Timeline: Past
Point of View: Claudia
Location: Red Planet
Claudia sat in the center of her prison and thought for a long time about what she was going to do. She didn’t know how much time passed, but she was tired of time passing without being able to do anything. She slept for small spurts at a time. Periodically she’d wake to find food, but she heard no sounds from outside the prison, and saw none of the creatures.
She thought about Lisa, and hoped desperately that the woman was still alive. She didn’t think she wouldn't call Lisa a friend, but she was an ally at least, and she had no one else left on this planet to lean back on.
She fell flat on her back and stared up at the ceiling, which crawled endlessly up into the blackness as the vines climbed. She thought about the tree that had nearly eaten her, which had taken her high up into its center as if approaching the sun, and wondered how high these vines similarly climbed. Everything on this planet seemed to grow tall, reaching upward to the limited light available.
She was tempted to try squeezing through the vines, wondering again how the buzzsaws seemed to have controlled them, opening and closing them like doors without touch. They seemed to have respect for the thick trees of the forest, but these vines were under their control.
She remembered how the trees had danced to the sounds of the missiles and her own voice.
“Hey, you fucking vines,” she said.
As expected, the vines vibrated near her softly, almost imperceptibly but it was there.
She thought again about being inside that tree, about how its life source had… entered her as she sucked its sap down. She’d been near death then, but she felt a… lifting of her energy when she’d sucked down that life force. She found it hard to understand what exactly had happened, but something had. It was subtle, but there, and she’d found herself wanting more of it.
She'd assumed she'd die if she touched those vines or tried to wiggle herself through them. It was impossible to imagine that the buzzsaws would hold people for so long inside them if anyone could just squeeze through to freedom. Given freedom was actually on the other side...
The vines were thin, red tendrils compared to the thick trees of the forest. There wouldn’t be any… absorption happening with this vegetation, at least. It was worth at least touching to see what happened.
She reached out to touch one of the vines. Instantly it grabbed her, and she found her hand stuck as if to a glue trap. She felt her heart racing, but waited to see what would happen before she attempted to rip her hand free.
Her hand began to burn, as if on fire, and she screamed and pulled, ripping her hand free. Several vines curled in to take the place of the one her hand had damaged.
She looked at her hand. She found that it was scorched, a red burn mark around the back of it as if the plant, too, had tried to absorb her. She rubbed the spot of the burn. She hadn’t felt anything in that touch other than pain, not like she had when she’d let the tree sap inside of her.
“You’re not telling me I have to fucking eat you are you?”
The vines didn’t respond, but wiggled and writhed, mocking her.
Lisa had said they kept humans because they were magnets, pylons of energy that attracted more humans. Not all humans, just some of them that had the hidden ability to go to the red planet, whatever that meant. There was something in their blood, in her blood. Some untapped thing. And she’d had a glimpse of whatever that was while in the other tree. Did she have more untapped abilities that she had to figure out, like a baby learning it use their hands and feet?
And if it were hidden, just back there in the subconscious mind, how did she... did they all... awaken them?
She stared at the vine again, feeling that burn on the back of her hand. What do animals on Earth do when they’re afraid, or when they’re defending themselves? They attack. When something feels cornered, they attack. Mice scamper away unless provoked, then they bite. Rattle snakes warn, but if the warning goes unheeded, they strike with venom. Dogs growl and cats hiss.
“They’re attacking to get me to leave them alone, not to consume me,” she whispered to herself, trying to hold back the excitement.
She stuck both her hands into the vines, pushing them as hard as she could. Soon she could feel the burn, intensifying on her fingers. It felt like a hand too close to a campfire but not quite in the flames yet.
“Not gonna work. I want your essence,” she said. Goddamn I’m going crazy, she thought, I’m talking to fucking vegetation. But still she focused. She could feel the vines leeching into her skin, a kind of acid eating away at her hands. It was pushing its way under her fingernails, and it felt like they were being peeled back from her skin. “Fuck!” She yelled, but kept her hands there. Still, nothing seemed to be happening. She didn’t feel anything like what she’d felt from within the tree.
She ripped her hands from the vines and shook them. They burned and itched profusely, and she rubbed her hands together. “Fuck, I really thought I had something there,” she said.
She felt defeated, but a part of her thought there was something there, something she just hadn’t figured out what yet.
The indent of her hand remained on the vines, and they started to close in on themselves, to heal.
She thought of the tree, of the essence entering her, of falling and impacting the ground.
“That’s it!” She said, a little scientist having her Eureka! moment. “This is going to hurt you more than it’s going to hurt me,” she said. Jesus I’ve gotten corny, she thought to herself, blaming it on her increasing psychosis.
She quickly wrapped her hand around a vine, fingers flailing until it found the curve of one complete vine. She bent inward toward herself and started to pull. She thought of helping her mom weed her garden. Some weeds rooted shallow and were easily plucked from the dirt. Others, the goddamn worst ones, the prickly ones with little sharp spines on the leaves, rooted straight down deep into the dirt.
The vines were the prickly rooted mother fuckers.
She did as she did to pull those weeds, pulling and twisting ever so slightly, trying to heave the thing from the ground with all her might, but subtly so as to not strain herself. It was giving, little by little, but it fought for its life. “Fuck your life,” Claudia said as she pulled.
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She suddenly felt it sever.
She flew backwards into the dirt and hit her head painfully. Her hands were red and painfully itchy. She lifted and blew on them softly, then tried to shake the pain out. Ahead of her, the vines quickly closed the gap left by the one she'd pulled.
On the ground was a single vine, flipping like a damn fish. It wasn’t as tall as she’d expected, and she realized that the ceiling of the prison must not be that high, or it’s not one solid piece all the way up. She gripped the vine and lifted it to look at it.
“Please don’t tell me I have to eat you,” she said, as she felt its slime slipping through her fingers. “Please.”
She soon got her answer. As the vine died, she felt its excess energy flow into her through the contact they shared. The vine flipped and it flopped as it dried out and died, and that unused remaining energy became her energy, as she leached it from the plant. There was nothing visible to the exchange, just a passage of something that she could feel.
“Oh wow,” she said as she felt her strength increasing. It wasn’t much, but it was something. She felt rejuvenated.
The exchange ended, and the vine lay slumped in her hands. Still. She stared at the dead piece of red licorice for a long while, feeling unclear and excited thoughts passing through her brain. She wanted more. She wanted more, and she wanted to move. She felt like the goddamn energizer bunny.
She dropped the dead vine and ripped at another at the wall and found that it came off easier this time. She absorbed its essence. She continued in this way until there was at least a pile on the ground of 15-20 of the dead vines. She stood. She jumped, and felt as if she were able to jump higher than she normally could. She felt the same, but she felt herself amplified. Even her vision felt sharper.
Lisa.
Her mind, her faster processing mind it seemed, reminded her of her acquaintance on this planet. There was surely time to still save her. First, she had to get out.
The spot in the wall where she’d torn the vines away was still rebuilding, thickening, new vines scurrying up to take the place of the vacant ones. She’d been able to pull them out much faster now, ripping them from their source at the ground in one tear. If she acted, quickly, with her new strength, she was certain she could rip through the barricade faster then it could heal itself. She’d have to let the vines fall to the ground, their energy wasted, but she could sap more strength once she reached the other side.
She put her plan into motion and began tearing at the vines. Her hands no longer hurt, having been healed by the act of absorbing the others’ strength, but without spending time to sap the energy, she could feel the burn starting again. She tore and she pushed, trying to will her way through the wall before it healed. There had to be a pile of 20 or more vines behind her now, but still she pulled.
Finally her hand reached forward and felt air from the other side. Her face burned as the vines tried to grow back around her. They seemed eager to grow right through her arm it seemed. She brought her hand back and started tearing from both sides, flinging the vines with ease.
She exploded forth from the prison, feeling like a newborn baby barreling forward into the doctor’s arms. Only there was no doctor, only the ground, as she stumbled forward from her excess force.
When she stopped herself, she could feel that the energy she’d stolen from the fines had completely faded away. She wasn’t sure if it was spent or if the power itself was inherently limited by time, but she didn’t care. She was free from one prison. Onto the next.
She looked around, seeing that she was still in the forest of trees. There was a clearing around her. There was no sunlight at all peaking down from the trees, so she assumed that it was night.
Before her, two buzzsaws sat alongside a fire.
She stood still and quiet, immediately fearful that she’d made too much noise, but she soon realized that the buzzsaws were…
They were fucking sleeping. She could almost laugh, the image was so comical. There numerous eyes were vacant, and there long bodies heaved as they slept, curled up on the ground before the fire.
Claudia turned to find that the prison door had fully closed now. There’d be no getting back inside without significant effort. On the ground before her were the pile of vines she’d ripped away to escape. She knelt slowly to grip them, sapping as much of the energy as she could from them. She felt that strength return, and felt the blood lust that came with it.
Once the vines were depleted, she approached the buzzsaw closest her. She approached it slowly, trying to get a good look at it, wondering how she would kill it. She had no weapons, but her hands, arms, legs… all of her felt so strong. She wanted to grab the buzzsaw by the neck and squeeze, squeeze until there was no more life blood in it, squeeze until she’d stolen all of the power within its fucked up body.
Her foot tapped something hard on the ground and she tensed, nervous that she’d wake the creature. She looked down to find a weapon, the creature's hammer, having fallen from its lap as it slept. They must always be out here, she realized, just sitting here doing nothing, occasionally rotating their numbers. They left two here on the off-chance that one of us escaped, but they’d gotten lazy because none of had escaped before.
Because Claudia was the first.
She picked up the hammer and the creature stirred. Before it could do anything, she had the hammer lifted into the air and she brought it swiftly down upon its head. It managed a shrill squeal but that was all, and it fell to the ground. For a second it tried to lift it's considerable head, but Claudia was on it again, bringing the hammer down over and over, pockets of its blood bursting about its body. She caught a few of its eyes and the pus burst from them, arching through the air and sizzling in the fire.
The other buzzsaw was up now, and it was running toward her with it’s weapon raised. Claudia raised hers in time to block the impact as it brought the hammer barreling toward her body, but the impact was stronger than she’d anticipated. She’d gotten cocky with her new-found power. She felt her arms and legs buckle and she crumpled to the floor.
It won’t kill you, her mind quickly rationalized, because you're the last magnet. But it will beat you until you cannot stand. They’ll restrain you and kill you once they find a new magnet.
The buzzsaw was standing before her now, and the hammer pierced the air.
She quickly rolled away and a plume of red dirt rose up into the air as it impacted the ground. She’d lost her own weapon, and it laid at the feet of the buzzsaw, who was lifting its weapon again for another strike.
You won’t get to it in time, the voice in her head said again, referring to the hammer.
Who’s in my goddamn head? She asked.
I am you. I am you amplified. I am your subconscious mind made present. Move. The dying one, take its essence. Use it.
Claudia rolled away, unable to see the battle field but knowing it was her quickest route to the body lying on the ground. She could feel the buzzsaw impacting the ground as she rolled, its teeth angrily buzzing and cutting through the air.
She bumped into the body of the groaning buzzsaw and placed her hands on it. Instantly she could feel that power, its remains, becoming hers. She was a thief, the grim reaper, but more efficient with the lost energy. If there was a soul in this creature, it was hers now, and it was under her command.
Now quickly, her mind instructed, as the creature comes at you, use the stolen energy to pierce it. Your hands are your weapons.
What? She asked, but didn’t question herself. She could feel it, too. The excess essence, more than she could absorb, was in her hands now. The buzzsaw reached her and brought down the hammer again. Claudia, now empowered and faster than before, quickly dodged the attack. She brought her hands together and placed them under the belly of the creature, pushing upward. The soul of the dead creature pierced it’s friend, light hurdling through the night as it cut a hole in its belly, and the dark blood rained down upon Claudia’s body. Upon contact, she instantly felt the heat of that blood intermingle with her own and become hers.
She pushed the second buzzsaw off of her, and it crumpled to the ground.
Quickly, don’t waste it.
She put her hands inside the belly of the beast, and felt its soul become hers.
She rested for a brief moment before looking up to see a pathway the curled through the trees.
It would lead to Lisa.