20170621
Dear Diary,
The bodies are piling up. So they gave us all guns.
The police gave us all guns because they can’t track the creature. Not to fire at the thing, but to fire at the ceiling above it to try and scare it off. Apparently that worked once. Once. Otherwise, no one has any idea.
We’re looking at a hundred and fifty dead now. Probably more. There’s no obvious patterns but the rumours from my scanner keep on claiming that only ‘not useful’ people are dying. Mostly the rich, but also anyone who isn’t running the ship. You’d think, with fifteen percent of the ship now dead (DEAD!) that we’d have lost the captains or something? It’s insane. Crazy. Nonsensical. Terrifying!
As I’m bloody recording this damn diary entry, the scanner’s picked up another death! Literally torn in half!
Whatever this damn thing is, no one can work out how to kill it! Someone managed to shoot it in the face and it didn’t even flinch. Apparently it bled black blood for a moment then fixed itself and tore off the person’s hand! And then it killed them.
The police have given it a name now, but that just makes it worse. They’re calling it Xenon. Because they don’t know what it is. I’m just going to call it monster or creature or just it. You give it a name, it becomes relatable. Death isn’t scary if you don’t know what death is.
The scariest thing? The few friends I have, I think they’re all dead. After the fiftieth death, they stopped announcing names and just announced numbers. I haven’t heard from Ennean since last night. The last thing I heard from her was that she was going to the Septa ritual rooms to make an offering. She was talking a mile a minute saying over and over that maybe ‘Thanti has sent one of her children after us all!’ then I didn’t hear anything else. Eftyin is worried sick and I’m constantly messaging him telling him he’ll be okay, but it’s pretty hard to say that with a straight face.
I suppose the only good news is that we’re still going to the New North. The dead get to be freeze-dried rather than incinerated. We can’t turn around now. It would actually take slightly longer to turn around and go back than it would to continue on our way. But that’s assuming this creature hasn’t gone and killed everyone before we get there.
So my best bet is to stay out of the way. No one’s seen the creature go into people’s rooms and kill them. It’s just people wandering around in hallways. As if it’s toying with us.
At some point, I’m going to have to leave this room and get supplies though. I’ve got three days worth of food, but that’s assuming I don’t eat all of it because I’m so damn stressed and scared. I can’t help it. I eat when I’m scared. It’ll be the death of me.
In the mean time, I’ve been watching those old 2d horror movies, the ones with aliens. It’s a dumb thing to do. Probably causing me to needlessly panic. But what if one of those old films were right? There is a lot of life in this universe. We’re friendly with giant, skinny ostriches, allied with dinosaurs made out of plants and spend time with humanoid scorpions. We know there are other races out there that don’t have proper contact with us. There are somewhat unfriendly races too. What’s to say that the little breach on the first day wasn’t an alien queen looking for a new nest?
Okay, okay, those films are all before we knew of other races, but still, maybe they knew something we didn’t. Then again, the monster that’s going around killing people, no one could know of that. It’s just like a damn movie. Except I’m not a strong, sexy heroine. I’m just some average person on a stupid ship trying to make a new life for herself.
But just like in a movie, it’s all gone horribly wrong.
Each day that passes, I wonder if I will see you tomorrow.