Bogleech.com's 2017 Horror Write-off:
Where I'm Gonna Go
Submitted by Miranda
I expected to ... dammit. To feel more as my car barreled through the upper atmosphere, y'know? Pride, liberation, a sense of leaving this choking, stifling planet behind, but there was nothing like it. Oh, look, the sky's blue. Now there's some clouds in the way. Now it's a darker blue, and now it's black and the Earth's small, like the astronauts tell ya. Wow. If the sight of the thing from space, like the sticker in a book I had as a kid, doesn't give me any sense that the months in my garage strapping all those rockets onto my 2004 Volvo were worth it, then nothing's gonna. I put the car in neutral, allowing it to drift through the black. Lean my seat back and fumble with my case of CDs.
Oh, goddammit. Goddammit.
I, a known moron, had left all the CDs I was planning on listening to back home. On the coffee table, in my earthbound house. There was one CD left in the case - Jimmy Buffett's Songs You Know By Heart.
Bits of rock and debris are floating past my windshield. I've put a protective force field up around the car, and a warning system, so I don't get woken up by a stray asteroid.
But I really hate silence.
Well, Cheeseburger in Paradise is a middle-aged vacation nightmare. Fins might be good with different instrumentation. By the time I reach A Pirate Looks at Forty, I'm tired of watching space dust float by me. So I park, and I rest my head on the steering wheel. Suppose I'll have to go back to Earth after a few hours - the Volvo doesn't have a food supply, or a bathroom, or enough gas to make it too far out into the solar system. My plans for this trip had more or less been focused on some ... concept, y'know. Some shining, false idea, of me yelling in triumph, smashing a vertical path through the clouds, listening to earsplitting hard rock, finally remembering what it was like to be alive. Well, Mom, I'd made it to space. I'd arrived, and the moment hadn't. There was just me and the churning of the air recycler, and this flat black emptiness all around me, and old Jimmy.
Yes, I am a pirate, two hundred years too late, he whines. The hell is he talking about. Shut up, Jimmy.
I must have fallen asleep at some point, because I wake up and the car's heading into a void of colors, purple and blue and black and some that ... some that I can't understand. Some that don't seem to fit in my eyes. And as my numb hands scrabble at the steering wheel in a panic I hear a voice speak to me, not in my ears but in my head, not in words but in ideas. This is what it tells me:
I - we, I guess - aren't alone in the universe. There's beings beyond our comprehension, and some of them are big, and most of them are hungry. This one, the one that looks like a black hole currently stretching out the stars in front of my windshield and making my skull vibrate with unfamiliar colors, has taken notice of my species as a result of our spaceships and radio waves. Billions of tiny people screaming and rattling the bars of space for decades, and something's finally come across time and space for a snack. Nothing personal.
Can I stop you? I think, like a scared goddamn kid, and the black tunnel's response is a wordless scream of rage. My stomach drops with the cold emptiness of billions of people swallowed up in seconds. I can see the Earth blurry out the window, and I'm vaguely aware that my face is wet with tears.
Look, I hate everyone back there. Hate them. There's nothing on that garbage-choked dot for me, and I've thought a million times that we all deserve for the seas to fill up with oil and drown us, but still I find my hands pressing buttons as if on autopilot. Some part of me knows what to do, and no part of me knows why I'm doing it, and the dark void is wailing and splitting open my skull with colorful bursts of pain in my memories, current consciousness, and vision of the future.
The floor of the Volvo rumbles as I speed straight toward the thing's starless mouth. I don't have one of those big red movie countdown clocks, but the sparks starting to fly off the metal are as good as. As space and time bend around me I can identify the present moment only by Jimmy Buffett's Volcano, emitting faint and scratchy from the CD player.
But I don't want to land in New York City, I don't want to land in Mexico.
The song anchors me at the coordinates of my last still moment, I guess. I see the Earth out the window - safe, in this second, and if four thousand pounds of exploding rocket car does anything to a terrified spacetime-eating abomination, safe for longer than that. Hope the Mythbusters are proud of me.
I don't want to land on no Three Mile Island, I don't want to see my skin aglow.
Wish I wasn't crying in my last moments, but that's the way it goes. I slam the gas pedal, and everything bursts pink and orange around me. There's pain, and the beast screeching.
I don't know.
It's five o'clock everywhere. I think I see the black hole creature being blown to bits, but Jesus Christ, this better kill me too. If I wake up in a time loop, some kind of eternal Margaritaville, I'm gonna be pissed.
I don't know.
It's like the neon lights back home. God, it's so beautiful.
I don't know where I'm gonna go when the volcano blows.
Now the sky's black and the Earth's small, like the astronauts tell ya. Wow. If the sight of the thing from space, like the sticker in a book I had as a kid, doesn't give me any sense that the months in my garage strapping all those rockets onto my 2004 Volvo were worth it, then nothing's gonna. I put the car in neutral, allowing it to drift through the black. Lean my seat back and fumble with my case of CDs.
Oh, goddammit. Goddammit.
I, a known moron, had left all the CDs I was planning on listening to back home. On the coffee table, in my earthbound house. There was one CD left in the case - Jimmy Buffett's Songs You Know By Heart.
Bits of rock and debris are floating past my windshield. I've put a protective force field up around the car, and a warning system, so I don't get woken up by a stray asteroid.
But I really hate silence.
Well, Cheeseburger in Paradise is a middle-aged vacation nightmare. Fins might be good with different instrumentation. By the time I reach A Pirate Looks at Forty, I'm tired of watching space dust float by me. So I park, and I rest my head on the steering wheel. Suppose I'll have to go back to Earth after a few hours - the Volvo doesn't have a food supply, or a bathroom, or enough gas to make it too far out into the solar system. My plans for this trip had more or less been focused on some ... concept, y'know. Some shining, false idea, of me yelling in triumph, smashing a vertical path through the clouds, listening to earsplitting hard rock, finally remembering what it was like to be alive. Well, Mom, I'd made it to space. I'd arrived, and the moment hadn't. There was just me and the churning of the air recycler, and this flat black emptiness all around me, and old Jimmy.
Yes, I am a pirate, two hundred years too late, he whines. The hell is he talking about. Shut up, Jimmy.
I must have fallen asleep at some point, because I wake up and the car's heading into a void of colors, purple and blue and black and some that ... some that I can't understand. Some that don't seem to fit in my eyes. And as my numb hands scrabble at the steering wheel in a panic I hear a voice speak to me, not in my ears but in my head, not in words but in ideas. This is what it tells me:
I - we, I guess - aren't alone in the universe. There's beings beyond our comprehension, and some of them are big, and most of them are hungry. This one, the one that looks like a black hole currently stretching out the stars in front of my windshield and making my skull vibrate with unfamiliar colors, has taken notice of my species as a result of our spaceships and radio waves. Billions of tiny people screaming and rattling the bars of space for decades, and something's finally come across time and space for a snack. Nothing personal.
Can I stop you? I think, like a scared goddamn kid, and the black tunnel's response is a wordless scream of rage. My stomach drops with the cold emptiness of billions of people swallowed up in seconds. I can see the Earth blurry out the window, and I'm vaguely aware that my face is wet with tears.
Look, I hate everyone back there. Hate them. There's nothing on that garbage-choked dot for me, and I've thought a million times that we all deserve for the seas to fill up with oil and drown us, but still I find my hands pressing buttons as if on autopilot. Some part of me knows what to do, and no part of me knows why I'm doing it, and the dark void is wailing and splitting open my skull with colorful bursts of pain in my memories, current consciousness, and vision of the future.
The floor of the Volvo rumbles as I speed straight toward the thing's starless mouth. I don't have one of those big red movie countdown clocks, but the sparks starting to fly off the metal are as good as. As space and time bend around me I can identify the present moment only by Jimmy Buffett's Volcano, emitting faint and scratchy from the CD player.
But I don't want to land in New York City, I don't want to land in Mexico.
The song anchors me at the coordinates of my last still moment, I guess. I see the Earth out the window - safe, in this second, and if four thousand pounds of exploding rocket car does anything to a terrified spacetime-eating abomination, safe for longer than that. Hope the Mythbusters are proud of me.
I don't want to land on no Three Mile Island, I don't want to see my skin aglow.
Wish I wasn't crying in my last moments, but that's the way it goes. I slam the gas pedal, and everything bursts pink and orange around me. There's pain, and the beast screeching.
I don't know.
It's five o'clock everywhere. I think I see the black hole creature being blown to bits, but Jesus Christ, this better kill me too. If I wake up in a time loop, some kind of eternal Margaritaville, I'm gonna be pissed.
I don't know.
It's like the neon lights back home. God, it's so beautiful.
I don't know where I'm gonna go when the volcano blows.
Now the sky's black and the Earth's small, like the astronauts tell ya. Wow. If the sight of the thing from space, like the sticker in a book I had as a kid, doesn't give me any sense that the months in my garage strapping all those rockets onto my 2004 Volvo were worth it, then nothing's gonna. I put the car in neutral, allowing it to drift through the black. Lean my seat back and fumble with my case of CDs.