The Scarlet Specter was far and away the strangest spacefaring vessel planet Earth had to offer; shaped like an oversized wine bottle, with a body built from high-impact glass tinted a dazzling crimson, and a large white propulsion jet at the end of its neck. Despite its unusual appearance, the Specter's eco-friendly design and unbeatable speeds made it the go-to choice for The Cultivators; a traveling band who had officially traveled further than any other band in history. Their mission —as their name implied— was to cultivate peace among interplanetary populations using the power of music.
Three years into their expedition, however, the quartet had yet to make any significant progress in their search for alien life. Not that they were trying very hard. The clouds of smoke constantly hanging on the curved ceiling were not due to any technical malfunction, but rather the crew’s recreational drug use. They spent most of their waking hours giggling about nothing, stuffing themselves silly on snacks and gliding back and forth on the sleek glass floors, while the ship's on-board navigational systems handled all the hard work.
Sadly, their miracle drug did nothing to loosen up the tightest ass in their ranks; Melanie Waters, a tall, blond bombshell with the voice of an angel and the temper of a tyrant.
She wasn't considered the captain per se (as the group at large didn't adhere to such archaic concepts as elected leadership), but the way she behaved, you would be forgiven not only for assuming that she held absolute dominion over her bandmates, but that she possessed some sort of seniority, when in reality she was the youngest of the bunch.
The remaining three supposed they ought to be grateful for all she'd done for them —after all, it was her stubborn nature that ultimately coerced the Aerospace Administration into granting their group the opportunity to pave a path of peace across the cosmos with their melodic messangery—, but that admitted appreciation didn't make Melanie's attitude any easier to deal with. Take for instance an incident which occurred roughly an hour before their ship touched down on alien soil for the very first time:
Melanie plopped down in the pilot’s chair and popped open the compartment under the dashboard. She rooted through the clutter without looking, feeling for the crisp paper wrapping of the chocolate bar she’d kept stashed inside. Her fingertips soon brushed the back of the drawer without ever having met with the desired dessert.
She glanced back across the cabin and eyed her associates with growing suspicion. Edsel Bogori sat cross-legged atop a yoga mat, strumming wistfully away on his guitar, his squinty eyes darting back and forth behind his dark-lensed spectacles, his fingers skillfully dodging the colorful tassels dangling from the collar of his bulky black cardigan. Beside him stood Nora Pouteria, the golden rings adorning her attire jingling merrily as she bobbed up and down in time with the melody, her flowing brown locks swaying with equal energy. And in the far corner of the cabin stood the shaggy-haired Cantel Lopez, smoking a joint. Melanie's bright blue eyes narrowed in on her latter companion, or more specifically, on the faint brown fingerprints staining his tie-dyed t-shirt. She wasted no time in taking authoritative measures, strolling swiftly toward her crewmate and swiping the spliff from between his fingers.
"You filched my candy bar, didn't you?!"
Cantel cowered under Melanie's interrogative gaze. Whereas most of the Cultivators despised direct confrontation, their lead singer seemed to almost relish in it.
"Aw, lay off Mel, you know I've got low blood sugar!" Cantel stammered.
"And you knew I was saving that candy bar for a special occasion! That was the last bar of milk chocolate we had!"
"So what? We've still got plenty of dark chocolate left. You could melt it down, stir in a little powdered milk, wait for it to harden-"
"That's not milk chocolate, goddamnit! That's dark chocolate with milk in it!”
“What on Earth are you two arguing about?” Nora cut in.
"It's nothin-" Cantel began.
"Cantel ate my candy bar!!"
Nora didn’t respond immediately, nor had Melanie expected her to. Nora wasn’t known to pass judgment on others regardless of circumstance, making her especially easy to confide in.
"Hey Mel, I think I finally figured out what your problem is: you love looking for things to complain about, don't you?" she asked.
Well, so much for confiding in Nora.
"What? No I don't!" Melanie barked back.
"Sure you do, you've been griping ever since we set out on this mission. Whenever we're drifting aimlessly through the cosmos you complain about how dark it is, when we get close to a star you complain about how bright it is! I bet if all three of us died tragically you'd complain about being left all alone!"
Blood began to rush to Melanie's face. True, she had a proficiency for pointing out what was wrong in any given situation, but she was only speaking the truth! She wasn't trying to be a drag, there were just some things she thought her friends ought to be made aware of, for better or for worse.
Suddenly, from his corner of the cabin, Edsel erupted into an all-too familiar tune:
got a problem, can't resist
"Be quiet, Edsel!" Melanie snarled.
makes it tough for everyone.
At least she puts on a helluva show.
The woman's warnings did nothing to deter the guitarist from further prodding her patience. In fact, it only encouraged her remaining bandmates to chime in as well.
She'll let you know when it's blistering hot,
she'll let you know when it rains.
When trouble starts brewing
you know what she's doing;
complain, complain, complain!
And that clinched it; Melanie continued to bitch and moan right up until landing.
The very first planet to catch the Cultivators’ eyes since their initial departure was a vast, lush jungle world not marked on any of the Earth's star charts. Of course, that didn't mean that it was totally uncharted, but the visiting humans had no way of knowing that just yet. As far as they were aware, it didn't even have a name.
Despite Miss Waters' apprehensions, the ship's landing went off without a hitch, and soon the four crew members were setting foot on solid ground for the first time in what felt like forever.
Melanie stretched out, allowing the soft forest breeze to tickle her midriff, savoring the feeling of her bare feet sinking into the soft dirt. Looking around at her companions, she was surprised to see that the reclusive Edsel had decided to join them outside rather than stay behind and watch the ship, though he was apparently unwilling to part with his beloved guitar, as he kept it hung from his back by a leather strap. But how could she blame him when she herself was concealing a cordless microphone in her pocket just in case the opportunity for an impromptu jam arose? She guessed that Nora had her patented triangle stashed somewhere on her person too. And Cantel completed the quartet as he came bumbling down the exit ramp resembling a one-man-band whose experience lay solely in percussion. Lugging a disassembled drum set through the jungle seemed a bit like overkill in Melanie’s humble opinion, but if Cantel wanted to blow out his back doing so, then she wouldn’t stop him. She was trying to cut back on her griping, anyway.
Melanie, pulled out of her ponderings by the shrill voice of her best friend, nodded.
"Okay, let's go find some aliens!" her curly-headed comrade cried out.
Nora's optimism was somewhat misguided; while humanity had established contact with otherworldly intelligence a year prior to the team’s departure —kicking off a series of similarly ill-plotted expeditions— , there was no guarantee that this, of all planets, played host to alien life.
Beyond the confirmation that there were other civilizations than their own out there in the universe, the earthlings learned surprisingly little from their preliminary discussions with the alien ambassador. Nobody knew what these lifeforms actually looked like —according to their correspondent this was not due to a lack of trying on the extraterrestrial’s end, but rather a failing of Earth’s electrical equipment to unscramble their video signals—, and the coordinates provided for the faceless figure’s base of operations did not correspond to any known sector of space. At least one thing was certain; these aliens were perfectly capable of speaking the human language.
Twigs and leaves crunched under the merry band's feet as they trekked through the trees.
Walking around barefoot was a long standing habit of Melanie's, and the soles of her feet had grown so calloused as a result that no amount of scratching and stabbing could phase her, so the slog through this hostile environment didn't bother her in the slightest.
She was busy examining the local flora when her ears caught onto a rustling in the bushes close-by. The band members stared in total silence. Cantel raised his hand and pointed toward the bush, as though nobody else had traced where the noise originated from. Before anyone could think of something to say, the bush rattled again, and something crawled out of it, something bug-like. Its eyes shone a radiant red, its hair forest green, its weathered skin a creamy shade of brown, almost —like my chocolate bar!
Little did Melanie know she’d just met the future father of her child.
The enormous insectoid blinked at the Earthlings. They blinked back.
Finally someone screamed. It was Nora. But she wasn't terrified, she was ecstatic!
"OH…MY…GAWD! I CAN’T FRICKIN’ BELIEVE IT! IT'S AN ALIEN!"
Nora's cry attracted even more of them. One by one they emerged from the wilderness, the bushes, the treetops, fluttering down on their housefly-esque wings to see what all the buzz was about.
The boys still hadn't spoken, their mouths hung wide open on their hinges like a couple of five-year-olds who had just seen their first pair of boobies.
"Don't just stand there you guys, let's sing them our song of peace!" Melanie ordered.
This seemed to snap everyone out of their collective trance. Despite how unlikely a scenario this was, the group happened to have rehearsed for just such an event. Quickly Edsel swung his guitar around to his front, Nora produced her triangle from her pocket, Melanie whipped out her portable microphone, and Cantel scrambled to assemble his drum set.
With the pieces finally in place, Cantel seated him in his foldable stool and clicked his sticks together, prompting his partners to kick off the one and only song they had prepared:
you don't know what you're missin'!
A sickening splat cut through their chorus, and Melanie turned to see Cantel slumped back in his stool, an arrow slotted stubbornly in his throat. His diabetic blood poured down his front, pooling atop the batter head of his medium tom, dripping down the coils of its springs, and finally pattering to the earth —No, this isn't Earth!— at his feet.
The next thing she recalled was hearing Nora's scream, and this time it was entirely warranted. She would have screamed too, but she knew she had to keep a level head; she needed to be the one who remained in their right mind. After all, she was the leader of this expedition, whether her bandmates knew it or not.
She looked back at the natives still standing stiffly in place, holding all manner of rudimentary weapons —spears, crossbows, daggers— in their clawed hands, their beaks quivering in anticipation, waiting for the invaders to make another wrong move.
"W-We need to get back to the ship!" Melanie commanded.
"WHAT ABOUT CANTEL?!" Nora shrieked.
"There's nothing we can do for him, come on!"
She grabbed Nora by the wrist and took off running back in the direction from which they came.
And all at once, the weapons went off. Their ears were assaulted by the twanging of bows, followed by the dull thuds of arrowheads piercing the trees on all sides of them.
A dagger flew straight toward them and jammed itself in a trunk right by Nora's head, causing her to scream so loud that Melanie thought her ears would have their period.
Edsel did his best to keep up, but the quick ducking and weaving under branches was something the large instrument on his back would not allow. He stuck fast when his strap was snagged by a low hanging branch, and shrieked in terror as the hunters caught up with him. It was the loudest noise anyone had ever heard him make.
Melanie didn't dare look back.
A chorus of chirps filled the forest, gradually growing louder and louder, until Melanie actually began to crave the dull, empty silence of deep space. These definitely weren’t the articulate aliens they heard from a year ago.
Finally she saw it; the scarlet sheen of the ship they'd arrived in, and that they would leave in, Nora and her.
As they were scurrying up the ramp leading toward the wide open door of the ship. Melanie inexplicably slipped, and toppled over. Her body slammed down on the steep metallic incline, and began to slide back down. She looked around wildly, wondering what could have happened to cause this.
The ramp was coated in blood. Her blood. All of this running around had caused the skin on the bottoms of her feet to blister, creating a trail of her own liquid essence leading straight to the ship. Silently cursing her own body's natural functions, she clambered to her feet and made another go at ascending the ramp, only to slip and fall once again. This time, she managed to salvage her progress by propping herself up on her hands and knees, but they too were beginning to succumb to the slickness of the surface.
Nora was already in the doorway, blabbering a useless advisory for Melanie to get inside, quick.
I'm trying, chill the eff out!
Melanie reached up and took hold of Nora’s outstretched hand, and with a surge of unexpected strength, her curly-haired comrade managed to hoist her up the ramp. The high pitched chorus of chirping had reached earsplitting levels. They were close.
Not trusting her to do it correctly in her hysteric state, Melanie shoved her shipmate aside and rapidly input the Specter’s lockdown code. The heavy door slammed down and Melanie watched through the transparent wall of the hull as the Lianhuan hunters slithered out from the underbrush and circled the spacecraft. They examined the battened-down bottle with immense fascination. Their targets were still in clear sight, but were unobtainable behind the hard redness.
"This is so not cool! We're, like, totally surrounded!"
Melanie’s skin crawled ceaselessly. The sight of all of these aliens around them, was, for lack of a better word, alien to her, but if she had been forced to describe it, she’d have likened the feeling to lying her down on her back with a sheet of clear plastic hovering above her face, and then having a bucket of cockroaches dumped on top of it. Despite the layer of material between them, the very sight of the creatures, and knowing they saw her, was more than she could handle. Nora on the other hand, had her nose pressed against the glass, looking down on the scene with childlike wonder.
"Huh...they're actually...kind of cute..."
Melanie had never understood Nora less, and Nora could speak Latin.
"Uh, did you forget what they did to our crewmates not two minutes ago?!"
"Of course not, but you have to try to see things from their perspective. To them, we're the aliens, we invaded their territory, and —let's just be honest here— we were kinda overbearing with our greeting. You can't blame them for wanting to defend themselves. Besides, look how confused they are now, it's adorable!"
"Sure it’s adorable, in a "trying to figure out how they're going to kill us" kind of way." Melanie muttered.
Then she heard the door slide open, and knew at once what Nora had been thinking. Before Melanie could do anything to stop her, her best friend was stepping toward the archway, calling out to the monsters as she went.
"I know we got off on the wrong foot before, but my name is Nora, and we-"
Melanie dashed towards the door, sliding in her own blood as she went, but it was too late; a pair of claws had reached out, seized Nora by her wrists and dragged her down the ramp. She arrived in the doorway in time to see them bent over the body of Nora, ripping and tearing, shredding and slicing, savoring the taste of Nora.
"Ew...I'll try to retrieve your remains later!"
Even as she watched her best (and last) friend being forcibly extracted from the mortal world, Melanie couldn't bring herself to lose her cool. Empathy had always been something Melanie struggled with, while Nora had not. In the end, it was clear to both of them who things had worked out better for as a result.
Melanie calmly pressed the lock button once again, and strolled across the room to the captain's chair as the door resealed itself.
Doing a thing like this isn't really in my nature, but I need to get rid of these monsters somehow, and the engineers shouldn’t have installed them if they hadn’t meant for me to use them! Melanie reasoned as she seated herself at the dashboard.
She activated the supersonic modulator, cranked up the dial on the external sequencer, and switched off the auditory restraints, then cocked her head back to look out at the swarm, lying in wait for their next meal.
Okay alien scum, it's time to send you running back where you came from!
Finally, she pushed the activation key, and a hatch slid open on the roof of the ship. A long rod extended high into the air, affixed to the top of which was a red and white striped siren, which released an alarming tone over the treetops.
The Lianhuans scattered in all directions, frightened to their cores by the blast. Melanie couldn’t deny gaining some small catharsis from finally being able to torture others with sudden loud noises the same way she had been. Soon enough, the panicked natives had vanished into the treeline, and Melanie was alone.
She radically reduced the homing horn’s hearability and reclined in the captain's chair, wiping away the sweat that had formed on her forehead.
Some day, discovered alien life, all my friends died...what a drag...
Oh well, nothing to do now but report back to Earth.
She removed a headset from the overhead rack and placed it on her head, switching on the radio as she unstuck her hair from the dead zone between the speakers and her ears. The communications channel came through with a satisfying crumple of static.
"Mission control, this is Major Melanie."
Assuming the lead operator was on break, she delicately twisted the dial to the secondary support line.
"Mission control, do you copy?"
This was getting absurd. Those turkeys at the command center assured her these lines would be manned twenty-four seven! She desperately hoped that those hacks at the dear old double-A hadn't lost their research permit while she was away.
With a frustrated sigh, Melanie removed the headset and tossed it across the cockpit.
Fine, I guess I'll just have to report back to them in person!
She swiftly removed the ship's key from her pocket and crammed it into the ignition. She gave it one good turn, two good turns, three good turns, but the engine refused to start. The fuel light flashed on the dashboard with an accompanying ping.
Something was grinding against the hull of the ship. Looking to the side, Melanie discovered that a lone Lianhuan had returned, and in a strategic move she’d not known his kind to be capable of, had chewed straight through the hull into the ship’s fuel line. Now the liquid contents of the gas tank were steadily draining onto the grass, where the alien slurped them up greedily. Melanie suddenly wished that the ship didn't run on vegetable oil.
"Hey, get away from there!"
She banged on the glass, trying to scare the scoundrel away, but still he continued to gulp away her precious fuel. Apparently these creatures also had the mental capacity to ignore.
Melanie was stuck here. She was undeniably, unequivocally, un-solution-ably stuck here. All this time her friends had assured her that no situation was ever as bad as she made it out to be, that she was being too negative, that there would always be a way out of any seemingly hopeless situation she might find herself going through, but she knew that wasn't the truth. There was such a thing as an unfixable problem, and Melanie was smack in the middle of one. And now that her faithful friends were dead and gone, there was no one here to tell her otherwise. So here she was, pacing back and forth through the powerless ship, having at long last been vindicated, and it sucked ass.
She spent the next hour or so in a state of restless rumination, trying to discern what the best course of action would be now that her only means of escape had been compromised. She could have tried sneaking outside to repair the fuel line, but even if she had had any idea how to go about doing so, the tanks had already run dry, and there was no way for her to recollect their contents, given that half had long since soaked into the soil, and the other half was sloshing around inside an alien’s stomach (and she would be, too, if she wasn’t careful). The radio wouldn’t run if the ship was out of fuel, so even if the operators miraculously returned to their stations, she had no way of reaching them. Her only option was to live out the rest of her days bottled up inside this ship. With the other members of her crew gone, she had enough clean water and dehydrated meals to last the next twenty years, and plenty of pot in case she got bored. But what sort of life would that be, lounging around this cabin, eating up resources and creating emissions without doing anything to better this planet or its people?
She decided it would be best to think about this for a little while, and what better way to increase her prospects than to get totally stoned?
It was during this period of contemplation, as she lay sprawled out in a bean bag chair, covered in cookie crumbs and cold sweat, that a third option presented itself, albeit one which put her life at risk.
Oh well, it’s not like I can do much with it anyway.
Melanie flipped the emergency door override switch and descended the blood encrusted incline, her hands placed firmly atop her head in a show of seeming surrender, making a mental effort not to dwell on what might become of her if this plan fell through. Still, the image flashed incessantly in her mind; her carcass being picked at similar to that of a dead bird lying on the side of the road, her insides swarming with feasting ants and flies and maggots. The only conceivable difference between her and this nondescript dead bird was that birds rarely volunteered to wind up in such a state. Such was the evolutionary contrast between humans and animals; only the former possessed the mental capacity to purposefully place themselves in a vulnerable position.
Melanie shook her head, trying to cancel out those thoughts before her survival instincts could take over. Any second now, the savages would see her, hear her, smell her, or however it was these creatures located their prey, and that would be the deciding moment.
She didn’t have to wait long. Shortly after setting foot in the forest, a band of vengeful Lianhuans sprang from the shadows, thrusting their stony spearheads toward her tender throat. Melanie reacted fast, flipping the switch on the portable microphone concealed in her cupped hands, then watching amusedly as the ensuing feedback left the hypersensitive hunters quaking in fright. They dropped their weapons at the woman’s feet and retreated. Melanie watched them go with a grin on her face.
Aversion therapy. Works like a charm.
Her former bandmates might have cited such methods as cruel and unusual punishment, but Melanie begged to differ. She wasn’t needlessly tormenting the tribespeople, just nudging them in the right direction, was all. Already an avid nature-lover, Melanie would have no trouble adjusting to the simplistic Lianhuan lifestyle, and if the nasty natives raised any objections (in the way of raising their weapons), she would swiftly and decisively shut them down with a dose of gnarly feedback. If all went according to plan, the Lianhuans would gradually gather that it was in their best interest to leave her alone, eliminating the need for negative reinforcement altogether. For now, however…
For the first few nights, Melanie slept aboard the Scarlet Specter, but it quickly grew to be too much for her to handle, knowing the great things this ship would be capable of —the least of which getting her off of this planet— if only she had some kind of fuel. Sadly, the vegetables grown on Lianhua weren’t anything like the ones on Earth, and failed to live up to the Scarlet Specter’s nutritional standards (or hers either, come to find). So although her cell had greatly expanded, Melanie was still essentially imprisoned.
Luckily, the village she eventually stumbled upon was greatly accommodating (not that they were given much of a choice), providing her with food, water and a small hut of her own.
It wasn't long before Melanie began to feel lonesome. She felt no shame in admitting (if anyone cared to ask) that she was no stranger to the occasional group love-making session with her bygone bandmates, but now that those had been put to a sudden stop, she was beginning to get pent up. So one night, after most of the hunters had turned in, and the guardsmen were performing their patrol around the perimeter of the village, she decided to experiment a little.
Under the cover of darkness, she snuck into the hut where a lone hunter resided. She scanned his sleeping body up and down, and couldn’t help but utter a gasp as she set her sights upon it. She'd seen it in passing once before, but the appearance of it when viewed directly (and deliberately) was truly breathtaking; his reproductive organ. She tried not to look that way very often, —since it wasn’t polite to stare, and all that— but on this particular warrior it was much too enticing not to. As he slept, she had all the time she needed to thoroughly inspect his equipment.
Yes, she thought. This will do perfectly.
But before anything could be done with it, she needed to be sure that the owner reciprocated.
She carefully stirred the warrior from his slumber with a gentle shake, and he blinked up at her with a confused, crimson stare. She stood a few feet back from his cot so he could get a full view of her body, then slowly pulled down her puffy pink bellbottoms. It wasn't long before everything from the stomach down was completely exposed.
She was surprised with how quickly he took to her.
And even more surprised when weeks later, the morning sickness began, and the cravings, and the swelling.
Against all odds, that alien creature turned out to be biologically compatible with her. Or perhaps she was biologically compatible with him. No matter who was responsible, the point still stood; in a few months time, Melanie would give birth. She wasn't quite sure what the resulting lifeform would look like, and a part of her was afraid to find out, but she knew that she was bound by nature to love it regardless. Though for its own sake, she prayed it would take more after its father.
"Sssh, sssh, it's okay, momma's here," Melanie cooed to the wailing newborn.
She had been riddled with worry about how the Lianhuans would react to her child, but she was especially worried about the crying. If their reaction to Nora was anything to go off of, the wails of her infant daughter may very well be the nail in the coffin for both of them.
The crowd of insectoids watched with respectful restraint, however, letting her tend to the child with no intrusion whatsoever. One of the females even brought a clay bowl filled with pond water for her to wash the newborn’s body.
The baby looked exactly like its mother; smooth skin, pronounced whites in the eyes, five chubby fingers on each hand, and the beginnings of hair on the top of its head. It looked human.
Once it was nice and clean, Melanie held the baby girl tight to her bosom, tears of pain turning to tears of joy. For the first time in her life, the infamous Miss Pessimist could find nothing to complain about. Her child was flawless. Her child was perfect. And a perfect child deserved a perfect name.
“Welcome to the world, my darling Gerine.”
Years later, that baby would grow into a pretty young lady, whose facial features were nearly identical to those of her mother, whose body was well toned and built for survival in the harsh forests of Lianhua, and whose name we know well. But Melanie would never get to see her little girl grow up, for on the day that her daughter was born, as she lay in her bed nursing the infant, the savages circled in.
The beasts began clawing at her and the newborn, rattling roars rising from their throats. Melanie knew something like this might happen, and luckily, she came prepared. Her hand fell to the microphone lying by her bedside and raised the instrument high above her head like a warning beacon.
Radio silence accompanied her actions.
She frantically flipped the power switch up and down, raised and lowered the volume dial, beat the damned thing against her leg, but it wouldn’t turn on.
But that didn’t mean Melanie was going to just give up and let these beasts take the life of her newborn. She threw the microphone directly into the mosh pit, striking one of the beasts right between the eyes, then set about beating another over the head with her bare fists. She didn’t know if her lover was among those in attendance and she didn’t care. She would fight off whoever she had to if it meant keeping her darling daughter safe.
But the baby wasn’t the one they were after. They could clearly sense that this child was —at least in part— one of their own. The baby’s mother, on the other hand, was an invader. An invader who’d had all the fight taken out of her. Her body was basted in blood and sweat. She was malnourished. She was weak. Now was the time to finish her off for good! If any harm came the child’s way, it was only as a consequence of trying to reach the mother.
Melanie realized this, and reluctantly released Gerine. Released her into a reality full of violence and bloodshed, of heartbreak and betrayal, of sadness and anger, and without anyone to guide her. Although, Melanie acknowledged, there existed equal opportunity for caring and kindness, for love and laughter, for peace and prosperity.
And so, able only to wish her baby girl the best of luck in life, Melanie Waters was swallowed by the swarm.
