The Black
A Sci Fi/Horror short story I wrote for Iron Age Media's latest writing prompt contest. Check it out!
He stared out of the view port enraptured by the view, his hands folded behind his back.
It always astonished him, the black.
A faint smile played across his features. When he had been a boy he had devoured every Sci Fi movie he could lay his hands on, even sneaking into the dodgy theaters in Times Square to catch the low budget Grindhouse flicks. It had been an adventure all on its own just to get there. He and his friends would walk the six blocks from the subway station to the theater, dodging the drug addicts who would slit your throat for a quarter and ogling the whores purveying their wares on the street. He could still remember the odd cigarette smoke and disinfectant smell of the theater and the way the soles of his shoes stuck to the floor. Being that the theaters usually showed what was euphemistically referred to as 'Adult Films' most of the week, it was best not to think about why exactly the floor was in the shape it was. He kept telling himself it was spilled soda, but even at twelve he knew better.
For whatever reason whenever they had shown outer space the vast majority of directors could not resist dotting their exterior shots with stars. The view outside the view port here was nothing but the deepest, most exquisite, immaculate shade of black he had ever seen. There was, naturally, not a star to be seen. The mindbogglingly vast distances between them precluded spotting even one, let alone the dozens the people behind those old films insisted on showing in every exterior wide shot. Then again, they also seemed to think that a spacecraft's engines and the epic battles he had marveled at as a child should make noise. He had found the idea laughable even then.
He glanced at the reflection of the woman slumped in the chair made hazy by the eighteen inches of super hardened poly-carbonate and the pale blue glare of the workstation on the desk in front of her. She wore the charcoal gray shirt, black trousers and boots which made up the shipboard uniform of an officer in the United Systems Marine Corps. Her black hair was clipped short in the style popular among people who spent a lot of time on spacecraft. Long hair tended to get in the way if the artificial gravity crapped out, no matter how well you tied it back. He studied the reflection a moment longer, considering. Attractive. Nice figure. She could have probably been in a recruiting vid if the right higher up had spotted her instead of here pulling security on a mostly automated mining facility on the outer rim. Yet, here you are... he thought with a wry grin as the tip of his tongue traced the topography of his teeth inside his mouth.
“You know, when I was your age, I dreamed about this.” he told her with a slight inclination of his head toward the view port. “Traveling the stars...” A line from one of his favorite television shows when he had been a teenager came to mind. “To seek out new life, new civilizations... Boldly going where no man had gone before.” He shook his head, smirked. “How naive I was.”
The woman made no response.
“Then I had a realization. An epiphany, as they say.” he said, slowly, his jaw working as if he were chewing the words before spitting them out. “Do you know when? I was a crewman on a freighter, back when the new sublight drives were still in the experimental phase. Way before your time.” His shoulders wriggled in a vague motion that might have been a shrug. “I'll never forget it. We were in dry dock at the shipyards on Callisto. The skies there... They were... God.” He grimaced, vague twinge of discomfort running through him like a man who had lost his leg stubbing his imaginary toe. He raised his hands and let them fall against his thighs with a quiet slap before folding them up at the small of his back again. “The clouds. These whirls of blues and greens and reds and shades I'd never dreamed existed before in all my days. Some side effect of the atmospheric processors.” He sucked in a deep breath, his chin lowering as a wistful frown ghosted across his features. “You'd never know it now. Curse them, whoever 'fixed' the 'problem'.
“I can still see them, the way the clouds roiled and split when the first wave of ships entered the atmosphere.” His expression darkened, shifting his weight subtly from foot to foot as he glared out of the view port. “Their hulls were glowing, white-hot, not even trying to slow down.” The man's hands clenched behind his back, his breath catching in his throat. “It was while I spent days trapped under the rubble that I had my revelation.
“Humans are a disease. An infestation, if you will, like vermin. Your...kind...going from planet to planet, destroying everything you touch.” He spat the words, his eyes rolling involuntarily in disgust. “I was...so hopeful, that after all this time maybe you'd pull your heads out of your collective asses!” He turned sharply, throwing a hand toward the view port. “I mean look at that, would you!?” The man bit his lip, squeezing his eyes shut for a moment as he turned back to the view port. “How. How could you not see that and not be humbled by your own insignificance? But no! No, you had to start fighting like idiot children!”
He took a deep breath, concentrating on letting it out slowly through his nose as he regained his composure. He smiled again, or at least made a wry and sardonic approximation of the expression and straightened the jacket he wore over his blue coveralls. “Well, I guess I've taken up enough of your time.” he nodded in the woman's direction as he turned and ambled jauntily toward the door. He put a pallid hand on the woman's shoulder and gave her a companionable squeeze as he passed. The gesture caused the woman to shift slightly in the grav chair, her arm falling from the armrest to dangle limply, the tips of her fingers swaying almost imperceptibly. Her head rolled and came to a rest on her shoulder, revealing two nearly perfect half circles of small needlelike puncture marks on the soft skin of her throat, the tissue around the wound a deep angry crimson.
“Keep up the good work, lieutenant. You're doing a helluva job.”
I’ve written some books as well. I’d be honored if you’d consider picking up a copy or two. You can do so right here. Thanks for reading!
Exciting News! This story has been nominated to appear on Iron Age Media’s site as part of the contest I entered it in. If you appreciated my humble efforts, please consider voting for it through THIS LINK RIGHT HERE.
Thanks so much and it’s an honor just to be nominated.
I did a podcast segment on this http://www.thehorrorstreamlive.com/index.php/books/1320-the-black-by-robert-van-dusen-substack