Snippet: Space Ruins
I am delaying. Taking readings on the same scrub brush that we have collected readings on for days. Dead. Complex roots held it to the surface of this moon when the escaping atmosphere took everything else with it. Not everything. I shouldn't say that. Not the ruins, or I wouldn't be out here. Not the... Else Beast. Or I wouldn't hesitate here, where the top of m shadow brushes the line between day and night. The sun at my back. Twelve of us came from the university to explore and document a ruined city, testament to a forgotten civilization. Off-casts of the brilliant magenta planet watching from above my head. Three teams of four. To compare and contrast our findings. Each went off, when the one before failed to return. I stayed behind to monitor from the camp, so someone would be there when the first two teams returned. That was two days ago. Two-hundred fifty kilometers of scrub brush that I documented. I either go home alone, or join them in the fate that awaits in the darkness bleeding over the excavation site. I can sense it watching me. I step forward, deeper into the dusk. Author's note: These snippets are unedited free-writing exercises that I use as a way to shift my brain into a creative state. I use Lynda Barry's What It Is YouTube timed exercises (usually 9 minutes worth of writing) for these. They are handwritten in a composition notebook, and then typed up here. As I transcribe them, I do tiny grammar and spelling checks, but the overall "clarity" (if you can call it that) of the exercise is left as-is.