So this is my first submission to the Young Writer's Society and I wrote it up in a few hours while doing some other stuff on the computer. It wasn't until the final hour that I was solely working on this, right here in the post new topic box. I actually wrote it once and when I submitted it, the website had logged me out and I had to rewrite it. Anyway, the story is of the science fiction/horror genre... enjoy!
The metallic echo of Marc's footsteps thundered in his head as his feet pounded the metal causeway. It was so loud. The noise rebounded off the walls and writhed about within the confines of his skull. The roar in his brain combined with the choking heat of this deck made cohesive thought impossible. Marc ran from the noise in his head, shaking sweat from his brow and blinking to clear his vision. Marc ran down hallways that hummed and buzzed, machinery grinding and shuddering behind the walls. To his left was the outside wall, the thickest wall on the ship that led directly to the vacuum. To his right was a thinner wall by comparison that led to various sections of the engineering deck.
Only four hours ago, Marc was lying down in the officer's lounge when he heard a scream. Not the blaring, baby-in-your-ear kind of scream, but a dull thunder of a man experiencing his last few moments in this life in pure terror, through thirty feet of cotton. However muted it was, it woke Marc from his light nap. Blinking a few times and glancing around, he found that was alone in the room. Marc grumbled as he rose to his feet and shuffled over to the vending machine to peruse the snacks. Not that any of the choices were new, but Marc liked the feeling that his money was being well spent. Choosing a bag of chips from the top row of snacks, he examined the musty looking bag before ripping it open and peering in at its contents. The chips looked questionable, but they smelled great and Marc was hungry. Plunging his hand into the bag and munching away, he paced out into the hall. That was when he saw it. Marc couldn't make out the shape, only a smudge in the shadows. The smudge remained motionless for a few moments and glanced up the small flight of steps to Marc, transfixing him in its gaze. The eyes shown a dull rust color, like a copper pocket watch in lamplight, as they swept across Marc, sizing him up. Marc, bag of chips in hand, stood motionless in the doorway, unable to make the first move.
The eyes shifted and the darkness let out a ghastly shriek, chilling Marc's bones and freeing him from his stupor. As the smudge screamed its intent, it leaned forward and leaped up the stairs. Marc stumbled back, dropping his snack and pounding on the door controls. With a whirring and a soft click, the door shut out the angry beast. Eyes wide and heart pumping, Marc spun about, looking for a means of escape. From beyond the threshold came a grunt followed by a thunderous roar as the smudge attempted to claw its way in. Off to Marc's left, above the couch he'd been sleeping on, an air vent was situated roughly seven feet up the wall. He ran across the room, acutely aware of the monster's presence. Behind him, Marc heard a metallic thud as something was wedged into the door jamb, prying it open from the outside. No time to waste, Marc rammed his fist through the aluminum vent cover and ripped it from its holdings, opening the air duct to access. Standing on the back of the couch he'd been sleeping on only minutes ago, Marc dove head first into the vent, wiggling his shoulders into a more comfortable pose. He tried in a vain attempt to crawl with his fingers and decided instead upon writhing his way into the vent as the officer's lounge exploded behind him. The angry darkness had found its way in.
Marc bumped and shuffled his way along until he came to another vent cover. The air duct was cold on his skin as he sat motionless, facing the vent cover, with no way to escape the duct. A dull shriek came from Marc's rear, the sound carried by the metal of the ductwork. As the thrashing from the lounge continued, the darkness of the vent seemed to surround Marc, closing in, burying him in this iron coffin to dehydrate and rot. Marc's palms began to sweat as his frantic thoughts raced to be free of the duct. Almost in an effort to beleaguer his terror, Marc wondered how long his bag of chips had been in the vending machine before he'd bought them. This had no calming effect on Marc's mind as his animal instincts screamed at him to move, move, escape this cloistered cell! In a fit of sheer terror, Marc wriggled forward and began ramming his forehead against the thin aluminum vent. The aluminum dented and dented, but would not give. He must have hammered away at the vent thirty times before the first crack appeared. This crack, a tiny shear in the vent's integrity, shown bright with the flourescent light of a stock room.
Marc flashed a stupid grin and resumed his pounding. The vent finally gave way with a crash as it clattered across the floor. Marc writhed forward and pushed his way out of the duct, landing in a pile of dirty laundry. Looking around the room, he found himself surrounded by industrial size washing machines, dryers and piles of drab, blue, work uniforms. Marc stood up in his pile of laundry and smiled to himself. He'd escaped death. And even standing in a pile of sweaty, old, dirty laundry, life was sweet.
That was four hours ago. Marc lay in a pile of laundry, doing his best to ignore the gnawing hunger clawing at his stomach. The hunger burned, a dull pain in the base of his abdomen. In his effort to ignore the pain, Marc turned his attention to the apparent silence of the ship. He hadn't noticed it before, but this particular deck of the vessel should have been bustling with crew members and other support staff. Marc slowly rose to his feet and cracked his back. In the silence that followed, he listened. There it was. No. It was gone now. There it was again! A quiet thud-scrape-thud-scrape coming from the wall. Marc waited as the noise grew louder. As he listened, the noise reached its apex, the sound of bone puncturing metal followed by the sound of a wet towel dragged across an air duct. An air duct. Marc looked up just in time to see a fleshy spider clambering out of the vent and into his laundry room.
Releasing a cry that wasn't purely human in pitch, Marc bolted from the room. The spider leaped the short distance across the room to the opposite wall and fell to the floor in a pile of laundry. Marc's feet pounded the metal walkway as he sprinted away from the horror that followed him. He could hear the rapid, heavy tapping of the spider's spindle-like legs beating the deck in pursuit. The image of the monster burned into his mind. A shiny black beak protruding from a mass of flesh and hair, topped by eight or so jet black eyes. The eyes had no pupil, but they followed him, he knew. Marc willed himself to move faster as he thundered down the hall. Running further down the hall, deeper into the engineering deck, the air grew thicker. It sank into his lungs and choked him as he gasped for breath. The heavy, burning air seared Marc's lungs, forcing him to run haphazardly along, stumbling every few strides. The monster was close, he could feel him. Sweat poured off his brow, down his face and into his eyes. Marc's saliva thickened and impeded his breathing as his body begged him for water. Coughing and clearing his throat, Marc ran on. He tasted salt as the sweat that blurred his vision ran off his eyes and into his mouth. There, ahead he saw his destination, his salvation. Marc pushed his legs to run, to run faster. Scrambling across the threshold of a freight elevator, Marc reached out and steadied himself on the lift's far wall. His frantic eyes scanned the hallway that preceded him as he hammered the lift controls. A heavy, metal cage closed down around the elevator and Marc gasped for air. He'd been holding his breath. He was safe; he had escaped. With a pneumatic hum, the elevator began to rise.
Marc was huddled against the lift's far wall as the elevator doors opened. He rolled onto his hands and knees and crawled out. It was colder up here on the crew deck. Marc made his way slowly down the hall until he came to a junction with halls branching off in front of him and to his left. As he crawled past the hall on his left, he saw a small security detail armed with rifles. Marc stopped a moment and looked at them. He heard the low squawk of a radio as one of the men talked to his sleeve.
"Found him." the man spoke again to his sleeve. "Yes, sir."
And then they opened fire. The first round went through Marc's right knee cap, shredding bone and ligaments and sending him spinning out of the line of fire. Marc lay on the floor writhing in agony, holding his knee to his chest in a vain attempt to stem the flow of blood. The man who had been speaking on the radio just moments before rounded the corner, almost in slow motion and smiled at Marc. As he raised his rifle, poised to fire, Marc noticed a high-pitch whistle. The smile fell from the man's face as he noticed it too. Too late. The punctured porthole fractured across its length and split the wall, ripping open the hull. The explosive decompression tore everything from the compartment, tossing it out into the cold void of space, including Marc and the security detail. Marc lost his bearings momentarily as he spun out of the ship. He screamed the air from his lungs, hoping to live longer, but he'd already escaped twice today and he knew a third was unlikely. Marc screamed again in the silent vacuum of space as his blood vaporized, obliterating capillaries in his fingers and eyes. Blood poured from his broken frame, turning to gas and seeping away into the darkness. Marc peered out through his useless eyes, trapped inside his useless body. Space was cold, dark and hazy and became ever more so as the light faded from his eyes. And Marc escaped again.
I LOVED IT 
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