Blacksunblinded

Orbital horror

Oct 28, 2024

[Placed second in the Macabre Monday Halloween Story Contest]

The eye can outstare neither the sun, nor death
François, duc de la Rochefoucauld

Looking down from on high like a god gives you power to unsee the suffering below. Clouds swirl and lightning forks soundlessly, seas burgeon and recede, deserts blister alone. For four whole days this place, our last home, won’t see any dark. High beta angle, so days will pass without any sunset. We’ll be able to pretend that the lights will come on across the cities below when night folds again over this world. This will stave off our despair, or so it’s imagined.

“Come gather round folks, it's time to hear a spooky old tale for your Halloween treat!”

Simeon from the air treatment unit calling. I can hear him just fine, so I stay at the cupola window, where the sunscorched view is unimpeded. Nobody even challenges me for this position, and they’ve given up pointing out that I never leave my spot to sleep. They don’t care that I no longer take any photos. They kindly pass me liquimeals to slurp, unhook my waste tubes, replace them with fresh empty pissbags, then move on in silence. They’ve learned that it’s easier that way.

Simeon’s job is to maintain high morale. He himself is of the sort that doesn’t need morale-bolstering. A glowing radioactive source of positivity and fortitude. Or just plain stupid, lost in denial of the obvious. No cracks showing.

“Gather round for your spooky story. That’s an order, people!”

Kenji and Olga drift in from the portside unit and report. Polly and Kyle have been attempting to snuggle up in the aft privacy section but the whole logistics of the business is made awkward by the proximity of others and the whole strap-in thing. You do what you can, I guess, but inertia is inertia, and they say old Newton died a virgin. I heard it all going on between them and I’m not disgusted or even aroused by it anymore.

I call out: “With you in a mo, skip! Got some interesting cloud formations coming up off Sumatra. I can hear you fine though!”

That’s what I’m here for, to take photos of interesting weather phenomena, but my failure to discharge this responsibility goes unspoken. I can’t see, of course, and I have no-one to show them to, and nobody’s much interested in these views, in any case. It’s old hat by now, and anyway there’s something strange about how the atmosphere looks these days, so they say. The others have made it clear they don’t want to look at the view. And I can’t see, so everyone’s happy.

Simeon checks that all the others are clustered at the air treatment unit and then commences his mandatory spooky tale. Some horseshit about Faraway Camp and the kids gathered round a campfire and the night being dark and the moon high in the sky, you know the kind of thing. A distraction. From one point of view, somewhat tasteless to remind us, but from another, just a harmless bit of morale-boosting entertainment. Horror stories, spooky fun.

And what could compare in horror to our own situation? Starved or dead of thirst within a month – but we won’t really need to worry about that, because we’ll be suffocated in three weeks. No escape, all lifeboats holed. No rescue, no comms, assumed dead.

Drifting and dead in the high beta day of the sun’s dark regard. Isolation deeper than any abysses of ocean.

Simeon’s story goes on and on, and I listen. What else to do? Dread vengeance rises from the lake. The kids round the campfire in Faraway Camp pair up to smooch, or drift off in their individualized desire to be grownups. They will die in inventive ways, for this is how it goes. The others are amused enough by the tale. This will do for now. Not me, though, my dark sight craves more than this thin fare. Campsites and boogeymen.

Me, I looked into the sun until I saw the black sun inside of that bright star. Now that black sun is all that ever shines on me; it’s all I see. Its burn in my skull is all the dark sight I would ever wish for. No matter what’s to come, that insight, that umbral vision, is worth it all.

I look down with void eyes on the turmoil of the world, the passing cyclones and torments, and I see them in my way, the way of the black sun, but I also see only darknesses, the spreading rays. I can see the world illuminated by that inner dark: it’s the stark bright world without any shade of the high beta sun. It’s the dread monster rising mudcovered from the lake. It’s what’s coming for us in just a handful of our numbered days.

In the middle of Simeon’s slasher yarn, Kenji drifts over to me and murmurs “Had enough yet?” I don’t know if he refers to the story, my blindness, or to the endless waiting here at my cupola with a grandstand view of the lost world.

“Got a little Halloween treat for you all, myself,” I whisper to him, careful not to talk over Simeon’s ongoing narration. And it’s true, I have something special. I reach into my personal storage bag and bring out a pumpkin and a cutter. Pumpkin brought from the surface at mission start in anticipation of this very evening, cutter swiped from the maintenance locker some weeks ago.

“Ooh!” squeals Kenji, like a schoolboy, causing Simeon to pause in his recitation and glare – or so I suppose – in our direction.

“Still listening skip, go on!” I call out, and he goes on. I beckon Kenji to watch as I carve the jack-‘o-lantern, and when I feel his warm breath on my right temple, I do it.

Gush gush. Warm gurgle soft. Trachea sliced asunder, no chance of more than a slight hissing noise, not enough to disturb the mounting tension of Simeon’s monster story. Station medical officer reporting for duty, skipper.

“And just at that moment, the monster was among the kids gathered round the campfire.”

And just at that moment, I’m among the crewmembers gathered round the air filtering unit.

The rescue capsule coming in to dock without any radio contact, without guidance from the station’s onboard lidar units, rawdogging the approach by eye feel alone.

Click-clunk-clunk. A power chorus of fastlatches closing. Hard dock achieved. No radio contact still, how about physical comms? Tapping at the hatches, as the whisper of air tells of equalizing pressure. Stale air hissing in, scent of rust and tripe.

Helmets on, to guard against microbial infection. Hatch open. Fine pink mist clouding the visors. Wipe-off. Proceed.

Into the main crew section. Floating through the mist, to see—

A ghost made of blood, floating with its polyp head and tendril limbs in the still center of the vessel. Haunting and coagulating around a core shadow within.

Stark sunlight glints in on the blood ghost bright as jelly as it slow wobbles in the air current, disturbed by the entry of us newcomers.

============= [ BLACKSUNBLINDED / END ] =============

Top image credit: Long Nguyen at Pinterest

Story placed second in the Macabre Monday Halloween Contest. Congrats to the winner, Iris Shaw of Long Oddities, and to Sam Rake of Treats of Writing in third, and to all participants.

Many thanks to the guest judges and the Macabre Monday team for organizing and hosting it.

Enjoy the music video, the music is my edit of Pixies’ “Distance Equals Rate Times Time”

I had me a vision
There wasn't any television
From lookin' into the sun
Lookin' into the sun

We got to think quick
Says blind Saint Nick, hey
From lookin' into the sun
Lookin' into the sun

We got to get some beer
We got no atmosphere
From lookin' into the sun
Lookin' into the sun