‘2081: A Space Tragedy’ – By Mark T. Bates (The Curious Dark #2)

‘2081: A Space Tragedy’

A Short Story …

By Mark T. Bates

(2025)

***

Richards opened his eyes and gasped deep for his next breath, before his senses began to restore and he realised there was an oxygen mask attached to his nose. His eyes darted around in panic. He noticed a feeding tube running from the glass shell of the stasis-pod he was cocooned in. He traced it down with his eyes into his gaping mouth and ran his tongue around the plastic, remembering then that the tubing had been positioned down his throat and into his stomach. His eyes widened at the sudden realisation of where he was, as the memories of three hundred days-worth of dreams melted into the ether of his deep subconscious. Forever lost.

Richards reached up and took the tube which hung limply from his mouth between his fingers, before pulling it free from his body in one slow agonising motion, retching as he did so. He pulled away the mask which had been supplying his body with air within the chamber these last ten months, before lastly and most unpleasantly of all, he pulled a final thin tube from the tip of his penis, wincing as it came free. Before dropping it to the floor so that it rested on top of the soil-drain it was attached to.

Having freed himself, his attention was drawn to a large red button situated just above his eyeline – Emergency Exit. He reached forwards and hit the button with his palm, immediately opening the glass door to his chamber as an excruciating sound of air decompression filled his ears. Richards stumbled forwards and fell out onto the floor into a heap, as naked as the day he was born.

His eyes then suddenly opened for the second time in as many minutes, as the sound of the air-compressed chamber gave way to that of a monotonous alarm drone. Richards clambered to his feet, holding onto the side of the dream-pod to steady his balance, and looked around the stasis-chamber room of the Andromeda X Spaceship. The five pods surrounding his were all empty, their doors already open. Richards shuddered as he realised blood was smeared across each of them, whilst slimy crimson streaks also stained the floor, smudged snake-like across the room. Death has visited here … he thought to himself. Richards stumbled forwards and followed the bloody trails to the exit door, while cupping his hands over his ears to try and numb the sound of the alarm that was pounding his head.

He moved towards the door which would take him out into the ship’s main corridor, limping like Quasimodo – his body still weak from the trauma of the elongated and thoroughly unnatural synthetic sleep he had just awoken from. He made it to the other side of the room, the room where he and his crew should have remained for 18 months prior to slowly being released after reaching a safe distance from the Earth’s orbit. He placed his hand upon a mirrored hexagonal structure on the wall, allowing its scanning laser to read his palm. When the outline of his hand glowed green upon the mirrored surfaced and pinged with acceptance, he spoke out-loud to the ship’s master computer.

“Auntie, do you copy? What the hell’s happening? Why is the alarm sounding, where’s my crew?” So many questions … But they were met with an eerie silence he had not experienced from the ship before. “Auntie, do you hear me!?” Still no reply. Fucking hell, she’s offline … Richards knew he had to head to the control room to try and reboot the computer. He knew that he was floating aimlessly in space, and God only knew how far away from Earth he still was. But he was sickened by the blood that was splattered around him, the floor painted like some sadistic abstract piece of art. And he was terrified at the thought of what may have happened to his colleagues, scared of what might happen to him as he explored the ship further.

A feeling of emptiness, of pure dread overcame him. In that moment, the Andromeda X felt like an abandoned hollow shell to Richards, while in his deepest thoughts he could only hope that he truly was alone. As he feared beyond comprehension what it was that had come for the others, and what might lay in wait for him behind the door he knew he had no choice but to go through. Richards looked around the room one last time. It looked like the bloody aftermath of some unspeakable carnage. But whatever brought the misery his crew had faced had seemingly spared him, leaving his own chamber be … Why?

Richards hit the exit button and the door to the ship’s corridor elegantly raised. He peered out and winced as the volume of the alarm increased, while red flashing lights stunned his eyes. What he feared most then became a reality. The streaks of blood continued not only across the floor, but were also smeared up the walls and along the ceiling. The Andromeda X had been a crew of six, and it shocked Richards just how much blood had been produced by the other five. But what on Earth could have dragged them up so high!? Nothing of our Earth … he feared.

The blood-trails all led forwards to the door of the control room, the only place Richards could go if he had any chance of rebooting the ship’s central computer. And bringing Auntie back online was his only hope of returning home, if such a thing were even still possible. Richards stepped out and made his way to the large silver doors of the control room, treading carefully to try and avoid slipping in the blood of his crew … his friends. His hands covered his ears as he tried to compress the noise of the alarm the whole way. When he eventually reached the door, he paused for breath, and curiously as he did so … the alarm stopped buzzing. 

The sudden silence was eerie and ghostlike. It made Richards shudder. He felt lost, scared, desperate for this nightmare to be over. He breathed in deeply as he held up his hand and allowed a second security reader to scan his palm. Then he listened as the click of the unlocking door echoed around the corridor. Richards stood motionless as it opened, and looked into what he hoped was going to offer him salvation. Only instead, his jaw dropped at the sight of the horror that faced him. In the middle of the control room sat a large console. The heart of the ship and the brains of its computer. But on top of the console sat a giant creature, the like of which in even his wildest nightmares, Richards had never seen before. Its body was a large pulsating globule, which was changing colour with each vibration. Green to blue to red, a chameleon-like incandescence morphing in front of his eyes. Richards stood hypnotised.

Long tentacles writhed from the giant throbbing body of the monster, reaching out to the far corners of the room. At the top of the creature, a giant blood-shot eye was staring at Richards. An eye weeping with a slimy luminous substance. But the sight of the mammoth Alien creature was not the worst horror that faced Richards. For scattered across the floor were the five bodies of his crew. All naked, battered and bruised, drenched in their own blood. Deep wounds covered their torsos, while their lifeless eyes all sat wide open, staring into nothing while the creature’s tentacles slithered across them.

Richards was still frozen to the spot in the doorway, when he realised that at the ends of the serpent-like arms, there were throbbing suckers full of teeth. Razor-sharp teeth that violently caressed the bodies of his friends. The suckling mouths were drinking the blood from the wounds of the dead, and the creature’s body was gorging, thick veins almost bursting at the seams of its outer skin as it drank. He looked up and became very aware of the eye that was watching him. He stared back mesmerised, and found that he could not look away. The alien’s gaze pulled him in deeper, and deeper. Their eyes becoming one. And Richards barely noticed at all, as the tentacles found him … and began to coil tightly around his legs.   

***

The Andromeda X drifted almost silently through the black, and as it approached its final destination – Earth – Auntie began the process of releasing the doors of each stasis-chamber of its crew. Slowly increasing her Humans oxygen levels to bring them out of their sleep. One by one the dream-pods opened. Until eventually, five of the deep-space exploration team had been raised from their slumber, and were all wandering aimlessly around the room – waiting for their senses to return. After a short while, they all began remembering where and who they were. And had begun greeting each other, laughing at their initial confusion, and sharing in the relief that they had been released from their 500 day sleep, embracing in the realisation that this meant they were almost home. It was Scientific Navigation Officer Baker, who first noticed that there was still one pod which remained closed. The five crew-mates gathered around as they realised that their Captain, Richards, was still locked inside his vertical glass chamber. Baker approached the pod and peered inside.

She studied their captain, trying to fathom why his chamber had not been released like the rest of them. And then she recoiled back, as she watched the skin of his face ripple. It looked to her as if some kind of parasitic worm was seemingly wriggling below the surface of his skin. Baker looked up and down, studying the rest of him. A body she had explored many times while they had been working away together in deep space. She shuddered as she saw that Richards’ skin was now moving all over his naked torso. Something was inside of him. Many things were inside of him. She startled, as an LED screen lit up on the pod, and the words – DANGER / QUARANTINE – began flashing repeatedly.

The Navigation Officer looked back at her captain, her lover, and as she did so, his eyes burst open. Blood-shot eyes, that drew her gaze in deeper. Eyes she could not turn away from. His lips slowly parted and a writhing tentacle shot out from his mouth … shattering the glass with ease as it ferociously reached for fresh sustenance, and attached itself to Baker’s face. The tentacle began violently convulsing as it lifted her entire body into the air with ease, before slamming her back onto the floor as if she were nothing but a rag doll. Richards body burst with more flailing tentacles, and the rest of the crew merely stood frozen and watched. Mesmerised as his eyes conjoined into one giant bulbous cycloptic pupil, before he stepped out of the stasis-chamber – his body pulsating and growing in size as he moved.

And as the creature who had once been Richards started devouring the crew, his crew, one by one … Auntie had already begun the ship’s descent down towards Earth.

*** END ***

Copyright 2025 Mark T. Bates

All Rights Reserved

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Mark T. Bates – Writer Bio

As a teenager Mark immersed himself in reading a cocktail of Stephen King, Clive Barker and James Herbert stories, while also diving deep into the movies of John Carpenter, David Cronenberg and Guillermo Del Toro. Gaining a life-long love of Horror, Fantasy and Sci-Fi which has transcended into a passion for telling his own tales.

Particularly drawn to the craft of short-story writing, Mark is inspired by the Night Shift and Skeleton Crew collections from King, Barker’s seminal Books of Blood, and stories from a diverse pool of authors including Chuck Palahniuk, Philip K. Dick and Joe Hill. 

Mark has had a number of short stories appear online as part of Crystal Lake Publishing’s Shallow Waters series, and his creepy supernatural novella – The Curse Of Six – has been signed by RDG Books Press for release later in 2025. His mystery thriller novella – A Slow Decay of Flowers – has been signed by Baynam Books Press … and is also coming soon!

Mark can be found online via Instagram / Facebook / Bluesky / X.

‘The Curious Dark (Vol.1)’ – by Mark T. Bates