Eternal Love

Of Flesh And Mind

Ronia's boots sank into the mud as she trudged through the overgrown field, her eager gaze fixed on the wreckage glittering in the distance. Her best friend Paul scrambled behind, loaded down with detection equipment. Ronia glanced back impatiently.

"I think this could be it!" she called.
"Actual alien spacecraft!"

Paul hurried to catch up, tripod and cameras banging together. "Do you think there could be survivors? Maybe they come in peace!"

As they drew nearer, Ronia coughed at the acrid chemical stench surrounding the craft. The advanced alloy was seamlessly smooth, the windows opaque. Ronia circled the vessel, heart pounding wildly. Her obsession with extraterrestrial life had led her to explore hundreds of crash sites, but this felt different.

Paul's devices registered no radiation or typical energy signals. But when he rapped the surface, the sound died unnaturally fast.

"It's absorbing vibrations. Almost like an organic compound." He met Ronia's wide gaze. "I think this craft was grown, not built."

Ronia crowded against the largest window, shielding her eyes. In the gloom, she could just discern an upright figure in the pilot's seat.

"There's someone inside! Looks injured - we've got to get them out!"

Paul helped her pry open the sticky door. As it groaned outward, a wave of putrid stench hit them, gaggingly sweet like decaying meat. Ronia gagged into her sleeve, inching closer to examine the figure within.

Its waxy flesh glistened faintly, but the face was concealed by an opaque helmet. Ronia suppressed a shudder at the gaping exit cavity blown through its torso. This was no ordinary crash.

"What the hell happened here?" Paul whispered.

A vicious scraping answered him. They spun to see the rear hatch bulging outward, oozing some dark fluid around the seals. Then with a crack, it burst open, dripping ropes of slime.

A bald, six-limbed creature emerged, veins pulsing wetly across its translucent skin. As it unhinged its sucker-like maw, the explorers stumbled back in horror. Blind predatory instinct burned in its bulbous eyes.

"Run!" Ronia screamed.

They fled across the field, the creature's shrieks piercing their skulls. It scuttled after them, startlingly fast on its spindly fingers and toes. Paul risked a panicked glance back at the swaying umbilical dragging behind it.

"What the hell is that thing?" he cried.

The trees offered a brief haven before it came crashing through the brush after them. They vaulted a crumbling wall into the shelter of a barn, hauling the door shut behind them. In the dusty gloom, muffled wails echoed as the creature hurled itself against the barricade.

Paul bent over gasping, face drained of color. "It can't get in. We're safe now!"

At that moment Ronia saw the skylight shatter. She tried to scream a warning as the creature's rope-like appendage whipped down, coiling around Paul's throat. His shriek cut off in a strangled gurgle as he was yanked upward into the rafters.

"Paul!"

Ronia scrambled for a weapon in the filth and straw as awful moist crunching sounded overhead.

She forced back hysteria, unable to process whatever was happening up there in the darkness.

Abruptly the noises ceased, replaced by the heavy thud of something hitting the dirt floor. Ronia raised her pitchfork with trembling hands to face the creature...and froze in horror.

The balding, writhing thing before her had Paul's lifeless eyes embedded in its oozing skull. Veins of glowing purple shot through the transparent flesh of its distended head. It had consumed him. Absorbed his living essence.

It dragged itself toward Ronia, trailing the pilot's umbilical like a grotesque infant. She backpedaled in panic, gagging at the stench washing over her. Somewhere in that glutted mass was her best friend's brilliant, gentle mind. Snuffed out as casually as a light.

"Paul..." she sobbed, the grief and guilt threatening to choke her.

But she couldn't afford to break down. Not while this aberration still lived, still craved.

She burst from the barn and fled wildly through the corn, the creature closes behind. Ronia felt its alien hunger clawing viciously at her thoughts, trying to digest her sanity along with Paul's memories. She focused desperately on slamming down mental barriers, walling off anything useful.

But deep within her bombarded psyche, Ronia sensed the creature hesitate. Recoil slightly as if burned by some bright flare of emotion. Seizing the chance, she pushed the memory forcibly through her failing defenses, herself as a child crying into her mother's arms after being lost in the dark woods. That primal comfort resonated painfully.

The alien spawn reeled back with an ear-piercing wail. Ronia watched as it writhed and warped, assimilating the borrowed memory on a biological level. Flesh split wetly as a new orifice formed on its torso...then blinked open human eyes that leaked bloody tears.

Still shrieking, the creature tore itself apart from within. Its psychic hold shattered as Ronia staggered away, pursued only by restless ghosts in her mind. She clung to that spark of remembered love - the last remnant of a gentle soul consumed by darkness. It would have to be enough.

There could be no going back now.