COSMONAUTS ONLY (DANK SECRETS WITHIN)

[brienneoftarthshreds]

I dropped out of a spaceship orbiting Mars wearing an exoskeleton. No chutes or rockets, just a graceful freefall that landed in a slightly staggered landing that fell back into something resembling a mountain pose. The suit, and whatever biomedical enhancements a person can get in this future is what cushions the blow. I'm before an advancing horde of fleshy monsters, cancer made sentient. It's the end of humanity, our tiny solar empire wiped out by the same advancing tide that has silenced every other light in the dark before us. It's why we were all alone, we were the last ones to realize it's best to simply be. We would fall victim to an alien force too nightmarish to be real, as if our literal fears had found us while we were sleeping in a near post-future daze. Other troopers were following me, seeking what a few of us hoped would be one of the last phyrric victories before we found some true salvation. I knew the truth, that's why I was the first to leap. Seconds later, we are in the fray. Gauss rifles, rockets, and plasma torches illuminate a rapid defeat for the forces defending the evacuating city. I'm engulfed first, and determined to make it count. My body is a weapon as I calmly fire off the plasma torch on my wrist and carve an escape from the horde that is enveloping me. Severing grotesque limbs and tentacles, I fight towards the atmosphere. The Creature grabs me in a massive claw, trapping me in a vice grip. A scene everybody has witnessed before, the last valiant thrashes of a defeated warrior. But I can't be taken, not like this. My death must have a funeral. I manage to drive the torch into the bulging eye beside the gaping maw before me, and I feel it. My life support systems are past failing, and reinforcements wont make it in time, but I feel the release of the Creature. I must have finally done it, stopped the centerpiece of the growth that was overtaking our civilization as it had every other one it encountered. Someone familiar is rushing to try to resuscitate me, but I'm already too far gone.

And all of my closest friends who weathered the storm will be there. I'll know their faces by then, each and every one. And there will be a mournful song, and a black dress, and a final, eternal rest.