Vacuity

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say.

I beg to differ.

One person can: yourself.

Three seconds.

My head is full of screams. I feel the bitter cold of space slap me hard, full force. I don’t know what my vision is doing because my eyes are squeezed as tightly shut as possible behind a strip of duct tape. I have no desire to witness my eyes popping like egg yolks. And my mouth is likewise taped shut, preventing me from taking a big gulp of nothing.

Duct tape in space? Who would have thought?

Curled as tightly as possible, I rotate like a ball traversing a nonexistent floor. Even though there is no gravity, my inner senses provide feedback, letting me know I’m rolling aft over stern, aft over stern, aft over stern…

Five seconds.

I don’t know if it’s the vacuity of air and the absence of heat, but I feel my mind slipping into a kind of sing-song narrative… aft over stern, aft over –

Snap out of it, Alex. You’ve got fifteen seconds, maybe twenty, before you die of asphyxiation or freeze to death. I tell myself I don’t have time for this shit.

I’m in this situation precisely because of the slippage of my mind. It seems like memories are all that exist in this head full of screams and this body empty of gravity. But I can’t be distracted from the task at hand, something called Routine-Inter-Space-Vehicular-Transfer. Made not so “routine” by a small, pesky little detail creatively named No-Space-Suit.

Eight seconds.

Having faith and being an astronaut may seem mutually exclusive, but it’s all I have right now. Faith that I’ve pointed myself in the right direction. Faith that my speed is enough to propel me the twenty meters to the shuttle. Faith that Mondo can get the hatch open in time for me to float in and not bounce off the ship like a bug off a HovJet windshield. Thank God I managed to exhale strongly right before taking the plunge through the containment field, feeling the tingly sensation as the air-vac barrier allowed my body through. At least my lungs wouldn’t explode.

I imagine that would be rather painful.

Twelve seconds.

My hands are flat against my breasts like I’m being laid to rest. Despite the sudden chill numbing my fingers almost instantaneously, I can feel my heart beating rapidly, a reminder that there remains a life to be saved: mine. Blood is still running through my veins. Sadistically, I wonder how it would feel when ice crystals start to form and jaggedly scrape the insides of my arteries.

Likewise, very inappropriately, my stomach rumbles like it is hungry. I’m sure there’s a Last Meal reference here somewhere.

Seventeen seconds.

I should be dead, I think. Hell of a last conscious thought. The technical manuals say you have fifteen seconds to live in the cold vacuum of space, eighteen if you don’t have any air in your lungs, twenty if you’re lucky. At some point the residual gases in my cells will begin protesting, fighting against the texture of my skin, the layer of flesh literally holding everything together. Blood will start to boil and other fluids will begin to become explosive, forecasting a very, very messy ending.

Nineteen seconds.

My head is yanked back abruptly, stopping my rotation and momentum. There’s a searing pain in my scalp where my hair is threatening to tear loose. Mondo, I think. He’s caught me, grabbing the only thing he could get a hold of, the long braid of my red hair.

I’m unceremoniously banged against the outer plates of the shuttle as I’m dragged toward the airlock, still in the fetal position. I would breathe a sigh of relief, but, of course, there is no air. Yet.

The doorjambs rake across my back as I’m pulled inside. If I remember correctly, the shuttle is an antique, still relying on doors and hatches to seal out the vacuum of space, doors and hatches which must be secured before oxygen can begin pumping into the airlock. My breath is still held.

But my hands are free.

I reach up and rip the duct tape from my eyes and mouth, no doubt tearing away a layer of frozen skin as I do so. The pain is intense, clearing my mind, driving away the fogginess. I feel the chamber shudder as the hatch is closed. Mondo still has his hand in my hair, gripping tightly to keep me from drifting in the weightlessness.

I hear air hissing in, the automatic pumps saving my life, providing oxygen for my deprived brain. I take a rattled, gasping breath and fill my empty lungs. The smell is ever so sweet, pure and clean and artificially processed. The best breath of my life; the one I thought I’d never take again.

Away from the vacuum of space, I can at least open my eyes and thank Mondo for saving me. He lets go of my hair now and I grab his hand and pull myself towards him. I chance opening my eyes, knowing he will be smiling that goofy smile behind the visor of his air-suit.

But there is no Mondo.

I see that I’m gripping a mottled, scaly claw attached to a rigid carapace over what might be an arm, terminating into the body of something so alien that I can’t comprehend what I’m looking at.

I scream again.

This time, however, only alien ears hear my cry.