Alone - A Very, Very Short Sci-Fi/Horror Story
ALONE
A Very, Very Short Sci-Fi/Horror Story
By Jean Daniel
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
ALONE
A Very, Very Short Sci-Fi/Horror Story
Jean Daniel
Copyright 2026
All Rights Reserved.
ALONE
Sometime in the future …
Here I am now, hurtling through space. Alone. Yeah, I wonder, too. How did a nice Southern girl like me wind up as an astronaut? Long story. I tell it to myself over and over again, just to pass the time. A rerun of a misspent youth, watching Star Trek and thinking space could really be that way. Ha! Teen years wasted, with my nose stuck in science books instead of breathing fresh air and appreciating nature while it still existed. I made time for boys – another waste – never found one I couldn’t outlast in bed or in any other competition.
I was an overachiever. Now, looking back, I fail to see what all of that hard work and the sleepless nights fretting over grades got me. A few years of glory, maybe? No, people stopped paying much attention to space chicks once the novelty wore off. Money? That’s a laugh. Pride? In myself? No, I’ve never been proud of my accomplishments. I drove my ass to take whatever challenge came along, for the mere thrill of it. But even the thrill of being in outer space wore off pretty quickly, after I’d been out here more than a dozen times.
The beauty that envelopes you at first, the overwhelming humbleness of being a speck in a vast, ever-changing void, is unspeakably frightening, with a rush no drug could ever replace. Then, you start to get an antsy kind of feeling, like, wow – why are we here anyway? How do we even exist? Sure, you study all the books; you know all the staid answers that were figured out by brains larger than yours. But the reality of it, the living in it, day by day, it wears your psyche down, tears at your sanity, eats away at your soul, tiny bit by tiny bit, until you force yourself to be numb to it, to save your life.
Sure, it helps to have companions; someone to joke around with, have meals with and even sneak a quickie with when the notion overtakes you. I had some great pals on this trip. We were going to be the bright, fresh hope for a new colony somewhere. As diverse a bunch of fools as you could ever pick, all of us with unique skills that might come in useful on a decent planet out in the dark corners of space – if we could find one before we all grew old.
Whoa! There goes another meteor shower. I have to swerve to miss them every few days. Or is it hours? Hard to say anymore. The ship quakes so hard I fear it’s going to crack in two but so far I’ve managed to keep it steady enough to survive the force of the blast. Not sure how many more times the ship can bear it. Or me.
I’m lost, I’ll admit it. The ship’s tracking devices went all haywire our first year out. And there was no one left on Earth who could talk us back in by then. The deluge we’d all been fearing hit quick, too quick for any of the ground crew to make it to safety. Mother Nature got her revenge, man, down to the last soul. Wiped out every town, no matter how high it was from the sea. The mountains had crumbled from the volcanoes months before. We were lucky to get out when we did – lucky, yeah, right! Lucky enough to see everyone I ever held dear in my stupid, selfish life become food for the fishes. I bawled for days.
Now, I sit and brood over them. I wonder if they suffered, or if they were spared by their faith in some god. I gave up on deities long ago. I figured anybody who’d let greed and cruelty rule the world wasn’t worth my worshiping.
There’s some kind of sphere to my left; been watching it for awhile, hoping by some crazy circumstance that it might be inhabited. I imagine lights on it. “Imagine” being the crucial word. I imagine lots of things in my abject loneliness. I see my mama’s smiling face as she bends over my crib, offering me her warm arms on a shivery night. I hear my daddy singing his favorite R&B favorites along with the music channel on his car’s satellite feed. I smell my best lover’s aftershave as he kisses my eager mouth. I taste the Chicken Fried Rice I used to get at Fu Lin’s on the city square.
Food. I haven’t had actual food in when? Hell, I don’t know. There was a homemade chocolate bar in my kit, but that was, oh, fuck, I can’t remember. Meredith said she’d fetch it for me. But she’s gone. I liked her, she liked me, too, well enough to satisfy my sex cravings quite often. The guys were willing, of course, but none of us females wanted to take a chance on pregnancy out here in the middle of nowhere. Sure, we knew that was going to be one of our duties if we ever found a planet we could live on. We’d even tossed the guys’ names in a cap and picked out who our baby daddies would be. They were all fairly good-looking, healthy specimens so none of us minded who we wound up with. In theory, that is, once the deed is upon you, you kind of want more than a good-looking mannequin for a life partner.
I wish I knew what day it was. Or week. Or month. Or year, for that matter. Every bit of data we had was digital (no printed calendars by then – there were no stores left on Earth to make them) and the systems went bad pretty quickly once we were hit with a weird radioactive stream of debris from heaven knows what kind of space vehicle. Our so-called betters didn’t take into account that we might run into such junk out here. I mean, we had back-up systems, yeah, but they were damaged, too.
Things went from bad to worse after that. We struggled to get through each day. Thirty of us were sharing food, water; some sneaking more than their rations whenever possible. Then, the inevitable posturing started. Especially after Captain Janes died from a freak infection he developed after cutting himself while shaving. The radioactive stuff had seeped into our air supply and found its way into his blood once it was exposed by the cut, or that’s what we decided had happened.
Carly stated that she was now in command, no matter what true ranking order was used. Then Meredith disagreed; then Thomas, and Wesley, as well. A brawl started. I stayed back, watched. Nobody was going to turn me into some mindless fool, fisting out my aggressions on my crew mates. Several of them wound up bloodied and battered then, yeah, you guessed it – they got the infection, too. Damned idiots!
After that Terrance, yeah, the one whose name I picked out of the cap – naturally – had some kind of breakdown and began offing everyone within sight. All it took was cutting their skin so the infection could enter. He seemed to relish each conquest as they succumbed to the sickness. We chased him around the ship for I don’t know - god, it felt like years, but he was quick and clever, hiding in places we didn’t know existed.
One by one the team dwindled down. Familiar, cherished faces disappeared as their limp bodies were wrapped up and ejected out the side escape. I’ve forgotten some of their names, which is a weight upon my spirit. Every damn soul ought to be remembered by at least one person. Or what was the point of ever existing? Ha! Odd question to be asking now, since I seem to be the only person left, from Earth, anyway. Maybe there were others. I did hear rumors of other ships being built in hostile countries. They might have fared better than us. I can’t see how anybody could have fared worse!
I got awfully tired of chasing Terrance. He was wearing us all down, using up our resources, our time, our air. I finally grabbed a pistol I had stashed in my kit and waited for him to show his pretty but fucked up self. Then I put one bullet in his fevered brain. And that was it. No more serial killer on board.
We wrapped him up without a prayer or a word, really, and sent him on his way. The vast dark expanses of this hellish universe are littered now with the lifeless mummies of our brave companions. I thought Terrance was the worst representation of us. But I was wrong.
Once the food vanished a few of the dozen left of my crew began to get desperate. I understood it. I was scared, too, and hungry. But I’d rather die of starvation than do what they did. You have to keep some sense of humanity. You can’t allow yourself to become a … thing … a wild, unfettered monster, unwilling to listen to reason or hope or faith of some kind. Yeah, I don’t believe in gods. But I always had a strange bit of faith that if you’re strong and intelligent and courageous you can overcome just about any obstacle. Again, I was wrong.
The cannibalistic fiends got a royal comeuppance when they too began to get the infection that plagued our ship. Six of them fell, in a swoop of karmic revenge. But by then, I was the only sane, well … the only breathing crew member left.
I cleaned house; threw the bodies out to float in the nothingness for eternity. Now I’m here. Alone. Watching as the galaxies pass by my window, the lights, the colors, the shapes, the sound of the Black Hole wailing like a trillion miserable souls who died in excruciating pain. The sorrow is tangible, as real as the cut on my wrist.
THE END
Comments
Post a Comment