Marku 3 was a planet with a sun in eternal eclipse.
I landed there just over a week ago, careful to make camp within a small clearing in a forest full of pale, leafless trees. It was midday. It was brisk. There was a calming eeriness about the way the dim orange sunlight painted everything in shadows.
On that first night a group of the planet’s natives came to the camps’ perimeter and watched me in wonder. They were primitive with skinny inverted legs, bulbous heads covered in wire-like hairs, and a single eye embedded within the center.
They communicated amongst themselves with clicking noises made by tapping two bone plates on the inside of their knees together.
One came as an emissary, approaching within feet of me. As it stepped within the harsh glow of a floodlight behind me it suddenly froze.
It’s single eye dilated. Every hair was out like spikes.
It started with a low rumble in its chest. A soft frequency vibrated inside me, growing stronger by the second.
It was warm.
It was mesmerizing.
A dopamine rush flooded my system. Nothing else existed but ecstasy.
Continue reading “Step 13 by Joe Jablonski”
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