The Supernatural Invades the Everyday

Location: Hegemony Ship

Aliens: Human, ???

Nightshift.

 I can’t stand it, but I’ve done something to piss the captain off. So it looks like I’ll be stuck with it for a while. At least until she forgets what I did wrong. Getting used to ship time is so odd anyway. But when you’re going to bed as the ship is coming alive…it’s weird. By the time you wake up and report for duty, everyone’s gone again. It makes me feel like a ghost, haunted by the living. Moving about while they’re sleeping, trying hard to not make too much noise. Brief brushes with the odd night owl feel otherworldly.

 Listen to me. Otherworldly. On a spaceship. It does something strange to you, though, this moving in different time than everyone else around you. It makes you look over your shoulder. Makes you draw little circles inside yourself. There’s been all kinds of reports on it. Which is typically why nightshift rotates periodically. Just gotta hold out til the next change. Assuming I don’t do something to prolong my sentence.

 I’m thinking about this, since it’s really all I’ve got to think about, as I walk the corridors. I’ve got a whole level to myself. Some people get a detail where they’re placed with a partner. Lucky bastards. But not me, little ol’ lonesome me. I get to listen to the groans of the bulkheads, wondering if they’re about to give way. I get to catch snippets of conversation and not a few late night rendezvous. I think that’s what I’m walking up on when I hear it. I keep walking and it gets louder. A kind of moan? I get red-faced just thinking about it. I pick up the pace, feeling like I’m privy to something private.

 I turn a corner and it stops. Not trails off to an end. Stops. I turn to look back the way I came and I hear it again. Now it’s so loud it sounds like it’s in my ear. I jump and wheel around again, hand reaching for my standard issue pistol. But there’s nothing there. I shake my head, as if I might knock loose whatever’s troubling me. A door opens to my left and I back into the opposite wall.

 That bulkhead is the exterior wall. A door there would open into empty space. I’d be sucked right out and die in the vacuum of vast, black nothingness. But there’s something in the doorway. Something my eyes won’t show me. I rub them, digging the heel of my hands into the lids. I see it now. It looks like someone wearing a rain slicker, or maybe a cloak. Their back is to me.

 “H-hey,” I say, but whoever it is doesn’t turn around. “It’s regulation lights out,” I say, but no response. Please just listen to me. I start to cry. I don’t want to, but my hand is reaching out to touch their shoulder. I’m walking forward, towards the doorway. I’m watching my fingers as they spread out, reaching ahead of me. Please, I think. Don’t. Just keep walking. Walk away. Go back to your room and file for sick leave. No, not again. My tears fall up to the ceiling. They’ll discharge me if I keep getting sick. I can’t keep getting sick. I have to get better. I have to do better. I’m so lost. I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m so alone.

 My hand grips onto the shoulder. It makes my fingers feel like static. Like the feed is disrupted and it’s going to trail off into illegible fuzz. They turn to face me. There’s nothing there. Nothing inside the fabric. Just an empty something looking back at me. Like looking in a mirror that can’t see you.

 The moan comes again. I scream and white noise comes out. The moan is me. It’s my voice. Saying, “help me.”