How Long

A lone researcher crashes on a planet far from earth. How long does he survive?

Four days, seven hours, twelve minutes, and thirty-seven seconds is how long I have been here. I have been running from… well, something ever since I got here. It is a weird thing, being alone, even for a short time. The reason why I know how long it has been is because my watch told me. I have abandoned my ship, since it is now useless to try to get off this planet. Everyone that was with me is dead, all twenty-six people that came with me are now dead, so there is no one to talk to or even help me find a way off.

I was part of a research team that was sent to this distant planet far away from earth to see if it could be colonized, and if there was or not any sentient life. We didn’t find any sentient life, heck, most of the people on the ship died before we got here. It was all because of that stupid meteor that hit us before we even touched the atmosphere. Fortunately for me, the atmosphere is breathable, so I can’t die from lack of it, but that wasn’t my problem that I was facing down on the ground.

From a distance, the planet had some blue to it, indicating that the planet has water on it. Where on earth you would normally see 

green, there was variety of purples, oranges, reds and yellows, but no 

green, so it was nothing like earth.The planet’s moon was much like 

the moons of mars, only bigger and more jagged, which would make 

for an interesting nighttime. There was plenty of life signs, our ship told us that nearly a dozen time. It made me almost want to bash in the computer just so that it would shut up for even a few seconds. Too bad the ship didn’t tell us about the meteor that made us crash, and the only survivor was me. Yay for me…

Getting out of the ship was easy, though the flames from the wreckage made it a bit harder, since they were everywhere. I was walking for about ten minutes away from the wreck when it happened. The ship that I escaped from exploded in a big mushroom cloud of smoke, so now there was no way of getting back home, not that there was much to get to, though I would like to get back.

From the ground, the trees did not look like trees. The looked more like some sort of like those swirled lollipops, only more solid, and they shedded in chunks, not leaves. The bushes, I assumed, were like hard candies, though they didn’t taste like candy. Trust me, they are awful tasting. The weirdest thing to me was that there was no smell to anything around me. It was strangely quiet too, under the pink sky that was above me.

About a day's worth of walking around looking for something to eat, I felt something watching me. When I turned around, I saw the weirdest creature in my entire life. Some kind of four legged creature was staring right at me, inches away from my face. It didn’t have any eyes, but I could tell it was looking at me. The creature’s body was made of some kind of slime, or at least, it looked like it did. It was the same colors as the planet itself, and had no other distinguishing features, it didn’t even have a tail. I was about to walk away slowly from it, when its head, or what I thought was his head, opened up like a flower of some kind to reveal that its insides were just like its outsides. It slowly leaned toward me, like it was going to swallow me whole, so I took off running.

I didn’t take the time to look back at it to see if it was chasing me, after a couple minutes of running, I thought it would be best to stop and rest. I was out of breath at this point and was about to collapse. I should have never cut gym class. I then heard something. It was a kind of watery, popping sound that told most people that there was water nearby. I decided to hobble over to the source of the sound, still exhausted. When I got there, though, I was very disappointed. What looked like water from space was actually just a blue goo. I took a closer look at it and it was definitely not water of any kind. I tasted it, and that was a mistake. To make a comparison, dirt tasted way, way better than whatever this was. Don’t ask how I would know that, I just do.

How long has it been? I can’t remember, and my watch just died, so I can’t find that out. I am so hungry, and so thirsty, especially from running from whatever that thing was that I ran into earlier. I was so tired, in fact, that I ended up collapsing to the ground, which felt an awful lot like some kind of solid jelly. It was a few moments before that thing that was hunting me came up and stared at me again. I didn’t care at this point whether or not that thing ate me, since there was nothing for me to eat on this planet anyway. It opened its head again, and finally, the end came for me.

Author's Note

The first story I posted online, so just tell me if it is good or not.

Reviews

[History_Birdman]

Pretty good for a first story. My only criticism is the line spacing problems(Not major) and the fact that the story is told in the past tense even though the narrator dies in the end so they couldn't tell the story. If you can adjust the tense of it and fix the line spacing, it would make a world of difference. Great imaginative plot though. Hope to see more!