Yo don't turn on the air conditioning, there's monsters in the vents!
Once upon a time, there was a noise in the vents. It was an annoying, shuffling, grating noise that was permeating from the vents and it was keeping the narrator from being able to work because it was louder than the thoughts inside one’s own head. This noise had been coming and going for the past hour or more, almost as if something was moving back and forth through the vents of the Saragossa. This was bad for both the narrator, who had a deadline to complete, and our hero, who was trying to get some sleep. This story’s hero is as to be expected, a young lady who has a very sad past but is determined to create a better future for herself and those around her. She’s very selfless, very brave, very much standing over the narrator’s shoulder, and her name is Cricket. Cricket was a nurse on the spaceship known as the Saragossa, which has been traveling the depths of space for nearly five years; the narrator, on the other hand, is a stowaway who has only been here for about three hours.
Cricket has had no prior issues on the Saragossa, whether it be with angry passengers or noises in various vents at bedtime. Cricket, being the brave, selfless human that she was, decided that she would go and stop the awful shuffling noise in the vents. Sadly, it would not be so easy for Cricket to simply go and stop the noise in the vents, for not everything on the Saragossa was as it was when Cricket first laid down her head.
Cricket’s very strange adventure started when she stepped out of her room and ran right into the narrator, the following conversation was something along the lines of;
“Who are you?”
“I’m the narrator, you’re not supposed to be able to see me.”
“You’re a giant rat! With the head of a cat! And you’re wearing a purple waistcoat! And a pocket watch!”
“Well yes, but you need to move along with the story now, so I’ll just get out of your way.” The narrator then proceeded to awkwardly shuffle sideways in a crab-like fashion and subsequently out of the story and thus out of the view of Cricket.
Cricket shook off the weird encounter and continued on her way, following the noise in the vents as it scurried along. Cricket ran all about the ship chasing the noise, until eventually she ended up in the boiler room where she discovered something horrible.
Cricket had found her way into the boiler room while chasing the incredibly annoying noise as it made its way through the vents. Upon entering the boiler room Cricket found to her horror that a humanoid cat creature, that was awful scary and disgusting looking, was roasting her shipmates alive. This wasn’t the thing that had been running through the vents, it was simply much too big for that, which confused Cricket because even though this was horrible it wasn’t what she had come down here to deal with. That was until the narrator thought of a solution to this conundrum and simply wrote in the humanoid cat creature having a giant maggot as a helpful companion to its evil deeds. As Cricket crept closer she could see more clearly her shipmates’ bubbling corpses, which is disturbing so we’re not going to talk about it, as the narrator has just eaten lunch and wishes to keep it in their stomach.
Cricket did manage to find something useful among the corpses with bubbling, burning skin. She found a led pipe, not the most effective weapon in the world but it would probably work against giant humanoid cat creatures and their faithful maggot companions.
Unluckily for Cricket though, the humanoid cat creature turned and saw her.
“Eek! It’s a live one! And it’s got a pipe! That’s my only weakness!”
“Begone foul beast!” Cricket cried as she swung at the cat creature.
A really epic battle ensued, unfortunately, the narrator fell asleep and missed all of the interesting parts. But do not fear, for the narrator managed to wake up for the end and knows that Cricket managed to break both of the beast’s knee caps and was now pointing the pipe in the beast’s ghastly face.
“Why?” Cricket demanded from the monstrous cat creature.
“Why what?” The disgusting being asked.
“Why would you do this? What was the point?” Cricket clarified.
The cat creature tilted its giant humanoid cat head and gave her a nerve-wracking, spine-chilling grin.
“Because you bothered to look.”
Cricket dropped the pipe and stumbled back, the sound of the awful creature’s laugh ringing in her ears.
Now the narrator understands that the moral of this story may seem unclear, and it is. All good stories need the reader to take from it what they will, at least that is what the narrator’s english teacher told the narrator. It’s the repersentation fear of waking up to a world that is not our own, seeing things that we cannot recognize, being kept up by noises that scrape and scurry. This is a tale that says sometimes it is better not knowing the cause of bumps and screams in the night, rather than face the horrors of their cause.
