Alien fic revived from cyro...
Jul. 12th, 2011 03:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wytchcroft
This, uh, 'impressionistic', piece first came to life as an article in the early 1990s while Alien3 crawled round cinemas in the crappy version it still was back then.
I say crappy with the benefit of dvd comparison to the ‘Fincher version’ but my initial view of the movie was positive – despite glaring faults and obvious production interference.
This was definitely something of the minority view and so, after a few fierce arguments, the article was pretty much forgotten by all and sundry (i.e. me). However, after Alien IV came out I rediscovered and rewrote the thing to include some of its scenes and characters.
Then put it back to the mercy of cryo-sleep.
Eventually though I did the Alien Quartet dvd viewing marathon and was completely blown away by the restored version of Alien3. I decided to resurrect the article and started to rewrite it pretty extensively. In true Alien style the job turned out to be horrendous and I gave up on it.
More recently however, I got into a conversation about the Alien films with a friend of mine who is something of a fan and she inspired me to finish the frakking thing at last. Thanks M. J. I owe you one, though I’m not sure the finished product was worth the effort.
This is a piece of fan fiction (yikes!), nothing is owned by me and I make no claims for originality on the back of a universe and characters created by a whole bunch of screenwriters, among the best in the business. Some of the dialogue is verbatim from the films but I have tried to keep it to a minimum. One line is actually based on a quote from novelisation writer Alan Dean Foster apparently given in an interview to explain his negative opinion of Alien3, (specifically in regards to the character of Newt,) so negative a view in fact that he has so far refused to novelise any further Alien films.
This is a dark story – it is Alien after all! - so it won't be for everyone. It’s not especially graphic though.
And, er, that’s about it I guess.
......................................................
Alien Ate Me:
Sometimes it feels like sleeping, I’m asleep and everything is dreams because nobody seems to hear me, nobody sees, nobody knows me or remembers who I am. And it’s been like that for the longest time. But I see and I remember. And I have a name; everyone has a name, don’t they? I have a name. More than one. My born name that’s Rebecca but no-one calls me Rebecca except my brother.
Rebecca isn’t me, not really. What is my name? They said it came from a man, he watched, he was a watchful man and he sat in the garden under the tree and an apple fell from the tree and he watched the apple fall and he picked the apple up from the earth and thought about the apple and how it got there and he had knowledge and he knew, gravity, he knew – and that was new and that was Newton and that’s me.
And space is dark and cold and you can’t live in it and you can’t see or breathe but you can sort of swim maybe, sometimes, and there are things like creatures and people and monsters and people, yeah, like living at the edge of it, I mean the corners of ponds, like by a big dark lake and that’s me too; Newt. I live at the side of the water - I live at the edge of the dark.
And I watch and I listen.
“Her lungs were full of water”
… But you can’t breathe water, you can’t breathe space, breathe the cold I mean –
“I’m almost certain she drowned, but it’s impossible to be a hundred percent sure.”…
Of course I didn’t drowned, I’m Newt, I told you! I can swim, see? Swimming, look at my tail isn’t it great? It’s got real long, like a snake almost a snake in the water but it swims and it shimmers and it dances and snakes don’t do that, no sir, swimming through the water, through the shadows, through the dark and the cold probing lights.
I can hear the scratchy sound of a pen. The man is finishing his report, signing his name I guess. He doesn’t seem to like it much. He says something as he writes, furious words, only there’s no fury in them. Maybe that’s because fury is everywhere around us. I don’t know.
His voice is a slab.
“Obviously, a death like this, it’s an obscenity.”
I don’t know what that means. The other stuff he said, I can still remember, and I could understand that ok because it was dumb.
“But it’s impossible to be a hundred percent sure”
… Yeah buddy? Well I’m sure, I’m certain and steady in every movement gliding through the water, there’s water everywhere now filling up the empty between the walls and the floors and the ceilings between the skin of the ship and the skin of me and the shadows that swim with me so quiet and concentrated and there’s a girl out there too, almost invisible with her tiny body all eyes and her clothes are dark and her hair is black so you can’t hardly see her. Just a girl, maybe she’s scared, maybe she’s terrified but she’s swimming anyway. Maybe she’s smiling. I swim towards her slowly just to see if she’s smiling - and to see if she’s really alone. She seems so alone. People shouldn’t have to be alone. But sometimes it’s better.
They put me in a bottle, she says, they poured me into a jar, dumped me in a drawer and slid it shut.
It’s a game, just a game, silly, Dead Man’s Fingers. Did he touch you? Show me where – all these fingers, all these faces blurring in and out, maybe if I squint real hard or close one eye, it’s better if you close both. Did it touch you, did he –? But they touch me, they touch me and it hurts, they touch me all the time.
And it hurts and there are so many of them, crowding around for a chance to pinch me with their bony fingers and cut me with their knives and stuff, digging.
And I can hear them.
“This is the wrong body”… “She’s wearing” – “She’s not…” “She’s wrong…” “This is wrong…” “This has to stop…”
I don’t know why I’m wrong, why it’s bad, why they want to dig at me, make a hole in me, rip at me, cut things out of me, there must be something inside, something better. I think they’re mad at me coz it’s hidden, the better me, doesn’t want them to see. It must be a secret.
“This has to stop!”
I want it to stop, mommy, I want it to stop!
I can’t speak, I’m trying to be brave now like Mom, she’s brave, always, she’s tough and strong, she’s gonna make it stop, all of it. I’m screaming and shaking but now Mom’s here and she knows what to do, make it stop, I’m so cold, she’s got that big flamethrower so it’s ok, I won’t be cold for long. Mommy loves me.
Oh God, get it out of me! She’s screaming in her head over and over just the one thing, get it out - get it out. Get it OUT! It moves and stirs inside her like it senses what she feels through every sweat drenched pore of skin, every adrenaline charged nerve, it kicks her.
Goddamn you! No! Not me, not my body, not you, not you thing, you alien bitch you are NOT my CHILD!
NOT my child you are my not child not bitch alien child you are my not my alien you are my-
She catches sight of her reflection twisted by warped metal; her face is distorted and wild looking, hungry. Her eyes are hard and the dome of her head, catching the flickering torchlight, is a smear, nothing human about it now, nothing of her. So she slams that head hard into the metal post, there’s a sickening thump and a spreading wetness, blood turning into heat, blazing into light.
“Don’t look at the light, Newt,” just don’t.
But the light just burns, it’s really hot, I can hear it sizzle, making the door glow and melting sticky like a brand new plate of Sunday waffles. I help my Mom make those.
I’ve been asleep a very long time, princess in a story, sleeping beauty but I don’t think I’m a beauty -and I wasn’t really asleep I was frozen like ice cream in a tub. I think they put things in you when you sleep like words and learning maybe. I’m supposed to be an old lady by now so they put things in you so then you’re old on the inside at least.
Hey there sweetie, so how was school? What did you learn today?
Ok, I guess, I learned some words all these funny words, I guess I already new some funny words like vector, processor, scanner, carbine, bulkhead, shithead. Now I got debris, collision, capsule, aorta, ventricle, membrane, impregnate, and the really long one, Xenomorph.
And you’re working on your math, you said you would try, for me, try really hard.
I have, I am – I know all sorts of crazy numbers now. 180924609. 337. 161. 36706.
Ripley, Ellen.
That’s my mother.
That’s me.
That’s just names. Sometimes I dream names; Nostromo, Sulako, Fiorina, E.E.V. - Bishop, Ripley, Hicks, Newt, Xenomorph, Alien...
A beautiful, beautiful baby…
Makes men scream.
“It’s coming up the A channel, the big bastard’s right behind me, guys, it’s right behind me! Come on trap it! Trap the fucker!”
Running and running, pounding down, everything sounds like a heartbeat. Doors slam and corridors twist in on themselves and fall away to nothing.
I don’t know where I am anymore except sometimes there is light and sometimes there is darkness and there are shapes in the light and there are things in the dark and I don’t want to go near any of them. And maybe I’m sleeping or running or swimming and maybe I’m under the sea or maybe I’m still in space... but it can’t be space it can’t - there’s so much noise. I don’t like it. Like water in the lungs, the swirl and gurgle, like the cough and splash of it, there are voices all around me.
“But there’s nothing there!” Hands waving in annoyed frustration.
“It’s just empty.”
Of course empty, they’ve cut everything out of me – hollowed me all out. The people, dressed like doctors with their lists and clipboards.
“Well, we don’t want this at all.” Never good enough.
“Just meaningless.”
“Too dark.”
But you told me not to look at the light…
“Well what about this, the tongue, make a nice souvenir.”
“Dumb?”
“Yeah…”
“Why?”
“For the funny.”
And the slower voice, the sound of its mouth the chewing noise it makes as it considers. “Huh. Ok, that might work.”
“Yeah I can go with that. Dumb is funny, dumb is always funny.”
I don’t want to be dumb. I don’t want to be funny. I want you to just go away!
All the faces leaning in, leering down to claim what’s left, picking at my body and grinning over the pieces with their wide, wide smiles and their long teeth glinting and drooling ready to bite.
“These things, the creatures, they like to go for the heart of things, that’s what we have to stop. They’ll be moving to the power core, where it’s safe and warm and nobody ever suspects.”
“Jesus. Ok, ok then, we better get ready to roll. How much time have we got?”
“Not enough. There’s never enough – but…”
“Yeah. I read you on that. Fuck it. Let’s go be heroes.”
“All the way.”
To the heart of things.
And the lungs.
When the first jet of water surges through the torn hull the ship gives out a scream high and long like a terrified pony.
She feels the impact not of the water some several sections away but of the scream, it is physical, it pulls her sharply around.
“No…”
If that is her screaming then it pales to the voice of the vessel, her lips won’t form a good shape, her throat won’t open properly, just groan, “No, no, no…” over and over again.
The covering above begins to crack. Water cascades from the ceiling, splashing and sparking off the computers, raining onto the workstations, the trays and the tiny plants - and her. She has the mad urge to open her visor, to rip off the helmet, to throw back her head and luxuriate in the gushing water. I’m going to drown, she thinks still somehow detached from it all. Divorced from really feeling, she is her own ghost, a spectator coolly watching as the body she is no longer connected to goes through the motions of panic and hysteria, jerking this way and that, flailing her arms and thrashing her reluctant legs against the ever increasing water, hurling herself through one door after another, careening into walls and lock-jams, desperately flicking rows of switches on the low ceiling of the compartment, trying to keep the power flow going, to stabilise the emergency floatation tanks and get a signal out, sobbing incoherently as her fingers work, running a broken commentary to her actions. “Life boat, air seals, lock down, no, no, not jettisoned, can’t...” - and calling out to Mother, to the shuttle, to anyone, anyone at all to be there in her ear, to speak, to save her. There is nothing, there is no-one.
Space is like a lake that froze. That was in a story I heard where the great lake just froze right over and a girl was skating on it, skating so beautiful and real happy making circles on the ice and cutting lines like a pattern, like a spider’s pattern little criss-crossed lines, cracks, cracks in the ice, cracks in the faceplate, cracks in the glass, in the window, chips and splinters and skating so fast, slipping through cracks in the faceplate, cracks in the glass. And she’s gone. Slipped into the dark, into the vacuum, into space, all the pieces of her ripped and revealed as they unravel, as they tumble out into the dark and gone.
The last things she sees are her mother’s eyes, her coal black eyes.
What really scares me is in the wind, the walking man. I can hear him, his long coat is like wings flapping as he comes, as the wind brings him to me. He scares me, this man, he is death. His fingers when he picks me up are chilled to numbness. His eyes are blanks and flat, nothing in them, no spark, no joy, no hope, no life.
He kills me. It’s him, I’m alive, kicking and reaching and screaming, till he picks me up and looks at me and my own eyes with nothing in them anymore.
“The child’s dead,” he says.
So I guess I am.
It was a girl, there was this girl. She had bad dreams.
I tried to help her. I think – I remember –
I tried to help her.
I told her to sleep.
And she told me her name.
………………................................................................................
“I was violated and now I get to be the mother of the leader.” Ripley.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2011-07-12 04:37 am (UTC)and I a so glad you are here with your stories
Yry! :)
Date: 2011-07-12 05:43 am (UTC)but 14 hr days? eek!
and how much time for gaming???
and the garden???
anyway, i am glad you are here on lj, always a friend and inspiration to me :))
Re: Yry! :)
Date: 2011-07-12 05:53 am (UTC)Mom is doing 90% of the garden, and I am just picking up the roses, makning some watering etc.
2-3 projects per day - have to capture chances :)) and have to redesign the structure of those chances otherwise I wouild be dead Unicorn.
2 - 3 projects a day
Date: 2011-07-12 06:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-12 07:38 am (UTC):)
no subject
Date: 2011-07-12 08:08 am (UTC)and it's a huge relief that the piece didn't put you off,
i don't (i think) usually go for emotions so directly but... - and it was hard to get the voices down... - and a million other issues that made me nervous about resurrecting and completing it.
So yes, thanks indeed my friend :)))
crikey - now i have to come up with something NEW! LOL!
no subject
Date: 2011-07-12 07:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-12 08:24 pm (UTC)