Yep, don't know what weird misspelling I did that autocorrected to staging. Thank you!

John was suffocating, drowning on the honey thick words. The frantic sensation lasted but a moment after he finished the incantation. As he hung weightless above the burning pentagram, he felt nothing. He was so desperate, he had resorted to fire code violations to end his loneliness. A spark of black fire, highlighted in white too bright to look at, twinkled at the top of the center candle as he dialed back on the gravity. Could it actually be working? No way.

Smoke began to fill the high-ceiling cafeteria, occluding the false skylight and staining the pastel stucco of this never to be finished all-inclusive paradise. He thought of all the rich saps that might never get to cuss out a waiter for under spooning their caviar or whatever. Almost enough to bring a tear to his eye.

“Attention,” called down an automated woman’s voice from above, vowels round as marbles. “Hot ash detected on muster group B, deploying suppression measures. Thank you for dining on August Grande Orbital Vista, stand back!” Hoses uncoiled themselves like whining snakes.

John looked about frantically, dragging a tablecloth to throw over the summoning circle. The black/white flame caught it instantly, sending a gout of blacker smoke to curl along the prefabricated arches.

“Hot ash! Hot ash!” the automated attendant bellowed, as sprinklers filled with foam began to spray, laser aimed at the candles. They dimmed lower every second.

“No!” John ran, unsure of his plan as he jumped into the circle, shielding the center flame from the foam with his body. The pain grew as the flame cut through his coveralls, then stopped, more than stopped. He felt great. Had he been afraid?

He wondered how anyone could be afraid in this warmth. A hand ending in long sharp nails reached up and touched his shoulder lightly, pushing him back.

“I’m very grateful, but you’re crushing me,” came a raspy woman’s voice.

John staggered back, getting to his feet. He tapped his chest, the burn didn’t go past the top layer of his uniform. He should still stop by the automatic med bay later, but it was hard to think about anything as he looked into the circle.

Other than the long black curling horns cutting through her silver hair, the sharp teeth resting on black lips, the almost talon-like nails on hands and feet and the fact she seemed to clock in at about 6 foot 9, she was the most amazing looking woman John had ever seen, real or holo.

She stood and brushed herself off, sending a cloud of soot up again. A small drip of more foam came from the ceiling in reply. “Ah,” she yelled, laughing. “Can you turn that off?”

“No, sorry,” John said, suddenly awkward beyond measure. This was the first human he had seen in over two years. But human wasn’t the right word, was it?

She stood at her full height and bowed, letting her smokey dark gray gown knock over two of the now thoroughly doused candles. “I am Arix, Princess of the Eighth Suffering, Legion Lure of the Blind! To what purpose have you summoned me, mortal?” she asked, hesitating as if trying to remember her next line. “That you might exchange your everlasting soul for my service?”

“Can you keep me company?” He asked, “this orbital station is so lonely.”

“Very well- wait really?” she asked, rocking her head back, raising an eyebrow, and looking him up and down. “That’s it?”

“What can I say?” John chuckled nervously. “I’m going a little stir-crazy out here.”

“Where are we?” She walked to a table by a window overlooking the titanic gas giant.” Holy shit, are we in space?”

“The most amazing vacation destination station in the galaxy,” John offered, following her like a puppy. “Or at least it will be once the striking shipbuilders guild comes here to finish it. The scale of the orbiting behemoth means it has to be assembled on location, smack dab in the middle of jack shit, and apparently, I was the only sop desperate for credits willing to cross the pickets and come out here.”

“So you’re all alone in this huge place?” she asked, stepping into the floral atrium. The demon looked like John did the first time he saw it. He hadn’t even seen a plant until he was nine. She dragged a claw across one of the apple trees. “How do you keep it running by yourself?”

“The automated systems do almost everything,” John said, grabbing an apple and taking a bite before handing it to her. She smirked and snatched it. “I’m really just here in case something fails, but there’s only so much one engineer could do anyway. Mainly I’ve been waiting for others to come, but I guess the strike’s still on and I’m stranded. I can’t access my bank account from here but I’m guessing I’m pretty rich by now, at least.”

“I see,” she said, holding the apple like a raccoon might horde a grand prize. “Do these work? Could you contact them? Your bosses?” She pointed to a row of monitors tucked behind a service wall.

“Password protected by the union, all the systems are,” John said. “I gave up trying like a year ago. Hey, do you think these air purifiers look like a techo laundromat?” John asked, pointing into the next room they passed. “I always thought so.”

She squeezed beside him to peek in. “Kinda yeah, but you’d have to feed your shirts in through the slit one at a time. I think they look more like the holes you stick your arms through at museums, and feel stuff you can’t see.”

“Wow, you’re right,” John said, smiling. That had never occurred to him.

“You know your soul is a pretty big thing to give up. Are you sure that’s all you want?” she asked, bending down to see him eye to eye.

“Yeah, I already feel so much better. All these thoughts bouncing around in my head were killing me. I even tried that thing from the movie where he painted a face on a ball and named it but my ball was an agitator from the pool and the cleaner system recalled it back after a few days.”

“Okay, it’s your soul. What do you want to show me next?” she asked, standing back up eagerly.

“Oh, you gotta see the karaoke room, the costumes in there are insane.” John said, eye going wide with his idea. “Wait, no, stay here and wait till I call you. You have to guess who I’m dressed like.”

“Alright,” Arix said, shaking her head as the man scampered through the hall. She had thought he was sly to sacrifice himself to save her but he didn’t even seem to know that meant he got his wish for free. Not a bad gig, besides. She was already growing fond of the human. This could be like a vacation.

She sauntered to the monitor terminal and bowed her head in unsanctified prayer. “Jaeryx,” she hissed in the abyssal tongue. “Find me a damned one, one who was a shipbuilder union member in life.”

“I have one on the racks now, Legion Lure,” the eager croaking voice came. "What would you like of him?"

"I need him to type something."

A severed and callous hand popped into existence and flopped energetically on the floor. She bent and picked it up before it could crawl away, holding it up to the terminal.

“Type your login details and I will give you a moment’s peace,” she offered cruelly, digging a claw below the cracked fingernail. The hand worked across the keys and the terminal chimed. John was still out of sight.

She dismissed the hand back to its suffering body and read the title of the first and only email sent to the station. “Station August Grande is abandoned in union deal. No further ships will be sent in or out.”

“Okay, come here,” John said. "Guess who I am!"

“Coming,” Arix said with a smirk, clicking the delete button.

/r/surinical

Thanks! Both prompts I did today were scary ones.

Thank you. I liked the challenge of making it more and more clear to the reader she didn't start out alone as the story goes.

Also the one person left thing is unique since false hydra stories are usually one 'fogotten' party member the DM makes up.

Great prompt, OP! I'm loving the creepy prompts getting attention today. Hope you like my story.

"The forest breathes," Dara repeated what the man in town had jabbered at her while looking up at the cloudless sky, as she did now. Hanging on to the last of the light, the deep blue spoke loneliness.

Senseless anxiety peaked in her as she watched the trees sway in the cool fresh breeze carrying notes of that most pleasant of decay, dirt and leaves and little things.

She was bored. What had she thought coming on this trip all alone? She had set up six tents, hauled all these supplies. Had she expected to meet someone out here in the middle of nowhere? The unsettling answer was she didn't recall. She remembered being excited to come and laughing alone all the winding way. She had expected something, something very good to happen. What was it?

Dara cracked open a beer. Maybe she should trust herself. Maybe this wasn't so bad. A wet growl came from the shadowed far distance. Were there bears out here? She didn't remember asking.

She pulled down the sleeves of her flannel and sat in one of the many chairs she prepared for herself around the fire. As she rose the drink to her lips, the gleam of the ring on her finger caught her eye. A diamond, a beautiful thing just like what she had hoped to wear one day. Had she found it out here? Surely, she would remember that.

She swatted at a mosquito just above her knee and noticed something strange. A message was written in sharpie along her thigh. She pulled up her shorts to get a better look.

-there are five of us-

-the forest breathes-

She tried to rub it out but only smeared the ink around. The message was still clear. She went to her tent. Weird she thought of one of them as hers when clearly all of them were, but she was just sleeping in this one.

She had a bottle of alcohol somewhere. She had many bottles of alcohol actually but only one of the rubbing variety. She had borrowed it from…someone. No, that didn't make sense. The beer tasted terrible. Why had she brought so much? She doubted she would finish this one.

She unzipped the tent and looked inside. She screamed and backed away, tripping over a risen root. As she watched puzzled, the zipper slowly closed itself. It was noticably darker.

Why had she screamed? The tent was empty. Just more nerves, she guessed. She grabbed a bottle of water instead, smearing half dried brown red on the top of the white cooler. She cleaned her hands and then set to work on her thigh.

She stared a long time, not understanding what she was looking at. The message before had been scratched through and below it a new one was written. When? Had she missed it before?

-not bears not bears not bears!-

She scrubbed, irritating her skin but managing to get the message mostly off. Four lines were written on the back of her left hand in the same marker, below that three lines. She scrubbed there too, taking off the ring to work under it.

It was heavy. She didn't know carats but she knew enough to know she couldn't afford something like this.

The wet growl came again, closer. She heard the forest breathe as she looked inside the band of the ring and the engraving inside.

-Dara, take my whole life too-

Someone's engagement ring. They must have lost it. Not hers of course, a wild coincidence.

Just as slow and smooth, the zipper to the tent opened. Nothing came out and she staggered back, falling on her tailbone. She was holding the sharpie, cap off and pressed against her hand again. What had she been about to write?

She felt that senseless anxiety again as she watched the first stars of the night shine above her. It was hard to get air in her lungs, nothing sitting on her chest, weighing her down.

Pinprick scratches dug into her cheeks. The forest breathed, hot and metallic on her face. She forgot herself as the wet growls resumed.

/r/surinical

Great post, OP. I hope you like my take on it.

Yep, the other comment was right. it's a pistol.

Marcus traced his finger over the circle in the symbol. “So, what’s this really about?”

“Exactly what I said in the ad,” the woman across the table said. She was older but looked stunning, even if she did stare a bit intensely. “If you recognize the symbol, I’ll pay you one hundred dollars.”

“I,” Marcus started, not wanting to look away from the paper. He almost said the name that came to mind but just laughed nervously. “I feel like I do know it, but I have no clue from where.”

“Then say its name,” the woman asked, her voice that deep sort of hoarse that ticked all the boxes. He wanted something from her, but it wasn’t money.

“Okay, I don’t know why I want to call it this, but Eskavalia.” He slid the paper back to her. “That isn’t right, is it?”

“Our kind are born sick, usually very sick,” she said, taking the paper back and reaching into her purse.

“Our kind?” he said, hoping this wasn’t about to pivot into some MLM pitch.

“We rarely made it past five in the best of times, until modern medicine, that is.” She pulled out a thin wooden box and set it between them.

“So, this box is something you sell, right?” Marcus sighed. It really was a shame but what did he expect responding to a newspaper ad in 2022. He had been sick as a kid but she couldn’t know that. He had come to her.

“The majority of us made it to adulthood last time. The Cord organizes us, giving us each a key symbol and name so that we might find each other this time around. You look hale, Eskavalia.” She gestured towards the box. “If it’s like it was for me, it will hit you hard, fair warning.”

“Right,” Marcus said, so he had been close. It was some kind of cult thing. Who could resist a closed box though? He opened it. A lock of red hair sat inside, tied with a bit of blue ribbon. His hair was blonde but this… He picked up the box.

“Why do I feel like this is mine?” He stared and rolled the strands between his fingers.

Flashes of screaming light nearly rocked him out of his chair. Traveling in a van, laughing, he had been a girl. He, or she, had worked in a zoo, she had three children. She had trained to fight, trained to infiltrate. He knew everything about all of her children. He mourned again for Sylvia. The memories came too fast, burning like a run of floss being pulled between his ears. She had been born in Pennsylvania. He breathed as the rush slowed.

The woman looked at him with what? Pity? Empathy? He opened his mouth to speak and another rush came. Old-timey hospital beds, incredible pain, a string of crying mothers holding him, each for only a moment. The chain of embraces came and went. The cloth pressed against him was starched dresses, homespun shirts, robes, then nothing but bare skin. A blurry vision of an untamed landscape as a mother sang to him in a tongue he never lived long enough to learn.

Finally, the rush of memories ended. He dropped the box with a shaking hand. “What the fuck was that?”

“All your lives,” the woman said. “So many cut short. You, as I, were thousands of dying children through the ages. We never had enough of a foothold to remember, to change things, until now.”

“Change things?” Marcus asked. “This is a curse, a misery.”

“This world is what its rulers want it to be,” she sipped her drink and gripped Marcus’s hand. “Since before humans kept time, a small group of reincarnating immortals, ashborn we call ourselves, have controlled everything. They have ways to find other ashborn like you and me, ones not in their privileged circle, while still in the womb. They poison our mothers so we will not gather memories of ages and challenge their rule.”

“So, this group has killed us, thousands of times each? All this is real?”

“Yes, and they know now their old techniques no longer work. They’ve already taken harsher measures with some of us, killing us directly.”

“So what do we do?” Marcus asked as the woman reached into her purse again.

“You spent twenty years before you died last answering that question.” She placed a cloth covering something on the table. “It was you that convinced me what we must do, Eskavalia. I am now ready to return the favor.”

Marcus picked up the heavy object hiding under clothes, bringing it to his lap, a gleaming barrel showing.

“We go to war.”

/r/surinical

"Erty ucks!" Angela tried to yell through the gag.

One of the kidnappers tapped a foot against her leg as he watched TV, like he was absent-mindedly rocking a fussy baby. The obnoxious commercial was for some type of hair schrunchie.

She managed to work the gag down under her chin. She took a deep breath. "You're only asking for thirty bucks?"

"Hmm," the kidnapper on the phone said. The voice modulator made him sound like yoda. "If you pick her up, we can do twenty-five. Gas prices, you know?"

"My dad is haggling you down!" Angela yelled, flabbergasted. "Let me talk to him."

The other kidnapper shushed gently.

"Do you want to talk to her? No? Okay, let me text you the address."

"Twenty-five dollars. I can't believe that's all I'm worth to him." Angela said, flopping to the side on the couch, bound hands under her.

"Did someone say twenty-five dollars?!" An energetic man yelled from outside. "Police, open up!"

"Oh, thank god!" Angela yelled. "Help me!"

The kidnapper stood up calmly and opened the door, stepping to the side as a man in a short sleeve button-up and cargo pants rolled into the apartment, wearing some twisted fabric on each wrist.

"Just kidding! But it's a good thing the police aren't here because a deal this good is a certified steal!" the man stood and dusted himself off. Somewhere, a crowd cheered and clapped. "Say hello to the tactical scrunchie. It has knives, mace, pepper spray, salt spray, glass breaker, glasses repair kit. You might as well ask what it doesn't have!"

"For just three easy breezy hold the cheesy payments of eight dollars and thirty three three three three three three three three..."

The man began to stutter and spasm as he continued forcing out "three three three three."

"Damn it!" the kidnapper said.

"Cut!" came a voice from nowhere.

Two of the walls pulled away revealing a film set. A screen on a popup table showed footage of Angela tied on the couch in black and white below the words -Has this ever happened to you?-

"You told me the AI Pitchman was as good as Mays," a man yelled, folding a script and beating another over the head. "This tactical scrunchie has to sell. It has to sell hard!"

"He is! We just have some kinks to work out, diviser issue, super quick fix." The other man shielded his head from the blows as he typed on his phone.

"Excuse me!" Angela yelled. "What's going on? Am I not being kidnapped?"

"The black and white segment actors are always kidnapped, sweetie," a lady said from the side of the set. "More realism that way."

"Take two, from entry!" the director said, sitting back in his chair. "Action!"

​

/r/surinical

"Ricky! Are you okay?" Tina slammed her keys down on the counter. "I'm so sorry I'm late. My alarm didn't go off."

"It's fine," Ricky rasped from behind the front register and a pile of empty bottles of sun block. "It was just a few minutes. It's good to see the sunrise actually. Feel like I haven't seen it in fifty years, working night shift I mean," he tacked on quickly. "I'll clean these up. They were all expired."

"Don't worry about it," Tina said, clocking in. Had he really worked here fifty years? He didn't look thirty. "Can you get home okay?"

"Well," Ricky said, pale skin already a little pink. "You know night blindness? I kinda have day blindness. Do you think I'd get in trouble if I just slept in the backroom cooler? I already rotated all the stock for the day, put away the order and cleaned the back so I shouldn't be in your way back there."

"Perfectly fine, Ricky. Sleep well."

He really thought he was hiding it, Tina thought to herself. Poor guy.

He hasn't lied, she realized. He really has managed to do all the extra day tasks for the gas station over the night shift. He worked like three people, maybe four. He'd stopped leaving dead raccoons in the back parking lot too. She wasn't getting rid of him anytime soon.

She looked up from the Clancy novel she picked off the shelf when the door chimed.

"Where's the safe, bitch!" a tall man asked, shaking an old revolver at her.

"It's on a time delay. I can't open it for two more hours!" she yelled, opening the register. There was ten dollars plus some ones. What dumbass robs a gas station right after shift change? She shook as she handed him the drawer.

"Bullshit," he said, throwing the register down. "Sure me the rest or." He waggled the gun in her face.

"Okay! I'll show you." Tina said, raising her hands as she stepped into the dark back. The tall man followed. The cooler sat there humming.

"It's in there," she said, pointing to the cooler before she fully decided to. "That's where we hide it."

She stepped aside to let him pass and scurried back to the front, door closing behind her.

"What the f-" she heard, followed by a rustling, then another sound she really didn't want to think about.

"Thank you," she whispered to the back after the sound stopped. She would have to get him a better setup than a cooler. Halloween was coming up, a coffin back there might be fun.

/r/surinical

"It doesn't make sense," Fardo said. "These humans must have had access to kreblock records."

She laid out the replications of the documents found in a medical facility on the ruined planet. "By all accounts, the humans died off millennia before the kreblocks even evolved."

"So then how did they have what looks like exact anatomical scans of a kreblock?" Researcher Geswaq picked up one of the papers. "Even has some kind of decorative paint on its skin, look how white it is."

"Could it be convergent evolution?" one of the archaeological interns asked.

"No," Fardo said confidently. "Look closer at the records. It doesn't just look like a kreblock. The organs, the neurons, the blood chemistry, it's all exactly the same."

"Could have been some type of time machine?" Geswaq asked.

"No, the humans weren't even advanced enough to keep their own planets alive."

The door slammed open. The frizzy microphone cover like hair of the man brushing against the top of the door frame as he entered. "I have the answer."

"Oh God," Fardo groaned. "I thought they banned you from the intergalactic research division."

"I'm not here as a researcher," Wewill said, holding up his mop.

"Then why are you bothering us? Just clean up and leave."

"Panspermia!" He gave as an answer. "Ancient aliens!"

Fardo slammed the paper she was studying down in frustration. "If I let you say your crazy theory, will you leave?"

"I will," Wewill offered, smiling as wide as a school boy. "We are humans, or at least their descendants."

He whipped out a projector using the far wall to display a presentation he clearly put together himself. "It is well known fact that there are several missing links between kreblocks and their closest ancestors. It is also known that kreblocks can tolerate and even thrive on a diet including meat, yet every animal on our own planet is toxic to us."

Fardo sighed. "The leading theory on that is that we did tolerate the meat of some now extinct animal."

"Which we have no evidence of!" Wewill declared, waggling a finger at her. "But the biggest discovery that all but guarantees this is the case has been right in front of us for decades!"

The next slide of the presentation showed a dilapidated archaic spaceship. The dessicated pilot looked a bit like a hairy kreblock mummy, with a muzzle and bigger teeth. "This was discovered in interstellar space near this solar system, the vacuum has preserved it's DNA perfectly. This creature has almost 99% DNA similarity with kreblocks!"

"That's impossible!" Fardo said, looking at the creature.

"The data is all there, free to look at but obfuscated for those who don't want to see the truth. I believe that this was another species of hominid that lived among the humans, the chimpanzee, which records found by your very teams state shared almost 99% similarity with humans."

"Bring me that data," Fardo snapped to the intern she forgot the name of. They scurried off.

"The conspiracy is real. Human sent out colony ships from their failing planet, one of which must have landed on our homeland and mixed with our own ecology as all history of humanity was lost. But that's not the scary part."

"And what's that?"

"One need not go back but a few hundred years of kreblock history to see we were a violent warmongering species. If one colony ship survived, likely others did as well, possibly preserving their knowledge they are human. I fear that when we do find living aliens, they will look like us, act like us and likely had a hell of a head start."

/r/surinical