The surface of Mars was ridiculously expansive, the apex of wilderness truly. The blanket of stars in the sky didn't really seem to be a blanket at all. They were like great shining jewels in the deepest sea. All black with twinkles of white reaching through the vacuum of space. In a way, it made one feel not at all alone while being lonely all at once. The energy of the stars was there, sure, but they themselves were not, and the absence of them was all too much.

Samantha Rogers, astronaut, pioneer, short woman, and all-around bookworm floated lazily through the air as she came to a rest at the back of a great hill. Her boots left deep spots in the soil where she landed and the descent itself took the breath out of her. It wasn't a stress on her body but rather the slow way she went didn't give her a particularly good inclination as to when she would touch the ground.

Slowly she hopped towards the P.O.D. so that it looked like she was perpetually falling through water. Inside of her helmet she could hear the tunes of Mozart and it was wonderful. In the least, it did take her mind off of the weird thing that the gravity on Mars seemed to do to her insides. All the time, her guts were full of worms, writhing and twisting. And the music, really any constant noise to help fill the void on the surface took her mind from the weird things going on within her. The P.O.D. project had taken much longer than any of them had ever thought it would. Actually, it took longer than even the Scepter Agency themselves ever would have considered. The P.O.D. itself was a domed shelter full of its own kitchen, sleeping and living quarters, and bathroom. It had dual hatches on either end of a long hallway. The P.O.D. had held up against the elements, the dust storms, the fluctuating temperatures. Samantha was sure that she'd be dead by now. By her math she'd tallied months ago, she was sure that she would've starved to death by now. But she wasn't alone in the P.O.D. so she didn't. She was able to sustain herself on the others.

Anyway, she'd been wrong. That was the important thing. She was alive. That's all that mattered. She spent her time now reading and listening to music to keep her mind preoccupied so that she wouldn't have to think about the rest. She would write sometimes, and even on a few rare occasions, she attempted to breach communication with earth, but it was to no avail. Ever since the lights had gone black on the planet and the telecoms shit out, she'd heard nothing from home. Even if she were able to contact someone back there, what would she find? She couldn't think about what the darkness on the surface would mean. Samantha couldn't fathom it except on the most subconscious levels of her mind. And it sucked that she couldn't just bring these thoughts to the forefront. Samantha wondered if she was the only living person left. In the whole world. In all of the universe.

Who could know?

Arriving at the P.O.D. entrance, she slowed her bounce and finally stopped, putting her gloved hands against the frame of the sliding doors while catching her breath. The sun was edging up the horizon and she could feel the temperature rising in her suit. The orb of glass around her head was fogging over and she could feel sweat beading up and rolling down her nose. As she entered the pin code on the panel next to the doors, she thought maybe she'd watch the sun crest over the edge of mars. She loved doing that.

There weren't many things that she loved anymore, so she took this moment of little contemplation and ran with it. Sometimes she would reminisce in her head about the time she'd spent on Earth. Or maybe she would drift into a state of thought so obscure that she would never be able to put them into words or align them in a way that she could pass said thoughts off to another person. But it wasn't any of these things that she cared about when staring off into the sunrise; the thing she cared about the most was that it made her thoughtful and thoughtless all at the same time. Very Zen.

Passing through the depressurizing chamber, she heard the hiss of the air passing into the room and lifted the glass fishbowl-like helmet from her head and deposited it on a shelf. Then she went through the arduous task of peeling her suit from her body and hanging it up on the hook below the shelf where her helmet sat. She slicked her shoulder length hair back. It clung to the back of her neck.

As she stepped through the second set of doors, she shivered and rubbed her arms. "Lights." And then there was light, and it was good. The overhead bulbs illuminated the main room that shared a floor with the kitchenette in the corner. In the wall behind the couch that she'd turned into her permanent sleeping quarters, there was a door left open. Through the small doorway Samantha saw a toilet and sink; she knew the tub was in there somewhere. But the weird thing about the bathroom wasn't what was inside. After she went to the door and peeked in, she saw there was nothing notable within. No. No.

The weird thing about the bathroom was that she didn't remember leaving the door open. That sort of thing had been happening to her more and more frequently. It had started out as nothing more than a moved spoon or fork. They were easy to misplace, of course. But then much larger things moved around in the P.O.D. chambers. Samantha couldn't chock it up to the pure coincidence. No, it wasn't anything like that. Sometimes she would leave a room and come back to see a table or chair that had moved clearly across the room.

There were two things that could be going on. She was either going mad (considering recent events, that wasn't entirely unlikely) or there was a presence. But she wasn't one for the supernatural. So, she liked the thought of going crazy more than being visited by some otherworldly entity. Ghosts. Gaseous Aliens. Things like that. She didn't like that. It seemed so impractical. No, being insane was better.

As the sliding door to the bathroom clicked shut behind her, she sighed and plopped down on the couch. "Bay window." And the wall in front of her, only a few feet away, shifted away to the left and gave way to a view of the rising sun. Only a sheet of glass stood between her and the vast emptiness of space. But there was the sun. The nearest star. It was kind of wonderful for her to think about, really.

After gazing out at the sky for either hours or minutes, she stood and walked to the kitchenette. Then she checked the time like she always did as she passed the little battery-operated digital clock on the counter. And she stopped herself and looked down, moving past the clock. It didn't matter. Earth time was irrelevant up here. Even more so now than before. Time was even more of a lost concept when there was only one person to pay attention to it. "What was it even there for anyway?" she asked the empty coffee pot. Speaking aloud like that- it helped her to cope with the powerful nothing she felt. Making noise, listening to music, watching the few movies in the P.O.D., and sometimes talking to herself loudly as though there was a full-fledged conversation going on between, she and herself.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

There were never any disagreements when it was just her. That was nice.

She opened the fridge and scanned its insides. Empty. Nothing inside. Samantha knew that. She didn't even know why she'd checked the fridge. Habit? The food- real food anyway- had been gone for weeks. When the last can of pears was gone, she had no choice but to turn her attention to the corpses. Samantha was able to fry up sheets of flesh like pork chops or bacon after cutting away the spoiling parts of her now dead astro-mates. The thing that nauseated her the most was the fact that the human meat on a frying pan smelled delicious. Just like the scent of brunch drifting from the kitchenette when Bernadette was still alive.

Yes, there had been other astronauts, three. Of course. Dr. Bernadette Horowitz, P.O.D. Physician and unofficially named cook of the P.O.D. after she'd lost a sure poker hand to Hal. Captain Halburt Lexington, the commanding officer of Mars Mission Thirty Seven, had been a very handsome man; his hair was trimmed to perfection so that it looked like a wavy small pompadour; his eyes were a twinkling blue and his voice was as strong and solid as his jaw-line. The last and perhaps most unimpressive member of the team, physically speaking, was Engineer Larry Moroche. Larry was the one Samantha knew best. Samantha and Larry were both private contractors on the Scepter Agency's payroll for less than half a decade combined. They'd leaned on one another socially for most of the journey up to Mars, becoming quick friends.

Larry was as wiry and shy as Captain Hal was broad and conventionally heroic. So, it was no surprise when the two traded barbs with one another, and eventually blows.

She was hungry. Samantha knew what she would have to do. She took the long knife with innumerable teeth from the drawer underneath the kitchen counter and went to the bathroom. She shivered and rubbed her arms again; she kept this room colder than the rest. Like a walk-in freezer. Or meat locker. For a minute it was like she was locked in the small room with the dead bodies and she thought about running away. Stuck. Taking the two long and hesitant steps toward the bath, she peeked under the shower curtain draped over the tub and saw the macabre mess of limbs and severed heads. Disgusting. But she wasn't ready to die. She couldn't face it. She knew what she had to do. So, she put it out of her mind and imagined she was somewhere else altogether. Samantha had gotten rather good at doing that. Grinding away at the meat like some medieval surgeon or butcher was never fun.

The first few times had been difficult. And not just because she was pulling human meat away from its bones, but because she didn't know exactly how to cut along with the grain of the meat. So, the flesh always tore away in strands. But this time, with practice, her handiwork showed experience.

The remains were covered in all of the salt she had in the P.O.D.'s pantry to help preserve it. It wasn't a lot really. But it seemed to do the job fine.

Recovering the tub with the shower curtain, she went back to the kitchen, being sure to shut the bathroom door behind her.

Within an hour or two, she'd cleaned, prepped, and cooked the meat on the little stove top over the counter. It was nice. It filled the room with a smell that made Samantha's mouth water.

She sat at the table near the coffee pot and dined voraciously, like an animal. The first few times she'd eaten pieces of them, it had been in small bursts, like a bird. And she could never eat more than just a little at a time. A few bites every day. But she started to waste away and if she were going to make her way out of this predicament alive, she couldn't go on malnourished. So, each time, she learned to stomach it better. She imagined it was a cut of prime rib from a sit-down restaurant back home. Or maybe it was her very own mother's roast. Really, when she closed her eyes, it could have been anything.

But my god, wasn't Bernadette tender. Samantha thought she remembered something in Anatomy about women having a thin layer of fat that men didn't have. It was like the choicest cut. Marbling. They called it marbling, didn't they? Something like that.

It was weird how eating once brought her pleasure. Now it brought on thoughts as such. It was kind of funny to think about. If she had examined someone else doing this sort of thing with some objectivity, she would have called them insane. And maybe she was. Samantha couldn't be sure. Insane or not, Bernadette definitely tasted the best.

"What are you doing there?"

The voice made Samantha nearly jump out of her seat and choke on her food. She swallowed hard and gagged a little then sat upright in her chair and looked around the main area of the P.O.D. She couldn't believe it. At first glance, scanning the room, she didn't see anything out of place. Or anyone. Then it dawned on her. Next to the couch, the bathroom door was wide open, and standing in the doorway was a small green man with his forearm propped against the frame. He couldn't have been any taller than three feet. Laying just under his large, squat nose was a wide mouth pulled back into a grin with long, tombstone teeth. "Nothing." Said Samantha.

"Oh really?" asked the green man, coming across the main chamber's floor. The big window to his right seemed to catch his eye and he turned to it. "Sun's pretty, isnt' it?" She nodded and he peeked over his shoulder at her. "Looks different up here though, doesn't it?"

She nodded again. "Who are you?"

"Ah, ah, ah," He waved his little green finger. "Not important, Sam."

She looked down at the human chop on the plate before her. "Well you have me at a bit of a disadvantage."

"That's such a trite social convention to use right now, don't you think?"

"I guess so." Another slow bite.

"Besides, I would say that you are in the least advantageous spot in the whole world right now. So, what's it matter to add one more disadvantage to the list?"

"I guess it doesn't matter a lot."

"Exactly." The little man extended his right arm to the wide window. "Quite a view though." His words whistled out and she nodded. Then he hop-stepped eccentrically toward her table and took up in the seat across from her.

"So," she began, "So you're the one that's been moving stuff around when I'm not here."

The little green man shrugged. "What can I say? I didn't like the arrangement."

Samantha nodded. "Are you hungry?"

He grimaced, leaned forward to look at her plate and shook his finger at the stuff. "Not for that, thank you."

It was her turn to shrug at him.

"So, what happened here?" he asked her.

"What do you mean?"

"What's forced you to resort to this?"

The room was quiet for a moment and she found herself pushing the food around with her fork. "Well it wasn't easy getting here. Kind of turned on a dime."