The Diary of Mitch R. Singer

 

Silently orbiting a dead planetoid

I walk through corridors of padded white walls as though I were trapped in an insane asylum. The lights flicker and swing feebly from their chains, steam pouring out of vents like geysers, while the crew bickers about their shares over reconstituted Chinese food that tastes like Styrofoam. Nothing is free in this place, not even the cardboard food. I take my chair and drink some swill out of a pale mug. The mug says "The Company," in plain bold lettering. "There's always a man," I say. Everyone looks at me silently before returning to their arguments.

In the medical ward

We watch dispassionately as they try to remove the organism from Dallas's face. It has acid for blood, and sort of looks like a cross between a crab and a pair of cancerous testicles. Rupert says it is pumping something down his throat, but we all disagree with this statement. All the men cross their legs when he says this. I take a quarter out of my pocket and go buy a cup of coffee. Every surface around here seems to drip water. I am more worried about water leaks than the Lovecraftian rape monster.

In the lounge

Everyone is terrified and pissed. A little penis monster erupted from Dallas's chest during dinner, covering our twenty-dollar food with blood and gore. "Maybe it wasn't a good idea to skip quarantine," I suggest. Everyone tells me to fuck off. I put my dinner in the trash and go to fetch a net. We have to catch the penis monster, apparently. I don't want anything to do with it, but I don't give the orders around here. I never give the orders anywhere.

Crawling through ventilation shafts

I picked the short straw, and so I am squeezing through our vents, a flamethrower in my right hand, a weak lamp in my left. The penis monster is larger now, somehow quadrupling in size despite not consuming anything but a bit of Dallas's abdominal wall. I have a motion tracker that does nothing but increase my likelihood of cardiovascular failure. In retrospect, having a man craw through a tight ventilation system with a homemade flamethrower in an attempt to drive an eight-foot-tall penis monster into an airlock seems like a terrible idea. If the penis monster is close to me, I'll melt my face off with the flame thrower. There is no room to escape, and the penis monster seems to know the vents better than anyone. So it goes. Once again the little guy gets screwed.

Cornered by the penis monster

The penis monster has cornered me in the pilot's room. I tried to blow the ship up, but somehow the penis monster figured out what was going on. I guess this thing is smarter than we thought. I gesticulate before it, trying to explain that I am not a threat. It hisses, drools, and advances, moving lethargically, like it has been drugged. There seems to be no way out of this one. Figures. I was going to retire after this voyage. "You look like you were dreamed up by an obese, creepy Swedish man with a thing for wieners and vaginas," I tell it as it approaches. It pauses, hanging its phallic head. I think I hurt its feelings.