First Contact

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At last, the wind abated. Once again, I drifted peacefully through the void. I shivered all over, but not because of cold; I shivered at the lack of cold. Usually wind would be accompanied by its cooling, caressing touch, but I did not feel any less warm now than I did before the gale. It was a phantom itch. I couldn’t recall feeling wind before that experience, but that wind had felt wrong in all the worst ways.

It had, however, brought me somewhere different in the Void. Soon after the wind had stopped, I saw what I had previously thought impossible: solid objects, floating in the Void like I was. Nothing substantial - a shard of ice, a sphere of slime, a dulled-out crystal - but they were physical. I could see and, if they drifted close, touch them. It was exhilirating. They were passing by on their own journeys, lost birds fleeting across the night. They didn’t appear frequently, so I had to enjoy the moments while they lasted.

I saw not only inorganic objects but things that were alive, or once alive, too. I dodged a large empty thing that resembled a shell of some kind, hurtling past my head. I saw a glowing blue femur bone, pulsating like the heart of a bioluminscent sea creature. I spied the dark shape of something that twitched and squirmed, far in the distance.

The noises didn’t stop, of course. Voices and sounds of all shapes and forms still echoed from all corners of the Void, and still from no discernable source. I heard a harpsichord playing heavenly music from above. I heard a rustic pot smash into pieces on an invisible floor below me. I heard a queer high-pitched ping, a small confounded device turning on right in front of me. I heard a woman’s voice, loud and strained, calling for help behind me. Her voice never wavered as she screamed, “Help! Help me!”

A hand gripped my shoulder. “HELP ME!”

I whipped round to see the dishevelled form of a woman grabbing at me in every way possible. I almost couldn’t comprehend it. Ages and ages of cosmic loneliness, and here now was a living, breathing person. Her bright yellow tumbleweed of hair glistened with sweat. Her panicked blue eyes shone like gemstones.

“HELP ME!” she screamed again.

“I-” My stunned voice disobeyed me, my sore throat dry from underuse in this abyss. I held onto her shoulders, but I found my fingers sinking into her skin and clothes as if they were mud. The strands of her hair seemed to shift and squirm of their own volition. Something wasn’t right.

The light in her eyes suddenly went out; her blue irises dimmed and turned lifeless. Her clothes sunk and dissolved into her skin. Her form began to contort and blacken. I jumped back in an attempt to retreat, horrified. My efforts were fruitless - her mutated arms were latched onto me like steel cables. I could only watch as her body distorted further and further, growing and growing.

Before me now was a writhing shapeless black mass of slimy flesh and muscle. What were once limbs were now strong inky tentacles, gripping me in place and feeling about my body. What once was hair dispersed into trillions of squirming black threads with a life of their own. What was once her chest burst open with a sickening pop, revealing a great undulating hole.

I quickly realised it was a mouth.

An awful stench of iron and rotting meat buffeted me, all but knocking me out. The horrendous creature gave a loud screeching whine, spittle flying in my face as its entire body rippled like a flag in a hurricane. Then its hungry mouth gravitated towards my legs. It was going to eat me from the bottom up.

I gasped in unholy fright and horror. My face began to itch wherever its saliva touched me. I tried once again to wriggle my way free to no avail. It was all I could do to even move my arms about, and coming into any contact with the creature’s sticky, mucous skin only glued me to it further. The two of us simply floated along the same trajectory now as it pulled me into its jawless maw. I couldn’t see where that hole ended. Its black tentacles, five of them now, searched thoroughly about my body; perhaps they were looking for indigestible objects to discard. I could do nothing as the alien continued its messy, yet almost mechanical, work. I noticed, with growing concern, my feet entering its mouth.

The tentacles tugged on something strapped on my back. I watched them pull away a faded leather rucksack. I had a bag on my back this whole time? The tentacles dived into its contents, eager to find something even remotely interesting. Random objects poured out of it: a spoon, a wad of wet tinder, some pencils and a strange block of stone. The stone block was within arms’ reach. As it spun through the darkness, I saw symbols etched on its surface, like it was some kind of tablet.

I grimaced as the monster tugged me deeper. My legs had now disappeared into the monster’s gullet, and they were itching all over. It gave another hungry whine, and my entire body shook and shivered. No time to hesitate; this monster was digesting me now.

I reached out and grabbed the stone tablet. Immediately, it began to glow and hum. Something within me gave a tug as I grasped it, and an odd feeling now swept through me. The itching faded. My fear ebbed. The symbols on the tablet now glowed in fanciful colours, rays of light stretching out into the Void like a thundering daybreak. A tentacle latched onto the stone and attempted to pull it away. I pulled back and swung the tablet in its direction.

An angelic BANG. Incandescent light spewed in all directions. The tentacle was gone - only a stub of one, waving back in forth in slimy pain. The creature shrieked, sounding for all the worlds like a wild pig with its legs chopped off - quite an apt description. But its mouth was now slurping upon my waist, sucking me up like a noodle.

It was halfway through its meal, and yet I could not have felt more alive. The stone tablet hummed contentedly, and through the recesses of my mind I felt a power within the tablet’s confines. Brimming inside it was the power of a thousand worlds ready to be unleashed. It was a bomb, sitting and waiting for someone to detonate it.

Steeling myself, I lifted the tablet over my head and brought it down heavily upon the massive creature’s flank.

BANG!

Bright light blinded me. The explosion’s shockwave tosed me backwards, but not enough to shake me from the beast’s mouth. A second ginormous hole now gaped through its undulating flesh, and gooey black ink gushed out of it. The monster screeched louder and whinier than it ever had before. Saliva and bodily ink shot in all directions. All the tendrils on its skin flailed about in a frenzy. Then it withdrew. Out came my waist, then my legs. Finally, its tentacles let go and the creature pushed me off.

It took many ear-racking minutes for its cries to at last be replaced by the ambient noise of the Void once more.

I slung my rucksack round my back again. My legs were covered in a weird mucous goo that was apparently acidic; there were a couple new holes in my pants and my feet were still a little red. I only now noticed I wore sandals; floppy, crimson ones. I tentatively looked about, searching for any more sings of danger lurking out there. Whatever that shapeshifting creature was, it seemed completely at home here - as if this was where it lived, hunting on hapless victims of the Void.

I looked down at the tablet in my hands, the thing that had saved me. The stone was as long as my forearm. It was fairly smooth and polished. The light that had emanated from it had much diminished. I could still feel energy bristling within it, but that too had depleted. I turned the thing over in my hands, and saw four numbers etched onto its flat surface:

4612

Something about those four numbers seemed to resonate within me. I looked up, hoping to find answers. But I saw only darkness immemorial.

This is a revised version of a story from 24 July 2021.