Ian Robert Krueger
Wyld FLASH– September 4th 2020
09/03/2056: We sank down into this horrible place precisely twenty-four hours ago. The surface is all blasted slag and smoldering cinder-cones, vomiting smoke and soot miles high. There’s no air, save what we brought in our decrepit colony ship that creaks and moans like a lonely old ghost. Everything is a sickly yellow, and stinks of hellfire. My mom says it’s just sulfur, and I should get used to it because Io’s got lots. She’s a scientist, so everything is all graphs and diagrams and those cute little models you make with balls and sticks. I say, it stinks like literal hell down here, and I want to go home.
09/04/2056: Had a bad dream last night. Something was alive on the moon’s blasted surface. Something squirming, dark, rotten. I awoke with a scream. Mom says I ought to see the our psychologist. Heck no. Wouldn’t trust that guy with two pennies. He smiles too big, and his long, slimy fingers are always wriggling. Like bisected worms, or something. Ugh.
09/06/2056: Mom says I should be grateful I’m here. That I’m a part of history. What history? The scientists are all excited, muttering to each other. They say they’ve found something. Mom can’t tell me what it is, but she says its gonna win someone the nobel prize. Someone mentioned something about the heads.
09/08/2056: Mom tried to explain to me how the terraformers work. I just rolled my eyes. Who gives a damn about her stupid machines. They give me the creeps anyways, the way they grind and moan and spew burning-clean chemicals up into the air, making it ‘suitable for life.’ What life? This place feels more dead every day. Had another nightmare. I was walking through the stinking wastes, all alone. Something was calling to me. I stripped off my enviro-suit, stripped off my clothes, slumped down naked, and died.
09/09/2056: Mom forced me to see that dratted psychologist, and she actually had the audacity to leave me alone with the bastard. At first, all he did was grin with his creepy-shark face and simper on about the ‘inherent stressors of interplanetary travel.’ But then he started asking me all these questions. And he seemed to know everything about my dreams, and how I shouldn’t worry because it was ‘just preparation’ and ‘all very natural, really.’ By the end, I felt like I’d been turned out like dirty laundry. Mom asked me how it went. I cussed her out good.
09/09/2056: The moon is alive. I heard it giggling to itself, under my bed. It wants to eat us all. I tried to tell Mom but she wouldn’t believe a word of it. She says I’ve got ‘auditory hallucinations’ and I need to see the psychologist again.
09/10/2056: God help me, they snapped pictures of it. It’s growing, right out of the moon’s core. It’s rotten, it’s hungry, and it speaks, from nine blasphemous heads that mock and devour each other. It wants a virgin sacrifice. People are looking at me strange. Mom cried hard, but explained there was “a lot of very complex metaphysical reasoning behind its thoughts, Julia. It’s a very intelligent being. I don’t think we should question it.”
Well, I do. I’m about to be eaten.
//Corporal Josephine Wichita, Confederate Xenos Specialist: The preceding text was recovered from a blood-streaked data-tablet in the abandoned Ioan base. There was no sign of Julia Fernandez, the Ioan colonists, or any xenos life-form. A small paper note was discovered in Miss Fernandez’s quarters. The transcript is as follows: “If anyone finds this, tell Dad It didn’t get me. I’ve got a cyanide pill in my pocket, just in case. I’m going to try my luck at piloting the colony ship. Love, Julia.”//
Author Bio: Ian Krueger is a young author from Minnesota who really likes writing stories about swordfighting teenaged girls. He also loves weightlifting, but his relationship with Jesus Christ is by far the most wonderful thing in his life. @IanRobertKrueger on Facebook.
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