The Effects of a Broken Astronaut.

“Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say.” The words came from the scratchy child's voice on the tape, floating through the greenhouse where Hearl kept his suspects. The beings of another kind in his own eyes, when they resembled nothing more than humans.

With a strike against stone, a match was lit. The voice continued its speech on space, life in the dark void, while Hearl moved around the musty structure. Candles littered the circular, broken down greenhouse. Stars above cast their own beams of light down through the shattered and collapsed roof. Puddles from dripping and weakly gurgling fountains littered the floor, mixing with the crimson stains around the three gurneys at the heart of the room.

The static and glitching television on a slanted nightstand across from the gurneys provided the only artificial light, if one didn't count his dozens of flickering flames.

Hearl, his boots shifting across the broken tile, shouldered the french doors open and disappeared from the greenhouse, trudging through the dark of night to Smith Jones truck, where the writhing potato sacks lay in the bed.

No one had seen Smith, or his pickup around town for three days.

“...I’ll shoot for the stars..” The voice, as well as the program it was tied to, had changed with a glitch of the screen, now a little girl from a 50’s sitcom, her perfect blond curls outlined on the screen, spoke.

Hearl returned. A sack, its wimpers muffled, thrown over his old and wide shoulders.

With a groan that mixed with that of the gurney, Hearl laid the body down, smoothly, confidently, he used the belt screwed into the frame to strap the bag down against the mattress.

“No, mommy, I don’t want to cook, I want to go to Mars with Timmy’s green friends!” The little girl's voice said. Hearl rolled his shoulders, disappearing once more.

There, on the gurney, lay Molly Kim. The teenager had her own head of midnight black curls, eyes as clear and blue as the sky, and a reputation in their small town for not being as bright as she was pretty. Then again, no one had ever given her the chance to be anything other than the next small town cheerleader, the same position her beloved mother had held before drinking herself to death on a hushed night four years ago. Most in town thought it had been a heart attack.

They were, of course, wrong. As small towns were prone to getting things.

Beside Molly, her fist clenched within the bag till her fingers cracked through her own skin, lay Smith Jones.

He’d been on his gurney since Tuesday.

“...Let me tell you something, our father in heaven made space for the purpose of teaching us…such as Abraham…” Now the voice of a philosopher from the 60’s scratched through the air.

Smith, his mechanics uniform soaked and stained in sweat, twitched at the voice. He’d heard these very lines from this tape non-stop ninety-one times. At least he thought that was the count when his head didn’t drift into an unconscious state.

Smith had only liked a few school subjects, math and shop class.

With his fingers, eight out of the ten limbs, cracked and contorted in ways that left one most likely never able to hold a pencil, let alone a wrench again, it looked like his only friend left was math.

Hearl cursed as his foot caught on the edge of Molly’s gurney while he placed the third body down. Within, lay Stuart Hark. His jaw was square and his piece of town fame lay in his reputation to try and smoke a light in every class till his teachers caught onto the scent. Though recently a girl named Molly Kim, had held Stuart's attention longer than the sticks of death as his mother called them. Stuart guessed she’d been trying to kill herself slowly for years, because he’d never seen her without one.

Both teenagers, kids really for the somewhat old standards their town held, a system that still rewarded the quarterback and expected the good kids to call their mamas at every football game to tell her the half time score. Yes, kids indeed. And neither of them, the beloved seniors their own parents had been with all the old crowds.

Both lay within their sacks, terrified. Molly’s head flashed with every horrid rumor she’d heard about every seedy football player, while Stuart could only curse against his gag with every colorful blasphemy that crossed his ADHD riddled mind.

Hearl grabbed a knife off the edge of a fountain. With it he cut around the kids faces till he could yank the bags down around their flushed necks.

Their eyes, the moonlight above reflecting against the whites of their fear, stared back at him, watching him. Though within Hearl’s broken mind those pupils might as well have been tentacles or talons.

“...They have big antennas, and I think it's safe to say Paul is an avid space-man, ha, ha….” The next program in the ever playing tape took hold of the boggy, thick air.

Hearl began cutting the sack off around the kid's feet.

Molly, a tear leaking out the corner of her eye, rolled her head towards Smith. After a moment, the man’s bloodshot eyes flickered with recognition at the girl laying beside him. He’d been the mechanic who’d towed away the car Molly's mother had drank herself to death in. He looked past the girl to Stuart, who was grimacing as Hearl began cutting the cloth away from his sneakers.

The men’s eyes met. Smith, one with a jaded, but if you asked the local pastor, savable heart, and Stuart, a scared kid who could never seem to focus enough to do anything noteworthy. Yet all three lay at the mercy of the man cutting fabric away from their feet.

Molly caught sight of the unnatural twinsting of Smith’s fingers in the same moment Stuart noted the blood which had dripped from the man’s feet and pooled on the grimy floor. His boots, the strings cut, had clearly been tossed across the greenhouse to land beneath the nightstand supporting the screen which had just changed to an old episode of The Jetsons.

Smith groaned, drawing every pair of eyes, tear filled or not, to him.

He didn’t want to watch these kids get hurt. And for absolutely nothing.

Hearl, huffed with disgust and turned towards a fountain, reaching for something. His white brows furrowed when the hand met an empty lip. With a curse, jogging his memory of leaving the nutcracker in the creature on the end's truck, Hearl disappeared into the night.

Molly’s head rolled. Nearly choking herself, she managed to spit the rag down onto her heaving chest. “What… is going on?” She sobbed to Smith, her southern accent heavy as her eyes pleaded with the man.

Smith had mastered the trick of removing his own gag. “We…“ he groaned and coughed. Unknown to even him, Smith had a cracked rib, yet still he pressed on. “That guy, he’s crazy. He th…inks he’s in space…”

Molly and Stuart, having also removed his gag, found their gazes shooting up to the dark and star studded sky above.

“Why did he grab us?” Molly gasped, sniffing as she uselessly yanked on the belts snaked around her pale wrist.

Smith licked his cracked lips with a tongue covered in bits. “The heck if I know, I-I don’t think even he knows, listen,” Smith gazed around the room, the tape playing through the thick air, as a bead of saliva dripped like molasses off his swollen lip. “Fellas gonna ask you some stuff, and you won't be able to answer.”

Stuart's head shot towards Smith so fast his neck cracked against the vinyl of the mattress. “Who says? Will he hurt us if we know-”

“Kid.” Smith grimassed and spit a mouthful of spit, tinted with iron onto the floor, though his bloodshot eyes were nearly kind. Sorry. “You won't be able to answer, trust me.” His drawl dipped.

A whimper exited the lips of the town cheerleader.

“...Now space is an expansion of our mind, after all, superman was born there….” An artificial audience laughed on the tape, which was labeled :Best Space Quotes in the last 50 years, part 1 of 6.

“Is there any way out of here?” Stuart breathed, swallowing the curses on his tongue, while he kept his eyes on the french doors, half open to the dark field beyond. Miss Kim never stopped yanking on the belts.

“Not that I've found. Kids listen…” Smith began choking on his own labored breath. Molly shushed him, then began to apologize for doing so until Smith cut her off with a look. “All-all I knows is he thinks he’s in space…that box…” he nodded to a coffin style structure at the edge of the greenhouse. “He sleeps in it during the day.”

“Why?” Both kids asked.

Smith's eyes rolled from the box to their sweat covered faces. “He likes the dark. To lean into his fantasy.” His throat cleared and the moonlight above reflected the far away look in his eyes. “Best I can figure, if we can make it through the night of questioning, the three of us can maybe pull something together while he's sleeping in a few hours.” Smith tried to smile, revealing shadows where teeth had fallen from long before his time here.

The scent of boggy water emitted from the gurgling fountains as he nodded to Iv drips at the corner of every gurney. “Just got to be able to pull your drip out with your teeth. To stay conscious.” He explained, more saliva dripping in long streams.

“No, no.” Molly, yanked on the belts, her chest heaving, causing her gag to rise and fall as the warm tears ran from her eyes, the salt burning a handful of scraps from their capture.

Smith tried to shush the girl as another space quote filled the air.

“What kind of question?” Stuart bit out, his wide eyes jumping from Molly, his latest and most serious crush within the small walls of their little town high, to the french doors. “Like are you sure he won't let us go-”

“He think this is space.” Smith bit out, his harsh tone causing Molly to hiccup, though she never stopped yanking on the belts. “And that he’s on a-a mission. As far as I can tell he don’t think we're human, or at least not his kind-”

“Space… is the home of particles that make our hearts race…” A black and white clip hissed into the humid air.

“And when he hears himself-he loses it.” Smith added, a hungry look entering his eyes as he, nearly entranced, watched Molly's yanking wrist, the creaking of the gurney mixing with the voices. In reality, Smith was hungry for her energy and hope. Between the things he’d felt and seen since answering the false call for help in the early hours of Tuesday, he had very little of either left. And it felt like the two were draining quicker by the second.

“Hears himself.” Stuart stopped breathing entirely in an effort to momentarily slow the pulsing in his chest. “Like-like he talks to himself?”

“I-” A creak echoed from the doors.

Every pair of lungs in the greenhouse stilled. Molly craned her neck, the inked butterflies behind her left ear stretching as she bit down on her gag. Stuart all but swallowed his own.

Smith was slower to react, and when he did, Stuart cursed. The man tried to stretch his neck for the cloth, but rather he shifted too hard onto his rib and flinched. The gag rolled off the edge of the gurney and landed in a puddle on the broken tile.

Smith stared at the fabric, the evidence of a change. The kids, their hearts racing, watched as his lips moved silently. “Father in heaven…” Little did they know the man had stopped praying for himself, now he only prayed for the two beside him. They deserve saving more than he ever could. Which wasn’t in fact true at all. But dark corners of Smith's own life in this little jaded town made it easy for him to believe others had better chances of getting help from above than him.

Hearl, his skin tanned from the sun and hair long faded to white, shuffled through the doors. He gripped a nutcracker in his hand and a knife in the other.

“...I love the stars, don’t you darling?” A woman on the tape asked

“My star is right here…” An equally dreamy voice answered.

Hearl froze at the whispers of Stuart's prayers, for none of his pastors had ever told him God could hear a prayer said within. And only God knew just how many prayers had been silently offered within their straying town.

Hearl’s dark eyes trailed from the cracked lips, to the gag on the floor.

He bared his teeth, retrieving the fabric.

Molly shook as Hearl approached Smith. “I have a mission to complete. And I've toyed with you long enough.”

Smith's eyes widened.

“I've got these two now,'' Hearl looked over his plaid shoulder to the kids. “And more where they came from.” He leaned in close to Smith's chapped lips. “I want the voices to stop, but that only happens when I find your base, your breeding grounds. You….” he gave a disgusted look at Smith’s broken form. Grabbed the man’s hair, he yanked it taut as he pressed the nutcracker around Smith's adam's apple. “You creatures disgust me.” He slowly began closing the device.

Smith choked. His crooked and contorted fingers unable to move as he jerked and crocked in pain. “Now…you tell me, where are your people, alien, and I'll let you go back to them….”

Molly shut her eyes against the wheezing coming from Smith as the device squeezed around his stretched vocal cords.

Stuart cursed a hundred times over in his mind, every dry swallow of his own throat burning in a terrifying shadow of sympathy.

Smith managed to shrug his big shoulders. And for a split second it looked as though Hearl would relent, would release, and momentarily stop the inhuman pain.

Then the TV glitched to the tapes next quote. “...I'm an astronaut. But I'm also a soldier, I protect my people, serve them. A good soldier never fails his mission. Or leaves his post…and space happens to be both for me…”

Hearl snapped at the words. “I will complete my…mission!!” He crushed Smith's adam's apple with the device, blood splattered across both men’s chest, striking Molly's cheek.

Hearl yanked the nutcracker out of Smith’s gurgling throat. With another scream, while the first voice the kids’ had heard started over again on the tap, he shoved the man’s gurney. Smith, gagging and choking on air and blood, crashed to the floor in a puddle of leaking fountain water.

Stuart cursed and cursed as he began yanking, almost as hard as Molly, her face splattered in red, against his belts.

Hearl tossed the flesh and blood covered nutcracker across the room, skidding over tile till it landed beside Smith’s boots.

Seething he wrestled with their strained heads till he had pulled their gags out.

“I can get more of y’all any time.” Hearl said, wiping at the blood on his hands with Molly's gag. The second voice, that of the young girl played through the air. “I wasted my time on him, now you've seen how dedicated I am to my mission.”

The kids frantically nodded against the vinyl they lay on. Hearl looked from one to another. “I want the voices…” His wide shoulders twitched as he threw the gag to the floor, retrieving his knife. “To stop. For my mission to be over. But for that to happen,” he leaned in close, breathing against the wet blood covering Molly’s cheek. She shuddered. “I need to know where your kind comes from. They are a threat to all peoples.”

“Ple-please,” Molly begged, turning away from the stench of Hearl’s breath, her wide eyes meeting Stuarts. “We’ll-we’ll tell you anything, just please, don’t hurt us.”

“Then tell me…creature,” Hearl took a bracing breath and looked the girl up and down, “where are your people holding up.”

“I-I, um..” Molly swallowed, her fearful eyes still locked with Stuarts. Even through the shake in her voice, Stuart could tell she wanted to fight. Which was oh so very true for the girl, Molly had been reborn a fighter three years ago, she just didnt know how. Not here, no not in this horror of a situation.

“In the dunes…At the old oil refinery.” She breathed. A false confidence forced in her tone she was accustomed to using. Both kids flinched as a sudden gasping and gurgling sound came from the other side of the flipped gurney.

More previous voices played through the air.

Stuart had stilled in his yanking of the belts. Perhaps Molly had just told the lie-

Hearl slapped the girl across the face, just as quickly locking her red jaw in his crushing palm.

“You think I haven't looked there. You're all liars….” He threw Molly’s head away. “Liars!! I know you know.” He looked to Stuart, Molly’s wimpers filling the air. “One of you has to know. And if you don't tell, I can take another of your kind, as many times as it takes.” He cracked his knuckles, the TV and candle light clashing to create a warm and cold ghoul of a face before them.

“I won’t fail my mission. I am a good soldier. I will make the voices stop.” His head cocked, his shoulder length hair brushing against his bloodied shirt.

“I. Will. Make the voices, stop.” He lunged forward and latched onto Stuart’s studded earring. Molly screamed in time with the boy as Hearl ripped the piece from his earlobe.

“One of you, tell me where your people are!” Stuart couldn't help but contort at the blood running down his neck while Molly yanked and yanked against the belts now cutting into her wrists. “My daddy said I’d die like this…” Her tortured whisper, the broken omission somewhat true, was nearly covered by the groaning of her gurney. Molly’s father had told her, time and time again, she would get herself killed by a man. One day it was the handsy quarterback, the next her most recent boyfriend who had liked her solely for the raven hair and long legs. Yet her father had also never told her about the kind of man who wouldn’t drive her into the ground. He clearly hadn’t been able to help her mother, so why the woman’s daughter?

Another voice filled the air, the tape clearly on a glitching loop.

Hearl threw Stuart's earring down and turned back to Molly. She yanked harder and harder as the figure approached. The girl resembled that of a mouse in a trap, pulling till her left wrist cracked. She groaned and cried out at the pain.

Stuart cursed, convulsing, as his eyes poured over the dark sky above and the even darker performance playing out before him.

Hearl was going back to Molly, knife in hand.

For a boy who had never amounted to much in anyone's eyes, a strange feeling lodged deeper than ever before in his chest at the sight of Hearl looming over a pale Molly. The girl's eyes locked with Stuart's.

It was clear what she wanted, just before Hearl blocked Staurt's sight of her face, she mouthed one simple request. The boy read her lips as Hearl ran his fingers through her hair, locking around the roots. He shifted, blocking their connection, beginning to inflict some sort of pain that had Molly screaming out.

Attack. She wanted him to save her. To fight.

“I am a good soldier. I’ll make the voices stop…and. Complete. My. Mission!” Hearl screamed above her own cries .

Attack, attack. As sick as it made him, Stuart shut his eyes on the scene. His mind running over the words. Attack. Mission. Solder.

He heard his own whimpers at Molly’s screams. Searching his mind for the answer, there was one here, always one….he could feel something…there was something he was missing.

“Stuart!” Molly cried out, then just as quickly groaned before the sound morphed into another wail.

He cursed, yanking against his belts. Astronaut. Space. His own voices. A mission…

"I'm also a soldier, I protect my people and serve them...” Stuart froze on the gurney as the television voice filled the air.

A broken astronaut.

Molly cried for the boy again. All she’d wanted was a night in the desert with a guy who didn’t seem to want her for her body alone. Then Hearl had come and…now she could feel the life draining from her. Metal shaking penetrated her own screams.

“Tell me!!!!” The man ordered, spit covering her lips as a crash echoed.

Hearl spun, yanking his burning hands from her skin, confusion illuminated by the moon above written across his face. Blinking past the sweat and tears in her eyes, Molly gasped at the sight of Stuart, still belted to his gurney, though it lay on its side, yanking on the belts as Hearl approached.

“Molly!” Stuart gasped, forcing her screaming body into action with that one word. Biting her lips against the pain in her own wrist, Molly leaned against the cracked bone and kicked out. Her foot landed in Hearl’s back. The man stumbled over the leg of the gurney and crashed into a fountain. The action gave Staurt enough time to rip free one of the belts from the bottom of the gurney. The strip of leather now hung from one wrist while his other was still trapped.

“St-stuart.” Molly gasped. Hearl was rising.

Stuart nodded, yanking on the second belt, his wide eyes watching as the looming figure stumbled to stand. “I don’t need either of you to finish my mission. To stop the voices!” He charged at Stuart. Molly screamed, the boy spun away, yanking his trapped wrist tight, causing the belt to be taut. Hearl tripped on the leather and crashed into a medical cart covered in candles.

For a moment Staurt slowed.

“...Superman was born there...”

Hearl appeared unconscious.

“Stuart.” Molly pleaded. Swallowing the bale back down her throat.

The boy looked around, his eyes caught sight of a broken tile three feet away. Reaching, his fingers brushed the sand stone edge.

Just a little further and he’d have the tool he’d need to slice the belts.

Just a little further.

A crackling met his ears, yet Stuart paid it no mind. He yanked on the gurney, dragging the metal across the ground.

Just a little further.

The crackling grew stronger.

His fingers closed around the shard. Yanking it to his chest, Stuart began sawing the belt.

“Stuart.” Molly whispered. The boy glanced up.

Curses flashed through his mind. Plenty slipped out. Flames were licking the wall above Hearl’s groaning form.

“Common.” He knew what he needed to do. But did he have time-

Hearl began to rise.

The second belt gave way.

Stuart stumbled to his numb legs in the same moment Hearl rose, his head bleeding and three front teeth broken. He loomed before the boy.

Molly gasped.

“....I love the stars, don’t you darling?”

Stuart could leave her here. His back was to the open doors. He could run, Hearl was disoriented enough to lose him in the dark. The flames grew higher, dancing towards Molly.

“Daddy was right….” Her lip quivered. Stuart looked past Hearl.

Then to the television across the room. “My star is right here..."

Stuart took a breath in the same moment Hearl charged.

Molly braced for him to leave, to let her burn to death. Rather it all happened so quickly. Stuart met the man at his stomach, the two wrestled. One, Molly couldn’t see who, fell to the floor first. They rolled. Stuart wrapped the belt at his wrist around the man’s wrinkled throat.

The wall behind Molly's was quickly becoming engulfed in the flames. A window shattered, raining glass down upon her dark head. She screamed, failing to cover her own ears, the belts holding her in place. A shard balancing on the edge of the mattress caught her eye. Groaning her fingers straining to brush the glass.

Hearl landed three rapid punches in Stuart’s shoulder. The boy moaned, blood dripping off his lips, yet rather than fight to the death as Hearl was doing. He fought for his way across the fiery room.

Stuart’s fingers brushed the bottom of the nightstand.

“I am a good soldier, I protect my own!” Hearl screamed in a new wave of rage. He yanked on Stuart’s ankle the same moment Molly grasped the glass. Choking on smoke she began sawing while Stuart kicked Hearl in the face. Bone snapped. Yet Hearl never relented.

“Just a little further.” Stuart choked to himself, kicking again.

Somewhere wood groaned and cracked, a sound that had Hearl jumping back as a beam of singed cedar fell across Stuart's back. The boy screamed, splintered, and burned wood was now cutting through his t-shirt.

The fire was making its way up the walls, every pair of eyes and lungs burning. With a gagging breath, Stuart was straining under the weight. Molly, her chest heaving as another window burst above her, freed her first wrist.

Hearl blinked out of his shock, and more than pleased at the beam, he pounced on Stuart. The boy screamed as the wood was pressed deeper in his flesh.

“St-stop.” Molly cut off with a hacking cough as Hearl delivered kick after kick to Stuart's pinned body.

“I am a good soldier!” Hearl screamed.

A sob echoed through her burning throat as she frantically tried to cut with the cracked wrist. She was going to die like this. Stuart was even now dying before her eyes.

“Moll-” The boy groaned and tried to shove off the beam, Hearl kicked his arms out from beneath him. His chin cut into tiles. Another beam of flaming wood crashed down, landing on the head of Molly’s gurney, the metal frame collapsed to the floor, echoing her screams.

“The T-!” Stuart shouted, spitting out blood. “The T-” Hearl struck his knees, landing punch after punch in Stuart's back.

Blinking to clear her burning vision, Molly looked down at the shard in her hand, then to the two before her. They were fighting, arms, and limbs everywhen with the beam between. She could never cut herself free intime, but maybe, just maybe she could hit Hearl, without striking Stuart. Swallowing a sob, she tried to save the boy when she couldn't save herself.

Stuart caught sight of her raised, aiming arm.

“The TV!” He screamed.

Molly jumped, a wave of fiery sparks warning that her vision of the room was about to be obstructed.

Stuart screamed again. Before she could do anything else, before she lost not only her life but this chance as well, she threw the shard at the televisions, a beacon of light within the sea of smoke.

The glass shattered the screen.

The voices praising space stopped.

Hearl’s cracked and broken knuckles froze.

Hacking on smoke and air, Stuart crawled half a foot further and grasped the flesh-coated nutcracker. With one last effort of strength he shoved the beam off. The half collapsed roof groaned, sparks raining down. His vision black, a stream of blood dripping off his lips, Stuart stumbled and turned on his bloodied knees. The boy struck Hearl again and again with the nutcracker till his eyes rolled back in his old, broken head. Stuart shoved the body away, it collapsed behind a fountain just as another beam of flames crashed down. Cutting off their sight of Hearl.

“Stu-” Molly, a ghost through the sea of flames, gave a hacking cough.

Cursing and praying, Stuart limped through the flames, crashing into the end of her gurney as a broken window frame rained down, striking his shoulder.

Molly yanked a shard free and kicked the frame off of him. Stuart locked his fingers around the glass and sawed through the leather.

Molly rolled off the gurney just as a wave of fiery wood rained down on the mattress.

In a flurry the kids, bloodied and locked around one another, stumbled out of the greenhouse. They lay, gasping in the grass, then with so little effort, they passed out.

----

Hours later, a morning mist striking their faces, they awoke.

The greenhouse now ashes. Groaning and swiping at wet faces, they both gathered themselves. Molly whispered first, huddled into a bruised and broken ball. “How did you know the TV would stop him?”

“That one about the soldier…it’s his voice. From a long time again, but still-”

“Stuart.” Molly grabbed his arm. Then pointed to the nearly charcoal building.

Smith Jones lay among the rubble. His flesh burned and seared. His skin as deep blue as the bruises on their own bodies.

Molly's chest began heaving. What-

“Molly…” Stuart's hushed voice drew her head around.

“What…” Blood, or what she had thought was blood, covered her fingers, only it was as blue as Smith. And it was seeping from every one of her cuts.

The girl’s scream was cut off by Stuart's hand. A black truck was pulling up on the other side of the greenhouse.

Something in his guts made Stuart roll the both of them out of sight and toward the river. Molly beat at his hands.

Men’s shouts echoed. “Close the perimeter.”

“Bring in the contamination unit.”

“Wrap it up, search the perimeter!”

Molly fought him, till finally she grabbed his free hand, holding it up to his own eyes. Where he’d gripped the glass, his cut was seeping deep purple.

“Check the river!”