The sweat dripped off my fingers and into the cracks. “Not again,” I thought. I could hear my heart thumping with a quickening pace. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Was it really a prompt? It sure didn’t prompt me to do anything but want to leave. The floor creaked. “Who’s there?” I yelled, but I don’t wait for an answer. I knew who was there. I quickly drew out my blaster and blew the door to hell. “That would do it,” I told myself as I slowly turned back to the screen, but I knew there was nothing I could do. There was no time, so I did to the screen what I do to anything else that I don’t have time for: I put my fist in it. The glass shards ripped through my hand like razorblades. For some reason I thought it was made of plastic. It didn’t matter much; you only need one finger to pull a trigger. I stood up and kicked over my desk, just for effect.

“Oh my gosh! What happened to your hand?” she asked, stepping over the trilorg carcass. “College essays,” I said, nodding to the overturned desk. Of course she wanted to look at my hand. She always acted like she was a doctor. “Well that glass has gotta go,” Glenn said, rubbing her chin. I smiled and told her to warn the others about the trilorgs. Murderous eight foot tall creatures that feast on brains were not something easily forgotten. These college applications were a curse, they swelled my brain. I thought my head must have looked like a big supple ham to them. I looked up, something was moving around on the floor above us. She heard it too. “Isn’t that the bridge above us?” she asked. She was right, they were probably flying us right to some trilorg slaughterhouse. “We’re wasting time, just go!” I yell. I wasn’t this nervous since last Thursday… the last time this happened. The circumstances were different. This carnage was supplemental. She ran out the rear airlock and I heard a muffled scream, then the sound of a bone saw. They were hungrier than I thought. That didn’t give me much time; they were probably planning to eat us all now, on our own ship. I jumped out the airlock and pumped three ounces of plasma into the trilorg. Glenn’s brain was exposed… that just did it. I kicked the trilorg’s remaining teeth in and headed towards the bridge.

I was blasting trilorgs left and right. You could hear the burning plasma rip into their bodies and come out the other side. My gun soon overloaded and died, that was inevitable. I kicked a few in the jaw as I made my way over to the main control panel to do what I had come there to do. I smashed down the ship’s self destruct button, that seemed to have the word “SUBMIT” on it, with my bloody fist and muttered, “See you all in hell.”

The ship groaned and shook, but no explosion came. I cursed under my breath. I must have forgotten some field… I searched the panel for a red asterix, but I ended up finding a few on my chest from the trilorgs’ blasters. One of them said something like, “Don’t move, human.” I could hear the whir of a bone saw behind me. Another one moved past me and tapped some commands into the panel. They were locking all the airlocks on the ship. “That’ll stop these pesky interruptions,” the trilorg said. Just then it clicked: all of the trilorgs had to be right here with me on the bridge. I slid my hand down to my belt. A trilorg shot my arm off. Through the immense pain I could hear them laughing and fighting over the fresh meat. With the diversion going, I whipped my other hand to my belt and unloaded three high explosive plasma grenades and smiled. “Eat up.” I said, tossing one in each mouth.

I woke up with a start, dried saliva on the corner of my mouth, my computer screen intact. “Crap,” I thought. The prompt is still there blinking incessantly. Nothing done, again.