Knocks At The Door

As the beast approached, the man cowering on the floor saw his life begin to flash before his eyes in a haze when he realized he was about to die. As his life went by and the monstrous beast howled and grew closer, his mind stopped on the moments that had led him down this path. The decision he had made that had led him to this moment, to his death.

Raymond Jones had lived a relatively simple life. He went to work everyday like normal and came home every night. He came home to no one though. Ray was in his mid-thirties and was fairly handsome with his jet black hair with startling blue eyes. He lived in a small house with a bedroom, a bathroom, and a small kitchen connected to a medium sized living space. Raymond lived a modest life with few luxuries. It's not that he didn't make a lot of money, frankly he did make quite a bit considering he worked at Vandenberg Air Force Station as one of their leading rocket engineers. No he lived simply because he didn't feel the need to buy more. He was happy as he was.

Everyday at work Raymond, known as Ray by his co-workers, developed rocket systems for the new launch. He didn't know much about the mission itself, but he knew he had to get the rocket out of orbit and near the moon. After several failed attempts, Ray was beginning to get frustrated. His team had worked for 2 years before finally they had created a successful rocket.

The next day after the rocket had been proven successful, Ray was call into his boss' office. Having done fairly well on the rocket, he began to wonder what was going on. Had one of his co-workers complained about him again? That had been the case many times over because, although Ray tried his best, he never got along with people well. His bad experiences over the years had led him to become antisocial and made it difficult to work with others. This was also why he had no close friends. When he opened the door though, his boss was not the only person in there.

"Sit down, Ray," Jerry, the lead director of this new project said. "Sure," Ray squeaked out as he sat into the chair in front of the large, cluttered desk. His hands felt clammy as he began to sweat with anxiety. The director started to speak, "As you know we are planning to send someone to space. What you don't know is why. We are doing this for an experiment the government has decided would benefit our program and society. The plan is to send someone into space alone to see if people can handle the vast emptiness of space without anyone else. This person would have to be able to operate the rocket by themselves if something went wrong." Feeling a bit confused but not wanting to say it he let the director continue. "We need someone who worked on the rocket to go so we have been studying you and your team. After looking into not only your skill but your life as a whole, we have determined you would be the perfect candidate for this experiment." The director paused then as if waiting for an answer. "Well, um what would this include exactly? How long would I be in space for? How could I keep paying my bills? Why would I want to do this?" Ray asked beginning to consider all the reasons he would never do anything like this. A woman on the side of the desk began to answer his questions, "All that would happen is you would be sent up and given all your supplies. We would also have to train you for any emergency.You would not be able to contact anyone on the ground unless you have a serious problem. We expect this experiment to run for about a year or so but really it would continue until we get the data we are looking for. During your time in space we would take care of all your accounts at home and as a bonus you would be paid $5 million dollars a year." She paused for breath then continued a bit more, "We know this sounds like a crazy process to you and you wouldn't have to make the decision right away but we would need an answer by the end of the week." This had all sounded crazy to Raymond. He had never done anything really dangerous with his life and this definitely sounded out of his comfort zone. "I.. I'll think about it," he said mad that he had stuttered. "We look forward to hearing your answer and hope that you seriously consider our offer," the woman said, motioning that he was dismissed.