Uninhabited

Susan was jolted awake from her warm and cozy delta wave induced sleep; the standard procedure for passengers on long duration spaceflights. She shoved the shoulder of her husband Roger, and shoved him again, but his snoring didn’t stop. Her eyebrows furrowed over her closed eyes, squinting from the glare coming through the cabin porthole window.

She struggled to open her eyes. She sat up the bed, stretched out her arms, and yawned. The sleeper cabin accommodated the large bed, with a hatch on one side and a cabin-wide window on the other. That circular sheet of transparent starship-grade acrylic kept the warm air inside the cabin and the black, icy vacuum of space outside. When she was able to open her eyes, she stared out the window for a moment, and then her jaw dropped. She squinted her eyes shut, shook her head, and looked again. Her eyes were wide open, then after a moment, relaxed. She smiled, lifting up her hand, and moving her fingers in a gentle waving gesture.

The ship was on the ground of a rocky, desolate world. But what was far more interesting was the indigenous creatures that were looking back at her from outside. Susan and Roger didn’t sign up for the optional “alien planetary safari” when they won the newlywed contest, an all-inclusive all expenses paid two-week stay at a resort overlooking the Horsehead nebula. Yet here she was, looking at the space men who were as curious about her as she was about them. She tried to wake her husband up again, and when she looked back out the window, more aliens were looking in at her. Their faces had two bugged-out bloodshot eyes, symmetrical ridges that stretched from its forehead down to its mouth, vertical nostril slits, and a row of dull teeth that hung down with a severe overbite.

“Attention, passengers!” the speaker in the sleeping pod announced in a soft tone. “Our spaceship has made an emergency landing on planetoid Z-39. There is no cause to fear an attack, in as much as this place is known to be uninhabited.”

She giggled at the showmanship from the crew. The alien turned away and beckoned to smaller ones, who dashed up to the window. They pointed at Susan who waved back. The creatures hopped up and down, until the larger alien nodded.

The larger alien reached to the bottom of the window and tugged on it. It creaked, and then opened up like a trap door hinged at top. The air in the cabin gushed out. Susan screamed. Roger woke in a terrified startle. They grasped onto each other and gasped for air. Their ears popped and crackled, their eyes stung, their skin burned by the cold. Anything that wasn’t bolted down slid toward the opening. The creature lifted the window all the way up and out of the way, and the rest of the air escaped. The creature was much larger than it appeared; somehow that circular window made them look smaller. The alien scooped Susan and Roger up with a rectangular wire-framed net, dropping them into a tall plastic cylinder. A lid was quickly put on top that blew warm air inside, which made them drowsy then unconscious.

* * *

Susan and Roger woke up on a bed, the hardest and most uncomfortable bed she’s even been on. There were no blankets, although it looked like there were blankets on it, but it was just some sort of giant plastic mold meant to look like a bed.

The apartment had an open floorplan and was rectangular. In one corner was a kitchen, equipped with a refrigerator, counters, cabinets, dishwasher, and a stove. Nearby was a living room couch, a boxy television set, a desk with a home computer, and a circular table with a rotary dial phone. The bedroom corner also had a chest of drawers and a vanity with a mirror and a lamp.

Susan and Roger explored the apartment. He went to see what was in the refrigerator, but it wouldn’t open. Susan tried to see what was in the chest of drawers, it wouldn’t open either. She examined the lamp, it wasn’t actually producing light, but was painted in such a way that it appeared to have a lightbulb underneath the shade that was lit up. But the most curious furnishing by far was the kitchen table, which was more of a flat bowl on legs, one side filled with brown pellets the size of tin cans, and the other side filled with water.

She frantically cried out to her husband for answers, complaining that everything was plastic and fake. He shrugged and outstretched his arms. Then there was a tremendous thud that shook the entire apartment. And then another.

They covered their ears and looked at the wall in the direction of the noise. They noticed the wallpaper was semi-translucent, and through the walls they could see several of the aliens from planetoid Z-39 looking at them, their faces were right up against the walls.

The mother alien shooed the smaller creatures away. She was wearing an apron, wagged a finger at her children, and told them not tap the glass because it scares their pet humans.

* * *

Back out of the surface of planetoid, two large aliens shook each end of the space cruise liner, tipping up on the side, shaking it some more. All the windows of the passenger cabins were fully open, and a man finally fell out of the ship. He ran along the rocky soil, and was chased by a giant inhabitants. The human stumbled, and a plastic cylinder was placed over him, flipped over, and covered with a lid.

“Oy mate,” the human captain of the ship shouted from an open tent a few yards away, signing paperwork with some of the aliens. “You better be careful with the specimen container. If you break my ship, next month’s shipment will be delayed.”

***

997 words. Entry for the "WEIRD TALES CONTEST "