*Mae*
"Really? Not another goddamn problem! Can't a girl catch a break around here?!"
I shouted up to the heavens as if they could hear me beyond the overpowering emptiness that was space.
I mean, if I really thought about it, that amount of space is almost suffocating to a certain extent, right?
Like, no human should have the power to explore as much as we have and yet, despite all that humans accomplished before the world, ya know, went right down the metaphorical toilet, we were still greedy for more.
Always wanting more and more.
Humans as a species were never satisfied with what they had in their hands or before their very eyes.
They always wanted more, their greediness and selfishness always got the better of them until it ruined everything that they had that was good in their lives.
Because that's what we were programmed to do.
We were built for the sole purpose to do only what needed to be done, what was necessary for our survival and instead of using that strength and power to better ourselves and the world community, we turned on one another quicker than a group of rabid mice all trying to fight to the death for the cheese.
We used one another, blamed each other for our problems and never once took responsibility for our own misdoings until the time came when we could no longer ignore the blinding truth that was right in front of our faces.
The truth being that no matter how quickly we tried to act, we were already too late when it came to saving our planet.
We destroyed our planet ourselves and even then, nobody would own up to that fact of reality.
We denied it for as long as possible until we couldn't deny it anymore and then, only some of us could escape it.
And outrunning it was nearly impossible because no matter where you go or where you stay, Mother Nature always has a way of finding you, of hunting you down like a predator just waiting for the prime opportunity to pounce on its defenseless, injured prey.
But I was getting a little bit sidetracked here so maybe I should just focus on the matter at hand, getting that fucking alarm to turn off before I literally opened the airlock and allowed myself to be Casted Out from pure frustration.
Grumbling with annoyance as I had to, once again, climb back over the storage containers to get back to the cockpit as it was surely starting to become a pesky and painful task, I nearly took my knee out a couple of times on some of those containers.
Whoever made those containers oughta get a medal of honor or something expensive like that because these things are fucking indestructible by now, who knows how many times I've banged my legs on them, I'm pretty sure I'm going to have several fractures in my shins and maybe a few broken toes when I do eventually get another medical exam whether that be on Earth or the Celestial again.
"Ugh, just shut up already! Jesus fucking Christ…."
I said through gritted teeth with annoyance seeping into the darkening tone of my voice, my butt finally and blissfully plopping down in the Captain's chair as I took one whole second to breathe and center myself before I got down to the root of the problem.
Visually scanning over the control panel, I frowned as I recognized that one of the buttons that controlled the engine turbines was flashing red.
And I found it to be a bit strange because I had literally just fixed one of the turbines so I couldn't understand why the ship was insisting that there was still a malfunctioning issue going on here.
"Hmm….Weird, indeed…."
Talking to myself as I pressed a few more buttons to pull up the holographic blueprint of the ship, which was probably older then I was but that was also just me stating the obvious here, my eyes widened in surprise when the blueprint hologram formed before my very eyes just above the control panel and the acid in my stomach churned like I had ingested something terrible when I saw the multiple blinking red lights displayed across the blueprint.
Because it wasn't as much of a blueprint as I thought, it was basically the current layout of the ship as it visually listed what was wrong with the engineered spacecraft.
And boy, there were more problems than I was expecting or prepared to find out about.
Oh no, this was much worse than just a simple damaged engine turbine because, as it turns out, there was also a breach of oxygen in quite a few of the oxygen supply tanks and the cabin was currently running low on oxygen, lower than it was supposed to be.
Almost as low as when I was back on the Celestial and started hallucinating because I wasn't getting enough oxygen to my brain.
That's trauma at it's kindest, folks.
The type of trauma where you don't even know when something's wrong until the bad thing is over with and you're left in a daze, confused as to what even happened in the first place.
"No…No, there can't be a leak in the oxygen tanks. It wouldn't make any sense, I would've died by now."
I rationalized aloud which, in hindsight, only made me look crazier from another perspective but I shook my head to clear those thoughts, there was just no logical way that the oxygen tanks were leaking and hadn't exploded upon impact when they were supposedly damaged.
There was no just way and I had to be right about my assumption that maybe the ship's database was wrong, that maybe the only thing other than the engine turbines getting fucked up was the computer system that analyzed the data of every inch, nook and crevice of this spaceship.
But that was the furthest thing from reality.
And I was, once again, wrong in my assumptions.
Because the next thing I knew, the sides of the ship were violently shaking back and forth and I had to clutch desperately onto the edge of the control panel to keep from being tossed around like a ragdoll.
My head spun as I tried to gain my bearings, teeth clattering together as I looked around for the sign of the abrupt turbulence.
What the hell is going on now?
We're not entering something strange like an asteroid field or growing close to a comet so what the fuck is happening?
"Mabel….My Mabel…"
All of the sudden, Mama's voice drifted through my ears and I shook my head again.
No, I couldn't be hearing Mama right now, she wasn't on the Calypso with me, it was physically impossible for her to be with me at this exact moment.
My eyes snapped shut as I tried to drown out all the other distractions and focus on my breathing as my chest grew tighter and tighter with every inhale of oxygen that I struggled to gasp in and shudder out with every exhale.
"No…No. This isn't real, it isn't real."
I tried to convince myself of this factual knowledge and for a moment there, I was pretty sure that everything inside of me and outside my body was beginning to calm down.
That is, until I felt the ghastly cold touch of a hand on my shoulder, a touch that chilled me to my very core and I let out a shriek as I turned around while attempting to fling the chill off my skin.
But it was no use because the touch was coming from the apparition that stood before me, the figure clothed in bright white and its features not quite distinguishable to the human eye.
It floated off the ground cleanly, its body a mere mist in the low quality air.
The figure's presence was strange and a bit alarming to say the least and, seeing as I wasn't really one to believe in ghosts or much of an afterlife considering the fact that I had seen death and destruction up close and personal, I was confounded by the fact that this apparition was here to begin with.
Didn't it have better things to do on this plane of existence?
Like say, I don't know, maybe haunting other people who deserved it much more than I did?
Like Commander Ophelia and that weird liver spotted supervisor she appointed me before I escaped, just to name a few names here.
But apparently, this apparition was quite intrigued by my presence instead, it's ghostly head cocking to the side as an area where it's mouth might've been slowly expanded for a moment there, I held my breath as I waited for it to speak, to communicate with me since apparently, I could now see and talk to the dead as well.
However though, the figure's white appearance suddenly darkened to an eerie and ominous black before it let out an ungodly screech that could've only been compared to that of a banshee's scream and my hands flew up to cover my ears to block out the screeching, piercing sound.
Pleading mentally to whatever was out there that could control such a spirit, I pleaded for the apparition to disappear, for it to just leave me alone and before I could even blink, the ghastly vision before me was gone and I was left alone with nothing but alarms blaring throughout the cockpit, deafening ringing in my ears and the worst pounding headache I've ever had before.
And that's when I realized I had hallucinated seeing that ghost, spirit, demon thing after all.
Oh, God….I really am going crazy!
Shit! Fuck!
Maybe those leaking oxygen tanks really are causing a problem….
And while it may have sounded logical to assume so, my oxygen deprived brain was insisting on telling me otherwise and just when I thought I wasn't going to make it all the way back to Earth with my rapidly depleting supply of oxygen, my muddle brain and blurring vision spotted what appeared to look just like my home planet, Earth, as the next nearest planet just in the outermost ridge of the solar system.
I squinted against the blinding headache as my vision spun almost as wildly and as quickly as my brain did, did my eyes dare to deceive me?
Was this Earth that I was actually witnessing through a fogged up brain and deteriorating eyesight?
And maybe I should've considered the reality that it might not have been Earth that I was currently guiding the Calypso towards, that maybe it wasn't Earth's atmosphere that we were going to break through at any second now and the heat shields that protected the Calypso were rattling noisily from the excessive amount of heat they were having to withstand as the Calypso and I broke through the thick atmosphere of the planet.
My teeth clattered together painfully, tremors from the rumbling of the ship causing my entire body to shake as the containers in the back of the ship jostled around like a child was throwing a full-blown tantrum in the back of the Calypso.
But that was nothing of the matter.
The fact of the matter was that the Calypso was plummeting down to what I visually assumed to be Earth but as the spaceship grew rapidly closer to a vast ground level of something of a deep blue color, possibly an ocean at best bet, my gut clenched with the possibility that this wasn't exactly Earth.
And as the Calypso was just mere moments away from crashing into the surface of the planet, and I was mere milliseconds away from reaching the threshold of death, I closed my eyes because, as dumb as it may seem to some, I didn't want to see what was going to kill me when the Calypso did crash into the planet.
I just wanted to see darkness and when I did die, if that was the last thing I ever saw in this lifetime, then so be it.
Bracing myself for the damaging and possibly life ending impact, a small voice in the back of my head counted backwards from ten as if it was initiating a sequence.
A death sequence, that is.
Three….Two.…One….Boom.
And then, there was nothing but darkness when the Calypso collided in a furious crash against the planet's surface level.
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-Ro♥️