People who don’t know what they want…
… have really been getting on my nerves lately.
People who don’t know what they want…
… have really been getting on my nerves lately.
The sun hung high in the immaculate sky. The relentless heat from it travelled a multitude of light-years only to drive itself into the flesh, particularly the flesh of a survivor, fresh from an escape-suit crash. Of course, escape may not be the best word here.
Brieze stood straight, as tall as he could, hand balanced flat over his brow, straining to see through the reflective obstruction of the sun; it’s presence insisting on being known, as it burned traces through the retina. To his right, nothing. To his left, nothing. In front of him, fuck all. Behind him, the shining monstrous glint of the escape-suit, every corner of it bouncing miniature versions of our closest star, a daytime mock constellation. Broken. It looked peaceful. “Well, his worries are over”, Brieze laughed to himself, though it wasn’t really funny.
As Brieze contemplated the machine’s seemingly comfortable state within it’s resting place, he noticed another glint, beyond the fresh junk. Cocking an eyebrow for no one to see, he walked curiously around to the other side of his accident site. “Yup”. There was something civilized not too far off indeed. At least something that represented what might have once beed civilized. No where else to go anyway. He turned quick on his heel, decidedly, and went over to the wreckage, hoping to find some survival gear and basically anything that might be useful. Especially anything resembling a weapon.
The hatch was barely able to pop open. Inside, parts were jumbled together, and his eyes came across a large round gear, sharply cogged and out of place, which, inches over, may have went ahead and given Brieze some unnecessary surgery. Removed his liver, perhaps. Or a few feet of intestinal tract. He shuffled around for a moment before noticing three things.
First, a titanium bar, fastened at the leg’s interior. At about two feet in length, this multi-purpose tool - curved at the end for leverage and prying, also peaking to a narrow flat tip for driving screws - could be made useful beyond the imagination of it’s original designer. Brieze unfastened it and hefted the thing in his hands, pursing his lower lip. “Yup”.
As he did so, he spotted the crumpled remainder of his juice container. It lay right by the putrid remainder of a nasty hand. He laxly took the small round box and squeezed out the last droplets of what was, essentially, poison. But it was a poison that let you live. As humans grew sick and overwhelmingly cancerous, a new element was created; not a cure, but a beastly organism able to attack man’s illness, and yet not him. Being liquid, it was also easily evacuated.
Crushing the plastic into an imitated raisin, Brieze noticed the third thing. Dust. A cloud of dust. Dust and sand only travel sky-ward when they are kicked up. Or blown about, but there was no real wind. Brieze felt around his pockets for his ultra-mag nano-gogs. Unfortunately, they were designed for sight in darkness, and even more unfortunately, they were cracked. Nonetheless, he propped a lens to his eye and tweaked a few dials. It was a blur. A large fast moving bulk of a blur. No shine, no metal, it was biological. “That’s…not good”. The thing’s cadence rumbled distantly, but was quickly getting louder. Brieze spun and a took a quick look in the opposite direction. What he had seen before was a cube, among squares, definitely not natural or biological. He dove his hand fast back into the suit, taking the emergency vacuum-sealed dry-food pack, pocketed it, glanced quickly around for anything else, noticing a few fairly helpful possibilities, deciding they were too heavy, and that he was in a hurry. A big hurry.
Brieze stormed off. A glance back, a brief focus of his hearing, and he knew the mad stomp of the creature at his back was heading in his direction. Heading for him. Two decades of ‘training’ pumped his legs and lungs, and he ran.
He was beginning to get used to the idea of escaping into danger. Avoiding one mess tends to cause another. Like and arm spasm you release to swat away a threatening insect, only to smack your friend, standing idly by, right in the face.
With something far far worse than than an insect - and immune to swatting - travelling fast behind him, Brieze hoped he’d find something much more forgiving that he could slap, and be safe. So he headed toward the constructions, to a place made by creatures much more human than the one that followed him. Somewhere in those moments he realized he was bleeding. “Wicked”. Sarcastic, even to himself. He picked up the pace.
The sun seared his scalp.
…is that it’s a really nice day out, and I have nowhere to go, and nothing to do out there.
Hey, at least my window is open, and I still have a few hours to find an excuse to spend some time beyond that window.
They say “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em”…but if you don’t want to join ‘em, lead and they will join you. Though, either way, they’re just content having their existence acknowledged.
Sheep: They prefer the shepherd rather than the shearer.
I’m a pure skeptic, and how. But, nonetheless, I pick up Montreal’s weekly free alternative newspaper, The Mirror, and read my horosope. Mostly just out of curiosity, and for some free ‘outside’ advice, though I know when to take it to heart, and when to toss it as nonsense. If the stars really could tell me what I should do everyday, I’d be staring up at the sky all night instead of trying to sleep.
Anyway, this is what I read today:
“Years ago a Polish scientist toiling in Antarctica was consumed with longing for a woman he’d left behind in his home country. Spilling over with the desire to express his adoration, he gathereed a mass of penguin dung and used it to spell out a large ‘M’ on the frigid ground. It was the first letter of his girlfriend’s name, Magda. To this day, two species of flowering plants have thrived in that M shaped area, fed by the fertilizing power of the dung. Your assignment in the coming week, Virgo, is to create something equally enduring and unique for someone you care for deeply.”
Sounds like a good idea, but I think I’ll avoid using excrement in my creation.
The humanoid, yet space-worthy, JumpSuit darted toward the crusty greasy Earth. Gear infested and wire veined, it’s sole purpose was escape. On this drop, it did not succeed this mission in it’s entirety; by no fault of it’s own, mind you. Aside from the Digital Landing Interface malfunction. Within the room of life, some windows just won’t open.
There are levels of shock that traumatize, and some that kill. There are moments so intense, they just numb a person. Crashing into the Earth at 600k/h in a cowardly junk suit with a rotting hand at their feet and only half a belly full of juice, knowing full well that they may not be going to a good place, will definitely numb a person.
All was noir; the metaphysical black. Sickly colors began to swim lazily in a dark pool, a thought so real that it became a feeling. Pain and shadow. The sensation of loss, but of only part of one’s self, as if one distinct voice in a large crowd was shut. The wind pulled Brieze’s hairs up straight, his eyeballs danced beneath his eyelids. Making sense didn’t seem to work. Neither did his legs. His eye lids fluttered, then shut tighter. Instinct took over. Lungs swelled. “Goddamnit”. Brieze let the words spittle out slow and deliberate, saliva trying to spill out over his lips. “‘m, still alive..?” Pain tickles his knees back to life, “Goddamnit”.
He could feel the damp, but also the hard earth, and a dusting of sand across his forehead. Near a beach? Near the coast of an ancient desert? He hoped he was just far from anything that had a nose for blood.
As it bombed down toward the surface of the planet, a little too fast, the JumpSuit had, at least, righted itself. Moments stretched and condensed, some felt like hours, some like nano-seconds. The mechanical shell, pregnant with an escapee, nailed the earth with it’s fat left leg, the impact so severe that as it was hip deep in solid pressed sand it just as abruptly bounced back out, arching high over another few kilometers. The big robotized pod balanced backward a bit, surrendering itself to gravity, heels first, ass second. After the awkward landing, the JumpSuit rested in the ground, hip-deep, knees bent, arms forward; like it had jumped into the car-seat of the world. A shiny, smoking, blue torso among the dunes, poking out of the cracked soil…
Brieze shuddered with a scent of near-memory, an aromatic wisp he wished to hold on to. He felt the need to speak aloud, “Shit, how did I end up here?…Just hope I didn’t attract too much attention”.
plenty of time to complain and be depressed once i’m dead
- - - and i’ll have something to be depressed about too
