Monday, February 23, 2009
Sunday, November 16, 2008
The Terror from Above and Below
This isn't exactly what I had in mind when I heard I'd be taking my first flight to Hawaii, thought Thomas Fiddel. He had departed from LAX at around midnight, and it was now around 1 AM. He wasn't quite sure if he'd passed over a timezone or not yet, although he must be pretty close. The only things he was overly aware of relative to the situation was that he was tired, and it was dark. He hadn't even touched his coffee, he hated the airline shit they tried to give him.
When he was younger, Thomas always had a fascination with aircraft. Well, he had a fascination with travel, and like most people, was curious just how the hell something that heavy could stay up in the air, but other than that, he wasn't much interested in airplanes. Still though, there was something alluring about being an international pilot for a major airline. He'd get to see the world, meet all sorts of interesting passengers, hell, he might even find out how these things stay up in the air.
At least that's the impression the brochure gave him. The truth of the situation was that he had to keep a big, heavy chunk of metal up in the air while dozens of businessmen and tourists in the room behind him vomited into little bags, or chattered obnoxiously in either strange foreign tongues or, worse, English. If they were only speaking foreign languages, at least he could pretend they were having an interesting conversation about far away lands that he'd really only seen through the plane's cockpit window, or whatever scraps of culture showed up in the airport terminal. But when they spoke English, all he would hear about is what happened on that new popular soap opera or reality show, or how much a given businessman holds contempt for his family. It was starting to get to him.
He fiddled with the yoke absentmindedly, waiting impatiently to see land, to see city lights, or great mountains and volcanoes, waiting to see ANYTHING beyond the flat, depressing, blue ocean that was the only thing he'd seen for at least an hour, save for the cockpit control panels and an occasional stewardess.
He'd only been at the job less than a month, but it was already starting to get to him. Putting up with all the obnoxious people day in and day out, having his biological clock interrupted on an hourly basis, and the only world-traveling he ever did was some miles above the landmarks he longed to see from the ground, up close. He didn't see it as just, he didn't want to put up with all this shit.
“Hey miss, can you please warm this coffee up for me?” He asked a stewardess coming in to see if he needed anything. He didn't like the coffee, and he avoided drinking it, but he needed something before he crashed, and it was better than nothing. “Right away, sir.” She gave a tiny bow and scurried out of the room with the little plastic thermos in hand.
About a minute later, he heard some shouting in the passenger cabin, and what sounded like most of the passengers screaming bloody murder. Jesus, what's going on NOW, Tom thought. Suddenly, the door to the cockpit burst open and a man wielding a 9mm handgun stumbled in over the fallen door, shouting for Thomas to get up. He did as instructed, and then walked back into the passenger cabin with his hands over his head, as he was instructed to do at gunpoint.
“Alright people, remain calm. If we do what the men say, we'll get out of this unharmed.” Said the stewardess, shivering at the gun barrel lodged into her lower back, the short man holding it squeezed tight up against her from behind. Damn, a hijacking, Thomas mused. This was exciting, sure, but compared to something this extreme, the tedium of being an airline pilot was the most fun thing on the planet. He felt a pang of guilt at constantly complaining about his boring job.
Just then, the passengers screamed again. But something was weird about this scream; only the passengers on the left side of the cabin screamed. Thomas dared to lean over from the back of the cabin, where he was forced to stand, and look out of the window, where the screaming passenger's eyes seemed to be glued.
What he saw was some sort of black outline, something tall and cone-shaped. A skyscraper? No, that's not right, they were hundreds of miles away from the nearest city. Another plane? No, planes don't usually extend for several miles out of the ocean.
Suddenly, the structure moved, beginning a hurtling descent onto the water's surface. It dawned on Thomas that this thing was not man-made at all. It was the limb of some sort of creature, a giant tentacle, complete with suction cups and sand and scum from the ocean floor. “Jesus Christ!” Thomas shouted, reeling back to the cabin wall, slumping to the floor in sheer terror. Several passengers lost their dinners at the sight, most of them not reaching for the sick bags and dirtying the upholstery of the seats and the floors.
Thomas' mind and heart both raced faster than light speed. What the fuck was that thing? Just a hallucination? Did I mistake it for something else, something more logical and familiar?
Before he could start formulating a theory for what the thing he saw really was, the plane suddenly whipped around 180 degrees, spilling a few stray passengers into the aisle, and knocking over anyone who was standing. Thomas took this momentary distraction to overthrow one of the terrorists and take his gun. He barreled forward and tackled the short man, still on his knees and attempting to pull himself up. He reached down and swiped the man's gun from the floor. He pistol-whipped the man's head a few times, until he was sure he was at least unconscious, then quickly made his way up to the cockpit.
It wasn't exactly a pretty sight; when the plane was flipped around, he must have gotten motion sickness and puked all over the floor, because the ground was slippery with half-digested bits of what looked like what you'd find in an average BLT. While he was hurling the contents of his sandwich onto the floor, he must not have seen the fire extinguisher he was rapidly leaning towards, because he fell into the metal canister and split his skull open, killing him painfully and slowly. Even now he was still twitching around like a little mouses' nose, stirring up the puddle of drying sick and blood and brains he was lying face-down in.
Trying to ignore the mess (and pausing once, briefly, to vomit), Thomas crawled over to the controls and attempted to take control of the plane and escape whatever it was out there swinging at the plane like it was the goddamn World Series.
He yanked the yoke to the right and up, to get out of reach of the tentacle. The plane bumped and started losing altitude. Thomas guessed the tentacle brushed the bottom of the plane. He tried to counter the force of being smacked down into the ocean, and for all intents and purposes succeeded, although he was flying at a lower altitude than ever.
Behind him, a stewardess let out a blood-curdling scream, falling over and rolling around in the aisle, still screaming and flailing around. For a moment, Thomas thought she had lost her mind; he looked over and saw her wrestling with what looked like a giant fleshy crab, all six pointed legs trying to rip off the flight attendant's face.
He ran back into the passenger cabin and saw nothing but chaos; the passengers screaming, four dead bodies on the floor (one of the short terrorist, one of the stewardess he had at gunpoint, and two more who died from the shrapnel of a burst window, through which the crab thing must have gained access), and the stewardess, still wrestling the beast off of herself, large chunks of flesh missing from her arms and face, clothes ripped to shreds. He took the handgun he had previously tucked into his waistband and fired a few shots into the crab, at an angle so as to avoid harming the stewardess. The crab slumped over onto the woman's face, one of it's claws half-dug into a gaping wound in her head. It wasn't all too clear whether she was dead or didn't have the energy to scream, but Thomas wasn't worried about that right now. He had to get everyone to safety, right this minute.
He dashed into the cockpit and fiddled with the radio, trying to send out an emergency broadcast. No good, the equipment was destroyed when the terrorist's corpse slammed into it. Shit, he thought, how the fuck are we getting out of this?
He heard a deafening crunch behind him, and jerked his head back out the cockpit door again. The tentacle had ripped off the left side of the plane, and swatted at a few of the passengers, knocking several of them out and slamming a few of them into the opposite side of the cabin. The plane jerked to the left and dumped several passengers out into the water, splashing the tentacle with bloody seawater and miscellaneous personal items, such as cell phones and shreds of clothes.
Thomas threw himself onto the yoke and flung the plane into a level position, immediately regretting it, because the bodily fluids on the floor came up to splash him in the face and stain the windshield. He retched once, then composed himself and started trying to fly upwards again, but something was wrong. Something was holding him back. He peered out of the cockpit and looked out of the gaping hole in the side, noting the blood stains and chunks of flesh arranged around the sharp edges of the gash. He made a mental note to throw up when he had the time.
The tentacle had wrapped itself around the circumference of the plane, and was squeezing tightly, attempting to break the plane in half just behind the wing. The plane was not actually moving of it's own volition anymore; the tentacle was swinging it wildly back and forth, giving the appearance of movement. The hull of the plane creaked under the weight of the pressure exerted by the mighty creature, and threatened to snap any second. The roof and floor of the cabin were already starting to warp inwards. Thomas had to do something. Fast.
He stepped forward and grabbed onto the luggage rack to stabilize himself, and went for his gun. He aimed right at the tentacle and prepared to empty the clip right into it's blubbery exterior.
“Wait...what's that?” Thomas had noticed something. It was dark, and he could still really only make out a vague outline of the tentacle, but there was movement on it. Something was moving more than the tentacle itself. Little crab-like things scurrying around, all gathering around the tentacle where the hole in the side of the plane was located.
All at once, several dozen legs retracted and contracted, plunging into the hole willy-nilly, attaching themselves to the nearest humans, tearing bits of skin and muscle tissue off, shoving it into little organic tubes that Thomas guessed were their mouths. One of them jumped in Thomas' direction, and he fired what was left of the clip loaded into the handgun (three rounds) into the crab's tube, sending it flying back out through the hole, smacking against the side of another crab coming to join the feast.
Thomas fell with a thud on top of a crab someone had managed to kill with his bare hands, before succumbing to it's frenzy at last, and did a backwards crawl back into the cockpit. The walls of the passenger cabin were bending inwards almost a foot by now, coming to breaking point. It was going to be over in seconds.
Several things happened all at once. The back half of the airplane snapped off, leaving a little inward curl of metal in the half containing the cockpit, and the rest of the passengers in the other half. (In fact, one passenger remained in the other half, who had screamed to Thomas “Hell of a story to tell up in Heaven, eh? We died getting eaten by some sort of alien!” He was not sure Thomas had heard him, but through his own insanity, he still managed to amuse himself.) The plane began skimming the top of the water, slowing ever-so-slightly, but not stopping or altogether sinking. A squadron of fighter jets zoomed overhead, firing little dots of smoking light in the general direction of the chaos seen from outside the back of the cockpit half of the plane. The creature attached to the tentacle gave out a soul-crushing roar, lifting it's head above the water and howling in rage.
The creature's face was of an indescribable and Lovecraftian quality. It rather looks like a cross between an octopus and an old man's face, comported over a watermelon, with tentacles sticking out of the back, and a neck composed of several strands of membrane. Thomas pondered the horrifying beast's biology for a moment, before realizing how grotesque it looked and making good on his promise to himself to vomit later.
The creature's tentacle (the one that was holding the other half of the plane) swung around viciously, spilling human and crab corpses out of the windows and the gaping hole in it's front, dribbling into the monster's screaming maw, swallowed whole.
The jets circled around and fired a few stray rockets into the creature's mouth, unhinging it's jaw and forcing it to slam the plane piece into it's own face, again howling in pain. Another tentacle flopped up out of the water with a mighty crash, washing away the only other survivor of the disaster besides Thomas, and finally forcing the plane to sink at last.
This is it, Thomas realized, this is how I'm going to die. Then, a third tentacle came up and smacked the cockpit up into the air, hurling Thomas into the windshield and cracking it. The plane flew what must have been 200 feet into the air, and then it began falling back to the water, killing Thomas at last.
The windshield cracked open finally, and spilled Thomas and some loose bits of the control panel out into the open, forcing Thomas to scream louder than he ever has in his life.
The monster's head moved into the path of the plummeting debris, and the last thing Thomas saw was an eye composed of thousands of little eyes, staring up at him, waiting for the chaos to end, to die at last.
It was the biggest justice could be done to him, to die finally, after all he lived through.
There was a wet splat, a mighty roar in the distance, the sound of screaming jets blazing around at thousands of miles per hour, perhaps on another world, and then being swatted from the sky by a mighty limb composed of blubbery flesh and parasites and spiny bones, and then it was all light and darkness.
The chaos was over, but there were no happy endings.
When he was younger, Thomas always had a fascination with aircraft. Well, he had a fascination with travel, and like most people, was curious just how the hell something that heavy could stay up in the air, but other than that, he wasn't much interested in airplanes. Still though, there was something alluring about being an international pilot for a major airline. He'd get to see the world, meet all sorts of interesting passengers, hell, he might even find out how these things stay up in the air.
At least that's the impression the brochure gave him. The truth of the situation was that he had to keep a big, heavy chunk of metal up in the air while dozens of businessmen and tourists in the room behind him vomited into little bags, or chattered obnoxiously in either strange foreign tongues or, worse, English. If they were only speaking foreign languages, at least he could pretend they were having an interesting conversation about far away lands that he'd really only seen through the plane's cockpit window, or whatever scraps of culture showed up in the airport terminal. But when they spoke English, all he would hear about is what happened on that new popular soap opera or reality show, or how much a given businessman holds contempt for his family. It was starting to get to him.
He fiddled with the yoke absentmindedly, waiting impatiently to see land, to see city lights, or great mountains and volcanoes, waiting to see ANYTHING beyond the flat, depressing, blue ocean that was the only thing he'd seen for at least an hour, save for the cockpit control panels and an occasional stewardess.
He'd only been at the job less than a month, but it was already starting to get to him. Putting up with all the obnoxious people day in and day out, having his biological clock interrupted on an hourly basis, and the only world-traveling he ever did was some miles above the landmarks he longed to see from the ground, up close. He didn't see it as just, he didn't want to put up with all this shit.
“Hey miss, can you please warm this coffee up for me?” He asked a stewardess coming in to see if he needed anything. He didn't like the coffee, and he avoided drinking it, but he needed something before he crashed, and it was better than nothing. “Right away, sir.” She gave a tiny bow and scurried out of the room with the little plastic thermos in hand.
About a minute later, he heard some shouting in the passenger cabin, and what sounded like most of the passengers screaming bloody murder. Jesus, what's going on NOW, Tom thought. Suddenly, the door to the cockpit burst open and a man wielding a 9mm handgun stumbled in over the fallen door, shouting for Thomas to get up. He did as instructed, and then walked back into the passenger cabin with his hands over his head, as he was instructed to do at gunpoint.
“Alright people, remain calm. If we do what the men say, we'll get out of this unharmed.” Said the stewardess, shivering at the gun barrel lodged into her lower back, the short man holding it squeezed tight up against her from behind. Damn, a hijacking, Thomas mused. This was exciting, sure, but compared to something this extreme, the tedium of being an airline pilot was the most fun thing on the planet. He felt a pang of guilt at constantly complaining about his boring job.
Just then, the passengers screamed again. But something was weird about this scream; only the passengers on the left side of the cabin screamed. Thomas dared to lean over from the back of the cabin, where he was forced to stand, and look out of the window, where the screaming passenger's eyes seemed to be glued.
What he saw was some sort of black outline, something tall and cone-shaped. A skyscraper? No, that's not right, they were hundreds of miles away from the nearest city. Another plane? No, planes don't usually extend for several miles out of the ocean.
Suddenly, the structure moved, beginning a hurtling descent onto the water's surface. It dawned on Thomas that this thing was not man-made at all. It was the limb of some sort of creature, a giant tentacle, complete with suction cups and sand and scum from the ocean floor. “Jesus Christ!” Thomas shouted, reeling back to the cabin wall, slumping to the floor in sheer terror. Several passengers lost their dinners at the sight, most of them not reaching for the sick bags and dirtying the upholstery of the seats and the floors.
Thomas' mind and heart both raced faster than light speed. What the fuck was that thing? Just a hallucination? Did I mistake it for something else, something more logical and familiar?
Before he could start formulating a theory for what the thing he saw really was, the plane suddenly whipped around 180 degrees, spilling a few stray passengers into the aisle, and knocking over anyone who was standing. Thomas took this momentary distraction to overthrow one of the terrorists and take his gun. He barreled forward and tackled the short man, still on his knees and attempting to pull himself up. He reached down and swiped the man's gun from the floor. He pistol-whipped the man's head a few times, until he was sure he was at least unconscious, then quickly made his way up to the cockpit.
It wasn't exactly a pretty sight; when the plane was flipped around, he must have gotten motion sickness and puked all over the floor, because the ground was slippery with half-digested bits of what looked like what you'd find in an average BLT. While he was hurling the contents of his sandwich onto the floor, he must not have seen the fire extinguisher he was rapidly leaning towards, because he fell into the metal canister and split his skull open, killing him painfully and slowly. Even now he was still twitching around like a little mouses' nose, stirring up the puddle of drying sick and blood and brains he was lying face-down in.
Trying to ignore the mess (and pausing once, briefly, to vomit), Thomas crawled over to the controls and attempted to take control of the plane and escape whatever it was out there swinging at the plane like it was the goddamn World Series.
He yanked the yoke to the right and up, to get out of reach of the tentacle. The plane bumped and started losing altitude. Thomas guessed the tentacle brushed the bottom of the plane. He tried to counter the force of being smacked down into the ocean, and for all intents and purposes succeeded, although he was flying at a lower altitude than ever.
Behind him, a stewardess let out a blood-curdling scream, falling over and rolling around in the aisle, still screaming and flailing around. For a moment, Thomas thought she had lost her mind; he looked over and saw her wrestling with what looked like a giant fleshy crab, all six pointed legs trying to rip off the flight attendant's face.
He ran back into the passenger cabin and saw nothing but chaos; the passengers screaming, four dead bodies on the floor (one of the short terrorist, one of the stewardess he had at gunpoint, and two more who died from the shrapnel of a burst window, through which the crab thing must have gained access), and the stewardess, still wrestling the beast off of herself, large chunks of flesh missing from her arms and face, clothes ripped to shreds. He took the handgun he had previously tucked into his waistband and fired a few shots into the crab, at an angle so as to avoid harming the stewardess. The crab slumped over onto the woman's face, one of it's claws half-dug into a gaping wound in her head. It wasn't all too clear whether she was dead or didn't have the energy to scream, but Thomas wasn't worried about that right now. He had to get everyone to safety, right this minute.
He dashed into the cockpit and fiddled with the radio, trying to send out an emergency broadcast. No good, the equipment was destroyed when the terrorist's corpse slammed into it. Shit, he thought, how the fuck are we getting out of this?
He heard a deafening crunch behind him, and jerked his head back out the cockpit door again. The tentacle had ripped off the left side of the plane, and swatted at a few of the passengers, knocking several of them out and slamming a few of them into the opposite side of the cabin. The plane jerked to the left and dumped several passengers out into the water, splashing the tentacle with bloody seawater and miscellaneous personal items, such as cell phones and shreds of clothes.
Thomas threw himself onto the yoke and flung the plane into a level position, immediately regretting it, because the bodily fluids on the floor came up to splash him in the face and stain the windshield. He retched once, then composed himself and started trying to fly upwards again, but something was wrong. Something was holding him back. He peered out of the cockpit and looked out of the gaping hole in the side, noting the blood stains and chunks of flesh arranged around the sharp edges of the gash. He made a mental note to throw up when he had the time.
The tentacle had wrapped itself around the circumference of the plane, and was squeezing tightly, attempting to break the plane in half just behind the wing. The plane was not actually moving of it's own volition anymore; the tentacle was swinging it wildly back and forth, giving the appearance of movement. The hull of the plane creaked under the weight of the pressure exerted by the mighty creature, and threatened to snap any second. The roof and floor of the cabin were already starting to warp inwards. Thomas had to do something. Fast.
He stepped forward and grabbed onto the luggage rack to stabilize himself, and went for his gun. He aimed right at the tentacle and prepared to empty the clip right into it's blubbery exterior.
“Wait...what's that?” Thomas had noticed something. It was dark, and he could still really only make out a vague outline of the tentacle, but there was movement on it. Something was moving more than the tentacle itself. Little crab-like things scurrying around, all gathering around the tentacle where the hole in the side of the plane was located.
All at once, several dozen legs retracted and contracted, plunging into the hole willy-nilly, attaching themselves to the nearest humans, tearing bits of skin and muscle tissue off, shoving it into little organic tubes that Thomas guessed were their mouths. One of them jumped in Thomas' direction, and he fired what was left of the clip loaded into the handgun (three rounds) into the crab's tube, sending it flying back out through the hole, smacking against the side of another crab coming to join the feast.
Thomas fell with a thud on top of a crab someone had managed to kill with his bare hands, before succumbing to it's frenzy at last, and did a backwards crawl back into the cockpit. The walls of the passenger cabin were bending inwards almost a foot by now, coming to breaking point. It was going to be over in seconds.
Several things happened all at once. The back half of the airplane snapped off, leaving a little inward curl of metal in the half containing the cockpit, and the rest of the passengers in the other half. (In fact, one passenger remained in the other half, who had screamed to Thomas “Hell of a story to tell up in Heaven, eh? We died getting eaten by some sort of alien!” He was not sure Thomas had heard him, but through his own insanity, he still managed to amuse himself.) The plane began skimming the top of the water, slowing ever-so-slightly, but not stopping or altogether sinking. A squadron of fighter jets zoomed overhead, firing little dots of smoking light in the general direction of the chaos seen from outside the back of the cockpit half of the plane. The creature attached to the tentacle gave out a soul-crushing roar, lifting it's head above the water and howling in rage.
The creature's face was of an indescribable and Lovecraftian quality. It rather looks like a cross between an octopus and an old man's face, comported over a watermelon, with tentacles sticking out of the back, and a neck composed of several strands of membrane. Thomas pondered the horrifying beast's biology for a moment, before realizing how grotesque it looked and making good on his promise to himself to vomit later.
The creature's tentacle (the one that was holding the other half of the plane) swung around viciously, spilling human and crab corpses out of the windows and the gaping hole in it's front, dribbling into the monster's screaming maw, swallowed whole.
The jets circled around and fired a few stray rockets into the creature's mouth, unhinging it's jaw and forcing it to slam the plane piece into it's own face, again howling in pain. Another tentacle flopped up out of the water with a mighty crash, washing away the only other survivor of the disaster besides Thomas, and finally forcing the plane to sink at last.
This is it, Thomas realized, this is how I'm going to die. Then, a third tentacle came up and smacked the cockpit up into the air, hurling Thomas into the windshield and cracking it. The plane flew what must have been 200 feet into the air, and then it began falling back to the water, killing Thomas at last.
The windshield cracked open finally, and spilled Thomas and some loose bits of the control panel out into the open, forcing Thomas to scream louder than he ever has in his life.
The monster's head moved into the path of the plummeting debris, and the last thing Thomas saw was an eye composed of thousands of little eyes, staring up at him, waiting for the chaos to end, to die at last.
It was the biggest justice could be done to him, to die finally, after all he lived through.
There was a wet splat, a mighty roar in the distance, the sound of screaming jets blazing around at thousands of miles per hour, perhaps on another world, and then being swatted from the sky by a mighty limb composed of blubbery flesh and parasites and spiny bones, and then it was all light and darkness.
The chaos was over, but there were no happy endings.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Speechless
I'm going to keep this short, as I can feel the vomit rising in my throat, but I just want to make a sort of public service announcement:
NEVER, and I mean NEVER, even out of the most morbid curiosity, read Spongebob slash fiction.
Ever.
NEVER, and I mean NEVER, even out of the most morbid curiosity, read Spongebob slash fiction.
Ever.
Saturday, September 20, 2008
My very first poem:
Poems suck,
What the fuck.
All those emo kids,
making gay-ass bids
on whether fags will like their crappy poems.
Can't stand the sobbing,
the vein in my head is throbbing,
and I just had an aneurism.
What the fuck.
All those emo kids,
making gay-ass bids
on whether fags will like their crappy poems.
Can't stand the sobbing,
the vein in my head is throbbing,
and I just had an aneurism.
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Luckiest man on Entler, part 5
The Tremoyen are a race that thrives in the unfavorable climate on Entler; they're a large, but diverse, tribal race that tunnels into mountainsides and takes refuge in cave systems. The tribes themselves number in the dozens on averaqge, and are seperated out the entire planet of Entler. Of the few things that are known about them, one thing is for sure:
They don't like strangers.
When exposed to an alien environment, it's not uncommon for a human to panic; they are very stressful creatures, and they tend to react poorly to new and dangerous situations. If ever there was a man panicking in a strange environment, it was Jeremy (something). He was beginning to think he was losing his mind, but it was rather hard to tell. It all SEEMED to be happening, at least.
“You see, the colonists wish to use this planet as a residential planet, but we all know how wasteful and harsh to the environmeny they are...” Even as Rylch'k (or Eustice, he wasn't sure how to address her) was telling him all this, he couldn't help but run a thought over in his head, and this thought blocked out all others: “Where the hell am I?”
But that would have to wait, there was a much more pressing matter at hand: the fact that he could barely walk, on account of his broken leg. "Excuse me, but my leg is really in need of some goddamn attention." She looked him over, and her eyes locked onto his right leg for a few moments. "Ah yes," she said at last, "I'll have to have a look at th-" and that is when Jeremy stopped listening, for he had passed out.
They don't like strangers.
When exposed to an alien environment, it's not uncommon for a human to panic; they are very stressful creatures, and they tend to react poorly to new and dangerous situations. If ever there was a man panicking in a strange environment, it was Jeremy (something). He was beginning to think he was losing his mind, but it was rather hard to tell. It all SEEMED to be happening, at least.
“You see, the colonists wish to use this planet as a residential planet, but we all know how wasteful and harsh to the environmeny they are...” Even as Rylch'k (or Eustice, he wasn't sure how to address her) was telling him all this, he couldn't help but run a thought over in his head, and this thought blocked out all others: “Where the hell am I?”
But that would have to wait, there was a much more pressing matter at hand: the fact that he could barely walk, on account of his broken leg. "Excuse me, but my leg is really in need of some goddamn attention." She looked him over, and her eyes locked onto his right leg for a few moments. "Ah yes," she said at last, "I'll have to have a look at th-" and that is when Jeremy stopped listening, for he had passed out.
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Brief Interlude
Slight case of writer's block, so chapter 5 of the Entler saga might take a little while. In the meantime, I got a major part of my new computer desk together!
These shelves are going to go under the desk, and I'll put books and CDs and the like under the desk. I just finished staining them today, but tomorrow is a coat of Polyurethane. It's a fairly large load of work, but it's already looking great.
And a quick detail shot:
So stay tuned for chapter 5 of Entler, SOMETIME this week, hopefully.
These shelves are going to go under the desk, and I'll put books and CDs and the like under the desk. I just finished staining them today, but tomorrow is a coat of Polyurethane. It's a fairly large load of work, but it's already looking great.
And a quick detail shot:
So stay tuned for chapter 5 of Entler, SOMETIME this week, hopefully.
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Luckiest man on Entler, part 4
Sitting in a corner of the cramped little room he was in, Jeremy still wanted to sob hysterically, but he knew that whoever that voice belonged to was on it's way to get him, and lord knows what it wanted with him.
The planet Entler in the Astren system is a barren desert world covered fully in clouds all of the time, with very little water anywhere to be found (though enough to support life). The atmosphere, however, is breathable by humans with no environmental alteration or use of life-support, making it a prime candidate for colonization. Currently, there have been 12 colonization attempts on Entler.
None have succeeded.
The Astren system itself isn't much to speak of; two gas giants, each orbited by three moons, orbit the sun. Their names are Y'ltar and Jupitus, and Entler is technically the moon of Jupitus. At night, the gas giant is quite visible, and it's a shame that Jeremy missed the view, for he was sleeping, being watched by an odd creature who believed that he could help his people.
When the door opened, Jeremy stood up and promptly fell back down, when he saw what was walking into the cell: a tall woman, brown-haired and wearing some sort of flak jacket over a worn military uniform, with black combat boots and holding an assault rifle in her elegant hands. There was a device around her neck, which looked like a dog collar, only with a small box attached to the front of it. As the woman's mouth moved, the words did not seem to be hers. In fact, they sounded rather robotic. She said "Pleasure to meet you, I am known as Rylch'k on this world, but my former name is Eustice."
The planet Entler in the Astren system is a barren desert world covered fully in clouds all of the time, with very little water anywhere to be found (though enough to support life). The atmosphere, however, is breathable by humans with no environmental alteration or use of life-support, making it a prime candidate for colonization. Currently, there have been 12 colonization attempts on Entler.
None have succeeded.
The Astren system itself isn't much to speak of; two gas giants, each orbited by three moons, orbit the sun. Their names are Y'ltar and Jupitus, and Entler is technically the moon of Jupitus. At night, the gas giant is quite visible, and it's a shame that Jeremy missed the view, for he was sleeping, being watched by an odd creature who believed that he could help his people.
When the door opened, Jeremy stood up and promptly fell back down, when he saw what was walking into the cell: a tall woman, brown-haired and wearing some sort of flak jacket over a worn military uniform, with black combat boots and holding an assault rifle in her elegant hands. There was a device around her neck, which looked like a dog collar, only with a small box attached to the front of it. As the woman's mouth moved, the words did not seem to be hers. In fact, they sounded rather robotic. She said "Pleasure to meet you, I am known as Rylch'k on this world, but my former name is Eustice."
Saturday, August 09, 2008
Luckiest man on Entler, part 3
When he arrived in the cavern, he didn't quite know what to make of what he was seeing; there were what seemed to be dwellings carved into the walls, and there were stairs made of stone, and a waterfall leading into a hole who knows who deep on one end of the massive inhabited area of this gigantic cavern. There were creatures in doorways, and by the waterfall, and walking towards the group that was carrying Jeremy in their claws.
What gave the cavern light was anyone's guess; there were many things on the walls and the ceilings that could bring the gentle glow that was omnipresent in the large grotto, deep underneath the surface of Entler.
“Just my luck,” Jeremy thought to himself, as he was dragged into a small room, about 7 feet wide, but over twice his own height. There they left him, closing a stone door behind them when they exited the room. Above him, Jeremy saw a small hole in the wall, but he could not see inside of it. He wanted very much to crawl into the corner and sob himself into a coma, but he knew he had to be a little more alert than that to survive this. Just when he was starting to succumb to his own desire to break down, a deep, booming voice echoed through the small room, shocking Jeremy to his feet and against the far wall.
“Do you have any idea why you are here?” It asked nonchalantly, but with a certain tone of authority. Jeremy did not respond, for he was too shocked to even open his mouth. “I repeat, do you have any idea why you are here?” “N-no.” Jeremy managed to croak out.
The voice spoke again: “I wish to find out if you would be of use to us.” “What do you want me for?” Jeremy inquired, rather terrified. “The fact that you are even asking tells me you may be what I need right now. I will be right down to retrieve you.”
What gave the cavern light was anyone's guess; there were many things on the walls and the ceilings that could bring the gentle glow that was omnipresent in the large grotto, deep underneath the surface of Entler.
“Just my luck,” Jeremy thought to himself, as he was dragged into a small room, about 7 feet wide, but over twice his own height. There they left him, closing a stone door behind them when they exited the room. Above him, Jeremy saw a small hole in the wall, but he could not see inside of it. He wanted very much to crawl into the corner and sob himself into a coma, but he knew he had to be a little more alert than that to survive this. Just when he was starting to succumb to his own desire to break down, a deep, booming voice echoed through the small room, shocking Jeremy to his feet and against the far wall.
“Do you have any idea why you are here?” It asked nonchalantly, but with a certain tone of authority. Jeremy did not respond, for he was too shocked to even open his mouth. “I repeat, do you have any idea why you are here?” “N-no.” Jeremy managed to croak out.
The voice spoke again: “I wish to find out if you would be of use to us.” “What do you want me for?” Jeremy inquired, rather terrified. “The fact that you are even asking tells me you may be what I need right now. I will be right down to retrieve you.”
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