Creepypasta 1 (Patreon)

@Jonas made an interesting request, a creepypasta set in HC that could be read aloud in about 20 minutes. Fair enough. I figure 20 minutes is about two of my 1500 word scenes.

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Jakari scrolled down through the task roster, making sure that she’d assigned someone to every important task. “Oh, hon?” she said, not looking up. “I sent a crew down to 20401.”

“Hrm?” her mate asked absently. He was sitting across from her at the officer’s conference table, located just off the bridge. The one-eyed geroo had been studying a report from the agriculture deck about some fungi that had been rotting the bencardo harvest. “20401?”

She set the tablet down. “Yeah, the gas leak in 20401,” she explained. “I sent a crew to find and fix it.”

Now, Ateri set his tablet down. “Gas leak? I don’t—”

Jakari nodded, her white fur as fluffy as a nebula. “The residents reported having hallucinations … seeing ghosts or—”

“Oh, oh, oh!” said the captain, nearly shouting. “Now, I know what you’re talking about. I already sent a crew to take care of that.”

One of her ears perked a little higher, “Well, I saw just now that the task got marked off, but when I spoke to engineering, they had no record—”

“Well, I handled that one personally,” he said, angrily pulling his strand from his right shoulder. “That’s why I marked the ancestors-be-damned item off. Now, I’ve gotta call engineering and get that crew reassigned.”

“Hon?” she asked, putting her paw to his strand and lowering it toward the table. “What’s got you so upset all of a sudden? This is just a minor error, a little duplication of effort.”

Ateri’s ears frowned. “I’m upset because this is precisely the sort of thing that Commissioner Sarsuk jumped my case about during his last inspection. He’s coming again in the morning, and if he sees another—”

“All right. All right,” said the commander gently, standing from the table. “This was my mistake. I assigned the second crew. I’ll go down there personally and find something else for them to do so no one will be idle.” Despite his uncharacteristic over-reaction to what seemed like a minor error, she kissed him between the ears.

“Thanks, hon,” he said, picking his computer tablet back up as she left the conference room.

Down on deck 20, she caught up with a crew in gas masks loitering just outside of 20401. “Commander?” said a red geroo, peeling his mask off. “You told us to track down a gas leak, but there’s a crew in there already, and they’re tearing out the walls. A bunch of real rude bastards too.”

“I’m so sorry, Eris,” she said, touching his shoulder. “Crossed wires. The captain already sent a crew. You wouldn’t mind burying this mistake, would you? It’d be a personal favor.”

“Bury it, ma’am?” he asked in surprise.

“Sure, instead of fixing this,” she said with a wink, “fix that nasty nitrogen leak across the hall. That should take you the rest of your shift.”

“Nitrogen leak!” gasped the engineer. He grabbed his strand and started searching frantically for news of such a dangerous leak.

Jakari just grinned. She leaned in closer and whispered, “Go home early. Mark it complete in the morning, okay?” With a quick glance to his peers, Eris nodded his understanding, and the commander pointed at the door to 20401. “I’ll take care of those jokers on the other crew, and make sure they understand that a bad attitude will come back and bite them on the tail.”

Her crew said a quick round of thank-you’s and hurried off in case she might change her mind about getting the day off. Then, she turned and opened the apartment door without knocking.

Inside, she found a crew of three that had indeed unbolted all the wall-plates from inside the apartment, exposing the struts and structural supports inside them. This was an absurd thing to do. Some utilities had to be located inside apartment walls—electrical conduits, plumbing, wastewater, and even trash chutes—but the ship’s designers and the architects that occasionally rearranged deck layouts were very careful not to pipe dangerous gasses too close to the living quarters. Even if they had to remove a single wall-panel to isolate a leak, removing all of them was a sign of gross incompetence!

Weirder still, this crew hadn’t been outfitted like the one she sent. They did wear respirators, but they were the wrong sort—not gas masks that protect the engineer from a noxious gas leak, but the sort that filtered out fine particulate matter like the vaporized metal generated from a laser cutter or engraver.

And they were wearing laser eye protection too! Why would a crew looking for a gas leak need such expensive eyewear? If anything, they should have been wearing safety goggles made from high-impact polycarbonate that would shield them from bits of flying metal when cutting or drilling into aluminum.

“What in the ancestors’ names are you doing in here?” Commander Jakari shouted.

The workmen froze, pausing what they were doing for a moment and sharing a worried look. Jakari glanced down. The geroo working nearest to her, a tan geroo with a cream belly, had been… Was he running a hand-held digital engraver across the inside surface of a wall-panel? Why would he do that? And from how the panel was discolored and oxidized with age, the captain’s mate could tell that whatever he was engraving on it would align with the struts inside the wall when the panel was eventually reassembled.

Why even engrave something into a metal plate if the pattern was just going to be covered by a heavy metal support once bolted back in place?

“You can’t be here!” the tan geroo sputtered suddenly. He leapt to his paws and nearly fell on his face as he scrambled over the disassembled wall-panel. With both palms, he quickly half-guided/half-shoved the white geroo from the room.

“You can’t kick me out!” she shouted.

But just the same, the workman ushered her out and closed the apartment door behind him, his tail pressed flat against the door as if his body could help keep the angry officer out. “You can’t be in there,” he said, sounding slightly panicked.

“I’m Commander Jakari, and I have the authority to go anywhere aboard this ship!”

“Yes, ma’am, and no,” he said, now sounding a little more calmed and authoritative. “This is a hazardous area, and I know you don’t have the safety certifications required, because only two other geroo aboard this ship do, and they’re already inside.”

“Safety certifications?” she laughed, snatching the eyewear right off his face and waving them before his eyes. “For repair work, you need to be wearing protective eyewear. These flimsy things wouldn’t protect you from getting poked in the eye with a finger, much less metal debris!”

“Ma’am…” the worker yelped. “I… I…”

Jakari growled softly in frustration. “I hate to pull rank on you, but I order you to step out of my way.”

“And I hate to pull rank on you,” the other replied, standing up a little straighter, “but my orders come directly from the captain, not to let anyone inside. You’re going to need to take it up with him.”

“I will!” she huffed, jabbing a finger into the workman’s chest to emphasize each word.

Then, she stomped away, trying to cool her fury as she walked.

This was a day like no other. First, her mate snapped at her, and now someone in the crew had defied her orders? Ateri was always civil with her, getting only a little grumpy when he was truly tired. But the crew? The crew consistently treated Ateri and Jakari as if they were the same. She and her mate were always on an identical wavelength, so they could speak for one another. If one said one thing, then surely the other would agree.

“Oh, father help me,” she prayed, seeking a little strength and salvation from Captain Idal, gone away these thirty years since he hit his sixtieth birthday.

Thinking about her mate once more, she shook her head. She wondered if his secular nature was what made him so frustrating.

By and large, the geroo were a very religious people. Though their religion didn’t feature a god figure, most believed in reincarnation and that the souls of their ancestors helped guide them through difficult times.

But not Ateri. Though respectful to others beliefs—as he would need to be to lead such a devout crew—he himself didn’t seem to believe. He kept only a single necklace in the little shrine they shared, and he never took the time to pray to it.

She wished he would. Though she couldn’t make him more religious—any attempt to push Ateri into something invariably made him dig his heels in harder—she wished that he could believe in the eternalness of the geroo soul.

Realizing that she was still carrying the workman’s eyewear, she turned back toward 20401.

And for just a moment, she caught an unusual sight through the thin plastic lens—a person, a geroo standing there in the corridor where none had been just a moment ago, surprise evident on his upraised ears.

But only for a moment, and the person she thought she saw was gone, stepping through a solid wall as if it weren’t there, a shade vanishing into the apartment beyond.

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Reviewer's link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ghszhVYz-ce6j9rPzPQJ9blvgMxuob1Sx8TeDktVTlA/edit?usp=sharing

Thoughts?