Dedicated to someone who helped publish this earlier than I could have hoped, thank you for the encouragement!
Thanks for adding it your reading list! Enjoy!
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Crawling out of her dormitory unit, she inched her way across the barely lit hallway late at night, black nothingness staring back at her from the void, and hoped no one would notice she was sneaking out past curfew.
Surely saving someone in distress was more important right? Although she got the feeling that Major Gideon, the head of SET, wouldn't be amused.
Having grabbed a handy flashlight with her, she turned it on, and was met with the most unusual sight.
Two black orbs staring at her.
She covered her mouth, stifling her yelp as her flashlight dropped, and turned off abruptly.
The creature continued staring at her, opposable thumbs looking up with...what looked like to be relief in their eyes.
Suddenly, the automatic lights switched on.
The creature was gone.
"What was that?", she whispered. Not once in her life had she been so frightened.
She wondered if it had been a hallucination, but she was not known to have those before so why now? Had the void of space made her imagine something that wasn't there?
Staying completely still, she breathed a sigh of relief when the hallway lights switched off again as she made no movement, and she was again greeted by darkness.
Okay, time to get out of here...
"Help me," cried out someone in the distance. She groaned, only wanting to go back to bed, but picked up her flashlight and turned it on once again.
It was the creature...only looking closer at it, it was a human!
At least that's what it appeared to be. What if this was all a dream?
Pinching herself, she found she was still awake. Unless...lately, her dreams had made her question reality and fiction, so she walked into a wall and stubbed her toe on purpose.
OW, she murmured, massaging the foot on the ground as the creature/human strolled over and started examining it.
"Bandages?", it said. Wait. Did her ears deceive her? It could really talk.... like humans?
Shining her emergency flashlight in its face, she saw green slime covering the face, but it clearly seemed humanoid in appearance. Eyeing the rest of its body, it appeared to also be scrawny and malnourished. The black orbs that had stared back at her seem to be extremely dilated pupils.
"No, I don't...have any," she answered.
The slimy human tilted its head to the side and offered her a hand to get up.
"Dangerous...at night," a growly deep voice told her.
"You would know?", she teased, then realizing it might not understand her jest.
It smiled, showing pearly whites...oh my stars and stripes! It seemed this was a human after all!
"What's your name?", she asked, holding one of its hands in an attempt to shake them.
"Tito," it responded back before shuffling noises made them crane both their necks to the farthest reaches of the hallway going left as they were currently at an intersection of four passageways.
YOU ARE READING
Aphelion
Science Fiction"It was all a dream come true...before it turned into a nightmare." In the near future, Quibilah is part of a group of students tasked with the mission to save the world, one school day at a time. The only difference between her and other students i...
