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In Space
The sweat dripped off my fingers and into the cracks. "Not again," I thought.
I could hear my heart thumping with a quickening pace. I couldn't believe
what I was seeing. Was it really a prompt? It sure didn't prompt me to do
anything but want to leave. The floor creaked. "Who's there?" I yelled, but
I don't wait for an answer. I knew who was there. I quickly drew out my blaster
and blew the door to hell. "That would do it," I told myself as I slowly
turned back to the screen, but I knew there was nothing I could do. There
was no time, so I did to the screen what I do to anything else that I don't
have time for: I put my fist in it. The glass shards ripped through my hand
like razorblades. For some reason I thought it was made of plastic. It didn't
matter much; you only need one finger to pull a trigger. I stood up and kicked
over my desk, just for effect.
"Oh my gosh! What happened to your hand?" she asked, stepping over the trilorg
carcass. "College essays," I said, nodding to the overturned desk. Of course
she wanted to look at my hand. She always acted like she was a doctor. "Well
that glass has gotta go," Glenn said, rubbing her chin. I smiled and told
her to warn the others about the trilorgs. Murderous eight foot tall creatures
that feast on brains were not something easily forgotten. These college
applications were a curse, they swelled my brain. I thought my head must
have looked like a big supple ham to them. I looked up, something was moving
around on the floor above us. She heard it too. "Isn't that the bridge above
us?" she asked. She was right, they were probably flying us right to some
trilorg slaughterhouse. "We're wasting time, just go!" I yell. I wasn't this
nervous since last Thursday… the last time this happened. The circumstances
were different. This carnage was supplemental. She ran out the rear airlock
and I heard a muffled scream, then the sound of a bone saw. They were hungrier
than I thought. That didn't give me much time; they were probably planning
to eat us all now, on our own ship. I jumped out the airlock and pumped three
ounces of plasma into the trilorg. Glenn's brain was exposed… that just
did it. I kicked the trilorg's remaining teeth in and headed towards the
bridge.
I was blasting trilorgs left and right. You could hear the burning plasma
rip into their bodies and come out the other side. My gun soon overloaded
and died, that was inevitable. I kicked a few in the jaw as I made my way
over to the main control panel to do what I had come there to do. I smashed
down the ship's self destruct button, that seemed to have the word "SUBMIT"
on it, with my bloody fist and muttered, "See you all in hell."
The ship groaned and shook, but no explosion came. I cursed under my breath.
I must have forgotten some field… I searched the panel for a red asterix,
but I ended up finding a few on my chest from the trilorgs' blasters. One
of them said something like, "Don't move, human." I could hear the whir of
a bone saw behind me. Another one moved past me and tapped some commands
into the panel. They were locking all the airlocks on the ship. "That'll
stop these pesky interruptions," the trilorg said. Just then it clicked:
all of the trilorgs had to be right here with me on the bridge. I slid my
hand down to my belt. A trilorg shot my arm off. Through the immense pain
I could hear them laughing and fighting over the fresh meat. With the diversion
going, I whipped my other hand to my belt and unloaded three high explosive
plasma grenades and smiled. "Eat up." I said, tossing one in each mouth.
I woke up with a start, dried saliva on the corner of my mouth, my computer
screen intact. "Crap," I thought. The prompt is still there blinking incessantly.
Nothing done, again.
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