This week I am participating in +Becket Moorby's Flash Fiction Project, which is using images as daily writing prompts.And, I am days behind already....
This was Sunday's image, courtesy of tourist_on_earth via Flickr Creative Commons (Attribution Link).
Alone. Light years from my home. Left here to rot in a place that no one dares come near. I no longer know who I am. I only remember why.
Slaughter. First of my own race, and then of each host I inhabited. The psyche would drown in my infinite sorrow and fury, then I would draw his sword as my own and plunge the blade deep into his nearest comrade. Using the host, I would mete out my own justice for their destruction of my family, my home, my world.
How many I inhabited I do not remember. I only remember bending the minds and bodies of my enemy, to surprise and then wreak havoc within their ranks until one would finally turn and kill the host. And on it's death, I would burst into the slayer and begin again. Until the last.
I staggered against his own strong mind as soon as I projected into his body. Each projection is agony. I feel the anguish of their dying, and on their last breath I am exhaled. Then, to be inhaled by another I am become the intruder, the invader, and the power struggle renews. After too many projections I was no longer able to fight his will, control his body, and we were hauled away to the brig regardless of his screams of innocence.
They determined I was an infection spread by the blood, and thus we were marooned in the deep of uninhabited space. Contagion alarms sound whenever a ship passes within 10 parsecs of the quarantine boundaries.
I do not know how, only that I managed to transition from my own life form into another. Nor do I know how, when the host body died of old age, I found myself inhabiting this ship. My one last refuge, my last hope for revenge.
I no longer know who I am. I only remember why.
<word count: 318>
2 comments:
Excellent as ever!
AK
This one has me knitting through a succession of questions. This piece has a poetic integrity. But I was confused by the changes in tense and between the uses of singular vs plural. If this Self is an infection whose purpose is revenge, could it not still be contained given that it is transmitted by blood, not air? but what kind of invader would an air-borne invader be? probably not self-aware in the least. But I've never thought about it.
And in the fourth paragraph I was not sure about who the Self was staggering against. If it is just one of the many inhabited, what made that one different? The fact that he happened to come at the point when the invader was reaching exhaustion? That's probably it. I've always had to have complex plots explained to me, and beyond that, I'm probably over thinking a vignette. Who was able to recognize, finally, that this Being was even going around infecting us? What was the fatal mistake that blew its cover?
Thanks for listening. I only had three hours' sleep last night!
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