They say that each snowflake is a small piece of a soul from heaven. I now know my piece will never fall from that sky.
There I laid, in the frigid cold, sweat slowly crawled down my neck and my heart raced. Every breath I took felt like they were pushing down my lungs vigorously, my body trembled, showing it’s weakness to the laughing snow that fell. My back was on a circulation chimney tube, I felt the hot excess smoke pushing its way to the top. The hybrid screams of the monstrosities inside could be heard; slowly those…things would tear me apart, a death better than life. I lifted my injured arm and looked at the timer that I held tenderly on my burnt hands, the glass was broken and the LED light was dim, 06:82 cycles. Kairth was slowly rotting away, and she’s taking me down with her.
I dreamed of freedom, where I no longer had to be forced to flutter across the long hallways, or descend down staircases where horrors await my peril. I wanted to walk away, and feel safe, as these turrets are only tools of war and the reactor gives no sympathy. How I hear these fairytales of people having others to love them, to think of them, to miss them. I am only missed when I am needed, I am only thought of as a numerical number. A card in the hand of Brindus, and easily thrown away. You will never know how it is to feel no longing, no heart. You cannot understand how it is to be seen as something which should never talk back and never think back. The aliens that crawl around here treat each other as brethren, as we try to hunt them down. Constantly dying, feeling the pain of a claw, scarring and molting your insides and feel death’s icy fingers grab at your eyes, then expected to live through it again as if nothing happened.
I do not know why we were here, our superiors from Brindus told us to kill the enemy and that was it, we landed here by craft and built a base inside. Instead we should’ve been building a heart for this mechanical beast which shows no remorse, no mercy.
I saw these aliens, teasing us, sometimes grabbing our men and torture them if we got closer. Their screams piece our ears, but we move on anyways, I was too weak to bear it. I saw these men, these soldiers I fight with; rape the remaining women where the enemy is, slowly taking what’s left of her over and over again, as I just watched silently, my insides churn. Or how they kick a dying child for fun, thinking they too could come back to life. I know now the truth, if they die, they die. No restarts, no extra lives, this reality is a cage that locks us in again and again. Their laughter haunts me; their blank, emotional faces hang over my head. The propaganda that our superiors show us left a mental image that shows the aliens are nothing but a thorn on their back. We are better, we are stronger, we are meant to live and everything else is supposed to die. I could not take it, how was I supposed to walk if my shadow is too big for me?
I began to resent my teammates; I had dreams of killing them, taking my saw and burn their faces again and again. I took matters into my own hands, as they stayed in their bases; one by one I picked them off. I removed the nodes and told the rest of them I was moving the base, they didn’t care, not anymore. I then stalked one fellow, the one who killed the child, then hid as I watched him cry in the corner, his sins haunted him. My eyes flashed and I quickly charged in-between his sobs. It was so easy, my first REAL kill. I felt the rush of adrenaline, the feeling of having a point to my existence, it was a strange feeling. I felt happiness for the first time, and I loved it. I slowly took them all, by myself, me! I don’t deny it, I will say it proudly. I killed those men, and hanged each one of them onto the reactor with wire, and for hours I watched them spin around and around. I began to hear voices, their screams and whispers crept into my mind and danced inside. They all talked to me, through my mind, they told me how much they cared for me, love me. I was loved! Love, this had to be it! But I wanted more friends, so I went out and captured and killed a granger. I broke the metal casing of a nearby turret and used the metal to make the granger’s body stand. I would talk to my new friends every day, I laughed and shared precious moments with them, but I always wanted more. I continue taking away parts of my base to make my new friends, until I had no more defenses, my mistake. My simple, faulty mistake, but I was too happy to mind it.
The aliens finally started to rush me, their anger was furious. They saw me take their brethren and turn them into shells of who they used to be, I knew they were crying on the inside but wanted to kill me. Their black, soulless eyes told me so. They pummeled me until I had to run, my leg was almost crippled and each step I took I lost more blood. I escaped and made tracks of blood when I came out here, now I wait, impatiently. I know now that I was insane, unnatural; I have become someone I never knew. But I was never somebody before, and then I laughed. I made something out of myself, and now soon I’ll join my friends in hell. We were supposed to take back Kairth, fuck her. Fuck her and Brindus, I don’t care anymore. I heard the screams of the aliens, rushing towards me, sniffing the trail I left for them. I wanted to die so badly, so I came out of my hiding place and waved to them. They came closer, they growled and sneered. They surrounded me, waiting for me to do something, I wanted them to kill me, but they didn’t. Why? Why would they do this to me? They looked at me; their eyes told me that they felt sad for me, reading me. As if I have become one of them. Then a small Basilisk crawled towards me, I lifted my hand and pet his head, gently. The aliens roared in unison and I now knew I have made new friends, real ones. Maybe there was hope for me, but Kairth has no more food and we were thousands of miles from it. I laughed, funny how these creatures, so different then I, cared for me more than the humans ever did. I didn’t care anymore about useless things like food, all I knew that I was given a new life. My very own fairytale.
My very own shred of hope.
