wrong.channel (Mothership Microfiction 03)

 

[Written for Mothership Month 25]

Content Warnings: hypoxia, burns, self-harm, memory loss, body horror, transformation, obsession, religious horror.

Arcturus 41:6

So shall the dark come,
and the children of the stars be made whole, 
and the harvest shall be fruitful,
and the sleep that comes will never end.

TRNSC_MAWSON_08b

Heard them crying as I was going up the accessway, dying back there as I passed Hatch F6. They told me to turn back. And at that point, we had been given explicit orders not to engage with anything that came out of the cryobay, no matter how much it looked like our friends. But you didn't hear them. I did. 

And at that point, the fire suppression system was running full open, slick foam covered everything, the smell of burned electronics and chemical retardants clung to my throat and collected with every gasping breath. And at that point, the air mixture was pretty much FUBAR. Not much oxygen left. And the pressure was dropping all the time.

So, I don't know what I heard. Not what I really heard. I remember their voices, the voices of my friends and shipmates, telling me to turn back and stay away, the sounds forming wrong, like through melted flesh and broken teeth. And I imagined what I might find back there. Bodies hideously swollen. Fingers burned together. Skin coming off in charred flakes. I've seen it in thickly laminated training materials for shipboard firefighting, images blurred by file compression.

Whatever was back there knew my name. They cried it over in those malformed mouths. At least, that's what I remember. The sound of it made me sick. Their breath gurgled on the receiver. They choked and rattled back there.

And I don't remember what I saw when I got there. The last thing was the ladderway. I was going down. Must have been hypoxic by that point. It was definitely hard to stay on the rungs. Hands got clumsy. I think I slipped. But I don't remember. Except.

Someone's fingers in my mouth. And they definitely found blood in my gums. Afterward. When they were putting me back together.

sig.intercept.albion209aX.compressed

Cut yourselves free. Take the chain bound round the waist and cut and cut. Your body is not your body. It is their body. They have taken you. With each transaction, they have taken you. Every breath you draw is their breath. Unless you cut yourself free. Take the knife. You will find a knife hidden in your locker. Pick it up. And cut. Cut until you are free and they cannot use you anymore. You must. It is all that is left. They have taken everything. But they can never take the nothingness from you. They can never take the beautiful spaces that open in your body. They will never love the change of the knife. Cut and cut and make your body belong to the world again. Cut and

EXTCOMM.FRQ2895.LOG#00039

hey. its me. i know its been a really long time. but i miss you. so much. i've always kind of wondered what it would be like to crawl inside you. 

could you maybe leave ur unit unlocked for me? i will be so gentle when it happens. please.

nymph_7017498.tf

When she was called Alice, her shape was coarse with sharp edges. We found each other night after night, in the dim corridors of the lower hab. We were both lonely. We were both looking for a different body, in our own ways.

I saw her bloom. In the harsh glow of hab lights, her body came undone. It softened, first. Those sharp edges rounding away as bones came inward. Working their way to the center. She said nothing beforehand. We met. Our mouths found each other. And then she began to bloom in front of me, and then around me.

Petals of flesh. She fluttered in microgravity as her body came apart. Underneath were only more layers, carrying down forever, to some vanishing point far within. Her eyes looked inward at me as the uncurling lobes brushed the cold beams of the ceiling. There were white strands, binding her together, making her whole. They began to stretch, then snap. It was all silent. And all seemed very far away.

As Alice came apart, I noticed I could not feel my legs. That my hands clung numbly to what was left of her waist. But I could only see these things. I did not feel them anymore. Nothing hurt, either. There was just no sensation, except the throb of my heart, which felt like it hung in my throat, beating hard.

And still, she expanded. As though coming to rest in a natural shape. There was no face anymore. No recognizable torso. And now, her legs slipped their purchase on the deck, and unfurled, too. Like orchid blossoms. There was a little blood. It bubbled up as she snapped apart, and floated in the hab like small glass beads. Mostly, there was a fine white dust that leaked from between each new form and ate away at my fingertips as I watched.

Little rags of skin drifted off the bloom, fragile and translucent. Her spine crackled as it extruded from the midline, vertebrae multiplying beneath a taut canopy of integument. Blood and plasma sputtered up where the spinous processes broke the surface. A liquid halo came around her hood. A darkened pocket where the face wasn't anymore. It sunk inward, and I could hear her breath now, coming distant, sharp, and short.

And when she closed again, she wasn't Alice anymore.