Young Writers Society

Warning: suggested strong language...?

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Sparks showered over me. I ran through the control room screaming into the receiver of my hand-held wave transmitter.

“There’s a rip in the-- holy crap this is worse than I thought!” I said, ducking to miss another bout of sparks flying at my face.

“Charlie,” came the garbled reply of my captain, “get the eff out of there!”

I gritted my teeth together and stopped walking for a moment, trying to decide what to do next. I could listen to my captain. I could and I probably should… but I wasn’t ready to let my ship (yes I said my ship, cap’n, shoot me) crash in the middle of nowhere with absolutely no guidance. I wasn’t just going to let my baby girl fly straight into a stone wall while I ran the other direction. Ships and I had an agreement- they let me live on them, sleep on them, and do whatever the hell I wanted to on them, and in turn I made sure they stayed afloat. If a pilot can’t keep a ship in the air, are they really a pilot? No. That’s when you turn into a glider. That’s when you get to be the jazz artist of the flying world- making stuff up as you go, listening to every single shift or shudder that your girl makes.

I started moving again, and once I got to the control room I dropped the receiver on the counter alongside a bunch of wires and crap that I’d pulled out earlier-- spring cleaning, if you will. I checked the monitor, and let out a half-wimper half-laugh. It seemed the ranger ship was coming towards me again. They must have heard the exchange over the receiver and realized I was still on board.

“Mr. Neon?” The receiver crackled. I stared at it, trying to come up with a crazy ass story that would somehow make them think I was actually a good person. Something that would make them want me alive-- ideas of having some information they needed, or being a captive amongst a crew of criminals came to mind, but all of them had one fatal flaw: the man speaking into the receiver was my father. Sadly, he knew all my stories, all my tricks, and well, plenty of my secrets-- basically enough to determine I was not a “good” guy.

I tapped my fingers on the counter, my heart pounding against my ribs. It made me feel sick, like something inside me was rubbing against my stomach and bruising it somehow.

“Pick up the damn receiver, Charlie,” he said, “...and I might just spare you and your tiny ship.”

I knew he was lying- he probably just wanted confirmation that I was actually still aboard, he probably wanted to know so that if I wasn’t aboard, he wouldn’t have to waste a missile on this “tiny ship”. My father never did have a working relationship with ships. He always said it was foolish to personify them, to get attached to a bucket of rust. They were simply rubble to him. A means of transport. Tools. Buses. Toilets, for how he treated them.

I snatched the receiver off the counter and pressed the side button. “Hello, Sir,” I said, keeping my thumb pressed to the button a good two seconds after I was done speaking. When you held it down after you were done, and the other person talked, thinking you were done-- and you let go of the button it would cut them off, and let out a blip on their end. I found it amusing, and I abused it as much as I could.

There was silence for a minute, and I wondered if it had worked, then: “Grow the hell up, Charlie.” And normally I would have laughed, normally I would have found it hilarious that my dad still said that line to me at twenty four, normally I would have slapped my leg and rolled on the floor because he’d actually fallen for it AGAIN. But I only smirked, a sad, lonesome smirk.

You need a chic, Char-coal man, my older brother would say. He lived happily ever after with his mail-order bride on a planet that I forgot the name of. One of those retirement planets where the food naturally grows mushy and tasteless. They had two miscarriages, I recalled, and finally managed to pop out a kid strong enough to survive that woman's acidic womb-- honestly, it’s like a lava pit in there.

I sighed, letting my head fall onto the counter. I lifted it up again, slowly, and then dropped it again. A buzzer snapped me out of my slump and I rushed to see what was up with my beloved, personified-to-the-core, bucket of living rust.

Yur going 2 die, the screen read. I raised an eyebrow at it. Someone must have hacked my system- either that or the ship had gone beyond personifications, and was now truly a living entity. I wished with all my heart the latter was true.

I glanced out the window- the planet was getting closer and closer. I gripped the receiver, and chewed the inside of my cheek. This was going to be painful. There wasn’t really a lot to do, when I hit the atmosphere that’s when it would determine what it was I had to do- it all depended on the level of gravity, and how fast it smashed us into the rock. Or soil. Hopefully soil.

I swiveled the pilot seat around to look at the ship's hall. My situation was hopeful, it really was. My father wanted to blow me into smithereens, but if I kept him distracted long enough I might crash into this strange planet and do his dirty work for him-- in fact, that’s probably the only reason he hadn’t blown me up yet. Why waste resources when I was just going to crash and die anyway?

“If you think you can land on this planet… you’re crazy.” My father said.

I let my head fall backwards onto the headrest and glared at the ceiling. “Oh, em, gee Charlie, you’re crazy,” I mocked, not bothering to press the button. “Did you hear your Dad?” I said, pursing my lips thoughtfully. Sometimes I felt like an idiot for being an idiot.

I pressed the button: “But would it be that crazy?” I said, trying to sound playful despite wanting to rip his head off.

The monitor beeped again, and I looked down.

Yur making him angry, it read.

I wondered which one of the crew was writing these messages, and if they really thought I had any other choice.

“Would it?” I said again into the receiver. There was no answer. I wondered if he was ignoring me or if something else was screwing with the wires. Maybe they had burnt- heaven knows everything else was burning. It smelled exactly how it should: like burnt plastic.

Still no answer. This was planting a seed of panic in me that I couldn’t let grow, if I started to panic then I would forsure die. It wasn’t even death that was so scary- it was pain, and who knows how long it would take me to die.

A button was flashing, and I pressed it, trying to recall what it was for. Memories twirled in my head and everything felt thicker. I shook my head and tried to concentrate. No more dad. No more captain. No more spacing out. Right now I had to get my act together before it was too late. The ship was entering the atmosphere- I knew this from how rocky the flight was becoming. Soon my teeth would be knocking together and I’d be thrown back and forth from one end of the ship to the other, soon I’d be wearing this morning’s breakfast, soon I’d be able to see if that “life flashing before your eyes” saying was true or not.