remained.

“She loves me!”

He let that petal fall with the others. The last piece in a patchwork of sentient alien flora, a mauve blanket covering a bound and gagged woman.

“You love me.”

The woman and mutilated alien plant wept in unison.

~*~

Home

I miss the mountains most of all.

I loved to wake up to that view. With their snow capped, amethyst spires stretching to the heavens, and the lavender mist enshrouding their foundations. The sky painted itself in vivid colour, mauve and tangerine, with a hint of cerise. The hues reflected in the river, tinting the water as it wended through our village. You wanted to fill your lungs with crisp morning air.

Space is nothing like that. It’s frigid and black and the escape pod’s dwindling air supply is stale. I don’t want to die. I want to go home.

~*~

© A. F. Stewart 2015 All Rights Reserved