Sci Fi
The Man In the Shed
Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space or so they say. Neither can it be heard here, in the sweet Bible's Belt state of Louisiana. Or so I thought. I was living the best country life of my youth in 1989. Now I’m not young, but then again, they say the devil owes his wisdom to his age not his name. I’ll get to that part later though. First, let me start by introducing myself. Now I’ve been kissed by an angel. Brushed the hand of death. Spoken the language of the heavens, but by far I’ve not known what a righteous encounter with life in outer space entails. I mean, I’ve heard of all this talk of Roswell New Mexico, mysteries of Area 51, probing and what not, but never had I thought I’d encountered a moment with something so rare. Those type of stories never really fancied me to say the least. Next to the Bayou, where the river stood still under the hot sun, now this is where I wanted to make my stories. I liked to run through the swamp alongside the river barefoot and free. The peaceful sound of the crickets and swamp bugs nestled in my internal mind and made a melody in my heart. Especially at night when it was pitch dark. I would look up and see the stars dancing in the night skies. The night skies had a way with making me feel at home. Maybe it was just comforting to be a part of something so big, even if I was just a small microcellular bodily existence. The swamp was my hiding place away from the bustling sounds of the city clamor. I was so used to being a southern fellah that the comfort of my poor financial class was no threat to me. I was raised by my mama alone and she worked like a field horse to keep us happy. I embraced the limited lifestyle she provided. I lived next to that Bayou right outside of New Orleans with my mama. This is what home was to me. Catching crawdaddies and eating some real Louisiana cooking was what I loved about whom I was. I rarely ever went to the city of New Orleans. There was always too much noise from the Dixieland music. People dancing around twirling and having fun with the day. Then there was all that voodoo nonsense that didn't set well with my spirit. I only went there on the weekends when mama had a day off and we went to visit my grandma. Mama was what some would call a beautiful southern bell. She had long blonde curls that weighed down and hit her waist. She walked upright in a 5-foot 7-inch petite frame. Mama always respected her waistline. She had a classic coke bottle figure. Mama loved going to visit and sharing time with my grandma. Those two loved strolling through the city and stopping to enjoy a freshly baked beignet. As a baby my grandmother always said I had a peculiar look in my eyes. She said the day I was born she never saw anything like them. Glossed over black with a look as much as dead to her. The wisdom of an elder sometimes carries quite a bit of mystery to it. Up until the age of 15 my grandmother repeated the story as if her soul was scarred of what she’d seen at my birth. Instead of talks of cute little ponies and silk blue ribbons there was always a terror behind my innocent first breath of life. My mother always told me she could barely remember my pa. She said he was like a cloud of black smoke in her memory. She couldn’t describe him but swore she’d recognize him if she saw him. Who cares, I was the luckiest fatherless bastard ever. At a young age anyone who hung around with me either found money or won a prize of some sort. Mama said everywhere she went I was a people magnet. Everything from older women to younger kids wanted to hold, kiss or squeeze my cheeks. Mama even made me wear this evil eye bracelet to ward off any type of negative vibes some folks might have had toward me. She once encountered a nice lady from downtown New Orleans. The old little lady that owned a shop on the popular Bourbon street took one look at me and was mesmerized. The lady swore I was special in a mysterious kind of way. Mama said the lady eagerly held me in her arms but gave me right back to mama as if I had an attractive aura to me. She darned near threw me back at mama as if there was an energy she could not withstand. Atleast that's how mama counts the story of how my evil eye bracelet came to be. The old lady said to mama, "Now honey, if it don't keep an evil eye off this tender angel, it sure will keep his eye off of someone else.” My mama always wondered what she meant by that. As if I were the evil eye. "Yeah right", mama said. "You were an angel honey!” “So much that you always pointed up to the skies in the heavens and said daddy!" Mama swore I was special to God. She said, “how else can a little baby know about a god at such a young age?” As I grew older my school days grew harder. I was envied for being so gifted. I won countless spelling bees, I competed in math competitions, and science, well that was like breathing to me. I was a darned good-looking fellah, too. Girls were always following me around. It was so bad I had to hide from getting a beating by the guys and smothered by the girls. All of that changed like the flip of a coin. Time stood still for me one hot night in August. I was only 18 years old even though I felt like i had lived my life as a caterpillar. Born as an insect to go through metamorphosis and become something beautiful. I remember getting ready for bed and feeling the crisp sheets against my skin. The weight of my blanket rocked me to sleep like a baby. I fell fast asleep that night only to be awoken by a jolt of energy that had run through my body. It was as if I had been startled in my veins. My blood quivered. I was sweating and woke up to the feeling of ants crawling all over my body. I remember feeling eerily alive as I walked to the kitchen to get myself a cold glass of OJ. That always helped me wake up. As I reached into the refrigerator to grasp that gallon of pulp filled orange juice, the refrigerator light flicked off. I figured it needed to have the bulb swapped out to a new one. Or maybe this old thing didn’t have any more life in it. Mama worked so hard she could barely afford to put food in my mouth. Grandma said a growing boy needed government food because he was sure to leave a single mother out of a paycheck on just his appetite. The moment I was about to satisfy my thirst I saw a reflection of some type of light on that old refrigerator door. I turned around to look through the window behind me. The view of the window lead to the backyard of the house. I walked close to the glass door to get a better view of what seemed to be a beaming light coming from some old tool shed my mama had. It was harmlessly filled with some baby clothes and other forget me nots from my childhood. I remember always hearing mama gripe of how some item always went missing from time to time. But there I stood staring out the window. I focused on someone standing there. It was twelve o clock midnight, and it looked like mama from behind. She was in her maroon-colored terry cloth robe. No shoes just that. I decided I’d go see if she was ok. I lifted the latch to the glass sliding door thinking she’d turn around startled, but it was as if she didn’t hear a thing. Or maybe she was just too entertained by what she was looking at. As I got closer I heard her talking as if she’d been begging or convincing someone of her love. "Wow!” I thought. "Could pa had come back home?" I’d be too lucky. As I got closer mama kept talking in despair professing her love. “Please don’t leave me again.” “I’ve waited to long for you!”, she cried. I got very close and saw no one. I only saw what appeared to be a hand pull back. A hand caressing mama's cheek but when I got closer it drew back into the darkness of the tool shed and the brightness went dim. I put my hand on mama's shoulder and said, “Mama is everything alright?” She kept staring into the dark of the shed and looked blank. Like the stare of a department store mannequin. It was rather scary. I kept asking mama if she was ok. "Mama?" "Mama!", I shouted. It seemed as if she was hypnotized. I grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her. Her head bobbed back and forth the way a ragdoll does in the hands of an energetic child. At that moment I felt someone touch my shoulder. An eerie chill ran down every vertebra of my spine. All sixteen of them. I guess anatomy in high school did help. Or it might’ve been my natural knowledge of science. The chill reminded me of the death stare my grandmother would get every time she talked about the way my eyes looked when I was born. I found myself standing there staring into the eyes of a man. I was taken aback. It was as if I was looking in a mirror. "Am I dreaming?", I asked myself. The man was my identical twin! His eyes had a peculiar look to them. His eyes resembled the horror grandma saw in mine at birth. Science began to run through my mind as if I were a madman. I felt sweat drip down my forehead. I could feel my heartbeat as fast as a runaway train. Then slowly everything just stopped. I felt as though all of my major organs had stopped. As I stood there, I felt like a dead man with a conscience. As much as I wanted to, I couldn't even feel myself breathing. I couldn’t move or speak it was as if I had sleep paralysis, yet I was wide awake! Everything in that tool shed was levitating. From teddy bears to pictures. My eyes just followed the baby memorabilia as I tried with all of my existence to break lose. All I could fathom doing was run away. I slowly began to feel a pressure. Some magnetic type feeling came upon me. My hair stood up like a balloon was rubbed against it. There was some sort of static electricity in this shed. When my dried- up bellybutton mama had kept, came floating around the man picked it from the air as if he’d found his only sense of self. He stared at the dry piece of baby umbilicus for a small second. "No." " No!", my mind silently screamed. I could not believe what he was about to do! Saliva began to drip down his outer lips. He slowly began to open his mouth. Was he going to eat it?! I watched as some sort of tubular type of hummingbird rod ejected from his mouth. He sucked up my baby memoir as if it had been what he’d been looking for. I struggled between reality and devoid thoughts of mania. I prayed I would wake up. Then I felt a pressure pulling me toward the man. I began to feel again. Only I felt an indescribable pain. In the depths of my soul, I felt a desperate need to live and escape. Escape the grip of death or more so the grip of an unnatural being. The man in the shed accompanied me in my thoughts. Somehow, he could speak to me. He was more than I could imagine. Suddenly his image melted leaving behind a new appearance. I guess first impressions do make an impact. His face resembled that of a praying mantis. He stood tall and naked. His skin gray and moist as if it were lacking oxygen. Every single breathe he took made his body look thinner. The hands he had were the shape of a frogs with palms covered in suckers like that of an octopus. His head resembled that of a squid's. It looked painfully heavy. He had no nose or lips. He was so close to my face, sickeningly I felt the cold of his breathe upon me. It was ice cold. He opened his gaping mouth and squealed in my face. The decibels of noise made my hair move. The rod ejected from his mouth; it flipped around in midair feeling around as if looking for a specific place to inoculate. There, I felt it, the tubular rod injected into my jugular vein. I knew I was done for now. I slowly felt like I was being sucked dry. I felt as though only a carcass would be left. Everything began to dim. My pulse was weak, and the breaths I took were shallow. I thought to myself “I’d rather die than see the horror of this creature in my face.” I faded. Black, everything turned black. This creature sucked me dry. I somehow still had a conscience or a somehow can see what was happening outside of myself. The man in the shed turned me into liquid somehow. Out of his tubular rod came some sort of regurgitation that melted me away. He then put me into a jar. He smiled as if he had completed s task. At that moment I then jolted back to reality catching my breath like a new born. This whole charade was a confusing fiasco. I was not dead! I was still here breathing! Maybe I had a dream. Maybe I’m losing my sanity! Who cares the man was gone. I began to feel like me once again. I’m ok. I’m ok I told myself. In my hand I held a jar. A jar of liquid jelly that looked like the one the man had put me in. Confused of what had happened I squealed. Momma awoke from her catstonic state. She didn’t remember a thing. She asked why we were in the shed? I hugged mama close to me and rubbed her shoulder. I assured her everything would be ok. She asked, “what’s in the jar honey?” Why is your breath so cold. Hurry on in you’ll catch yourself a cold. As we walked in to go back to bed we passed the refrigerator. I saw my reflection. A tubular rod hung out of my mouth. I pulled it back in as not to frighten mama. I heard an internal voice say, “I am you as you are me.” “ We are now one.” “We are a son and father all in one.” So now as you read this passage be weary. When the sun sets and the sky darkens, we will look up at the stars. Those who live up in the skies, they will hear the squeal or a scream, in the vacuum of space.
By Monica Yerena4 years ago in Fiction
Compound Elements
Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. They also say that if you leave the sanctity of our compound, your head will explode into a million pieces and your guts will rip out of your body and float away for eternity. But that’s just what they say to fortify authority, right? Truth be told, I don’t know anyone that really knows what lies outside the walls. We’ve all ventured past the signs and the barriers and the outposts with watchmen on, and shimmied under rusty, dirt-covered barbed wire and over cement blocks, but the view at the other side tells little to the vast expanse of darkness and rock that you see. Honestly, I don’t know if I relish the thought of expanding my knowledge that far. Ignorance is bliss, right?
By Ruth Postlethwaite4 years ago in Fiction
Welcome to the IMET
Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. But, to my knowledge, nobody had ever tried either. Space was full of new and exciting experiences, so nobody had really cared much about what they could or couldn’t do in the vacuum. The vacuum seemed like the least interesting thing about space. It was just the space between space, essentially. No, what was most interesting for everyone as they pushed deeper and deeper into that empty vacuum was how full of new worlds and exciting life it was. Entire systems of planets that contained not only the right conditions for life, but life itself. Some of it was exactly the same as that of our homeworld, but far more exciting was the life-forms that were nothing like ourselves. The ones that defied the logic and science we’d worked so hard to establish. The ones we thought couldn’t possibly exist. That’s the funny thing about the universe though. The unexplainable happens fairly consistently to where even miracles become everyday occurrences.
By Tyler Ryther4 years ago in Fiction
The Golden Ratio of Space Travel
Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. I don’t know if that is supposed to be a warning, or our team motto. I’ve heard it said so many times in the past months I just grin anymore. Besides, where we are going nobody would be there to hear our screams anyways, at least, not that we know of. As the ship’s doctor and veteran of space travel to the orbiting International Space Station, I feel like I may be the most ignorant person sitting in this ship. The rest of our crew is waiting for us on the ISS above. Brilliant scientists from every field, each one with hopes and dreams of finding something revolutionary in their field.
By Dave Blade4 years ago in Fiction
It is for Me to See
Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. I can feel the air ripping out of my lungs, but I can’t hear any sound. I am falling backward, and before my mind can wrap around what is happening, I can feel my body turn into soup and then explode. I am disappearing into the backdrop of stars and space. Am I dead? Just as I am losing all of myself, losing any thought of a memory, I can feel an electric charge, like a lightning bolt, that suddenly pulls me back together. With an explosion and a click,,,, I am standing naked in the dark. The floor feels smooth and cold against my bare feet. The cold air is still, but a static vibration pulls the hair on my body.
By Barbara Lamb4 years ago in Fiction
Smuggler’s Run
Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. Seren peered out at the galaxy, a view she had seen a thousand times before, and wondered. It had been six years since her arrival on the Ulysses, a space station orbiting the planet Kismetul 583-U on the outer fringes of the discovered galaxy, and within the next year, she would have to transfer to another station. She had received the notice a few weeks ago; there was no longer any need for scientific personnel to investigate the planet, and the Ulysses was to be converted into a residential vessel. Seren sighed, watching the swirling reds, blues and greens dancing across the inky sky; She looked away, poking forlornly at her now cold noodles.
By Amy Parker4 years ago in Fiction
Desired Limitations
Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. Sound travels through vibration in air particles that typically carry oxygen, and with space existing as a vacuum, sound becomes absent. Unless one were to carry radio device in ones' suit, you would not be able to hear your travel partner.
By Meli Remborn4 years ago in Fiction
Quantum Thread
Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. Yet, there is noise here. In a frequency so high, it’s silent. An almost deafening silence, one of anguish and affliction. The darkness is all-consuming, though luminous as stars fill the vastness of the open skies. I suppose there is peace in knowing that this is where it all ends. Time works differently here, still, I can tell that mine is running out — unless I find a way out of this predicament. A rather ambitious presumption, as the pressure burrows through my eardrums, filling my head with a smothering lightness, the weight of a bomb. I’m just one tick away from exploding. In the distance, the nebulous dancing of giant fireballs reflects a dazzling flame in my eyes as my vision blurs. With my back flat and arms outstretched, it’s the most relaxed I’ve been in a while. As if floating on water, my concern drifts away in waves. This breath is final. A slow and deliberate inhale with the shallowest gasp will welcome my end. In anticipation, my lungs expand. Then contracts, clearing the fog on the exhale. The clouds on my judgment pass and I’m reminded — THIS ISN’T REAL!
By Luna Jupiter4 years ago in Fiction
So We Came
Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. Hundreds of thousands of souls screaming out as their atomic structure was ripped apart, rended on the quantum level. I assure you we heard their screams, bridging lightyears in an instant. So we came.
By Matt The Poet4 years ago in Fiction
