by Mackenzie Bodily
“Rat-a-Tat” placed fifth in Southern New Hampshire University’s 2023 Fall Fiction Contest.
Marlyle watched the words “BEACON ACTIVE” slide over the walls of his one-man cruiser. The cabin was dark, illuminated only by the stars outside the window and those words projected in bright red by his ship’s distress beacon. The beacon rotated and the projected words moved over the dark interior at a rate of thirty seconds per rotation. Twice a minute. A hundred and twenty times an hour for three days. He had timed it.
A lone man could go crazy alone in space. If the reports of space sickness were true, some did. Trapped with no lights or sound, the human mind rebelled. Marlyle wasn’t going to let that be him.
The key was keeping yourself busy. The first day, he classified the stars the ship passed. Red dwarf, blue giant, protostar. It worked for a while, but several hours into the exercise the stars all started to look the same. He was going in circles.
The second day he calculated how long he would last without aid. He had enough rations for sixteen days tucked in the supply closet. He lugged a box into the main cabin, jumbling against the steel shelves as he went. Oxygen would run out before he starved. The thought of suffocation was unpleasant.
Late on the third day, however, a tapping came from somewhere in the ship. He stood in the center of the main cabin, every sense alert, every muscle tense. His heart was pounding. He forced himself to listen. The noise was coming from the supply closet. The door stood ajar, and every thirty seconds, the red letters jumped through the gap and illuminated a two-inch slot of steel shelves and silver ration packets. The sound was just an illusion, he thought to himself. It was his mind playing tricks on him. It was nothing to worry about. He was alone on the ship. He was certain of that. At least, he was almost certain.
He backed away from the door and came to a space opposite the opening. Two silver machines stood side by side. He slid into the gap between them and sank to the floor. The supply closet door stood across from him – open.
There was nothing there, he told himself. Nothing in the supply closet. This was all in his head. The human mind was used to endless stimulation. Put that in a dark void, in a room without movement, without sound, and it would start hearing things. Space sickness was humanity’s own evolution turning against it. If he looked inside there would be nothing there. Nothing but shelves and supplies. He would look. Tomorrow he would look.
On the fourth day, the door had moved. Or, at least, he swore it had. He watched the red letters spill into the gap and tried to remember if two had fit inside at a time or three. He started counting without realizing it. Twice a minute the letters disappeared into the gap and his heart started to pound.
He ate his dinner without leaving his hiding place. It had been two days since he last ventured into the supply closet. He had no more food or water outside of it.
He had to go inside. He would go insane otherwise – or starve. He took a deep breath. The tapping continued.
He reminded himself of everything he’d read about space sickness. He imagined himself getting to his feet, sliding out of the gap, crossing the room, and opening the door to the supply closet. He even imagined looking inside the small space and seeing what he knew had to be there: rations, shelves, and nothing else.
But the sound continued and he could not go inside.
Hours passed and the small clock – kept alive by emergency power changed as the sixth day began. Marlyle was thirsty, hungry, and hadn’t slept for thirty-six hours. There were things at the edge of his vision now, little wisps of movement. He had to go or starve. He stretched his cramped legs and, with an arm pressed against the wall of the ship, got to his feet.
The tapping was constant. He watched the letters of the beacon slide into the doorway. Three letters falling into the gap before leaping out and continuing their journey. He closed his eyes and focused on his breath. It was all in his mind. It was just the nothingness getting to him. It was space sickness. He took a step forward. There was nothing else on this ship. Nothing could enter it while in the vacuum of space. Unless… He froze. What if something had snuck onboard while he was docked? What if there really was something inside and what if, by opening the door he… he stopped himself. Go down that path and he would just create more monsters. Feed the sickness and it would grow.
He had to face it. He had to face it now.
He took another step. The distress beacon washed over him and cast a deformed shadow on the wall. He took another step. He was there now, his hand on the door.
He opened it, and the black interior gaped at him. He could make out the shelves, the silver packets, and the bottles. Faces swam before him. Their eyes were empty, their mouths open. They made his skin crawl. Marlyle steadied himself. The faces weren’t there. Not really. He looked closer. The room was empty. Just as he knew it would be. Just as the still-sane part of himself knew it would be.
The letters came around again, illuminating the closet. And then something, something that was not an illusion, moved.
He froze, a scream gurgled and died in his throat. Unable to look and see what hung to his right at eye level. He stood lifeless, his blood draining from him, and his heart pounding. He thought he could feel something perched there. Something dark. Something watching him. Thirty seconds passed and the letters spilled over them again.
The light broke the spell. Marlyle leaped from the room. He scrambled on the padded floor and flung himself into his corner. His heart pounding, tears running from his eyes, and his fingers digging his chest as if trying to stop his own heart. He pressed his back to the wall and sobbed. The door hung open now. He shoved his body deeper into the nook between the machines and sank to the floor. Never to leave again.
A supply craft picked up the distress beacon six days later. A party boarded the ship and repaired the hardware failure. The only passenger had died of starvation three days before. He was wedged into a corner, his eyes wide with terror, his entire body focused on the door to the supply room where fifteen days of rations sat untouched.
In the whole ship, only one thing moved. In the supply closet, hanging by a thread, was a cheap, plastic mirror. It hung at eye level and, as the ship’s oxygen pumped through the closet, it and collided with the corner of a foil ration and made a faint rat-a-tat.
Category: Competition, Featured, Short Story, SNHU Creative Writing, SNHU Student