The October Music, Stanza 2 - Day 26

Upside Down and Inside Out

            Howard came to consciousness slowly. The supernova that had gone off inside his head had taken him out for several minutes. That can’t be good, he thought groggily as he tried to look around. He had been tinkering with the alien minerals the last survey crew had brought in from the asteroid when everything went white and then black. If he had had his way, he wouldn’t have touched the damn things, but you don’t get hired on to a crew like this without expecting that credits override literally everything else.

            As the world faded back into view, Howard noticed that everything was out of place. The tables were wrong. The chairs were wrong. The beakers and tools and even lighting were wrong. Had there been an explosion? If there had been, wouldn’t he be ash right now? That didn’t line up. Why was everything so blurry?

            He tried to shake his head and couldn’t. Oh shit. Was he paralyzed? He couldn’t afford that. His family couldn’t afford that. They had told him as much before he joined the crew. He was to send 80% of his credits home to take care of the family because that’s what family does. His father had also told him that, if he became a burden to them, he may as well just put himself in the airlock and head out to space. Apparently, family loyalty only went so far.

             Reflexively, he tried to wipe his eyes to clear the blurriness from them. Maybe he had just slept for a while, right? When he tried to wipe them, he noticed two things. First, that trying to do so really, really hurt his eyes. Second, that his hands had scraped against his eyes. Scraped. That was definitely the feeling. It didn’t feel like fingernails, though. It was more like bone.

            Even in the blurriness, Howard tried to reorient himself. The room had been moved around enough that he could just –

            He froze. No, the room hadn’t been moved at all. Everything was in place. He had been moved. The tables and chairs and the like were still on the floor where they always were, but he was on the ceiling. That made no sense. He needed to find a way down.

            More pressing, though, was the steadily increasing rush of pain covering literally his entire body. It had started as a tickle, then an itch, and now it was starting to burn. At the same time, he saw an inhuman amount of red pouring from the ceiling and splattering on the ground. Poor bastard. Someone must have…oh no.

            Howard moved his hand in front of where his eyes had been. The hand was perfectly intact aside from the little twist of being entirely inside out. The scraping he had felt was from the bones of his hand. His eyes were blurry because they were covered with skin and flesh. That was his blood. He was alive – just inverted.
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            That was when Howard began to scream.