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A short story I wrote yesterday
“Brother, Lost in the Sauce”
A short story by J.M. Scrudder
It all started one morning when I woke up on the floor. The floor of which room and which house I could not say. It was dusky, I could hardly see and I felt tired and groggy.
My slab of a face was pushed against a pungent carpet – it was shag, I was lost in the jungle of wool that encroached from the cold pavement below. Dust crawled into my nostrils, it tickled my hairs.
My back was as sore as if an elephant had laid down on me and decided it had found its final resting place.
I moved my fingers slightly, then my wrists, then my arms. I was not bound so I felt slightly better about my situation – the sun sliced through the curtain and I could see a beautiful illusion of dust particles caught in a slow enticing dance which was drawing me up off the floor.
I stood up slowly, painfully as the sore in my back stretched across my shoulders.
There was a bed with four posts that reached up and into the ceiling; it was as if the bed were symbiotic with the rest of the house. While the smell of death permeated all around me it seemed as though the room were alive. It didn’t make much sense to me until I saw the Nightstand and dressers. They seem to have grown right into the walls of this house, this room, this… wherever I was.
I took a step towards the small door on the right side of the bed – it had grown and attached itself to the door frame and into the wall with an amazing series of tiny little veins which seemed to be growing right before my eyes. Little green and brown cracks and tears of veins stretched and spread so thin I could only catch their movement through my peripheral vision. The carpet had wrapped itself softly around my toes. Oh, how familiar all this seemed to be – the smell of the room – the dust in the light, had I been here before or was this just some strange comforting dream I have been reliving each night as I slept, only to have it erased and left cold and forgotten when I awoke each morning.
I leaned toward the dusty brass knob on the door and slowly extended my hand which started to feel a slight tingle race though the pad and push out to the fingers.
I heard a quiet sound, a distant echo – the banging or creaking of a pipe. I couldn’t be sure. My head started spinning in a daze of confusion. Had I been drugged?
The window!
I started over but noticed my movement had become slower. Were my feet dragging? No, it seems as though they were getting caught up in the carpet. I struggled, one determined step at a time until I made it to the window – I grabbed a hold of the shades and drew them open wide. The flood of light washed over me – I was blinded instantaneously (the sound from the other side of the door became more distinct – it became clear that it was a dull thud, one object softly striking another perhaps?) I closed my eyes tightly, water brimming at the edges, at least I was waking up a bit more and I could feel a slight surge of energy coming back to me – though the tingling in my hand had persisted and had now crept its way up my arm and to my elbow. I turned my head away from the window quickly, shutting my eyes tighter until I could adjust to the light.
When I opened my eyes, I thought I saw for a brief moment the walls were moving, scuttling about quickly. There were bugs all over the walls! And just as quickly as I saw them they sank into the walls as if they were being swallowed by the house. I fell to my knees and began to panic. This couldn’t be real, this was a dream; it had to be.
What’s happening to me?
Then I saw in the corner of the room, a white suit clumped into a pile of other clothing. I crawled over to it. It was hard and rumpled. There were tiny pictures and words sewn all over it. There were clamps and holes and metal protrusions near the chest and neck of it.
I felt I knew it so well but it seemed so foreign to me at the moment.
My name is Frank!
My name is Frank whyler.
I could smell something new, an aroma so sweet and fresh. My wife! Amelia.
She was in the kitchen cooking us a dinner tonight. I remember now. I went out last night for a drink at the bar. That woman who was talking to me, I didn’t know her but she seemed to remember me. She must have slipped something in my drink while I was away at the bathroom.
I had to get into the kitchen to see Amelia, maybe she could explain how I got home last night, but why did she leave me on the floor? Something wasn’t right and I felt scared now.
I got up with all my strength and made my way to the door. When I reached for the doorknob again the thumping sound on the other side stopped. I felt a rush of cold wash over me and I felt sick. My whole body started to tingle. The carpet was wrapping around my toes.
The tiny veins quickly retracted and the door started disintegrating from the inside out. No, it wasn’t disintegrating; it was shrinking back into the door frame.
I was afraid to look, but I knew I had to.
I leaned into the opening to the kitchen.
The kitchen was not there. The smell of death was.
I saw the most horrible thing my eyes had ever seen.
Hard wood tables stretched across the floor, which were covered in dusty red sand. And on the tables laid four pale bodies – their white suits were lumped in the corner of the room, smeared with blood. I recognized these people. I was sad and infuriated all at the same time. Constructs of a blade pressing machine hovered above them as they were laid out in an assembly line fashion. I heard a small cranking sound and then the sickening soft thud.
They were being chopped up.
I threw up and fell backwards into the bedroom. There faces were so pale, there eyes were like hollowed out glass. The images burned their way into my mind. I tore at my head and scratched my face. How could this be happening!?
Then I saw from the slant of a view that I had into the kitchen, four bodies melt out of the wall and started slowly lumbering towards me, they were thin and pasty and their arms hung all the way to the floor, their finger tips dragging through the sand. They had no faces save a small mouth with which hundreds of perfectly aligned razor sharp teeth protruded.
I started crying and I got up off the floor and ran to the window – I looked outside and felt futility seeking into my bones. This couldn’t be real…
The landscape was red, the mountains were crimson, and the sky was a putrid hot pink.
Smoke curls raised up from unseen distant fires and were caught and mixed with dust devils which fell from unforgiving clouds and blew across the deserted wasteland.
I turned to see my captors hovering near me. I slunk down to the floor with my back against the wall; I curled up and began sobbing. The sun shone on them to reveal a tone of skin that was first a slick black and transitioned between beautiful, cold shiny blues and warm ultra violet purples. Like oil slicks on the ground, that’s what their skin looked like. Their hands were thick and their fingers which lay in the ground moved like tentacles. They seemed to be weaving in and out of the carpet as though it was part of some intimate conversation.
Then one of them spoke.
“We apologize for your awakening. You were not meant to have seen any of this. Your mind has been infected with a toxin which should have kept you asleep”
He spoke in raspy howls and high pitched screams and jerked his head about in a violent manner. I could tell he was not speaking English, yet, I could understand the words.
“You came here with a crew of seven” He continued.
When you began to excavate the surface you released a noxious gas which infected and killed six of your crew members. You were immune for one reason and one reason only. Over a millennium has passed since our sun collapsed. We knew survival for us would soon come to an end – we decided to send out our seed to repopulate another planet but we found that they only grew and evolved on our world because of the specific make up of our planets core, the core which gives life and grows our seed.”
I couldn’t understand the words anymore. Nothing the being was saying was making sense anymore, but he continued to speak anyways in those horrible screams and howls.
“So we sent out the few remaining seeds with a message implant that would forever be connected to its DNA. The message was… Return home and repopulate, bring as many as you can with you. As your world began to evolve, your seed grew and branched out. Your world would not be alive if it were not for us. Once the seed had evolved enough to gain the knowledge to return home, it did. Your crewmates died because they were not immune to the gas because they were part of the transmutation that occurs with all evolution. Their original DNA lost the identity that was a part of the original seed. You survived because you are of the original seed…
You are on of us” He paused for a moment and screeched at one of the other beings. One of them slowly slunk back towards the kitchen.
“The rest of your world that is not of the original line will serve as an organic supplement to the rebuilding and growth of our surface. Once again, our world will flourish.”
I saw a sickening grin appear across his face, though; it could have been my imagination, he seemed to be genuinely pleased with how this whole situation playing out.
Suddenly his voice came across to a point where I could understand what he was saying again.
“Our world use to be as one living organism – we lived off each other and grew from what we made. This house, this house is the creation of just two of your crewmates, they are living and breathing all around you – that’s why it feels as if this house is alive. But they are hungry for more of their own kind, their new kind. And we are sorry to say, that we’ll be sending you back so you can bring the rest of your planets inhabitants home.”
What was he saying, he couldn’t be serious! Any moment now Amelia would come and shake me awake from this horrible nightmare.
“What are you going on about?” I asked in a small tone.
“You think I would go back to my planet and instruct anyone to do anything but avoid this place at all costs, you must be insane.” I wiped beads of sweat away from my forehead and stood up. My legs felt like wet spaghetti noodles.
“Think whatever you want.” The alien leaned in and hissed.
“You are one of us, as mutated and grotesque as you have become through your planets evolutionary stages, you are one of us. You will go back and bring the rest of our kind home. Yes, our species will change a bit, but we will have survived – you see, it’s you who has been fooled all this time. Your kind never existed at all.”
I stared in disbelief. My mouth was dry I couldn’t speak.
My body became completely numb and I slipped to the floor again. I could not feel my body.
“That’s the toxin we’ve placed into your blood stream. It’s an antidote to the noxious gas that infects our planet. Once you are asleep, we will send you back to your planet and as soon as you awake and breathe, the toxin will spread as an airborne virus in a manner so quickly that it will cover your world in a matter of weeks, and there is nothing you can do to prevent it. All your inhabitants will be infected and then they will be capable of living on our world. As it stands now, this house will die. Your crewmates cannot hold on like this – They will die in a matter of a few months because of their mutations that have led them away from the original seed – they will sustain a while longer if they had something else to feed on.
“You can’t be serious” I said. I began nervously looking for an escape. My body was completely asleep and only my head was capable of moving.
The creature that was sent away came back in with one of my crewmates bodies. I could only see him out of the corner of my left eye as I looked up from the floor.
I saw the comforter on the bed shift and move. Then, all of a sudden, the mattress lifted up to reveal a darkening abyss of a mouth with a fat wet tongue reaching out. My God, this house was alive. The bed had no teeth – just large swollen gums. It let out a deep groan as if begging for food. The Alien picked up my crewmate like a rag doll filled with lead in the hands and feet and pushed his body into the mouth of the bed. The bed sank its upper jaw down on my friend and I heard his back snap like a twig. Only for a brief moment I saw the pale reflection of death in his eyes and I all at once understood the fate of my planet.
The Alien that was speaking to me could see the horror in my eyes.
He kneeled over me and put his mouth against my ear.
“Hear these words, brother” he whispered quietly.
“Your time is over, now go, and bring them home… Oh yes, one last thing. You won’t be returning alone. Goodnight, dear brother.”
My eyes began to fall asleep and I drifted into a myriad of wonderful dreams.
Catalina Hospital, near the town of Water Crest, Florida:
“Amelia!”
Dr. Swanson shouted from the parking lot. He caught her walking up slowly to the entrance. She looked tired and exhausted, walking in a daze. He was sure the last time he saw her she was wearing the exact same clothes.
“Hello, Dr. Swanson” She said quietly. “Has anything new developed with Frank?” She knew what the answer was but she felt inclined to ask anyways.
“Sorry, Amelia” He said hopelessly as he directed them towards a bench near the entrance.
“It’s been the same ever since he returned I’m afraid.” The MRI’s have all been conclusive in showing that over 78% has been inexplicably activated. We’ve been probing to see exactly what functions they serve but we haven’t discovered anything yet. God only knows what’s going on in his head that’s torturing him.”
“What about his behavior?” She asked hopefully.
“I’m afraid it’s deteriorating at amazing rate. He still sleeps in the corner of the room. We had to remove the bed altogether because anytime we laid him down on it he would scream uncontrollably. He still tears at his face so we may have to bind his hands or put him on a higher dose of suppressants…”
Amelia started to cry.
“Oh God, I’m Sorry, Amelia – I wasn’t even thinking, Please, Please forgive me.”
“It’s alright Dr. Swanson, it’s just that it’s been 4 months and he hasn’t improved at all, I just don’t understand it.” She began sobbing.
“Well, one good thing has come from all of this, Amelia” He tried to remind her.
You’re husbands a Hero. He saved his six crewmates from certain death when they got caught in that cave in. all our tests confirm that the gas they say he was exposed to was the reason for the activation of the dormant area of the brain. It’s really quite amazing, and if we ever figure out how to control his dementia, it would be amazing all the things we could learn. Just imagine if those areas are able to tap in to some sort of telepathic abilities or has heightened sense awareness or, or, well, the possibilities are endless.”
He looked up to the sky arms stretched out; he realized he had gotten carried away.
“Look, Amelia” Dr. Swanson started again. “The team that you’re husband saved, said they found something in that cave that they could eat. They came back stronger then when they left. They said there were tunnels riddled with the stuff.
Anyway, they’re already in the planning process for terra forming the planet. In the next few months hundreds of shuttles with thousands of scientists will make the trip back to the planet. Bio Domes will be set up and thousands of settlers will be a part of the integration and building process. Just think” He grabbed Amelia’s hand.
“Just think, Amelia, if it wasn’t for Frank getting everyone back, none of this would be possible.”
“He’s a Hero, Amelia… and when this planets resource has been exhausted, well, you know, he’s essentially guaranteed the survival of our species.”
“I know I should be comforted, Dr. Swanson, but I’ve lost my husband” she said matter of factly.
“But he’s saved mankind” I know it doesn’t mean much now, but he’ll go down in history as the man that saved us all”
“You’re right” Amelia said.
“But one thing still bothers me… has he been able to say anything else since the day he returned?”
Dr. Swanson looked down.
“No. Just that one time, he said – They’re all dead, all of them, they’re all dead.”
“Would you like me to take you into see him now?”
“Yes, Thank you very much… you’re right, I am proud of Frank, Dr., He has saved us all,
The End.
May the 17th 2006
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