Collins Does Solo RPG 'The Wretched'

Music (What is it? – Chris Bissette)

Day 12 Entry 2, salvage ship The Wretched, Flight Engineer Collins Reporting.

Well it was bound to happen again wasn’t it. It’s the middle of ship’s night and I have woken in a sweat again. Another killer dream. This one is even more unsettling than the last.

I was out on the hull realigning the antenna and setting my trap for the creature and I could see him skulking around at the stern of the ship, just like I had in real life. All went as planned on the hull, I got back into the airlock and had a minor issue getting the door shut and room repressurised but nothing that was concerning. I walked into the dressing room to doff the EVA suit. I broke the seal on the helmet hearing the hiss and feeling the rush of stale shipboard air hitting my nostrils. I lifted the helmet, disconnected the lamp, comms, and HUD cables and then the lights started flickering. It was odd, like an incandescent bulb that is on the way out but the thing is, those sorts of bulbs aren’t installed on this vessel. Sure it’s an old ship but it’s not ancient.

Holding the helmet I turned it to put it on the shelf and that’s when something caught my eye in the glass visor, a dark humanoid shape. It rapidly got larger and took up most of the side of the visor, as that happened I felt a shadow come over my right shoulder. I barely had time to gasp when the EVA suit racking flew towards me. I felt a searing pain in my abdomen as the wall hooks hit me point first and my cheek caught fire with pain as the helmet shelf slammed into it. I tasted metal in my mouth.

After a second I lost my footing and hit the floor. Inexplicably I then was dragged across the floor and immediately felt the weightlessness of flight mixed with falling. Another huge impact, this time solidly across my back and shoulders.

When I realised what had happened I was looking down into my lap, I could see that my normally drab EVA suit was rapidly changing to a new vibrant strangely patterned luminous red. I kept looking around becoming aware that my peripheral vision was black. I couldn’t see anything that wasn’t directly in front of me. As I looked back down to the new pattern on my suit I could see something protruding out of it. It was strange, kind of bonelike, glossy and jet black. I followed it from my abdomen, out in front of me, up and then I saw it join to a shadow. I wasn’t able to make out the details of the shadow, but it was intimately familiar.

I saw a glossy crown hover in front of my face and then there was a lancing pain across face and a high pitched scream causing my ears to bleed.

That’s all I remember… I woke from the scream and I can still hear the echoes in my ears.