Page 4 of Monsters in Love: Lost in the Stars

The inside of the temple is cavernous and echoey, and I can immediately feel that I’m not alone. The tell tale sounds of small animals skittering away reassures me though. They wouldn’t be here if this was a predator’s home. Still, I’ll make my initial camp near the entrance. I want to be able to get away quickly.

The temple will shield me from the weather, but something tells me that this stone is going to chill me worse than if I were out in the elements. I need a fire, and if I’m lucky, as much brush as I can find. That way, I can pile it up underneath me to shield me from the cold of the ground.

Still limping, I sneak out of the temple, and into the courtyard. Clouds threaten on the horizon and I know my time is running out. The courtyard feels ominous now, with the statues' backs to me, each one symbolic of my family when I left the church…well, cult.

I keep trying to get used to calling it what it is, but it’s hard, when you've always known it as a church. Still, churches don't rule lives that way. I’d like to say that I got out prior to the sky opening up, but that simply isn’t the case. I wanted to get out, but I was still too scared. It wasn’t until after everything was complicated, when the Prophet was desperately re-writing the dogma to incorporate the aliens suddenly appearing from space that I realized that it was my time. With as much chaos as was happening, no one would see me leave…or so I thought.

Instead, someone saw me, and before I knew it, a whole mob had gathered and I was surrounded. For a moment, my mother tried to convince me to stay, but I was so scared that I couldn’t even hear her over the sound of my blood rushing in my ears. When I didn’t respond, they all spat on the ground at my feet, or at least it was supposed to be the ground, but a fair few hit my feet, and then they turned their backs on me and left.

Though I was trying to leave, I realized I was entirely alone. I’d already rented an apartment, with money I’d been squirreling away for years, hoping that at some point I would have the bravery to leave. So, I got on my little scooter, and went into town. Stashed it in my new parking spot, and cried on the floor of my empty apartment.

All of the statues threatened to pull me back to that day... until a drone reminds me where I am. The little whirring noise of its fan, the lights flashing at me to indicate that it is still recording. All of it adds up to an entirely different, but still familiar, memory.

I am here on another planet, and people all over the world are going to watch me and dream that they, too, could do something so miraculous. By now, they’d have played my intro interview on the episode, and so folks should know that I’d grown up in a cult. Not only would people be in awe, but if I’m lucky, they might be inspired, too.

When you grow up secluded from society, as I had, you find yourself without a lot of skills, except, perhaps, the skills I needed to survive.

I want to inspire people, because I needed someone to inspire me. So, I square my shoulders and hobble through the foreboding statues.

My ankle is killing me, but I can’t rest until I have fire, at minimum, so I kneel to gather some brush for kindling. Once I am near the ground, I decide I might as well just crawl. It hurts my ankle less, and everything I need is down there anyway.

I brought my pot with me, because this isn’t my first time, and dragged it around with me to hold the kindling. The ground in the courtyard isn’t just underbrush, or what passes for grass on this planet, it’s actually a thin layer of underbrush over stone. Stone that’s chipped in some places, stone that digs into my knees and slices them open when I miss a jagged edge. At some point, I explain what I am doing to the camera, but really, I'm trying not to get in my head. This doesn’t exactly bode well for my chances out here, and though I’ve been injured on location before, I often had a partner, or hell, a whole group of folks. On my first season, I’d even had a camera crew that I could talk at, instead of the drone. Today though, the loneliness is getting to me… early. It’s normal to get a bit stir crazy after you've been alone for a bit, but usually, talking to the camera can keep some of it at bay. Instead, it just reminds me that I am somewhere so dangerous that they couldn’t even bother with a skeleton crew for me.

“Fucking Cara,” I curse under my breath. All of this is because I agreed to be the guinea pig for her grand scheme. I’m not going to tap, I’ve got that bonus coming if I can finish alone, but it's going to be a lonely month. I fill my pot with tinder and then hiss as my knee catches on a raised crack. Pain slices through me and when I look, there’s a smear of blood on the ground. Damn.

Hopefully animals around here don’t have blood that smells like mine, the last thing I need is to smell like lunch. I pull up some of the fluffy plants that grow in the cracks of the stones. It’s not quite moss, but it should do to stem the flow of blood, and if I’m lucky, it might just conceal the scent of my blood as well.

I press it to my knee, leaning back to find the base of one of the statues. Relaxing against it, I realize that it’s my statue from earlier. He’s got the same grim, determined expression—well, of course he does, he’s a statue, his expressions don’t change—and virtually identical clothing to many of the others, but I immediately know it’s him.

“Hi, I hope you don’t mind if I lean on you—er, your stand…thingy.” I might not consider the drone good company, but I’ll talk this guy’s stone ear off. “I just need a minute to get this bleeding under control and I’ll be on my way.”

The temple will shield me from the weather, but something tells me that this stone is going to chill me worse than if I were out in the elements. I need a fire, and if I’m lucky, as much brush as I can find. That way, I can pile it up underneath me to shield me from the cold of the ground.”

The pain has dulled to a throbbing now, and the blood has slowed, though the

moss is soaked. Now, I really can’t be crawling around, I’ll grind dirt into my cut and leave a beautiful little scent trail right to me.

On the horizon, the clouds roll in faster than they would on Earth and I grimace. I don’t have time for sitting around and nursing my wounds. Not only do I need to get firewood for tonight, but if that storm is anything like I worry it might be, I’ll likely need some for tomorrow, too.

Thunder rumbles in the distance, a reminder that the clock is ticking.

“Well, this just keeps getting worse.” I say, as if the statue could respond. I grunt, pushing myself up to standing balancing to try to keep weight off of my foot. I wobble, and catch myself on the statue. Specifically, I catch myself on his butt, and blush.“Sorry,” I apologize, before rolling my eyes at myself. “Get a grip, Abbie, the statue doesn’t care if you grab its ass.”

The drone circles around me, its lights flashing in sequence as if laughing at me. “Alright you, let’s finish this.”