Thread by @_ZenGirl_

I'm going to take a shot at doing a story here on twitter. Here. We. Go. #twitterstory

Trana ran her fingers around the lip of the mug. She'd been nursing the coffee in the hopes that the longer she took to drink it, the longer it would keep her awake. She had to 1/?

keep an eye on them, the creatures in the long, ceiling high cages that lined two walls of the lab. She hated pulling the nightshift, but someone had to do it. Besides, management had decided that everyone had to do it at least once a month. 2/?

So here she was, watching them. She hated the way that they watched her, always watched her, never blinking. They couldn’t find a species with eyelids to study? She shivered, an array of green and blue and yellow pairs of eyes pacing in the darkness. She’d been told 3/?

that the researchers were trying to mimick a diurnal system, since the creatures were from a planet with only one sun. Heave shades had been drawn over the windows and the only light in the room was coming from her lamp. She’d worked a triple and was just not in the mood to 4/?

to be stared at all night. Why did they even need her? They had their cage. One of the sets of eyes, an unusual pair, each one half green and half yellow focused intensely on her. A shiver rippled down her spine. Outloud she said “You don’t scare me.” 5/?

It sounded hollow in the empty lab. The heavy wooden tables and the clock work machines that were crammed on to every surface seemed to absorb her voice and made it feel small. Especially when she looked at just how many of those eyes there were. She had only ever worked the 6/?

nightshift and it was forbidden to turn on any of the electric lights that lined the walls, only the lamp at her desk, so she had never seen the faces of the creatures that she guarded. She’d wondered more than once what the 7/?

rest of them looked like. They had an awkward long-short gate that she could hear when they paced back and forth in the deep darkness that settles in to the corners of forbidden rooms. Maybe if she turned on 8/?

the light, just once, for just a minute, they would creep her out a little bit less. She shook her head. It wasn't allowed. But then she looked up again and more of the eyes were focused on her. It was hard to tell sometimes where they were looking but 9/10

at least 3 sets of eyes were focused directly on her, and tracked her nervous movement as she stood and stretched and turned her back to prove just how un-rattled she was. When she turned back 4 more sets of eyes had joined the vigil. She locked gaze with 10/?

the strange one, with the half and half eyes and repeated "I am not afraid of you." A noise that sounded unsettlingly like laughter leaked from the cage. The eyes tilt as if the head were cocked to one side. 11/?

There was a rearranging in the cage, a shuffle-bump-shuffle, as bodies rearranged. Trana glanced away from the eyes for just long enough to see that she was now the center of attention. 11/?

She could feel them, their unblinking, unwavering gaze and she pulled herself to her full height. It was then that she realized just how small she felt. Even standing the ceiling was almost four feet above her head and the eyes reached to the top of the cage 12/?

stacked one on top of each other, but she never got the idea the creatures were standing on top of each other. She swallowed as she thought about how tall that made the creatures in the dark that watched her with frightening, staring eyes, from behind metal bars that 13/?

now seemed very thin. Again she wondered if she wouldn't be more at ease if she had seen them, if the things in the dark weren't unknowable unknowns. The things that we fear that live in our minds are so much worse than the terrors we know and can touch. 14/?

Something beeped behind her and she jumped, spinning, hand on her pistol at her hip to find the offending source of the noise. Her radio crackled on the table. She took a deep breath and tried to slow both of her hearts as a voice spoke in the dispatcher's usual monotone 15/?

intonation. She forced her shoulders to relax and reached for the radio, depressing the button to speak. "Facility 8-2-9-4-8, night duty here, please repeat." In the silence that followed a chorus of the hissing leaking laughter grated at her back like sandpaper 16/?

When she could hear the dispatcher again it was through static and he had lost his monotone voice. "--get --- door -- don't know when --- diurnal facilities compromised -- cages --GET OUT" 17/?

The hissing half laughter grew behind her, sliding under the tables that stood between her and the cages. There was a high pitched screeching sound that was mixed in to it, slowly, low at first then getting louder, multiplying and jumping around the room. It was 18/?

the sound of metal bars stretching against their will, pulled apart by unseen appendages. The radio screeched again, and a robotic automated notification began to play while Trana calculated how many steps she would need to get to the door, down the hall, and 19/?

to the containment room. Too many. "We apologize for this delay," the overly calm robotic female voice said. "but there has been an emergency situation across. Four. Teen. Diurnal testing facilities." What about if she fought them? Could she win? "Test subjects have "20/?

"proven volatile. Facilities are now being closed down. Please proceed to the containment area of your facility and wait for dispatch." The radio clicked off. There were footsteps, shuffle-jerk, step, shuffle-jerk, step footsteps behind her. there were so many of them. 21/?

"Are you afraid?" Asked a sliding, slow voice, so quiet she almost didn't hear it among the shuffling. "No." She said. She put as much force behind the single word as she could. It wasn't much. In one motion she grabbed the lamp from the desk and pulled her pistol 22/?

and pointed it erratically in front of her, wherever the light touched. It fell on the creatures who simply looked back at her, not even flinching at the sudden light. They were small, barely the size of children, and their lidless, bright eyes looked back at her curiously 23/?

they were advancing slowly, the one with the half and half colored eyes leading them. As it stepped towards her she lifted her gun. It paused. Then began to grow taller, elongating and widening its body, as if building its body from the inside out, until it stood with its 24/?

head brushing the ceiling. "Is it--" it started to say something and Trana screamed, panicked and backed up, dropping the lamps to the floor and firing her pistol in to the darkness. She fired 6 shots, then continued squeezing the trigger as the barrel clicked 25/?

its hollow empty sound in to the darkness. Tears were running down her face and she sobbed. She heard the emergency latches fall in to place. It didn't matter if she could have run before. She couldn't now. and she could still feel them getting closer to her. 26/?

The shuffling sound stopped. All she could hear was her own panicked breathing. Alarms had begun to sound, but they were lost in her adrenaline fueled panic She opened her eyes and screamed. A set of half and half colored, lidless eyes stared at her from only inches away. 27/?

"Are we that terrible?" the voice came from the darkness but it was the same one that had spoken before. "So terrible that you must lock us away so that you may never see us and when you do you must assault us?" She whimpered in return. A chorus of hisses cascaded over her 28/?

"Do you know that we never kill?" the voice asked. There was a long, long pause, the air filled only with alarms as Trana stared in to the darkness. They never kill? Had she fired on helpless creatures? But the radio had said -- "We NEVER kill." the voice cut in to 29/?

her thoughts. Then a pair of long, taloned hands gripped her by her shoulders and she screamed again. A third hand ran a long finger down the side of her face, then over her eyes. "We . . . . repurpose. We never kill." It said in a whisper by her ear. 30/?

END OF TRANSCRIPTION.

TRANA VALESA, AGE 29, DECEASED.

FINAL MEMORIES RECORDED FOR USE IN TRIAL AGAINST FULMER AND BOSCH RESEARCH LABORATORIES.

CHARGES: KNOWING ENDANGERMENT OF EMPLOYEES

VERDICT: NOT GUILTY. RESEARCH TO CONTINUE. 31/32

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