The Human Retaliation [on hold]

Chapter 7 part 2: Celeste 1

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Twinkling stars in the distance, twinkling stars coming closer.  Shine bright shine strong shine everlasting.  Twinkle, twinkle little star.  The stars swirl and move, migrate and blur soon they are everywhere at once making the world around very, very bright.  Then they stop, but there are no more twinkling stars in the sky—there is no more blur and no more light.  It is all dark.

A shadow, within a shadow—fear.  Fear of what?  The unknown, the unseen, the darkness, the shadow itself—what could create a shadow where there is nothing?  Jessie looked up, it was hard to focus on something so huge and vast and metallic.  But there it was, some sort of floating mammoth.  A ship, a ship in space.  But this spaceship didn’t seem to be working, everything about it was dark—huge holes filled it sides and scraps hovered around the beast like it spit them out but they were unable to fly far.

A derelict ship, some forgotten mammoth lost in the void between worlds.  The beast was very blocky in its build and could be miles long, its actual length unseen.  The abandoned craft had heavy weapons mounted on its shell, some as large as half a dozen people stacked on top of each other.  Its surface wasn’t smooth, it had indents and protrusions at random, boxes of metal welded on the outside, and exterior pipes covering its exterior. 

The massive grave seemed to have no color to it except the dull gray years of exposure to harsh environments must have given it—ripping any shred of joy and happiness off the creature years ago.  The ship rolled slowly in space, a perpetual spin it must have gotten right before it finally died.  A side with writing appeared.  It was in a strange language, but somehow she could read it.  The symbols turned and twisted with the abandoned deathtrap transforming into words she could recognize, “Celeste One”.

Celeste One, though destroyed and floating through space, didn’t feel empty at all.  Its abandoned insides were filled with thousands of souls—maybe the minds of those slaughtered on the vessel, maybe something else.  But she couldn’t see inside to be sure, the massive wreck had no windows, not even at its front.  But it was teaming with life-force, none of which could escape the grasps of the metal. 

Celeste One continued its roll, finally showing its bottom.  Everything was missing—almost as if the ship had its bottom sliced off like a slice of cheese.  The entire inside of the vessel was visible from its neat cut, parts of rooms and halls of varying sizes.  These rooms and halls had white apparitions walking through them as if the ship’s crew was continuing on its daily activities.  These ghosts were everywhere, some sleeping some moving through the halls; others were sitting in the maimed bridge of the ship, as if they were still flying the wreck. 

These ghosts communicated with each other, ate their ghostly food together and pretended to run Celeste One.  The hundreds of white ants moved around the ship as if its insides haven’t been exposed to the ailments for what could be decades. The moment the exposed part of the ship was completely pointing at her all the ghosts stopped.  Their heads all slowly twisted up and their separate existences began to merge and fuse together, trying to reach out into space. 

The human-like appearances they had before transformed into a generic blob then into five lines as they reached closer and closer to her.  Jessie tried to get away; she tried to swim though the nothingness to escape the fingers.  The ghosts had merged themselves into a massive hand that was trying to reach out and snatch her out of the sky.

As she struggled against the frictionless space her eyes rolled down over her body, she wasn’t in one of her dresses, she couldn’t see her legs. In fact, she didn’t even look like herself.  She had a heavy black coat on and large boots.  Her legs were long as if she was fully grown and she felt heavy.  Suddenly she could feel her hair standing up on her head and a trench coat lightly tugging at her body.  She moved her hands in front of her to see not her hands, but someone else’s.  A filthy gagged metal claw had replaced one of her fingers.  She realized she wasn’t really even her.  This wasn’t her place, this wasn’t her body.  This was Sean.