Chapter Text
The time is 07:46 on day 43, Friday. Sunlight calmly filters between waxy needles of the surrounding pine trees, the first golden rays casting their warmth on the frozen dewdrops that cover the grassy fields out southwest of satellite dishes Kilo and Juliett.
The first frost.
Dr.Kel watches the camera feed of the field intently, the calm, lazy river snaking its way off into the distant forest. He scans the screen again, and again, eyes raking over every last shrub and blade of grass, looking, searching, straining for anything that could be out of place. He had seen something on the radar here, and had trained cameras to observe this place. Surely...
There.
A yellow glow, only a few pixels on the screen, but unmistakable. The same sickly, yellow hue that had been haunting him for over a month, though in the past couple days, had become immediately dangerous to him. The bitten nailbed of Dr.Kel's middle finger stings when he presses it against the scroll wheel, zooming in to train the camera exactly on the newest threat to his life.
The pixels update only slightly behind real time, revealing a wild hog-like creature, though its skin is bloody and is covered by the seams of zippers, as though its flesh had been torn apart and roughly stitched back together. A patchwork of metal plating overlaps itself on the sides of the creature, like ribs, as it floats through the otherwise peaceful valley, supported by some strange cybernetic hovering devices where the animal's legs ought to be. Whatever it is, it is part animal, part cyborg, and not at all friendly.
He had seen one of these before. Just the night previous, he had encountered one on an outing to one of the transformers responsible for powering his satellite dish array, and it had chased after him, squealing bloody murder. It very clearly had intent to kill. It is as though whatever modifications had been made to those animals has warped their minds, tuning it only for aggression. The sight and sound of the cyborg-hog had sent Dr.Kel very quickly into fight-or-flight mode, and he had been able to escape it relatively quickly. He thanked the stars that his ATV could rapidly outpace these creatures.
Now he is staring one down through a video feed, as it quietly floats back out of the line of his sight, into a line of trees along the south side of the clearing, heading off toward somewhere behind satellite dish Whiskey.
The astronomer leans back into his chair with a groan, reaching up to rub his tired, aching eyes, pushing his round, cracked glasses out of the way. He turns the chair around, readjusting his glasses to sit properly on his face again, and reaches for coffee he had sitting out for this occasion. The warmth of the beverage helps to stave off the growing chill in the area that had seeped its way into his fingers. Winter is approaching, he knew that. What he isn't sure of is how he'll find warmth in a place like this.
The coffee smells nice. However, its taste is another story. It's quite unpleasant, without any form of milk or sweetening. He drinks the bitter, black liquid in a few large, burning swigs to avoid tasting it for too long. He just needs the caffeine. It leaves an acrid aftertaste in his mouth, once he's finished.
The cup, stained from many previous coffees, is returned to its place on the coffee maker in the break room, after the short journey it takes for him to walk there.
The front door to the base spontaneously opens with a pneumatic hiss, and the familiar sound of footsteps approaching has the tired astronomer turning around just in time to witness his red-and-white companion robot, Kerfur, rapidly approaching him in nearly a blur. It then stops right in front of Kel, throwing a sheet of paper at him that Kel only barely manages to catch in time. It's the daily hashcode report form that he had sent it out to retrieve.
"Thanks, Kerfur," Dr.Kel's voice croaks with misuse and exhaustion, as he reaches up to pat Kerfur on the flat top of its screen box of a head.
Kerfur, taller than him, leans down to allow him to reach the top of its head. Though it's not much, when his hand smooths over the metal plating a few times, the robot responds with an enthusiastic prerecorded "Meow!" voice-line, bit-crushed to the point of sounding as though it had been sampled decades ago, then passed from system to system until it finally ended up in the robot. Kerfur is the semblance of a friend, happy to receive praise from its master.
Dr.Kel then looks over the hashcode report briefly. He trusts his robot to have entered all data correctly. After that, he repeats the same routine he had done at least once each day previous to this one, in which he tapes the report form to the lid of a full drive box, sets it outside, and calls in the delivery drone to whisk it away.
He doesn't bother writing any additional messages on his report form anymore, not even to attempt to notify his boss of new dangerous entities that want to take his life. Kellin is not naive to his circumstances at this point, fully aware that those in power are completely ignoring him.
He gives them drives and hashcodes, he gets points. It's a mutually beneficial interaction that allows him to keep on living. Work gives him something to do. Points let him buy comforts for the place he now must make into a home. There is no other choice. Without a purpose to continue, he is aware that he would want to fall asleep and never wake up again. So, he sticks to performing well on his daily tasks and upkeep of the grounds, because he must.
Currently though, he wants to stay awake. He has a foe he'd like to deal with: the cyborg-boar, which he has nicknamed as "cyboar" to himself. The Dunkeltaler forest, while not his place of origin, had become his home by this point. It is his job to defend it.
---
Screaming with exhilaration, Dr.Kel engages with the beast, throwing a molotov in its direction to enrage it and attract its attention. Then comes the slow process of kiting around it, avoiding its hydraulic-strength bites, until he can bury his crowbar into its head enough times to rip the bundles of cables loose enough until he can kill it with another molotov, to put the thing out of its misery.
It shrieks, floats, writhes, and explodes into its components, including a spray of blood, gore, and chunks of flesh. He has to shield his eyes from the blast, however, it is a bit late for the rest of him. Blood now spatters and stains his coat.
It's an ugly mess, but it's his fault. He is the one who decided to fight it and cause it to explode its guts all over the place. Once he is certain that the commotion has stopped, he approaches the steaming, smoking pile of flesh and scrap parts that once was a cyboar. Now that the beast had been completely obliterated, he could study the shredded remains of its carcass.
He wipes the blood off of his glasses on his shirt, and then takes off his gloves, storing them in his backpack, and rolls up his sleeves, to deal with the mess in front of him. He picks off pieces and parts of alien technology that he thinks might be salvageable, and also takes a few of the metal plates that once guarded its innards. They're bent out of shape, like shrapnel, but possibly still salvageable.
Next, he takes a few plastic bags out of his backpack, and picks over the remains. He had deliberated on this decision at length back within base Alpha, and, now out here, finds himself more curious than hesitant. He wants to know what it will taste like.
Not minding the smell of raw flesh, he uses his pocket knife to find and cut away strips of meat that still look edible and hadn't been completely shredded from the explosion. The red blood of the animal stains his hands as he works, slippery and still warm, and he carefully fills the containers he brought, until there is no room. He looks back, to still see a decent pile there. With a sigh, he walks up to his ATV, opening up the trunk, and pulling out a few rolls of garbage bags, to clean up the rest of the mess that he made. He plans to not have a corpse left to rot away in his valley, if he can help it.
After that, it is a short ride back to the Alpine Signal Observatory.
---
Later that evening, the lights begin to flicker, putting Dr.Kel on edge. With a sinking feeling in his chest, he stands up, grabbing his crowbar off of its place leaned up against the signal processing terminal. The uncomfortable prickling of hyper-awareness crawls over his skin like many centipedes.
Kel walks up to stare out of the wide, open window that looks out from the signal processing & research lab, towards the lonely field out in front. The street lights continue to flicker, gaining intensity in a familiar way, until eventually, all electronic devices shut down.
Dr.Kel turns, to look back at his companion robot that stands behind him, Kerfur. "Kerfur, Idle," he commands, voice raised with anxiousness.
Kerfur listens, though as he takes his next several steps, he watches his robot shut down, curling up and placing its hands on its knees, screen turning off, deactivated by forces beyond his control.
He narrows his eyes, scanning the room. "Something's fucking with me," he mutters under his breath, and does the first thing any sane person would do. He exits the base, forcing the front door open with his own strength and the crowbar he brought with him, and walks out into the parking lot in the front.
Evening hues light up the sky in a pleasant rainbow gradient, the surrounding pines well on their way to becoming inky-black silhouettes against the colorful sunset firmament. And up there, amongst the stars twinkling into view, a new, sickly yellow star rises from the horizon.
Kel watches, not afraid, not happy, and not pleased. He pulls out his camera, and watches, fascinated, as the yellow light passes close enough overhead for him to make out the shape of a flying saucer as it comes into view.
He trains his camera on it, zooms in, and snaps a picture he finds himself somewhat proud of, as details of the spaceship are visible within the photo. As he goes to snap the next picture, the spaceship drops off some sort of cargo, that falls in pieces to the ground, landing with wet thumps, and a trail of mysterious liquid, that has him second guessing whether or not his camera is the best choice of object to be holding in his hands.
The ship flies away, its ethereal humming Doppler-shifting low as it makes its way out of view once more, the yellow glow of it disappearing into the treeline as swiftly as it had appeared.
Feeling uneasy, adrenaline already coursing through his veins and making his heart pound in case if this means danger, Dr.Kel approaches whatever was just dropped, clicking the button on his flashlight to shine it at the...
Body.
Red, bloody, and still wet, glistening in the light of Dr.Kel's flashlight, was a mangled corpse. Dr.Kel sighs, at first, glad it is nothing alive. Thinking its another animal or cyboar corpse, he mentally prepares himself to have to clean up yet another carcass, and feels thankful that he doesn't have to go through another fight that night.
Until he sees a foot.
The shape is undeniably human, though the flesh had been stripped off the bones, and no skin remained on the calf it was attached to. Whoever had died to become this had likely died in a very painful manner, or, at least, had been torn to shreds before being dropped from the sky, into the parking lot in front of the research station.
A shudder passes through him, uncertain how to feel. He knows he should be feeling nauseous, and sick, and horrified, but, he just... Stares, more confused than anything else. He finds himself trying to puzzle out exactly what is going on. The aliens that dropped it on him clearly meant it as a message. As for what the message was exactly, he isn't sure. He already has a few theories running through his head, as he shakily brings out his camera, and takes a picture of the shredded corpse, whose pieces had been somewhat scattered by the impact. He'd need to be able to explain this later- if he ever was to explain it to anyone, he'd at least need this picture to be able to explain it to himself, later, to be certain that this all really happened.
These new aliens were likely trying to show him that they could very easily kill his species. They want to scare him, clearly. So, he must not allow himself to feel fear. He tucks his camera back away in his backpack, and has to take a few moments to process the sight in front of him.
Were they trying to tell them they hate him? That they hate his species? Perhaps they intend to toy with him- and they want him to be terrified. A deeply unsettled feeling makes itself home in his stomach, and does not leave. He would have to clean this mess up, still. That he knew. He decides to not allow the deadly message of the human corpse to get to him- clearly, that is what these aliens want. He must keep his resolve.
He runs inside, quickly gathering supplies he could use to clean up the pieces. He isn't sure the best way to go about it. He continues to ponder over the mess in front of him, not sure where to store the meat. Then, an idea hits him.
His freezer has room.
It wouldn't be permanent- just until he has long enough to fight off the other dangers of his life, and have a long enough break to manage his stress, and then he would get rid of the pieces of flesh, the limbs, the torn muscles and sinew now packed away nicely inside.
The fact that aliens would drop this in front of him eats away at him, for a little while, as he hoses down the pool of blood where the body had been dropped, rinsing the red stains off of the black pavement, and back into the earth beyond its borders. What did this mean?
The sky had now dimmed, turning into dark hues of blues and teals, the sun having long set, and with it, a good portion of Dr.Kel's resolve. The cold in the air begins to get a bite to it, so he rolls up the garden hose, storing it back into loops on its rack.
He stares out at where the spaceship had dropped the mangled corpse.
Gone, and clean. The spot is clean, and he could now breathe a sigh of relief, as it is gone. He no longer has to worry about such a sight staring at him from out the window while he does his work.
The astronomer heads back inside, locking the door behind him, out of habit. His stomach aches with anxiousness. He just wants the day to be over. He returns to the main desk, to stare at his computer, and look over the records and photographs he had just taken of the spaceship, the sudden delivery, and the unrecognizable remains.
There had been no skull attached, thankfully. Only limbs, part of a ribcage, a pelvis, and a spine. He looks back to the photograph of the overhead spaceship, which was blurred significantly from the motion of it. The yellow glow was unmistakably tied to the other malicious entities he had encountered. The yellow wisps, and the yellow glow of the cyborg-boar-like abominations that had begun to appear in the area.
Surely, they must be connected. Absolutely a new species of alien trying to torment him. But for what reason? What would they be getting out of scaring one lone human in the middle of the Swiss alps? He finds it a little absurd, which eases the anxious worry in his gut somewhat. He could almost laugh. It reminds him of the cheap pranks that high-school bullies might pull, only more sinister.
As the questions in his mind grow, the anxious feelings become replaced with a somewhat morbid curiosity. The intent of the aliens, of course, clearly must be malicious, given the human corpse, and the creatures that wanted to kill him non-stop.
He sits for a while longer, waiting for the printer to finish. This would make a good addition to his cork-board. He had many questions, and had the feeling that he might be getting answers soon. For now, he stands up, going to collect the physical pictures, and gets to work.
---
Over the next few days, each night, something new gets dropped in front of the base, and more cyboars appear on the radar map each night.
Day 44, he visits the ariral camp, and notices the remains of more of the abominations. Piles of blood and shrapnel litter the area, leaving him confused, puzzling over the remnants of the corpses. He decides to return to the treehouse built by the arirals, settling down to watch the surrounding trees sway in the wind, and listening. He listens, for a while. Sometimes, when he's lucky, listening like this, he'll hear a very quiet chattering, or sound of footsteps, from his alien friends. It makes him smile, whenever he catches them. He has never seen them directly, but knowing there are other sentient creatures out in the woods with him that don't want to kill him helps to put his mind at ease.
It isn't long until he discovers why the cyboar corpses surround the camp, when another one floats out of the woods, letting out a shriek as it begins to approach him, wrath in its bloodied eyes. Dr.Kel stands up, startled, prepared to either make a stand, or bolt.
What happens instead, though, is he hears the little pitter-pat of footsteps once more, sprinting past him, towards the beast. He watches, in amazement, as the cyboar gets lifted off the ground, and beaten to death. He pulls his camera out just in time to take a picture right as it explodes in a spray of blood, flesh, and components that he almost finds to be beautiful, in his own strange way.
He giggles, putting away his camera, and pulls out his notepad, tearing off a page to leave as a note for his invisible friends, the arirals.
He writes. "Thank you for protecting me - signed, Kellin, the human," he takes out few pins from a pin-box he had accidentally brought with him from the night before of puzzling over his corkboard wall. He uses them to pin the note to the wall of their treehouse.
On the night of day 44, a flaming car is dropped from the sky, right in front of base Alpha. It startles Dr.Kel greatly, but it just becomes another piece of the puzzle for him to try to understand. He takes more pictures of it, and returns inside the ASO building Alpha.
---
On the evening of day 45, at about 19:30, the power goes out. Dr.Kel is brought back to transformer 1, to get the lights running again. He is almost certain it went down from extraterrestrial influence. It had been at 95% last time he pinged the transformers, and it had only been a few hours since then.
He returns the transformer station to working order, by flicking the switches on the transformer unit itself a few times, resetting it. When he exits the building, having just repaired it, a familiar, eerie hum fills the sky. Another spaceship, about to drop a delivery.
This time, it is a large crate, self-propelled to land itself gently, as though it was some kind of drone carrier. Yellow lights line the sides of it, and sparks fly, warm air blowing out in all directions beneath it, flattening the grass before it settles down onto the earth.
Dr.Kel immediately gets the sense about him that this would be highly dangerous. He takes pictures, of course, for documentation's sake, but as soon as the walls of the crate fold down, and the metal construct within begins to unfold, beeping as it boots up, he runs off to safety, adrenaline coursing through his veins. He knows what he just did was extremely risky, but now he has the documentation for it. If there was a term for what he just did, reckless would be the best one for describing it.
He leaps over the back of his ATV, putting it into gear as soon as his feet touch the pedals. The engine roars to life as he speeds off, easily able to outpace whatever it was that just got released from the alien crate, and when he's far enough away, he looks back in time to see a spew of fire come from the turret that extends up from the wheelbase of the construct. A flamethrower.
The groundskeeper leaves the area, with much to think about. Dangerous constructs built to hunt him down and spew fire... This is dangerous, indeed. He'd have to prepare.
---
Day 46.
Dr.Kel comes up with a plan to defend himself from the metal construct dropped to his location. Looking up "fireproof" on the store reveals that it just so happens that ASO would sell a fireproof suit to him for 500 points.
"What?"
Kellin leans forwards, elbows resting on his desk, massaging his temples.
It becomes suddenly clear to him that his boss is aware of the dangers that he has to face here in the Dunkeltaler forest.
He knows he should be filled with rage, and indignation that he would be treated in such a manner, when upper management knows full well the dangers he has to face, and didn't let him know of any of it upon arrival. He's already well aware that whoever gets sent here isn't meant to return.
Instead, he feels... Strangely calm, and more puzzled by it, than anything. This will be yet another mystery for Dr.Kel to uncover, and at least it gives him some mental stimulation outside of staring out into the void of space, or being terrified for his life.
If they're at least aware of the fire tank these aliens dropped on the premises, they're likely aware of many of the other things that have happened. Including the magenta construct aliens that took away the yellow wisps, or the arirals.
He looks back at Kerfur, raising an eyebrow. "Are you seeing this?" he then decides to buy the fireproof suit. He'd use it another night, when more prepared to face the danger.
For now, he'll wait.
On the night of day 46, more flesh is dropped from the sky. Human flesh. Dr.Kel studies it for a while, studying the way that the parts became mangled, before he stares at the sky, from which it came, watching the sickly yellow glow swiftly disappear off into the distance.
He does his same routine, cleaning up the corpse, just like last time, and stores it safely, just like last time. He is not pleased by having to do so, nor is he overly disgusted or horrified. He has dealt with enough viscera at this point. It's just more blood to clean up.
He'd... Deal with the rest of his freezer situation later. He's not ready to face it yet.
---
Day 47, 3:00 am
Dr.Kel wakes up to the sound of distant explosions, and a familiar, eerie feeling crawling on his skin that always happens when he knows something paranormal is afoot. He sits up, quickly, staring, wide-eyed, at the window.
The constant, distant sounds of popping and crackling continue. It reminds him of the sound of fireworks at a distant festival, or a new-years celebration.
He knows that these sounds cannot possibly be fireworks. War, then?
With chills running down his spine that raise goosebumps on his skin, he quickly scrambles to put himself together. Pants, coat, hat, backpack, and boots that he frantically ties and double-knots. Then he grabs a cold burger out of the fridge, not even bothering to reheat it, before quickly running out the bedroom door, through the adjacent room that connects the hallway to the garage, and it's a swift rappel with the rope down onto the floor of the garage.
He runs to open the garage door, his fist hitting the button with a slam, and gathers all of his supplies for an alien-research expedition- Camera, backup camera, extra pair of glasses, a dozen molotovs, his crowbar, several garbage bag rolls, and saddlebags roughly hooked to his ATV. Just in case.
After that, he's rolling out of the garage, revving the engine, and then shifting gears as he gains speed, causing a spray of gravel out behind him as he speeds towards the sounds in the middle of the night.
The sounds are toward the ariral camp.
Confusion, excitement and worry all brew in an upsetting knot in his stomach as he finds his way along the gravel roads to the source of the commotion that crackles like thunder across the sky. The ATV's engine roars beneath him with the effort of climbing the hill.
When the ground finally levels off after passing by Transformer 1 near satellite dish Papa, he's able to look out into the field, and see flashes of blue light. "Lasers!" he shouts, awestruck at the realization. Yellow lights fill the sky like angry fireflies, quickly whizzing past, constantly dropping something new down onto the battlefield with each pass. The multitude of them fills the air with angry humming alongside the crackling and booming of laser fire.
Cyboars, in the dozens, are unleashed onto the ground, and several of the fire constructs that he had encountered not more than two days ago also roamed the scene. He could hear the arirals without seeing them, and quite loudly. They fire their laser weapons with deadly accuracy, each beam connecting with its target in a crackling blue spray of electricity.
It is a war, of yellow versus blue, and Dr.Kel thanks the heavens that blue is on his side, because they are winning. Beautifully so.
He has to hit the brake, hard, because not too far in front of him, he's face to face with another cyboar. Just as it shrieks from having spotted him, though, a blue laser cuts clean through its body, narrowly missing Dr.Kel himself, and has him jumping in place from the startling crackle that passed not more than a yard from his leg.
The groundskeeper, perhaps too excited and curious for his own good, quickly hops off the ATV, and grabs his camera. Flashes of blue light cast deep shadows from between the trees, flickering like lightning between orange flares of light from the roiling arcs of fire cast by the flamethrowers.
The cyboar that just got shot in front of Dr.Kel explodes, the concussive blast of it knocking him back, while he gets covered in a spray of its blood and guts again. He has to scramble to his feet, wiping off his glasses, to search for his lost camera.
He grabs it again, and puts it away. Watching in awe as multitudes more electric-blue blast of laser-fire crackle through the air, connecting with a firetank no more than 100 yards in front of him, tearing the construct apart.
Dr.Kel shouts with exhilaration, cheering for the Arirals.
Perhaps, stupidly, to get a closer view, he runs towards the battle scene, quickly pulling a grappling hook and rope out of his bag, throwing it high onto the roof of the treehouse. Once it gets purchase, he grips the line with strength, and hoists himself up, climbing up the rope faster than he had climbed any rope in his life, and clambers up and onto the roof, perching himself somewhat precariously on the edge, to watch the chaos unfold.
The sounds of footsteps belonging to the invisible aliens run past. Following the sound with his eyes, he counts three floating blasters, held by invisible hands. Three. So there are three arirals, Kel thinks to himself.
He gets chills, watching the rest of the battle unfold, in perhaps one of the most exciting moments of his life. The crisp alpine air is filled with the smells of ozone, burning flesh, and oil, while the war rages on in front of him. He takes pictures when he remembers to, but mostly sits, and watches, enjoying the sight of what had been an immediate threat to his life now neutralized right in front of his eyes.
Eventually, after about an hour, the yellow saucers that fill the sky dissipate, and no new fodder is dropped to the ground. The last few blasts of laser fire fill the air, after which the air becomes still. Calm.
Dr.Kel waits on his perch for a few more minutes, before finally allowing himself to rappel back down the side of the Ariral treehouse, unfolding his aching limbs and stretching cramped muscles.
The sound of footsteps come up the treehouse, one very familiar round-shaped alien blaster floating alongside it, approaching Dr.Kel. The human stares, wide-eyed at the distortion in front of him, praying that these invisible aliens still feel fond of him.
He jumps, with a start and a yelp, when he feels a very familiar rough rubbing on his head. The ariral messes with him, to the point it knocks off his hat, shaking his head, and even his whole body from the force of the invisible hand. He starts to laugh.
"θœ naalnu roæθ," alien words get spoken to him. Then, suddenly, two english words, that he can understand, spoken in a thick accent. "Stu-pid. Hu-man."
Dr.Kel's laughter ends abruptly. He stands there, dumbfounded, rendered mute from shock. The alien just spoke to him!
The Ariral leaves, the only sounds hinting to its departure being the faint tip-tap of its footsteps on the wooden planks of the treehouse, going to the ground.
The human finally finds his words, before the ariral leaves earshot. He cups his hands around his mouth, and shouts with all his might. "Thank you!"
He hopes they heard him. He thinks, for a moment longer. He must thank the arirals that just won this battle for him in some other way. He looks around, frantically, for ideas. The battlefield was a total mess. Perhaps he could clean up, for them? Perhaps they would appreciate his presence.
Over the next few hours, the human scavenges. He scavenges the metal shrapnel and scrap left behind from the battle, the electronic components blasted off of the beasts, bags up the guts left behind, the meat. He fills as many garbage bags as he can without straining the material to the point of tearing.
He takes many trips back and forth from the Ariral camp to base Alpha, in which he slowly works, methodically, storing and organizing every piece of metal salvaged from the battlescene, each electronic component stored away, and each cut of meat stored in his freezer, which quickly becomes full, to the point that he finds himself buying an entire separate new freezer from the ASO store, just in order to store it all away safely for winter. As for the garbage bags full of guts, he sells them off via the drone, hoping, with a chuckle to himself, that he can disturb his boss for leaving him here, isolated.
Dr.Kel pauses at the thought, and then shakes his head, hopping back onto his ATV for yet another trip back to the Ariral camp. He couldn't let himself dwell on thoughts of his isolation for too long.
The sun rises, cutting golden rays through the early-morning mist between the trees, long shadows cast onto the Ariral campsite. Frost sparkles on the needles of the pines, and the sun reflects brightly off of one of the panels of the spaceships parked there. It is calm.
The astronomer's chest fills with warmth at the sight.
After a third trip, the battlefield is clean, aside from the bloodstains that will soak into the grass in time. After such work, the groundskeeper finds himself quite exhausted, yet satisfied with himself for completing something he put his mind to.
He climbs the steps into the ariral treehouse once more, this time no longer terrified for his life or full of adrenaline, now filled with hope. He slings his backpack off of one shoulder, and sets it down onto one of the ariral cushions. He settles himself onto it, making himself quite comfortable, curling into the fetal position, and using his backpack as a pillow.
The chill of the air against the warmth of his thick coat has sleep taking him easily, in which he begins to dream.
He dreams of violence, but also peace. Fear that melts away into understanding, isolation turned liveable.
Once fully rested, he wakes up to a spoon in his mouth, and the sound of startled alien giggling filling the air around him. Dr.Kel sits up, taking the spoon out of his mouth, and licking and swallowing the sweet substance that was just on it. It's kind of like yogurt.
He listens to the sound of footsteps run away from him, the giggling continuing as it runs off to somewhere out of earshot.
With a yawn, and a stretch, he thinks aloud. "What a beautiful fuckin' day."
---
15:23
After a series of outside chores, including repairing transformers, and retrieving and sending the next set of hashcodes from Kerfur-O to Bao, Dr.Kel finally finds himself with free time.
He is no longer afraid, as he goes to check his fridge for edible food. He had just eaten his last burger, so it was time to do some meal preparation for the next week or so. He knows, now, that he truly does have friends on his side. He knows that the tanks and boars can be defeated. He is ready.
He opens his freezer, and takes stock of his supply. He's well stocked, now, the shelves lined with boar meat he had packaged himself, alongside...
Oh. Yes, the human parts. He had forgotten to remove those. He probably should, but...
He stares, for a while, considering, a sudden curiosity eating away at him. Would it be worth it to eat any? He considers the winter. Perhaps he would give it a try, to see if it is edible, and worth keeping in his freezer. He reaches in, and pulls out a ribcage and shoulder, this one definitely human, frozen and preserved well from days earlier.
He's heard rumor that the meat would taste like pork.
He sets it into his fridge, to thaw for later.
---
Day 48, 09:37
The next day, when the cut has thawed, he takes it out and sets it on a cutting board, and first slices off a little raw strip of the flesh, using his kitchen knife. He considers, for a moment, what he is about to do.
He takes a deep breath. He decides that if it wasn't fine, he wouldn't bother, and he'd throw it out. That's what he'll do. And if it's fine... If it's fine, it's worth eating later.
It couldn't hurt him, could it? He had eaten worse raw stuff than this, too. He knew there were psychological aspects to consider. Most people who eat another human end up being unable to live with theirselves. He doesn't think that will happen, though, or at least, not for this reason. He couldn't think of why he shouldn't give it a taste, given the circumstances. He'll satisfy his curiosity, then, and if it turns out to be bad, or horrible, or make him rethink his whole life, he'll just decide it isn't for him, and just not use the human flesh in anything.
He picks up the thin slice of meat between two fingers and a thumb, looking at it for a moment, before biting into it, and then chewing, eating it.
It was like anything else raw he had eaten, metallic, chewy and a little stringy, as it hadn't been cooked yet, and a little savory. He swallows, not feeling any worse or better. It probably would be better with some seasoning, or cooked.
He was honestly a little disappointed by how normal it tasted. He expected more out of the whole ordeal, or for something to happen when he tried the meat. It tasted... Fine. It also felt... Fine. He didn't feel as though he had changed at all. He almost expected something to happen from it, but... Still, nothing.
He looks around, half-expecting to get scolded for his curiosity, or to have angered some sort of spirit that would come and haunt him. Still, there's no reactions around him, nobody to shout at him, to tell him not to do what he's currently doing. Just isolation. He runs his slightly bloodied fingers over the rough, carved surface of the cutting board, considering this.
In a way, he finds that it is nice to be alone. No more worries of the judgement of others, he is now free to satisfy any curiosities he might have. Now that it is satisfied, though, does he even use this meat?
He considers for yet another moment. It tasted fine. Nothing is wrong with it that he could tell, aside from the obvious. He didn't feel worse from it, either. Of course, if he does decide to use it in his cooking, he couldn't go back. People don't talk to cannibals. At least, he doesn't think that he'd be respected by the next human he met, if they knew he would actually eat something like this willingly. Not many people wanted to talk to him anyway, even before he got stationed out here. It didn't matter. Besides. It wasn't like he'd be returning.
This is likely the closest he'd ever get to another human again, anyway. He feels a little strange about the piece that now sits in his stomach. He isn't going to be able to go back from this, is he? He isn't able to go back home from Dunkeltaler, either. He knows this. Might as well allow himself to to whatever reprehensible acts he needs to do in order to survive.
It wouldn't matter in the end. He'll use it; it's just meat. He cuts off another bite for himself to eat, and then starts to prepare his next meal, with a pang of sorrow unrelated to his now solved moral dilemma.
It's all just meat.
---
Days 49-56
Days pass, and the nights grow longer, and with them, the changing of the seasons. Leaves fall from the few deciduous trees that live scattered amongst the evergreens, their brilliant orange, red, and yellow hues littering the ground in patches where they grow. Frost begins to cling onto grass and leaves a little longer each morning. Sometimes, it rains, and storms, and other times, the nights become clear, allowing the temperature to drop ever lower. Dr.Kel adjusts easily, always resourceful.
He dabbles in the consumption of human flesh every now and then, sometimes raw, most times cooked into meals he prepares for himself, to avoid spending as much time cooking any one day. It doesn't seem to affect him at all.
Of course, the cannibalism is only occasional. Most meals he makes are not from such meats. The boar meat from the war the arirals had waged about a week earlier also made for good cooking. It never seemed to end up tasting all that different, once prepared nicely and seasoned properly.
Not a single yellow flying saucer had visited the area since the war on day 47. Things have calmed down significantly in the Dunkeltaler forest, making the days pass by slowly.
When things slow down, it becomes a problem. With too much free time on his hands, Kel now has too much time to think. To reminisce. He starts a project or two, one in the garage, and some remodeling in the upstairs of the base. But… even during those, Kel’s mind can’t help but wander.
He sticks to routine, to distract himself, to keep his mind from stopping. From thinking too much. He knows that if he slows down for even a moment, that might be the end for him. Sundays are meal prep days, Mondays are a little slower, but still active, spent tending to his garden or clearing branches fallen from windstorms. Tuesdays are for garbage cleanup, Wednesdays are for fixing up transformers. Thursdays are for patrols of the facility grounds and explorations, Fridays are for cleaning and research. Saturdays are for eating the last of the leftovers, and playing with Kerfur and his cat, Maxwell.
Each night is for accounting his time at the ASO in journals, recording his experiences, discoveries, thoughts, research, and revelations. All the while, something begins to bother him, waiting in the back of his mind. Something familiar, that doesn't let him know what it is just yet. Something uncomfortable, and raw, almost like some unpleasant place he had been before. Something... Itchy.
It starts out small. First, it's shadows playing tricks on his eyes when he doesn't get enough sleep. As the woods are very haunted, with high levels of paranormal activity, this is not out of the ordinary, at first.
Then, it's the dreams.
Strange, and off-putting. Dreams of home, that make him ache. Dreams of regrets he now doesn't have the opportunity to fix, stuck out here. Occasionally, they'd be visions of something... Scary.
Each night is another nightmare. Each day, despite his best efforts, his mind begins to retrace old steps. Old patterns. Old habits.
He had been there for 54 days, now. He has known since the second day he wasn’t going to be getting back to his normal life, or, what little of a life he had outside of staying home and losing himself in the internet with each waking moment.
Now, there’s nothing to lose himself in except the stars, and void. No distractions. No modern technology. Just him, and reality. His thoughts. His nightmares. His mind.
It isn’t always a fun place to be, when it gets quiet. With nothing to be busy about, he finds himself more frequently delving into old curiosities he's had. He studies the bones from the human parts that he had eaten. He indulges himself with more cannibalism. Distraction. Motive. Anything. The urge to lose himself becomes stronger, but he ignores it, for now.
He has been in that place before- a deep depression when his life had no direction. He had fought his way out of that rut hard, and had thought this job would be his chance at building up a good fund towards a future.
Future...
Directionless now, he slips into old mental habits. He’d willingly disappear if given the opportunity. Though, under a technicality, he understands that he may as well already be dead to the outside world. It had been months since he had received anything that wasn’t just an automated message from his boss. He'd long since figured out his situation by now.
Now? Now, he just has himself to work with.
During the day, he studies the metaphysical. During the night, he checks the radar for new entities every few moments out of a habit of slowly dwindling self-preservation.
Finally, something new happens, the 56th night. An opportunity. Something to study.
It's an unidentified entity on the radar, close to the base. Excited, he grabs his bag, heading out of base Alpha in the dark of night, to check the field near satellite Kilo where it had appeared. Unfortunately, as he walks through the dark, he finds nothing standing there or waiting for him.
He spends some time scanning over the place where he had seen the radar blip appear several times. Eventually, he finally comes across a sign.
Two bones, arranged neatly, in parallel. They appear to be human in origin.
This is fascinating, to him. He picks up both bones, and carries them back home, to study them. This didn't feel like it was from the yellow aliens, who hadn't shown up in some time. This felt... Different.
---
Day 57, 3:33 am
The next day, in the early morning hours, the blip shows up again. This time, he's more cautious, and slow with his approach. He doesn't want to potentially scare it off, if that is what he did last time. He steps outside to look at it with his own eyes, and he sees it.
A beast of some sort, standing 7 or 8 feet tall, staring back at him with eyeless sockets of a head resembling a skull, staring at him from between the trees just outside the front of the ASO building. It almost seems to… Know. Kel knows he should be feeling afraid in this moment, but he can’t. If anything, he’s relieved. Something new.
The beast stands still in the snow of late fall, antlers branching up from its skull of a head, and forelimbs branching downward into long, pointed claws of odd proportion. Its tail, like a whip, flicks for a moment, almost as though it is thinking, hard, considering something that Kel would never be able to guess.
Just as suddenly as he was able to see it, it fades into the dark, almost as though it was simply a figment of his imagination. Kel feels… Disappointed, that he didn’t get to see it for longer. He wanted a picture.
Something that thinks. This would be fascinating. Kel must study it. Finally, something to learn about. Maybe even... Something to talk to?
---
Days 58-65
Some evenings, he can swear he had seen that creature watching him between the trees. it was large, with antlers, like an elk, but standing nearly upright, its forelegs long, proportions disjointed. It would always be staring, watching. He couldn't shake the feeling that he had done something to attract its presence. Or... Perhaps there was something about him that it liked? Either way, he got to see it. It got to see him. Kel likes this.
Each night, he could see an entity appear near satellite dish Uniform, walk its way to base Alpha, and wander just within the inner ring of satellite dishes, without ever getting too close to the observatory.
Sometimes, Dr.Kel would see glimpses of the beast, haunting him, or hear its footsteps, if he stood outside the balcony on a particularly calm night. He could tell it was watching him, waiting for him.
Sometimes, he'd try to approach it- Only for it to turn and disappear into the woods, usually heading in the same direction. Sometimes, like an aberration, it would disappear, and in its wake behind, he would frequently find bones, human bones, left in the spot that he had last seen it. Sometimes, he would see an odd construction of sticks, tied together into the shape of some form of effigy.
Sometimes, when he would open his lockers, he would see the ghostly image of a deer skull with a bloody symbol painted and carved into its forehead, but after blinking in confusion, it would vanish from in front of his eyes.
Dr.Kel quickly becomes obsessed with studying the creature.
He would spend nights, sometimes sitting outside, waiting for it to appear. Almost every night, it would. He discovered that if he held especially still, the beast would quietly approach him, almost as though it was as curious and cautious as he was.
One night, he decides to shine his flashlight out into the dark, silhouetting its pale bones against the inky night behind the beast. It tilts its head, and then leaves him, alone, standing in the doorway of the research observatory.
Dr.Kel knew he should feel afraid at the sight of the thing- But he had seen so much before. Whatever it was, it is just another paranormal creature for him to study. He shrugs, and returns back inside, closing and locking the door behind him like usual, returning to his research. Perhaps it would visit him again, and he would learn more about it. It would help to break the monotony of his routine, anyway.
Some mornings, he would find bones, laid down at the front of his door, arranged in parallel, pointed in the same direction, always. He took note of the direction, lined up towards some point off in the direction of Uniform, where the entity would appear from each night. Fascinating, indeed. He would always bring the bones inside, to study them. The astronomer was beginning to find himself with quite the bone collection.
For fun, he would sometimes take the bones out, studying them for signs of damage, to determine the cause of death, as well as defining characteristics to determine which part of the body they once belonged to. Sometimes, he'd try to reconstruct a skeleton with them. Other times, he'd arrange them into shapes, trying to understand the meaning behind being left with so many gifts of them.
He pulls out a printed photograph of the effigy left behind by the antlered skull beast that often visited him at night. Perhaps there was meaning behind the symbol?
He arranges the bones into the shape- and it feels right. Something just felt right about keeping the bones in such an arrangement. So, in an effort to attract the beast, he leaves such an arrangement of bones in what was formerly the utility room of base Alpha, now fully cleaned and unused, save for the storage of a mop, broom, and a bucket.
It seems that had piqued the interest the beast.
The next night it visited him, it waited, patiently, with an offering placed on the doorstep of the research center.
What might have scared most other humans, left Dr.Kel fascinated. It appears he has reached some sort of mutual understanding with his new friend. When he looks at the offering, he finds it is a limb- and not just any limb, but a human limb, severed. He blinks, for a while, slowly reaching for it, watching the skeletal beast, waiting for its next move, not speaking or moving suddenly so as not to startle it. He picks it up. Nothing happens, for a few moments.
It turns to leave, but stands for a few moments longer, waiting, watching him through three dark, eyeless sockets.
The two wait there, for some time, watching each other, before the beast slowly strode away on its long, branching, fleshy limbs, the scent of fresh blood following it as it disappears into the darkness.
Kel gets a shiver as it disappears once more.
He leaves to store the arm in his freezer.
The sun takes a while to rise, as the seasons continue in their endless march around the annual cycle. Frost clings onto the needles of the pines, while Dr.Kel studies more signals from space.
He thinks over his past dozen or so encounters with the elk-like skeletal creature that had been visiting over the past several nights. It usually shows up several hours before sunrise. Pouring over his own journal entries, detailing the last several nights he had written down the times he had been visited, he usually would get around to writing about the visitations at 4, 5, 6 am. Sometimes if the visit was short, he could start writing at 3:45 am.
He then made a soft laugh to himself, recognizing the pattern. The thing was visiting him at 3:33 am each night! How occult. Enara would love to hear about this, if only he could tell her.
... Ena...
He sighs, clearing his thoughts, and continues to read.
Every time it visited him, in each retelling, it would stand, and wait for him. Dr.Kel then hits himself on the forehead for being so slow to come to the realization over what the beast could possibly want for him.
It wanted him to follow it!
---
Day 66, 00:12
That night, he dreams again. This one is more pointed. More haunting. A strange visage greets him in it, though he's uncertain of who, or what it is. As soon as he asks it any question, it vanishes, and he wakes up with more questions than answers.
Tonight, he'd follow the beast into the dark, and get his answers. If it took him forever... He wouldn't mind, really. Past mistakes and regrets still haunt him, making him feel uncomfortable living in his own skin. He thinks again, of disappearing forever, into the night. The thoughts come and go, and he shakes his head.
He doesn't have to worry about deciding whether or not he should stay in this world, when he's already stuck in a place of no return. It aches in his chest, a little, when he thinks about it for too long. With a sigh, he gets up, to prepare himself for his plans for the night. He refocuses his thoughts to what will happen later. He will be seeing the creature that had been visiting him each night. And this time, he would follow it. He would follow it into the dark.
Dr.Kel collects plenty of supplies and places them into his backpack, from backup batteries, to thermoses full of warm coffee, and delicious pork burgers to snack on if he ever got hungry, made from the meat of the war the arirals had gone to some dozen of days earlier. He would be prepared, this time, for the beast to come.
He goes to the front door of the research center, opening it. The moon shines bright and full, illuminating the field and parking lot in front of him. The shadows felt less inky and dark tonight, this time not full of mysteries, but familiarity. He knows what is out there, now, and he knows he doesn't need to feel fear. He would be going out there soon, perhaps to not return from.
Up above, stars shine in the sky like a trillion diamonds scattered across the deep indigo-black velvet firmament, the evergreen trees silhouetted against the cold void of the sky, almost as though they were reaching for the stars. In a way, it is the most beautiful night he had seen. He often spent long nights, simply looking, watching, waiting. Sometimes, if he was lucky, the void would stare back at him.
The time on his watch reads 3:30 am. Any minute now.
Finally, his friend appears from the shadows, a very slow, silent march out of the dark, each footstep that it places deliberate, planned. Its antlers and skull glint in the light of the full moon. Adrenaline tries to shoot through Dr.Kel's veins, raising his heart-rate, but he takes a deep breath, calming himself down. He had encountered this creature many times before, and it had not hurt him.
It stood there, patiently, staring as it always did, with three dark, black, eyeless sockets.
"Ready to go?" Kel speaks to it, his voice sounding surprisingly chipper, even to himself.
It almost seemed to understand him, because it moves again, with the faintest creak of joints, and turns away. Almost as though it already knew what was going to happen.
This time, he follows the beast into the dark.
Dr.Kel could hardly contain his excitement. Nervousness and anticipation crawls over his skin in the same way that it always does when something truly paranormal is happening in his vicinity. He rides the high of the feeling, following the slow pace of the creature, easily able to keep up with its long, silent strides. It's almost as though it has been perfectly pacing itself for him to be able to keep up with it at a comfortable walk.
It leads him out along the gravel paths towards Uniform, streetlamps flickering slightly with its approach.
They eventually veer off into the woods, the shadowy form illuminated in front of him by his flashlight as they pass in between the trees. The only sounds audible are the faint, icy crunch of leaves, grass, and moss beneath his hiking boots, and the feet of the creature in front of him.
The moon blinks. All light flickers for a split second, with a faint, barely audible, distant rumble.
Dr.Kel blinks, when the eerie feeling about him raises in intensity. He considers it, for a few moments, as he follows this truly supernatural creature. He gets the feeling about him that he is about to discover something truly otherworldly.
They come to a the abandoned shed. He shines his flashlight on it, then the beast, and back again.
"You want me to go in?"
The creature only stares, silently, sitting, watching. The light of Kel's flashlight casts its shadow out behind it, looming as a large and distant shadowy projection of the beast against the trees, the silhouettes of its antlers twisting upwards with the branches of the trees of the forest, merging with the sky and stars above.
He sighs. "Okay. But only because I need to understand why you keep visiting me," he talks to the creature, as though it would understand him.
He vaults himself up, and grabs onto the rafters, hauling himself up and over, finding his way inside the abandoned shed. He had been in this place before. It had wall-mounted heads of goat and deer, almost like hunting trophies. There was a bed, old, and worn by the elements, and old dressers and other furniture, worn and rotted by time and rain.
And of course, there was the red bush, a few rooms over, with the deer skull next to it. Stepping around the dilapidated framing, Dr.Kel goes to investigate the room, feeling as though it is what he is meant to do.
When he finds the skull itself, he notices something about it that he hadn't before. It had a symbol carved into its forehead, red with blood. It was not just any pictogram, though. It was the same symbol as the effigy of sticks left behind by the antlered beast, and it glows, almost as though something has rendered it active. Fascinating.
He crouches next to it, staring. Uncertainty starts to eat away at him. The air rumbles again, with a flicker to all light. The moonlight dims for a second with the sound. He waits, for a minute, wondering what is going to happen next.
The shadows in the corners of the room seem to start to move, oozing and pooling around him, like blood. He watches, transfixed, as they take form, and reach out to him, wrapping around his arms, his hands. It pulls on him, and forces him to extend a finger, to start drawing shapes in the dirt. His adrenaline spikes, and fear grips him. He realizes, quite suddenly, that he is messing with something he has no idea about. He's gone too far, he should have never come out here. The light flickers again- Kellin realizes what the flickering of light means. The black fog is coming. The black fog is coming, and he is out in the middle of the forest, at night, next to an ethereal bone spirit of some kind, getting manhandled by fucking shadows.
A loud, animal shriek fills the air, and he yelps, startled out of his frozen state, tearing himself away from the darkness that had a hold on him. It reaches out, trying to grab him again, the shapes of the tendrils forming hands that protrude from the dark. The world very suddenly quickly snaps into focus for him, feeling suddenly very real, and very surreal, and very terrifying. Very suddenly, he realizes he wants to live. That he doesn't want to disappear into the dark, forever. He stands up in a panic, whimpering, terrified. He must escape.
Adrenaline courses through his veins while he gets a running start back towards the hole in the ceiling of the abandoned shed, vaulting himself up there and gripping onto the internal edge of the rafters until his fingertips sting, he scrambles up, and out, falling to the ground, and rolling, until he rights himself back up, and gets his feet underneath him, heart pounding in his chest.
The beast is there, waiting for him, outside. It lead him here. He shrieks, and gets running, digging his heels into the earth, booking it towards the nearest satellite dish, Uniform.
Making his way through the woods becomes difficult as the darkness begins to grow deeper, and a loose root sticking out of the ground catches his foot, causing Kel to trip and fall to the ground with a solid thud, the icy grass crunching under the impact, dropping his flashlight.
He scrambles for purchase, trying to get himself back up. The world around him is already fading into black, becoming warped, and distorted by some otherworldly force that he can feel is approaching. The light of his flashlight only just illuminates the world next to him, and he turns back for it, going to grab it-
Only to find himself face to face with the abomination that lead him out here. Within its sockets float glowing red pinpricks of light that pierce through the blackness of the fog that presses in from all angles, dark, thick, and suffocating. The branching forelimb of the beast reaches out towards him, pushing against his chest, its warped claws closing down over his shoulders, pinning him down against the ground.
Pins and needles of fear scatter over Kellin's skin, feeling much like a nightmare. He tries to move, to struggle, to escape, to do anything, but finds that he can't, stuck in a horrific state of conscious paralysis. He can't move. He can't move at all, and the fog is coming.
Darkness closes in around the both of them. The dark grows so deep and empty that the moon and stars disappear, and the shadowy form of the antlered beast in front of him fades to blend in with the black. The eyes remain, for a few moments, as well, until they too, disappear, leaving him in complete darkness, with nothing but the horrible pins and needles, like TV static, all over his body. The sound of blood rushing in his ears from the panic grows to a loud roar.
Until, slowly, it all fades to numbness, like a trillion venomous bites, sedating him.
He sees darkness. So much darkness. Darkness as though it is being seen from a thousand eyes, within itself, nothing within nothing, consuming him. Only the purest, emptiest, blackest void remains.
---
Day 66, 03:33
Kellin wakes up with a jolt and a shout, in a panicked, cold sweat, whimpering. His stomach churns with fierce anxiety and nausea, his heart pounding in his chest like a frightened, trapped animal. He gets up quickly, running to the bathroom, and retches, emptying the contents of his stomach into the toilet.
He trembles, shaking, crying out of fear, tears streaming down his face.
After a few more dry heaves, he holds himself, trying to keep his grip on reality. He flushes the toilet after a few moments, to rid himself of the smell.
He's not gone, thank fuck. He knows he would be so easy to make disappear. His only connections outside of his coworkers at the ASO are his parents, and a long forgotten childhood friend who likely doesn't remember him. He knows he'd be easily forgotten. He swallows down tears and bile.
"Fuck, fuck," he whispers, pulling at his hair, feeling the stubble on his face, standing back up, staring at the mirror in front of the sink. His own face stares back, blurry, his eyes still burned and scarred with pale rings around his irises from the time the sun had forced him to stare at it until he bled.
He turns the water on, cold, and splashes it into his face, the bright, cold sting snapping him back into reality. Thank fuck it was only a nightmare. Thank fuck. He rinses out his mouth, and even drinks some of the icy-cold water, just anything to feel any kind of solid stimulation and grounded attachment to reality, and to get rid of the taste of acid. He then grips the edge of the sink, letting the water run for a while.
His stomach churns with fear and anxiousness, and he clamps his jaw shut when another heave reaches him.
He swears to himself to never follow the antlered beast again.
He then strips down, and takes a long, cold, miserable shower, trying to wash off the lingering feeling left on him from the nightmare. He could still feel the claws of the beast over his shoulders, pinning him down, trapping him in that nightmare, inescapable, paralyzing him. He could still feel the way the shadows wanted to grab hold of him, sinking into his skin like pins and needles. He shivers, feeling truly alive, and terrified, frantically scrubbing himself with soap to a near-obsessive degree, trying to get every last bit of grime and sleep and lingering sensation off of him until his teeth are chattering, his skin is flushed pink and scrubbed raw in some places, and the icy cold begins to soak into his bones as he rinses off.
Note to self: Never do something stupid like that ever again.
He dries himself off, with a towel, taking extra care to wring out his long, shaggy hair, as any extra cold water left clinging to it would likely be too much for him to handle. His muscles could barely keep up as it is with their constant shivering.
He puts his clothes back on, bundling up as much as he can, and walks back out into his room, trembling with each step, going to wrap himself up in one of his rough, spare blankets, putting his hat back on, and putting socks on to protect his freezing toes from the cold of the floor.
He curls up into the armchair, and then recounts the nightmare, writing frantically onto one of his notebooks. He does so to the best of his ability, while his hands are full of tremors from the miserably cold shower he just took, yet also from the fear that still grips him to his core. Surely it was all just a nightmare.
Once complete, he gets up, blanket still over his shoulders. He's hungry, but he knows he couldn't make himself eat anything, even if he wanted to. He slowly shuffles his way out to his main signal-processing and research room, full of terminals, lights, the large window, comforts he had bought and placed into the room, and of course: Kerfur, his robot.
"K-Kerfur, follow please," his voice croaks, rough from both exhaustion and the burning in his throat from stomach acid.
"Meow!" Kerfur follows him, and he leads it back to his room.
"Kerfur, please sit," he gestures to the armchair.
The robot politely complies, sitting down.
In a fit of desperation, loneliness, and exhaustion, Kellin climbs into the lap of his robot, curling up into the fetal position, and resting his head on one of the arms of the armchair, absorbing the slightly radioactive warmth coming from the core of the machine.
He no longer felt so sure that surviving this place would be so nice. The arirals could protect him from the boars and the tanks, but they couldn't protect him from his own mind. He just did something really, really stupid, and he knows it. Reckless.
He bites his lip, closing his eyes, still exhausted. He finds himself the most lonely in moments like these, in which the horrors that haunt him are not just external, but internal, as well. His hands grip the rough fabric of the blanket as he clings to his robot. Its programming was meant for following basic commands and tasks. It wasn't meant for anything more than that, but it is the only semblance of a person that he has to turn to out in here in the forest. Maybe it could be his friend.
The arirals, he might be able to turn to. However they always keep their physical interaction with him to a minimum, with the most they ever do is feed him in his sleep, or leave him gifts.
What he really needs, at the moment, is to be held. They had not done that for him, yet. So he has turned to Kerfur. He feels somewhat guilty for projecting so much emotion onto a robot, one that he is certain is only programmed for completing basic tasks. It was not designed for this, and yet, he clings to Kerfur, out of necessity.
Some time later, he opens his eyes, to stare. Not at the wall in front of him, but beyond. Into nothing. He needs to let his mind rest, and stop racing. However, that is all it does, running with a thousand possibilities of what his nightmare could have possibly meant.
He has the sinking feeling, with the memories of the last week and a half, that there would be more to it than just being a nightmare. It felt so real, it had to have been real- but, how could it have been real, when he woke up from it, right here, in bed?
He sits how he is for a long, long while. Minutes pass by, and he doesn't notice. He waits, and waits, and waits for his nerves to calm, and his heart to stop racing, so that he can function. So that he can think.
He starts, when he feels a very gentle weight settle onto his head. Then, it moves, over his hair, the touch so gentle, and caring, and soothing, that he begins to shake, and shiver. With a trembling hand, he reaches up to feel what is touching him, to make sure it wasn't simply a piece of blanket that slid off his head.
It had happened to him once before, horribly, embarrassingly making him tremble, thinking and imagining someone was there to comfort him, when in reality no one was there. It had been his own imagination becoming hyperactive from the sheer isolation.
His hand touches metal. It's real. He looks up, with teary eyes, at Kerfur. Its segmented, jointed hand rests in his. "Kerfur, I, I didn't tell you to start petting me," Kellin stutters. He swallows, worried he would burst into tears in front of his beloved robot companion, and a little embarrassed to do so, even if it is his.
Kerfur's face on its screen changes to a little open-mouthed surprised expression, and moves its arm back down to rest idly on the arm of the couch they both sit on.
Dr.Kel musters his courage, taking off his hat, and leans back. "Please. Continue," he pauses, staring not at the screen that displays Kerfur's face, but into the camera, that the robot truly sees out of. Tears well in his eyes, as the weight of the situation dawns on the man. He knows that he's being completely, horribly pitiful. "P-please..." he settles down, almost unable to choke out the next few words, for the painful vulnerability of speaking them. However, after several more seconds of nothing, his desperation for contact wins out over self-consciousness. "Please pet me," he sighs, the weight of the stress of making himself speak finally gone, and relieved from his system.
He knew this was about to be rough on him. He could hardly handle even the feeling of a single hand rested on his head.
When Kerfur meows, politely, and its hand returns to gently smooth over his hair, in a robotic, repetitive motion. It is enough to make the grown man cry.
And cry he does, sobs shaking his frame, ugly tears streaming down his cheeks, as he shivers from even the smallest amount of physical contact. He worries if this does as much of a number on him as it currently is, that he would not be able to handle coming into contact with another human again, otherwise he would make a complete fool out of himself, aching so sorely for contact that he might end up tripping, and fumbling over everything that could possibly be done wrong.
He can't stop himself from whimpering. Nobody is around to hear him, anyway, he might as well enjoy the loneliness, the isolation, the lack of company, and use it to his advantage. He wasn't naive. He knew what signing up to this job meant, and that the loneliness and isolation were a part of it. What he hadn't prepared for was the constant horrors he would be haunted by, that made the previous things flare up much worse, and cut much deeper into him.
He had always done better on his own. He is fine with that. He wasn't getting much physical contact anyway, in college, so working in the Dunkeltaler forest was not too much different for him, in terms of social interaction.
And he was fine with it... Until the horrors made it worse. Until he knew that his stay was not just temporary, but likely permanent. Just like any human, he craves physical contact, perhaps to a degree that he feels horribly selfish for. He finds himself amazed, suddenly, with Kerfur.
It had chosen to pet him, all on its own. It had taken a moment for this to dawn on him. "Kerfur!!" He turns to look at it again. "You decided that? You decided to pet me, all on your own?"
The eyes on the screen blink, almost in... Processing? Confusion? Until the robot eventually replies with a "Meow!" and a nod.
"Thank you," Kellin sobs, throwing his arms around the shoulders of his robot. "Thank you, thank you, thank you," his voice creaks on the last words. He nuzzles against the flat, metal-plastic shoulder. "Please continue. If that is what you want," he adds, realizing, amazed, that if this robot had a will of its own, then he would feel terrible commanding it without first making sure that what he asks the robot to do, is something that Kerfur itself would like to do.
Kerfur only continues to display a happy, cat-like smile on its screen. It then resumes petting him, leaving the man a trembling mess in its lap. All it does is smooth over the hair on the top of his head, returning to the front, and repeating that motion, petting him from his forehead, to the back of his head.
It is plenty. Occasionally, sobs will reclaim him, between moments where he quietly shakes with each pass of Kerfur's hand. Kellin settles himself into a more comfortable position, resting his head onto Kerfur's shoulder. He lets his head continue to rest there, staring, thoughtfully, in the direction of Kerfur's chest, where its camera would be, if he could see it from this angle.
Did it really decide to pet him, all on its own?
He remembers it so vividly, and yet, it feels so surreal to him. He'd have to watch Kerfur more, later. For now, though, he lets his eyes drift shut, underneath the robot's continual petting over his head. He startles, then, when he feels the weight of little paws landing in his lap.
"Maxwell! Oh. Hello," the cat quickly begins kneading the blanket, purring loudly. He pets over the fur, then, while being pet himself, soothed by the sounds of Maxwell. It must have been woken up by the sounds of his sobs, and came running.
The tender touches relax his nerves, and, finally, Kellin feels exhaustion winning out over fear. He finally feels appreciated. He finally feels... Safe. It isn't long before Kellin is soothed back to sleep, under the gentle soothing care from his own robot, and the warm weight of a purring cat in his lap. The strange feeling lingering in the back of his mind almost goes away, this time.
Almost.
---
Day 67, 03:20.
The next night, a familiar entity appears by Uniform, again. It slowly wanders towards the base, and Kellin watches, frozen in quiet horror, as the small blip on the radar moves a few feet each second, approaching him. Deliberately. Slowly.
Shaking, the astronomer walks, carefully, to the locker in which he keeps his weapons stored. He grabs a few previously prepared molotovs, and carries them with him to the front door of the observatory, terrified, but determined to make his stand against the beast. He opens the door, and stares out into the night.
This time, the moon does not shine, nor do the stars. Only the faint blinking of red lights on the top of the radio tower, and the spotlight trained out into the darkness from the roof of the observatory are the only things providing light to the heavily vegetated field in front of him, the plants now dead and dry from the approach of winter.
Then, he sees it, stepping out of the shadows, barely there, almost a ghostly image of the creature he had seen so solidly before. Its three eye sockets are still unmistakably hollow, and its antlers still pointed towards the sky.
Dr.Kel then shouts at the beast, opening up the lighter. "LEAVE ME ALONE!" he sets the cloth of the molotov in his other hand ablaze, the fire traveling along the surface of it with a whoosh of displaced air and heat. "LEAVE ME ALONE, AND NEVER COME BACK!" He runs out towards the beast, throwing the molotov at it.
The glass breaks and shatters against the tree trunk just behind it, while the form of it dissipates, leaving only a flaming puddle of broken glass, two bones laid down in an arrow shape, and gasoline in the grass where it once stood. The fire climbs up the bark, and tangles with the branches, setting the nearly-frozen tree ablaze. He could have sworn that the skull almost looked like it was laughing at him, as it vanished.
The human stands there, dumbstruck. Then, he rakes his fingernails down his face, at the horrific realization that dawns on him. "Fuuuuuck," he groans in fear, grabbing his hair, pulling it, walking backwards from the scene, keeping his eyes peeled on the dark woods around him, knowing better than to turn his back on woods like these. "Fuck, fuck," he then bolts back into the research observatory, closing the pneumatic door, and locking it. He leans back against the wall, heart pounding, stomach churning with anxiety.
"Fuck. I think I'm going insane," he finally admits to himself, sinking to the floor. He takes a deep breath, and heaves a sigh, closing his eyes with a pitiful groan of defeat. He curls up to hold his head, as it aches, warm, irritated, and uncomfortable.
Then, a realization shoots down his spine, like a jolt of lightning.
"THE BONES!" He yells to himself, standing himself up to his feet in an instant. He runs himself to the utility room, storming through the hallway in a panic.
To his dismay, the bones once left on the floor remain in the symbol of the beast that had haunted him. He quickly gets on his hands and knees, scattering them, and his heart stops for a second when he sees that underneath the bones is an imprint burned into the floor where they once were.
He grabs all of them, frightened into frantic motion, collecting them into a pile. He rips a bag off the nearby shelf, shoves every bone down in it, and then runs down to the basement, chucking them all into the incinerator. He puts both hands on the large, round blast-door of the thing, and grunts with the effort and force that it takes to close it. He then closes all the locks on it, pulls the levers to add the right mix of gas and oxygen and airflow, and turns on the ignition.
While it runs, he leaves it alone, and rushes back upstairs, grabbing mop, sponge, and bucket, dragging them with him into the utility room with him. He gets to work, scrubbing the charred symbol off the floor, spending time and energy to work and scratch out every detail, every speck of ash, every faint stain. He works until he can only see the faintest remnants of the symbol, following the lines around, until scrubbing alone cannot rid him of the faintest imprint of the mark left behind.
Becoming somewhat manic, he runs back downstairs to turn off the incinerator. Then, he brings in bleach, not caring to wear gloves and avoid chemical burns on his hands. He gets nauseous from the chemical smell of it, as he rubs it into the bare concrete floor, until he's certain that not even a ghostly imprint of the symbol remains, nor a trick of the eye.
Then, it's more work, ventilating the area, rinsing it, drying it, coming back with the mop, pouring out the bucket water, grabbing new water, and mopping the floor, pass after pass, until the concrete is clean, and lighter than the walls ever could hope to be.
He hopes it will be enough.
---
Day 67, 22:13
Later that night, he decides to take care of himself, in an attempt to calm himself from the earlier panic of the day. He pulls out the crock-pot, and begins cooking- Adding cubes of meat, spices, tomatoes, broth, peppers and whatever else he can think to add, making his own recipe of tortilla soup, with rice and beans in the broth.
He forgets which cut of meat he used, but he shrugs, not particularly bothered whether it ends up being pork or long pork that ends up in his soup. It probably wouldn't taste too different.
It's all just meat to him.
He sets it to boil, on low, for eight hours, which will provide much-needed warmth to the research station that grows ever-colder with each passing day, as it becomes later and later into the fall.
At the reminder, he decides to clean up after himself, washing all of his utensils and storing them neatly away, taking all the waste and food scraps from the meal preparation in a garbage bag. He sets it aside to be sold to his boss for later.
Then, he returns to the research and signal processing room, settling down in front of his ancient meadow-brand computer. He begins buying himself some goodies. First, of course, are several space heaters, which he plans on planting in the several enclosed rooms of the base.
Then, he stocks up on groceries, like flour, eggs, rice, sugar, milk and other essential bulk goods and canned foods that would store well over the winter, as well as condiments and other flavor items, like spices or vanilla extract. He had no idea how his stay at the ASO base in Dunkeltaler would go during the winter, and wasn't certain whether or not the winters would mean blizzards that the delivery drone couldn't fly through. Always better to be safe, than sorry. He could get into baking to help himself survive over the next few months.
Next, are other bits and bobs, such as comfort items, like pillows, lamps, curtains, and blankets, for decorating purposes. Dr.Kel clicks the order button, after which will be a 15-minute wait until the drone arrives with his goods.
What now?
He simply waits. Too much has happened for him to want to think too much, for too long. So, he thinks about nothing itself, finally allowing himself to space out, until the sounds of the drone interrupt him from his dreamless daydreaming.
Dr.Kel then spends the rest of the next day organizing, placing heaters in their designated rooms, preparing for winter, putting away his groceries into the cupboards in a neat and organized fashion, and finally, decorating his room to the point it looked quite cozy, with a somewhat compact space in the corner where his bed was. He also separates the bedroom from kitchen using the curtains, to help the spaces feel more purposed, individual, and cozy.
The crockpot bubbles gently as the food within it cooks and boils, and, for once, Kellin starts to feel better. Maybe he scared off the beast. Maybe he had banished it, and no longer has its attention. Time would tell. He can at least handle himself, to make his space better.
In the morning, there would be warm, delicious soup for a week. He goes to bed, and for once, his sleep is not plagued with nightmares. He rests peacefully.
---
Day 68, 07:52.
The next morning, Dr.Kel wakes up with a pounding headache. He groans and rolls out of bed, groggy and unfocused. He puts his hand to his head, and feels, warmth- and two lumps, almost as though he had hit his head twice in his sleep, and now he was bruising from it. They also feel soft, and fuzzy, and he almost jumps from the unusual texture on his head.
Confused, he gets up, grabbing his glasses off the nightstand, navigating through his new curtain setup, and goes to look in the mirror of his bathroom, eyes still bleary. He sees his reflection, blurry, until he puts his glasses onto his face. He rights them on his face, blinking a few times, as his eyes focus, and the image of himself becomes clearer.
His hair parts around two round nodes growing out of the top and front of his head, buried about an inch behind his hairline. He sweeps his bangs back, and out of the way, to look closer again. There are two nubs where scalp should be, only half an inch grown out of his head, covered in fuzzy, soft... Velvet?
He stares, dumbfounded.
Antlers.
"What the fuck?"