Author: Adrian Rodriguez

“Time to move,” he said with a shaking in his voice.

He searched through the main corridor for a spot that would feel safe enough to wait out the storm. He focuses on a spot on the floor, and noticed a hatch. He opened it, releasing a strong current of air. It was fresh. After the smoke from the air lifted, he saw a small tunnel that lead to another hatch underground.

Closing the hatch, he began to descend down to the next compartment. He moved slowly, trying not to draw any attention from the creature he had just encountered.

As he opened the hatch, his eyes widened. He found himself in a bright white, pentagon shaped corridor. With 5 doors. Each had a number on them.

“E1, E2, E3, E4, E5 , ” he whispered. He thought nothing of the numbers. And when he hadn’t heard anything to indicate that the creature had found him, or was nearby, and decided to rest. He sat down, closed his eyes, and slept.

As he drifted off into his slumber, his eyes suddenly open. “That noise,” he thought. Drip…drip…drip. He rose to his feet. Then, again, drip…drip…drip.

From the hatch door above, he could hear the slow drip. “It found me!” he thought with horror. “Where do I go? Think. Think! Just pick a door dammit.”

Darkness filled the room, and slowly the creature rose from the ground. He watched the creature with it’s confused, tilted head, rise to the ceiling and expand it’s body around the walls of the communication center, staring at him with it’s blank gaze. He ran from the room the moment the darkness was near him, but not before grabbing a portable voice communicator from the communication desk.

He began to run down the hallway, tossing everything in his path behind him to try and stop the creature from getting close to him. The creature twisted, turned, and deformed and reformed itself, getting around any obstacle in front of it. Once it appeared as if he had bested the creature, he stopped for a breath of air. Suddenly, his voice communicator began to crackle…

‘This is … cue… br…”

The communication was scrambled, he couldn’t make out what was being said. He decided to try for a better position. Maybe another room had better reception. He ran towards the front of the outpost, back to where it all started. There, he reached the cafeteria, and once again a voice came through his communicator.

‘Do….y…….me”

The reception in the room was worse. It seems that the rooms where the creature resided caused an interference on the voice comms. The brighter the room, the better the reception was. Realizing this, he turned around and decided to run straight towards the exit of the outpost, but he couldn’t move.

His legs, were frozen, stuck, in a mud like substance. Then, he heard a dripping noise. It was similar to the one he had heard when he first discovered the creature. Shivers ran down his spine, and as he turned towards the noise, he saw the creature. Once again the creature stared back, with the blank gaze, a blank canvas of a face.

As he stared back at the creature he felt a cold like liquid on his feet, slowly rising up his leg, his shin, and his hips. He looked down and saw that the creature was extending itself onto his body, slowly covering every inch of him. Soon after he looked up, staring back at the creature, fear engulfed him. He could not speak a word. The darkness surrounded his eyes and soon he was completely covered…

‘Wake up,” said a soft unfamiliar voice, ‘this is only the beginning.”

As he sat there and thought about the situation he was in, he thought to himself, “First the herbivore, and now this? I thought we were mining on this planet because there was no sign of life?”

He noticed a notebook in the corner of the room. It was the journal of one of the crew members, a scientist. Normally these outposts were home only to miners, so what was a scientist doing with with a bunch of miners? The book was covered with dust and drops of dried blood. He grabbed the book and returned to his hiding place. Remembering that he needed to stay safe because someone, or something, was coming back for those miners.

He opened the journal, carefully. He skimmed along until he found something that might provide some insight as to why a scientist was with the crew. There, in the middle of the journal he noticed the mention of a new mineral. He read to himself, “The Recour quadrant is a calm one. It has a vast planetary system, but this planet of the ten in the quadrant had no sign of life even thought it had the ability to sustain it. Once teraformed, the planet produced a mineral that helps produce oxygen similar to how trees produced it on Earth. This mineral is a significant push forward for science and to find a new planet to officially call home.”

“Since we began to focus on gathering this mineral instead the of others, we’ve noticed a change in attitude within the crew. People seem to be happier, and more motivated. I think the discovery adds more worth to their time on this planet separated from people, other outposts, and the rest of the colonies.” He skipped a few pages ahead. “Today I noticed something strange when analyzing the mineral. There was something else that it was producing, something organic, an organism. I decided this was something the crew didn’t need to know about. I discovered a new species and definitely didn’t want anyone else taking the credit.”

“As I continued studying this organism, I noticed it had a particular quality about it that was different from any other species we had come in contact with before. It took the shape of objects around it, almost like as if it was learning, and adapting…”

Before he could read further he heard a noise. He took a deep breath, and heard a slow steady dripping noise coming from the cafeteria. He thought to investigate but hesitated.

“I’m not about to be someone’s dinner,” he thought to himself. But his curiosity got the best of him.

Before reaching the doors, he decided to peak through the glass panes. What he noticed was one of the bodies, beginning to decay.

A strange orange liquid dripping from the foot, the face of the body was sliding down it’s chest, towards it’s legs. Fear began to take over as he noticed the liquid begin to move towards the door.

“What…the…fuh…fuh…”

As he struggled for words, the liquid began to solidify right before him. It raised up at a slow steady pace, forming legs, then hips, then torso, and soon after a head, and a complete body, with no face.

He closed his eyes, “This is a dream. SHIT! This is a freaking dream. You’re going to open your eyes and this is all going to be gone. You’re going to wake the hell up and be in some stupid room, in that stupid ship that you hate so much. WAKE UP!”

SMACK!

When he opened his eyes, he sighed in relief. He saw his reflection through the glass window and laughed, but the reflection did not laugh with him. It stared, tilted his head in confusion, and then opened the door.

The dark and red clouds loomed overhead, full of threat, as the sun began to set.

“A storm is coming,” he thought to himself.

The storms of this planet made the worst storm in earth seem like a drizzle. The wind picked up, and the dust from the mountain tops began to skip across the ground beneath him. He inched closer to the outpost.

An eerie feeling came over him.

He arrived at the outpost door, which slid open just as he passed the sensor. While in the decontamination chamber, he noticed the steady white noise over the outpost comms. Not a word was spoken.

As decontamination finished he walked inside the outpost. Uncomfortable with the silence he shouted, “That’s some serious weather out there!”

He smiled at the breath of fresh o2 inside, but his happiness quickly turned to worry as the lights inside began to fade. All he could see was the texture of the walls, and all he could hear was the sound of his footsteps and the white noise from the comms.

“Um, this is courier Lee of the Recour quadrant. I’m here to retrieve a package.” he said nervously.

He walked around the outpost for a minute or two before reaching the cafeteria, where it was pitch black. He scurried around, feeling the walls for a light switch. He found it.

There, from the ceiling, hung four people. What looked to be the crew of the outpost. Eyes wide open, toes numb, blood rushing… this is probably what they would have felt had they been alive. They were perfectly straight, as if standing; head straight, arms, legs, everything, just perfect.

He didn’t scream, he didn’t shout, he didn’t run, he stared. He walked around the bodies, examining every aspect of them. He’d seen dead people before. What he had never seen was four people dead, floating, in mid air.

As night began to fall, he began to recall thoughts of Earth simulation he experienced. Beautiful beaches with ivory colored sand. The season called Winter where cool breezes would remove the sweat from his brows. He imagined whatever he could think of to get through another wretched night on this planet.

He thought to himself, “Now that I’m out of that swamp, I could finally gain some ground and make up some of the time I…”

A sound of a crackle caught his attention.

In the distance he could see what looked like another human being. He called out, “Hey! Someone out there?!”

The sound of someone walking became louder. It was close.

As he began to walk towards the direction of the sound, it became louder, harder, and more rapid. The sound of walking became the sound of running. He began to panic.

“What the hell is that?” he thought to himself, “I… Where did that…”

He reached in his pack and began looking for his radio. As the the distance of the sound narrowed he began to stumble and dropped his pack. After a failed attempt at recovering his backpack he began to look for a place to hide.

There was a hole that looked large enough to fit him in the ground just ahead of him. As he ran closer and closer to it, the sound got louder and louder, and the image he saw ahead of him grew larger and with it, a cloud of black dust. He slide into the hole.

Three feet above him, he could see the dust rushing over the hole and what looked to be orange colored objects. At the speed they were traveling, they were impossible to make out. The dust seemed to go on for hours. He sheltered himself there for the night and when he woke in the morning, with the dust cleared and a calm quiet wind, he arose. What he saw startled him.