Something is wrong.
Consciousness drifts back to me lazily, like an incoming tide as my mind and body awake in stages. At first, it is dark, and I have no form, just a terrified animal spark suspended in a featureless abyss. My primal hindbrain sends useless impulses to my unanswering body, demanding that I run and hide, but I am still. How long I drift here, I do not know, and the darkness devours time.
Gradually I become aware of muted sensory impressions, the faint hiss of venting gas, the dry taste of recycled air. It is utterly black however, darker than I would have believed possible, and I slowly realize that my eyelids refuse to open. I am aware of them now, thin sheets of flesh that tug across my face, but remain closed despite my efforts. Even without them, I can still sense the glass and metal frame around me.
With a dawning wave, I realize how cold I am. So cold, that for a hideous and protracted moment, I believe I may be on fire. I begin to panic, still trapped inside my nearly lifeless body, wanting to slither and crawl away from the pain. My lips part with a tear of flesh and I can feel blood trickling into my mouth, growing instantly cool as it runs between my clenched teeth. My jaw remains locked in place, the muscles straining weakly beneath my cheeks.
I want to cry, to sob like a child, bathed in quiet despair and helplessness. In my cocoon of self pity, higher functions of my mind begin to slowly emerge, grinding like rusty gears into use, and I try to calm myself.
I am alive, I tell myself. This is all perfectly normal, and at any moment one of the ship’s medics will carefully open the capsule, place the tip of a plastic bulb between my torn lips and squeeze warm, sweet electrolytes down my parched throat. This maternal image of comfort stills my quivering body, and I began to breathe regularly, and my reason begins to return.
If I am awake, then we have arrived. The long silent passage through the endless night of interstellar space has ended. If I am alive, then we are in orbit around Eta Cassiopiae.
I breathe evenly and smooth, and catch a tinge of something in the air, a faint whiff of chemical corruption from the dry sterility of the ventilation. The blackness beyond my closed eyes pulses briefly with light, registering a soft red glow as it diffuses through the vessels and capillaries of my closed lips. My cracked lips emit little white sparks of pain as I contort my face, tugging my eyelids open with a quick and agonizing jerk of the head. Fluid weeps from the corners as I blink convulsively.
At first I am terrified that I am blind, and then, slowly, the edges of my tiny capsule resolve in the faint red light of a blinking LED. The glass is just a few inches from my face and I can see my breath against it, a wet fog that briefly flowers into ice, and quickly evaporates into the dry air. Beyond the glass, is nothing, a silent and yawning darkness.
My heart is thudding in my chest now, and my limbs seem to twitch and tug on the safety restraints around my ankles and wrists. The tight glass coffin and the empty abyss beyond seem to crush me between them, twining threads of claustrophobia and agoraphobia around my chest and I struggle to breath evenly. The lights should be on. Someone should be here by now. Something is very wrong.
Faint movement at the periphery of eyes causes me to turn my head and eyes in a sharp instinctual move. The weary atrophied muscles of my neck scream in agony, and my eyes grind through sandpaper filled sockets. I gasp and my eyes fill with warm welcome tears, that without gravity simply cloud my eyes like a lens. Through the watery haze, I see a passing wave of dull red light, illuminating briefly the dimensions of the space in the dark, and then drifting out of sight.
I shake my head, gritting my teeth against the dry tearing pain of movement, and fling the tears from my eyes. They drift away in little silver spheres and freeze, moments later. I blink my eyes and try to focus again on the darkness. I barely realize that I have stopped breathing when the light returns.
It is a red emergency light, spinning silently, but it is far too dim, and far too slow. It crosses the room like a broom, briefly revealing the faintest glimpse of the space beyond. I see rows of dark containers, dozens of them, each containing the vague shadow of a figure. My eyes dart around the scene, unable to absorb any details, only the vague sense of scale and shape inside the room. I strain my eyes to focus each time the light passes, but I can’t make out anything in the dimming light. There is nothing in the darkness that can tell me what has gone wrong.
I didn’t see the window at first, but I gradually became aware of it as faint pinpricks of starlight catch my eye. I lock my eyes and focus on the drifting stars as my heart threatens to burst from my chest, and my lungs suck in frigid air in ragged gasps.
Calm, I repeat, over and over like a mantra to myself. Calm. If I can just get control of my breathing and be patient, someone will come to help.
Like an answer, there is an explosion of light from beyond the window. I squint, feeling my irises spasm and struggle to contract. Outside the porthole, there is a blue and cloudy world, looming and massive. My eyes adjust and I can do nothing but drink in the sight of the oceans and land. The planet light seeps into the cabin and illuminates the rows of glass and steel tubes, and I can finally make out the occupants.
Most of them are frozen and dead, pale blue and white wraiths with lips and eyelids pulled wide and open by contracting muscles. A few of the containers are smeared red and opaque. Each has the same flower of frozen blood and cracks, where it’s occupant must have beat his skull against the glass.
I tug again on my restraints as panic overwhelms me, my limbs thrashing against the restraints. I realize I am silently asking for god, begging escape from this frozen mausoleum.
My eyes lock onto the planet, now wide and filling the window, and my heart stops. In the blue ocean I see the distinct silhouette of the European coast. My mind reels and I clench my eyes against the disorientation.
We never left.
The fever of panic breaks, and I begin to feel a glimmer of hope. We never left. I am not going to die in orbit around an alien world. I am home. I can still be saved. These thoughts start to warm me and I stop tugging against the straps. Measured breath returns, and I close my puffy, swollen eyes and allow my heart to settle.
I open my eyes again, gazing down onto the Earth, and a sudden wave of nausea rises in me before I really understand what I’ve just seen.
Striking a sharp line across the face of the globe, the terminus between night and day divides Europe and Africa.
On the day side, I see the polar ice, a stretching white sheet that has all but absorbed the Scandinavian Peninsula and coils around the rest of the continent.
On the night side, there is primal and elemental darkness. There are no cities, no lights. There is emptiness.
As quick as it came, the Earth slides out of view, showing only her frigid and lightless night, and dropping the cabin into a final, cold darkness. The red klaxon light has stopped spinning. The lights inside my coffin have stopped blinking.
I am left alone, in the frozen dark, with the dead.
Terror claws at me, my body is shuddering and useless, with blood like ice.
I suck in a deep lungful of the dying air, and scream.
The Josef K Stories 
Sorry for the lack of comments, I’ve been away on business; I hate keeping myself busy, I’d much rather procrastinate.Anyways, this one is… hmm. It feels like it lacks any momentum. In my opinion, this is partially due to how vague it is. There’s a fine line between being elusive enough with your narration to mystify your reader, and then being just plain ambiguous. So from the text, we can derive that a) The speaker has just woken up from a deep cryogenic freeze; and b) Earth has somehow been catastrophically destroyed, and there is no hope for said speaker.But why is he there? I mean, was it an escape mission? Was it routine? Did he/she know Earth was going to be destroyed?Your imagery is, as always, incredibly florid. I can’t even describe to you how many authors wish they had your descriptive grace. But again, it paints a brief picture of something that lacks motion. Whereas your other stories either gave me the shivers, or outright scared me, this one is just kind of… blase.Now, to give it some momentum, here’s what I suggest:Go into the back story. Make those faceless people in the other cryo-tubes have personalities. Make the bloodied mess of the belovedly naiive Sgt. Sharon an emotionally traumatic thing for the reader. If we feel attached to these people, the pang of their abrupt loss becomes that much more poignant.Have the narrator try to escape the tube, only to realize the futility. He’s trapped, left to die alone, as his comrades likely did. Shackled in a frigid chamber, he strains violently against his fetters, but to no avail. Death will not come quickly for him, and he knows this. A slow death is always much more terrifying than a quick one–and in this situation, you could definitely play up the “buried alive” angle.If I think of anything else, I’ll pop in and let you know, but hopefully those suggestions will spark some ideas.Best regards,Edward
Although I understand where you’re coming from Edward, I enjoyed the story very much the way it was. The idea that the other people in the capsules are just nameless scientists who suffered his same fate adds to the the helplessness the character must feel. He doesnt even have a familiar face to die with him, hes alone stuck in a coffin in space.
wonderfulI think this is my favorite so far
I actually really liked this one as well. It is a bit choppy, as you pointed out, and edward is right that it could do with a bit more momentum. But I strongly disagree with him about adding more backstory and explanation, and especially urge you to avoid adding the kind of cheap manipulative drivel like poor Sgt. Sharon who had such high hopes. Frankly, I like being left to wonder.Just clean it up a bit. And in that vein, I should point out that it’s the hindbrain that’s primal — the fore-brain is the new bit.
I try to avoid general “here’s what you should have done with your story comments”, simply because it truly is a matter of personal taste, and authorial execution. I’ve seen the same story written two different ways, with two different effects. Adding in the back story is simply one way of going about this.Mostly, the suggestions I put on here aren’t meant to be directly implemented, but rather used to spark further ideas more in line with your own vision. If I could get in my authors’ heads and figure out what they were trying to say, it would make my job a helluva lot easier, but unfortunately, I can’t. So I resort to flinging ideas haphazardly in the hopes that maybe one will spark off some flame of insight for the writer. I probably should’ve clarified that before coming across as a bit presumptuous.My sincere apologies,Edward
Gutentag Gentlemen,First off, absolutely no apologies necessary! I put these stories up here for exactly this kind of feedback, and I love all the advice. I may disagree or not use it, but there’s nothing presumptuous about it, because I’m directly asking for it. The more feedback the better, no matter what it is.For this story, I regret that I really do not intend to revisit it. I, personally, think in a piece this small and simple (one could say “one-note joke”) that extra characterizations would be unwieldy without more of a plot to support them. I also don’t think this piece is worth much fleshing out. A little backstory, this was originally, in a very different form the opening to a much longer piece. The main character found himself aboard a crippled colony ship millions of years after launch still in earth orbit, the forgotten relic of an ancient catastrophe. The ship is maintained my a long-half-life reactor as well as solar power, but after millions of years in orbit, it’s slowly failing. (There was an unnecessarily expository section regarding the low energy deflection shield that kept the ship from being swiss-cheesed by interstellar garbage)Our intrepid hero breaks out of the life support system to find the power plant is finally dying, and being only a exobiologist wakes up the highest ranking officer whose pod has not been compromised. (only half the colonists have been frozen beyond repair at this point)After a lengthy debate about euthanasia, they figure a way to generate enough power to return to Earth, and begin to use their colonization supplies to terraform it. Earth is coming out of a new ice age, and humanity has long gone extinct, or evolved into a diverse group of extremely primitive forms.That’s about where I gave up, envisioning a couple decades of world and government building ala Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy (absolutely essential reading), and a lot of good vs. good conflict. Something about taking the opening and cutting it short to kill all my cast of a dozen characters was appealing to me. So, in a sense, Sgt. Sharon is in one of those tubes. She was the tough, no-nonsense XO that Dougal (the narrator) was supposed to argue with about the fate of the remaining colonists. All the pods are filled, I just neglected to tell you about them, and mostly because I was tired and wanted to wrap it up.As always, I appreciate all the advice, especially the good criticism. Thanks, all.
the most amazing yet, but… your stories always arethankyou ❤
I agree that the story is missing something, although what I can’t be sure. It just feels a little..incomplete.That being said, it is one of the most terrifying stories I’ve read in a long time, and though you’ve already said you don’t plan to revisit it, I’d urge you to reconsider. Even if it’s just touching it up and fixing what people have pointed out, that could make it incredible, rather than the just ‘really great and terrifying’ that it is now.Thanks for writing these, they are great, and have given me some truly horrifying nightmares in recent months.
This one truly terrified me.Thank You.
when I first started reading it, it kinda reminded me of Pandorum, which i just realized didn't come out till like a year after u made this. haha. but eitehr way, i was reminded of it and i just thought to myself: "This would make for an excellent trailer for that movie" overall i liked it, even if it was kinda short.
I will admit a tinge of jealousy when I saw Pandorum. This idea is one I've toyed with for a while. "Thaw" was originally the opening to a much longer piece, that I cruelly truncated to make it a short.The novel I'm working is a reworking of the original idea, and contains a similar, if less horrific, amnesiac awakening.
So… Wait a minute, I’m slow. Was this guy in the cryogenic thing until everyone in the world died or what. Confusing, but still a great story!
MH.
That was my intent. In my mind, his colony ship was loaded up in the middle of an economic collapse, and his whole fleet was left in orbit while civilization collapsed. This was a rapid adaptation of a previous fragment, so if you’re confused, it’s almost certainly my fault.
Awesome.
Your work is amazing. I would like to say I have a favourite, but I just so thoroughly enjoy everything you create!