This week’s artwork gave me a good excuse to revisit the soundtrack for the film Moon by Clint Mansell. He’s one of my favorite composers and one who has such a unique sound. Some of the best melodies in the business along with creative use of instruments that aren’t typically featured in film soundtracks. That music coupled with my love for space horror made this one a fun one to write. I have some regrets, as one always does when attempting to crank out a story with no outline, but that is part of the process.
Thanks for reading.
Artwork by Morten Solgaard Pedersen
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/kD8JvK
DISCLAIMER: This work has not been edited beyond what was done in the video. The goal is to capture a story in a short amount of time and keep it as raw as possible.
The Story
Torres didn’t truly know what darkness was until he saw the far side of the moon. No words could describe it, so dark his eyes fabricated light of their own, in converging and diverging threads that only reminded him of the cover of his high school geometry book.
“Man, should have skipped the space burrito.” Bell’s mono crackle was insect legs in Torres’s ear canal. He groaned. “Get anything yet?”
Torres checked the readout, appreciative of the real light on the screen. Not a blip. When he looked back up into the darkness, the readout square imprinted itself with every blink. “Nothing.”
“Murphy?” Bell asked.
Heavy mouth breathing was the only response.
“It’s been, what, ten minutes?” Bell said. “Can’t be far.”
Torres flipped the sensor box around to use it as a flashlight. The image of the screen burned onto his retina was brighter, so he packed it away on his hip where he’d feel a vibration if anything was detected.
Underwater was the closest thing Torres could compare it to, the soundlessness here. Besides the steady white noise of the open line in his helmet, all he could hear was his heartbeat. Midnight swimming alone had been something like this. Sitting at the bottom. The pressure. Imagining the vacuum of space.
Sweat trailing down his arm was torture. How he wished for Earth gravity, at least then it might not settle in the crook of his arm for an eternity to itch and itch and itch.
Nothing was the closest thing Torres could compare any of this to. The feelings and images of a world that was a world away only made it all the more unbearable.
He shouldn’t be here. They shouldn’t be here. But Simmons. He should be here, so they wouldn’t have to be out here looking for him.
The sensor vibrated. Torres checked the dim screen, smacked it, which jostled the readout back to life. Three dots. Two ahead, one behind.
Had Bell fallen back? “Bell? I found him,” Torres said. “I’ll wait for you to catch up.”
“Catch up? I’m ahead with Murphy. Give me the coordinates.”
Torres stopped, setting his body into a position where his suit didn’t touch him, that middle zone that had been a game with him on the long days out here, scouting sectors. He’d stand that way for minutes, his record being five. Now he did this for an entirely different reason. To be invisible to whoever or whatever was beside him.
A static hiss found him. Boo, it said. “Torres?” it said.
Torres’s helmet took his head to his chest, oxygen hose reminding him he couldn’t escape.
“Simmons,” he said. “Where the hell? Doesn’t matter.” Torres transferred to group comms and spoke. “Bell, Murphy, we’re–“
A shove sent Torres to the ground, colliding with a rock, then rolling down it, face first to the ground. To his left, he saw the readout’s glow, half-buried and flickering. Unable to orient himself, he reverse snow-angeled hoping the coverage would allow him to find it, but then what?
A hand picked it up, then the light was gone. That blackness again, except for the complex geometry tattooed on his eyes, every movement the scratch of an Etch-A-Sketch, scribbling out what little he had.
A touch to his arm, movement up the back of his helmet. He held his breath on instinct, waiting for the hose to be pulled free, the vacuum of space to be nothing like the bottom of a pool.
Then tapping. Gentle. Steady. A pattern.
B-E-L-L-I-N-F-E-C-T-E-D.
Infected? “Simmons–” Another hit to his helmet. Torres switched to Simmons’s comm. Simmons’s breath was clipped, words struggling to fight their way between them.
“Simmons. Relax. We’re good.”
“We’re–” Breath. Breath. Breath. “Not.”
Group comms beeped.
Torres climbed to his feet, orienting himself with Simmons’s help. “Let’s get back to base and–“
Beep-beep-beep.
“Fuck.” Torres switched to group comms. “Yeah?”
It was Bell. “What the hell are you doing? Thought we lost you. Give me the damn coordinates already.”
The readout flashed brighter than Torres though possible, and in that flash, he saw Simmons’s face, drenched in sweat, aged, eyes bloodshot and pupiless, his head vigrously shaking no, no, no, no . . . .
He was tapping Morse Code again, on Torres’s visor, dead center. I-N-F-E-C-T-E-D.
“Torres, you have one fucking second to–” His voice was cut off by a half-scream, then liquid static.
Simmons’s suit went off like a Christmas tree, every light more frantic than the code he’d tapped to Torres. Then his own suit ignited, interior lights reflecting off the inside of his visor, showing him his own twisted face.
Then it was as if the sun soared behind them, white hot, their shadows stretching across the barren landscape, marred by stone and crater, reaching toward what could only be Murphy, who ran toward one of those craters, above which floated what could only be Bell.
Torres wished he were at the bottom of a pool, back home, decades ago, millions of miles away from the sight before him.
The group comms exploded inside his helmet with electronic screeching, but between the synthetic reproductions, he heard a man begging for life, then death, as he most certainly saw it tearing from his chest, in a geyser of threads, which sought out Murphy and pulled him into the pit.
All of this was displayed in the pure brilliance of the Rescue Beacon, surely documenting the horror for home to see long after they were all dead.
Torres grabbed Simmons’s arm, but he was locked as if a photograph, hand reaching as Murphy’s had been, the snapshot of his future.
Torres ran away from it all, into the light, waiting for his feet to find a stone to send him face down again, but this time, everything illumiated completely so he wouldn’t miss a thing, taken to whatever hell awaited him, because no matter how long he stared at the white light, running toward it, through it, he only saw complete darkness.
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