Jaxx tasted the sweat dripping from his forehead as he stared, confounded, at the controls.
The ship’s control deck, an interwoven mix of alien symbols and glowing holes, looked more like an elaborate painting than anything he could use to navigate the craft. He could continue to punch the symbols until he shit ice cream, but was reluctant to stick his fingers in the glowing holes, to mimic what the Zed pilot was doing before Jaxx killed him.
The Zed.
He glanced at the dead alien lying in corner of the ship’s cramped control room. He hadn’t meant to kill it; he only wanted to knock it around a bit and find out why it had abducted him from the star port on Primus II. The alien’s skin was so thin that the single blow of a flashlight squashed its head into a big pulpy mess and sprayed him with blue blood. He managed to kill the alien and ruin his favorite shirt.
The nose of the ship lurched upward (or downward depending on your center of gravity) and Jaxx felt his stomach flip. He pounded the symbols on the control deck and momentarily contemplated cutting off one of the Zed’s fingers so that he could shove it down one of the holes. Instead, he pulled off his gloves and slowly stuck a finger into a luminous green hole on the deck. His finger touched nothing but he tip of it felt cold. He jumped back when something crackled in front of his face. A view screen zipped open in mid air and bobbed at eye level. He stepped back from screen and looked into the field of stars it displayed.
Where the hell was it taking me? He thought. The ship changed course again and Jaxx held steady. The field of stars veered away and the screen filled with black. Well almost black. Space seemed to swirl around the edges of a black blot. It was as if everything around the black was being slurped inside of it. Jaxx thought that it resembled a toilet flushing.
It’s finally happening, he thought, someone has pulled the ultimate lever and was flushing the universe away. He giggled nervously like a man trying to ignore the fact that death had come a’ reaping.
Jaxx stared deeper into the hole. His instincts ordered him to pound the controls. Kick them! Do whatever you can to turn this ship around and get away from the goddamned thing.
But the only movement that he made was slow intake of air into his lungs as he watched the circular motion of light bending around the edge of the black hole.
It was the most wonderful thing that he had ever seen.
Jaxx smiled and waited to be swallowed.
Fred’s work has appeared in the virtual pages of Quantum Muse Webzine and Science Fiction and Fantasy World. He is currently editing his sci-fi/fantasy novel “The God Maker” and writing the sci-fi/comedy, “Barbarians at the Stargate”. Fred’s blog is located at http://fredcharles.wordpress.com.
[...] New story up at Flashes from Fred Charles called T H E E A T E R. And then go to his flash fiction to get some of the story on Jaxx. Related Articles: [...]