by Lena Ng
Pilot Huang floated, the light of the distant stars reflecting off his helmet, surrounded by drifting chunks of asteroid debris in the infinite black aloneness of space. At first, when his vacuumed anchors lost their grip, he struggled, windmilling his arms in futility, triggering his air jets which activated with a swoosh of sound and a propulsion of smoke; yet he watched with a sickening pit in his stomach as the elongated, white satellite body sailed further and further away, until it shrank in size to a toothpick before it disappeared altogether.
A glancing meteoroid had ruptured a secondary oxygen tank, depleting the life support of the other four team members, slumbering in stasis. Pilot Huang had donned his spacesuit, emerged into the cold void, and patched the leak. As his own oxygen tank depleted, a misplaced footing had caused an incomplete seal against the titanium alloy of the satellite’s body until he could only watch as the distance between himself and the satellite inexorably lengthened.
Pilot Huang closed his eyes and time elapsed. He didn’t know how much time or distance had passed; such things didn’t seem to matter with nothing to anchor the passage. Distance in relation to what? Time to when his oxygen tanks would empty or he would dehydrate to death? The pure, cold light of the stars bathed him in a deathly pallor.
He concentrated on his breathing. The rush and whoosh of blood rhythmically pulsing through his heart; the movements of his ribs as breath flowed in and out of his lungs; the slow travel of life-fluid through his legs without the contraction of muscle movement to aid its flow.
Over the curve of space, the traveling lights of a meteor shower danced. The annual Geminids with glowing amber fireballs and meteors cutting a knife-slice of white light through the sky. Pilot Huang was saddened that this would be the last time for him to witness this event.
He thought about his family: his wife with jet-black eyes, and his pea-sprout daughter; his parents where he burned incense at their red-and-gold shrine. Generations who came before him and generations who would come after him. As the stars were uncountable, what was the loss of one small life?
Floating like an embryo in cocooning amniotic fluid, surrounded by the vastness of the black, Pilot Huang watched as phosphorescent, curling lines of light began to steal out of the dark. Long, winding tendrils, thin as filaments, curved and flowed like the cosmic hair of Ophelia as she cascaded in pallid slumber down the lily-covered, winding river. These translucent tentacles tentatively reached out to gently stroke the thermal garment. They gathered and coiled around a wrist, an ankle; gracefully, they wrapped around his limbs like shining, sentient vines.
With leisurely, relentless pressure, the tentacles tore open the composite fabric. The nameless eater of the abyss pulled the man closer, about to transform human matter into energy. Its eight-chambered, lamprey-like maw began its feast of flesh.
LENA NG lives in Toronto, Ontario. She has short stories in over fifty publications including Amazing Stories and the anthology We Shall Be Monsters, which was a finalist for the 2019 Prix Aurora Award (Category: Best Related Work). “Under an Autumn Moon” is her short story collection. She is currently seeking a publisher for her novel, Darkness Beckons, a Gothic romance.
