Christian Oesterling - Blank Space - Into the Depths of the Universe

The alternative suggested a form of life. Although a biologist, she was wary and nervous about the possibility of another species. Not because she was particularly xenophobic, she had dated a Soorvite at one point, many a year past, but because it seemed to have a kind of malevolence to it. It was violent, destructive, intending to harm. It didn’t just appear and say ‘hail, we come in peace. Our weapons are up, gee, isn’t it nice to see someone else out here? We thought we were the only ones, although we did see you putting up that outpost just on the edge there, and I have to say we think it is coming along swimmingly. Mind if we come aboard? We could bring some snacks, sit down and have a drink, share our tales of nothing much because there’s nothing here, but I’m sure we could agree on something, and maybe we could even join your Empire. Wouldn’t that swell? I think it would let’s do it, peace y’all.’ It was a darkness, a kind of evil that was hanging over her, and it disturbed her. More than once since the whole charade sequence had begun, she had felt the hairs rise up on the back of her neck, as if something was there, watching her. For now, all was calm, and she was in a relatively pleasant mood, serenely moving her bishop along that Ruy Lopez diagonal that she loved to utilize so much.

She thought of the dream she had had last night. She had been…

In the dark, though where exactly she was, she couldn’t discern. There had been a luminous moon though, bright blue, dazzling, highlighting mists that swelled and floated around her like phantoms of the night, whispering to her. She had been scared, looking around for something, eyes searching out through the black. And then she had seen him. It was him, The Man of her reoccurring nightmares, the plague of her subconscious. It was The Man in The Top-Hat. He was shrouded in a long black coat that reached well past his knees. It was buttoned up, the buttons gilded in glorious silver, like the blood of a unicorn. In his right hand was a long knife, sleek and deadly, poised and ready to strike out at her, lashing swiftly. She could not see his face, but she knew it was a man from the way he stood. Confident, legs ever so slightly apart. And The Hat, that manifestation of all evil, inside there could be anything. It was the black hole, that demonic chest inside which all the impending dooms of the world hid, waiting, biding their time for the grand entrance that he would give them when the time was right. He raised his left hand towards the rim. He tipped it towards her, slowly, deliberately. It was this movement that terrified Yuki. More than the darkness, more than the knife, more than the figure itself. It was the tipping of the hat. She had seen it many hundreds of times, and she was sure that Holden would say it was some subconscious manifestation of a traumatic event in her childhood and had he known her childhood intimately he would know, as well as her, which incident it would be the embodiment of. But it wasn’t. She had seen it before that night, she was sure of it. It scared her every time, petrified her right to her very core. She turned and ran.

Her footfalls were silenced somewhat by the mossy undergrowth of the forest she found herself in, the trees moving past her ever too slowly for her liking. She willed them to move more quickly, to assemble behind her like a protective garrison, barring the way of the man. But she knew they wouldn’t. He always made it to her. She caught her foot on the knot of a tree that had clawed its way out to meet her, and she fell face-first to the floor. The mist clung to her eyebrows. She began to cry, it was useless after all. Yuki felt the presence of the Man in the Top Hat, looming over her, monolithic in his imperial might. His hand reached down and yanked her head up by the head. Slowly, but with an inhuman deftness, the knife was placed underneath her chin, cold as the grave against her neck. She looked ahead of her, into the distance…

She looked at the monitor before her, and a black face with two red eyes stared back at her.

Yuki stumbled backward in her chair, tipping it and spilling her out onto the floor. She flung her arms out to try and steady herself but just succeeded in flipping herself over and smashing her nose into the floor. She winced in pain, stumbling onto her feet, ignoring the pain. She looked for the monitor again, but there was nothing there. Just the slumber of the ship, lulling her along, rocking ever so slightly against the hum of the whirring engines.

Her heart rate was increasing, pounding against her chest like a Magna-train with a suicidal driver. What had she witnessed exactly? She couldn’t recall, save for a black mass, shaped like a human head, with two eyes. They had seemed to be somewhat squinting, evil, as if they saw through the camera, into her very soul. She stood, rooted to the spot, a cold sweat creeping over her. She was beyond scared; it was creeping over that tipping point into sheer, unadulterated terror. It could have been anything, a Brykthylosian, a Kozolequinian, some unseen terror with five hundred tentacles writing and pulsating all over, and it would not have gripped at her fear as much as those two eyes did. They knew her, it seemed, and they would punish her for an unseen sin. She had to do something.

She went for her Halo-Core. She knew she should investigate it herself, see if it was just her paranoia and memory of the dream, but something told her that it was real, what she had just seen. There was no way it couldn’t have been, it was the evilest thing that she had ever witnessed. If it wasn’t her mind playing tricks on her, Holden had said her head was perfectly fine after all, then something was there, and she needed back-up and emotional security. She went to alert Duma and then looked back to the screen. It had been outside Duma’s quarters, isolated from the rest of the sleeping areas. The door to his room stood open, and she watched it slide shut again. Yuki was paralyzed for a second, her body refusing to follow her brain’s orders. She needed to go to Duma, to get there instantly, to protect him. Yet her body seemed to be arguing against that loyalty which her brain was plucking at, telling her brain, in no uncertain terms, to sod off with that idea.

Her brain eventually won. She reached for her gun and her Halo-Core. She turned on the coms in Duma’s room. She shook nerves in her veins. Would he answer? What if it was too late? What was now behind that door, that stood closed against her. There were no cameras for the rooms during sleeping hours, so she couldn’t know what was happening. She pressed for the coms.

‘Duma?’ she whispered, her voice shaking and cracked, like the earth in a desert, baking under a sun so hot it burned all that walked under it. There was no reply. Terror gripped at her heart. She asked again. Still nothing. She was frantic now, ready to move on out. Then, his voice.

‘Yuki?’ He sounded groggy as if he had just woken up. Most likely she had woken him, or the door had.

‘Duma, something, something’s there,’ she said, trying to sound as calm as possible. Under the circumstances, she thought she was doing pretty darn well.

‘What do you mean? What are you…?’

‘Your door just opened, and I saw, I saw something. It…’ she couldn’t bring herself to describe what she had seen. It was so simple to describe, and yet she knew nothing would ever be able to depict it.

‘What did you see? Yuki?’

‘Just stay there, and arm yourself. Shoot anything that moves until I get there.’ She had warned him. She dropped the Halo-Core and moved with all the speed she could muster.

That flight through the ship was horrifying for Yuki. She saw all of the beams, the pipes, and the trusses turn into trees. Their branches clawed out to her, called to her, beckoning at her. Her heart raced the same way it did in her dreams when The Man in The Top Hat was behind her, closing in every second, an unstoppable force on a collision course with her final, ultimate end. The ship seemed to be conscious, twisting away from her. She never had full focus, her vision was blurry, and she fell twice, grazing her elbow but ignoring the pain. The cold steel was ever colder, the dark spaces ever darker, and the lights overhead, oh those warm Celestrian lights; they were ever dimmer onboard the ship.