Your Last Breathe

Nobody can hear you scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. But that's only mostly true. They get it wrong on 2 accounts. You can hear yourself scream. As the last of the air leaves your lungs, escaping over your vocal chords. Your final plea reverberating through your skull. Hoping your crew, anyone, will hear you and look. As you stare at them from just out of their sight. You can hear it.

The second thing they get wrong are the Banshee's. You can hear every one of their screams. But only you can hear them. Directly in your head, as if they exist just for you. Only ending to tear into your flesh. To eat. The pain from their psychic wailing being replaced by a new palpable pain. It's eerily quiet, surreal, to watch them eat you alive in complete silence. In space the cold vacuum numbs you quickly so you don't die of shock, but you're not completely numb. That would be too easy. Slowing down your bleeding just enough so you're alive to watch longer. You don't realize just how much is inside you, until its being pulled out right in front of you.

Nazca bolted up right from her bed. Sweat pouring down her face. She sighed as she wiped her face with the sheets. It was a fifty fifty anymore whether she would get actual sleep or not. Though it seemed to be getting worse with the deadline approaching. In three days she would be returning to work. Back on a ship. Back in space. Back where they are. She barely survived her first encounter. Having to be sent back planet side for numerous surgeries and months of physical and psychological therapy.

Last week she was cleared to return. Most people never encounter a Banshee on their travels through space. Space is big. They tell you that growing up but you can't really understand it till you're out there. Even then you can't truly grasp it. Nazca's mother always wanted her little girl to go to space. To get to travel and see the other worlds. She herself never got to leave her planet. Her mother was born with a heart defect that made her unsuited for space travel. That's why she named her daughter Nazca, after the Nazca lines you could see from above the clouds back on world zero. She hoped it would lift her little girl above the clouds when she grew up.

Right now she thinks her mother might regret that. Nazca was taken to the closest inhabited planet for medical attention and not her home world. Since her mother can't travel, and she was too injured to, they have had to communicate through subspace video calls. Her mother would usually end up in tears blaming herself. Thinking if she didn't push me to go to space I wouldn't have these scars. Doctors can grow you new organs, more rapidly than it would normally take. It's a small fortune but the company Nazca works for covered everything since it happened on the job. But they cant fully remove scars. Growing new cells in a lab is one thing. Doctors can only help your body heal back together. They can't do everything for you. They can't fix nightmares. Can't take away seeing them every night.

Banshee's are big. Their skin is resistant to energy from the cosmic radiation. Evolving in space makes them much more suited to its environment than us. Much better at hunting us. They're like giant blackish purple masses of tentacles. A mix between a jellyfish and an octopus, with teeth hard as diamond. They can move their organs around inside their body at will, and have sacs they store debris or small asteroids they've collected. They use them to propel their bodies through space by hurling them in the opposite direction. They can hibernate for years when they can't find food similar to how Qyuans on Simil do, or dragonflies use to do on Earth. But since humans have started traveling through their region they have been hibernating less and less. Their sightings much less rare now.

At first they were cryptid stories told by the first travelers. Seeing what looked like space itself move towards them. Then ghost stories told by the settlers. It wasn't an asteroid or malfunction that caused a ship to never make it to its destination. It was the screaming darkness. But when one attacked a military vessel, and was captured, everything changed. Ghost stories became tales of horror and warnings about the dangers of space travel. Ships started hiring armed escorts, settlements had to have defenses, and mining ventures payed for protection. Space got even bigger.

She still spoke with what was left of her team, when they could between missions. They couldn't wait to have her back. To have someone back. They lost John during that encounter. He was the one that looked. He was the reason she was alive. He radioed over the comms to the others, but didn't wait for them to arrive. If he had she might have died anyway. But one pulse rifle isn't much against a Banshee. John didn't last long by himself. Banshee's are very aggressive about their food, since meals are hard to come by in space. It didn't like John interrupting its meal. It tore him apart, into multiple pieces. All I could do was watch, unable to help him. I saw him scream. I couldn't hear it. Nor could i hear the Banshee wailing in his mind. But John could. John heard his last scream. I know he did.