Alone (14 page)

'Away where Mark?' I screamed into the speaker. 'Please, tell me...please. Away where? And why can't you take me with you?' I demanded.

'I'm sorry David.' Said Mark regretfully. 'But this journey is only for me and Anna.'

Suddenly the large solid thick metal wall at the back of the sealed room and behind Mark started to crack open, beginning to slide slowly apart. It was completely unexpected and seemed an impossibility to me just seconds ago that the walls at the back, behind Mark, could ever pull themselves apart like that. Slowly and painfully it began to peel and reveal the dark and mysterious, vast, never regions of black space outside. And then a great ferocious wind burst in through the emerging crack, screaming and screeching it's way inside like some ghastly and hideous invisible monster. Desperately trying to grab a physical hold of both Mark and Anna and pull them out. Mark's trousers shook in the wind and his hair stood on end, wavering in the air above him. Then just as fast I could physically see and hear, all of the oxygen, air and life was being sucked out of the sealed room by the monstrous wind. It was absolutely frightening.

'Goodbye David.' Shouted Mark, his voice booming out over the deafening alarms and roaring winds inside the sealed room. Both his and Anna's bodies were beginning to shudder and rock violently back and fourth, almost off balance now. Mark closed his eyes and held onto to Anna even tighter. Gently he kissed her forehead as their hair entangled with each others in the high winds.

'Don't leave me Mark.' I screamed into the speaker. 'Please don't leave me here. I'm so sorry... I'm so, so sorry for everything I ever did...'

And then to my horror Mark was finally lifted off his feet and sucked violently out of the sealed room, right in front of my very eyes. And just like that. In a quick blinking instance he was gone and I was alone. It was like he had never even existed or ever been here. Sucked out he was, along with Anna's lifeless body, right out and into the vast darkness of black empty space, clutching on tightly to his wife and my sister as he went. Furiously I banged the thick glass separating me from the sealed room inside and raged out in a fit of screaming agonising emotions before dropping to the floor beneath my feet in utter devastated defeat. I sobbed as that thought 'The beginning of the end' rang out continuously between my ears. I was all alone here now. All Alone

CHAPTER thirteen

Some time had passed. In fact it felt like a hell of a lot of time had passed. I had no idea how long, but I was still lying in the cargo bay outside the sealed room that had sucked both Anna and Mark out into their new eternal home. Those sliding walls at the back of the strange room had long since closed back over now and everything was quiet again. It was like no one had ever even existed here on board this shuttle, beside me and my memories. Everything that had ever happened, all the people who had ever lived and breathed here. Only lived in my memories now.

I had stopped sobbing but was still lying down on the

floor in complete silence, just staring obliviously up at the metallic ceiling above me. An image of Steffi smiling out warmly came to my mind and then another image of me holding Steffi's naked body in my arms while she pressed softly against my skin as the warm shower water ran over our bodies.

'Steffi.' I said out loud. 'I'm sorry. I am so, so, sorry.'

And then Anna came to me in vision. My sweet, beautiful, pale and fragile sister. She came into my thoughts all smiling and giggling and happy. And then the image of us making love in the control room haunted my mind again. I clenched my face and fists up tightly, trying to shake the disgusting image from my head. Oh Anna, what had I done. I was feeling more and more upset by the second while listening out to the deafening silence which reminded me once more of just how alone now I really was. I was trying and struggling desperately to control my emotions inside. I wanted to cry, scream and roar at the top of my voice, but I was controlling it, barely.

I staggered up to my feet using a nearby cargo container to help me up. When I was finally on my feet I turned towards that cargo container and felt mad at it all of a sudden for some reason I just couldn't comprehend. I wanted to lash out at it, kick and punch at it with all my strength and all my might, but again I restrained myself. I couldn't hold back the sobbing though and with my hands placed over my face I began to cry out in a restrained fit of sobs. 'This was all my fault.' I couldn't help but think. The reason to why I was all alone now. It was all my own doing. I leaned over the cargo container, grasping my hands tightly around the edge. It felt so cold and hard. The tighter I gripped, the harder I had to fight to hold my frustration and guilt deeper inside. But suddenly it was just too much and the emotional pain and anguish finally overcame me and I just had to let out one desperate and painful crying roar before falling to my knees in a fit of uncontrollable sobs... and this time there was no holding back. I let everything out. All the pain, guilt, anger, despair, remorse and internal emotional suffering. It all came flowing out.

***

I entered the control room and sat myself down at one of the small computers screens. I tried to enter one of the computer programs by tapping away at the keyboard, but nothing happened. So in frustration I threw the computer monitor onto the floor and sat in an awkward silence for a long while. Later I went for another wander around the shuttle, looking for anything, something to take my mind from my new doomed fate. I took my time to study the different doors and corridor walls in much more detail now and for no particular reason. It was just something to do, to entertain me and occupy my thoughts.

Eventually I ended up in the kitchen and took out some more food packages. There seemed to be plenty left since I wouldn't be sharing them with anyone anymore. So I sat now in the centre of the room playing with some of them and throwing them from one hand to the other. It felt nice, relaxing. It calmed me down. But then I got bored and decided to rip open the heads of the packages and squirt them all over the dining room floor. Then I got even more bored and started squirting the food packages all over the walls until I'd squirted out the words 'MY FAULT' in big, brown, sludgy wet letters. Next I found myself in the long windowed corridor again and pressed my face hard and right up against the window looking out into space. After some time I pulled my face away and spat twice on the glass and watched with great fascination and interest as the two trails of saliva raced their way down to the bottom of the glass.

A mundane boredom was growing bigger and stronger inside me. I couldn't imagine how much longer I could entertain my thoughts and mind like this for. I knew the thoughts of ending my life were there, creeping away at the back of mind, creeping their way slowly to the front of my mind like little creepy, crawly, monsters. Was this what going insane felt like. And then I thought about some of the ways in which I could end it, end this mundane suffering. If I could figure out how to work the strange sealed room that Mark had used then I guess that would have to be the best and easiest option for me. The other option of course was Anna's way, using the pills and syringes from the medical room. I just didn't want to inject anything into me though that would only cause me pain and physical suffering if it wasn't enough, that was the thing. Plus I had no way of knowing what pills and syringes did what? Unless I stuck all of them into me at the same time.

I turned my attention back to the glass and the trail of two spits. Even with the first spit having had a greater head start on the other, he was still handsomely beaten to the bottom of the window by the second. And for some reason that had given me a great feeling of satisfaction and delight inside. And with that ridiculous thought and feeling I chuckled and laughed out from the bellows of my stomach. For a few priceless seconds it felt good. It felt really, really good. But then as the laughter died my thoughts filled up again with dread and despair and my dire situation. My cheerful and delightful laughter quickly turned into a frantic bout of sobbing as I once again fell to my knees upon the corridor floor. Still sobbing I began to crawl, crawling on my hands and knees and all the way towards Anna's old bedroom. The door was still open as I crawled inside and climbed my way up onto her bed and snuggled up into her old covers. I grabbed a hold of her old pillow and put it against my face, sniffing the material hard and wafting the old smells of Anna deep into my face. And then I held that pillow so close and strong against me. Cuddling right into it now for dear life as I curled myself up into a snug little ball, clutching the pillow harder into me with all my strength and might. Imagining and believing that the pillow I was clutching a hold of was in fact Anna wrapped snugly and tightly in my arms. And in no time at all I had fallen into a deep, long and dark sleep.

CHAPTER fourteen

I awoke. It was a gradual awakening as the faint sound of something crying and screaming from a great distance, crept into my ears and growing conscious state. The more awake I became the louder the screaming and crying rang through my ears which was beginning to sound more and more like the wails of a very young child, a baby perhaps. I shook my head in disbelief at hearing the sounds, but the crying wails still came to my ears. I raised my head and listened more carefully. I was very confused about what was happening here and from where, but it was definitely the faint cries of a new born baby. Still feeling depressed and lethargic I rolled out from my bed with as little effort as possible and down onto the floor, falling onto my hands and knees. I crawled out of the bedroom and into the first main corridor following the faint but distinctive baby cries which grew gradually louder as I approached the shower wet room. Still on my hands and knees I came to a sudden halt outside the doorway and gazed around the empty room. For a few eerie seconds the baby's cries stopped and I struggled to fathom just where the hell the cries were coming from or even if I had actually in fact heard them. Then suddenly the screams came back to full life again over by the toilet bowl at the far end of the room. I stared in bewildered terror at the toilet as the cries from the screaming baby grew louder and more distinct. They were coming from inside the toilet bowl and every instinct inside my body told me to just get up and run. Run as far away and as fast as I possible could from this horror. But like a horse to a carrot my curiosity got the better of me and I just had to peer inside that toilet bowl and see what was making these damn noises. I started crawling slowly towards the toilet, moving closer and closer towards the sounds of the wailing baby. Finally I reached the edge of the bowl. My mind was running wild of a hundred and one different images of all the horrific sites I might see inside. A bloodied baby swimming for it's life. A screaming tiny little baby floating face up in the water waving it's arms and legs to paddle and keep itself afloat. A tiny little baby trying to scramble it's way out of the slippery sided slopes of the toilet bowl. Surely the baby couldn't of been that big to have a full set of screaming lungs to make this kind of deafening noise. And then the memory of witnessing Anna standing here previously all bloodied and distressed as the remains of her bloody, pulpy offspring floated inside this very toilet came back to haunt me. I took a long, hard and deep breath before gathering up the courage to peer inside. As I did so the baby's cries came to an abrupt halt once again and I found myself staring hard into an empty toilet with the air around me filled by an eerie silence. There was nothing but clear water inside.

***

I was lying down on my back but fully awake out in the main corridor when I heard a faint beeping sound from somewhere further down the corridor. I raised my head a little from the floor and turned my attention towards it, gradually standing up onto my feet. I made my way along the main corridor, following the beeping noise all the way to the control room and entered. The computer which Mark was last working on was making the beeping noise as the screen flashed wildly. I sat down at the main computer and read the message that was flashing there - CO-ORDINATES FOUND: LOCATION FOUND: SHUTTLE ON ROUTE - I turned towards the large viewing window and saw that the shuttle was now beginning to move at a much faster rate through the twinkling darkness. We were finally going somewhere and I felt a slight twinge of excitement.

***

It felt like an eternity had passed and we were still moving through space. The views were just the same, always the damn same. Just stars and blackness. My excitement had long since died and at this rate I would die an old man before we reached wherever the hell the shuttle was now taking us. The last time I had looked at my reflection in the corridor window I was looking painfully thin with my beard now overgrown by at least half a dozen inches. Back in the kitchen I ripped open the last empty food package and as soon as I'd devoured it I began licking the entire inside contents of the bag clean. I then threw the empty package into the far corner of the dining room where hundreds of other empty packages were mounting up. There were no water packages left so I entered into the shower wet room and made my way over towards the shower. I hit the shower button but no water came out. I then glanced dourly down at the toilet bowl and moved towards it. Once at the bowl I crouched down and cupped my hands together and placed them into the depths of the bowl. The coolness of the water felt good against my skin as I raised the water to my lips and drank.

***

I was fast asleep in the shower cubicle when I was suddenly awoken by a shuffling sound out in the corridor, just outside the open doorway. I quickly glanced out but all I could see was the hint of a slight shadow, which quickly disappeared from the doorway. Eventually I stood to my feet and cautiously made my way towards the top corridor where the control room was situated. I turned into the dark control room and proceeded to double tap the light switches. Suddenly a voice called out to me from further inside the room.