Halloween Vault Prompts

Prompt 1

The Prompt: You're alone somewhere in deep space... or at least you thought you were alone.

     I never believed they existed, but one is staring right at me. In the darkness between the stars, I can barely make out the shape of it as it flits between asteroids. My mind flashes to tales of sirens, those creatures that lurk in deep space, singing their dark songs to lure wayward wanderers.

But this doesn't look like what I had been told sirens were supposed to appear as. In fact, it doesn't look like anything I recognize- sometimes it seems familiar, but it is gone the next instant.

Teeth and claws and tails that I both do and do not know appear; glaring eyes and snarling, slavering mouths that produce no sound glitter in the pulsing, far-off starlight.

As far as I can tell, there is only one. But it changes so much and moves in such a way that I am not so sure. As I watch it, I become aware of a creeping cold, crawling up my limbs and weighing me down- though aren't you supposed to be weightless in space?  Doubt and a slow fear show their heads, along with the feeling that I must check out of the corner of  my eye, to be sure that nothing is behind me or where I other wise cannot see.

I do not know exactly what the... thing... before me is. Neither does anyone else. The only evidence that it exists are stories- legends, muttered warnings, bedtime stories to tell children, low whispers in dark spaces.

There is nowhere for me to go to escape. I do not even know if I can. The thing creeps ever closer as I try to find a way out of this crushing darkness. Ever closer, until I realize that there is a presence near me that was not there before...was there?

I dare not look, for I fear if I do that will be it. Instead, I do my best to ignore it and continue to look for an egress.

The presence grows until I feel I may suffocate from its nearness. My chest feels tight, and my head foggy.

It's getting harder to think. Shouldn't I be going somewhere? ...but where? Do I need to? The darkness is fine, and stars are too bright anyway...

I close my eyes to block the light. My chest is light now, my mind still blurry. I am weighed down and weightless all at once.

A soundless snarl, then quiet.