Thud. I stopped dead in my tracks. What was that noise? It was faint yet still loud enough for me to hear it down stairs. I had just turned the lights off down there as I got ready to go to bed, I'm sure I had left everything perfect so that nothing would fall. I stared down into the dark abyss downstairs. I stared and I stared, but it was just the darkness that stared back. Deciding it was just my lack of sleep that led me to imagine the noise, i grabbed the cold metal knob to my room, layed down on my warm and familiar bed, and fell asleep under my cozy wool blanket. While I was asleep, I dreamt about the stairs again. I was staring back into the darkness, but this time it was cold, and I was terrified. I tried moving away from the stairs, I didn't want to look into the dark abyss. But I found myself unable to move. Although it was my own house, it felt so unfamiliar then. Through the shadows of the darkness, I saw something moving in the dark. It didn’t look human, its proportions were off, almost as if the thing were trying to mimic a human appearance but failed. I tried to move again, absolutely horrified by what I saw, when suddenly. THUD, I woke up in a cold sweat under the familiarity of my blanket. Concerned, I got up quickly out of my bed, and rushed into the hallway leading downstairs. I flicked on all the lights and searched my house, but i found nothing that was out of place. And then, through the screen to my backyard, I saw the creature again, rushing into a bright light that I don't recall leaving on in my backyard. As scared as I was, I cautiously made my way to the screen door, where I saw something that I was sure should not have been real. A giant cube. Its dark metallic shell, along with the light that brightly beamed out of the small opening in the cube, filled me with dread. I felt as if it were calling to me, its darkness enveloping me. 

Every fiber in my body told me to run far, far away, but suddenly my body was moving towards the entrance. I can't explain what overcame me, but I felt compelled to go inside the dreadful thing. I stepped through the bright opening, but I quickly found the light had no source, nothing but a lure, because the inside was a black abyss. The darkness swallowed me whole, and as I tried to leave the door slid shut. I was completely alone, in some vessel of dread in the form of a cube. I frantically felt around the dark area, in hopes that I would find another exit back into the world I was so accustomed to. But due to my fumbling around in the darkness, I lost my footing on some dark object and fell down some kind of hole further into the cube. I landed with a thud, and I felt like I had broken every bone in my body. I laid on the ground for a while, my whole body aching, yet when I tried to get up, I was completely fine. A fall that size should have surely broken many bones, it might have even been big enough to kill me. Yet there I was, searching yet again for another exit, ignoring the fact I had just fallen down a deep hole. I searched and I searched, yet I found nothing. After what felt like minutes, maybe even hours, I sat down on the cold metallic floor, I breathed in the cold yet fresh air, and gave up. I laid down in defeat, and as I laid down, I couldn't help but notice that the cube was rumbling, i hadn’t noticed it before, but now that I had my ear to the floor, it was clear as day. “Whatever,” I thought. All I wanted to do was lie on the floor and die, maybe that was the only way out of the cube. As I rested on the floor I could feel the darkness holding me down, almost like it was tucking me in. I laid and sunk into that darkness. I closed my eyes, and lost myself. 

Days? Weeks? Months? Years? I don't know how long it was before I woke up to that damned THUD again. It was the loudest I had ever heard it. It startled me and I got up from the floor, to be greeted by the door I had come in the ship through. It was slowly opening. How was it that I was back at the door, if I ran around for so long? I didn't know, and I didn't care. I rushed towards the door, hoping I would see my house again, and hoping I could forget all about this nightmare. As I stepped outside of the ship, I blinked and squinted my eyes to get accustomed to the light I had not seen in so long. But when I looked around, I quickly realized I was not back home. I had no idea where I was at all. The ground was a light brown, with purple veins running through it as far as the eye could see. The terrain was bumpy, filled with big hills that surrounded me on either side. I was in some sort of canyon. The terrain was all the same as the ground, with no difference at all. On top of the hills that towered above me, I saw what looked like dead trees, though they weren't. They looked like them, they had no leaves, and the branches all grew in different ways. But the trees here were made of some kind of black goo substance. It looked like ink, and it was constantly dripping from the trees. After I was done being shocked by my surroundings, I took a deep breath, and noticed that the atmosphere was completely different. The air was so pure, too pure. It was like nothing I had ever breathed in before. The sky was a dark gray, and if there were clouds then they blended in with the sky. I saw no sun, yet the entire planet was still well lit. planet… I thought. Was I on a different planet? No, surely I was still dreaming. I would wake up any second now, and be greeted by my alarm clock screaming that it was time to wake up. 

Once I was done taking my surroundings in, I noticed a dripping sound behind a rock not too far from me. I went to investigate what the sound was, I'd use any excuse to get further away from the cube that brought me there. As I walked towards the rock, I noticed the ground was sort of squishy, like the skin of a human. When I got to the rock, I circled around it to see what the source of the noise had been. It was one of those dead trees. I could see the texture even clearer now, constantly dripping that black inky substance. I reached to touch the mysterious object, but I heard some kind of noise I can't explain suddenly behind me, along with a gust of wind. I slowly looked around to see what the noise was, and I'll never be able to explain exactly how terrified I was. The human mimic I had seen at my house was suddenly behind me. I realized then that it was nothing like a human. Its body was that of a skeleton, and it was made of the same inky substance as the trees. Its arms were different in length, and the ink dripped from its fingers. And for its head, it had no head. What should have been there was compensated with a black smoke that had no source. The thing was also enormous in size, it must have been at least 8ft. The inky creature was constantly twitching around, and I noticed parts of its body would disappear before reappearing shortly after. After a while of me staring in disbelief at the inky creature, it started trying to communicate with me in some language I had never heard before. I tried for a few minutes, but I must have noticed I had no idea what it was saying, because it gave out some kind of grunt. It suddenly reached out its hand, and before I could retaliate, its hand grabbed the top of my head, and everything went black.

When I came back from wherever I had been, I suddenly realized I had thoughts that weren't mine, memories that weren't mine, had that thing shared its thoughts somehow? That wasn't what concerned me however, what concerned me was what I was seeing in my newfound memories, a giant monster that looked like it was sent by Satan himself. I let out grunts of pain as I fell to my knees while the inky creature watched me, flickering in and out of existence. The beast I saw in the memories was worse than anything I had seen, it was the giant upper half of a skeleton, it wasn't like mine and yours, it wasn't like that of the ink covered creature in front of me, it was made out of the same material as the ground I was kneeling on. Brown, with purple veins going all around it, and on top of it was a skull of the same material. Only half of it was covered in flesh, it was the giant head of a human, its one eye looking frantically around everywhere, and it had a smile that was too big to be real. The monster was hunching over some kind of city that was surrounded by the dead inky trees. Then I noticed the monster was chewing on something, I had to squint to see it, but when I did see it, I instantly knew that the fear I had towards the monster was mutual between me and the friendly creature. Because inside of the jaws of the monster, I saw it was chewing on the dead corpses of the same kind of species that the creature in front of me is. I snapped back to reality. I started to hyperventilate. Where am i, where am i, where am i? I started to panic, why was I here? What had I done to get here? Was I in hell? As I sat on the ground clenching my chest, the creature put its hand on my head again, and this time only two memories came to me. One was of the word 

YOU. 

the other was of the word

 KLL. 

You kill. Did that creature want ME to kill that giant beast? No, surely not, how would I kill such a thing? I got up and pushed past the creature, leaving a dark substance on my clothes. I started running back to the ship, the darkness in there was better than the hell out here. Before I could get even a quarter of the way there, the monster willed itself into existence in front of me. I came to a stop, almost tripping forward. I panted heavily, and then I started pleading to the creature. “You have the wrong guy, I can't do this. I'm just an ordinary man, how am I supposed to kill that thing?” the creature put its hand on my head yet again, and yet again more memories appeared. 

of the same being. Put the beast to rest. Only human. No us.

 Of the same being? Put the beast to rest? Was I chosen just because I was human?

The creature reached out its hand and offered me something. In its inky hands, it held a syringe. In it, some kind of blob of ink was moving around in it. I took it cautiously, and more memories I wasn't aware of appeared in my head. 

Inject. Beast. If you do, Go back home. If not,

 The memories ended at if not, but that wasn't what I cared about, I cared more about going home. I was absolutely terrified, but the only thing I wanted was to go home. And something was telling me that the only creature that stood before me wouldn't let me get back into the ship until I helped it. I started panicking again, and with the same confidence that overtook me when I first walked into the giant cube, I told the creature I would help it. The smoke on its head seemed to grow for a few seconds when I told it, almost like it was thanking me. Before I could ask what I was supposed to do now, the monster grabbed me, and in an instant I was somewhere else. Before me was a dusty and destroyed room. I looked around and noticed it was the room of a child, filled with toys and books. Drawings on the walls of a girl and her family. The roof of the building was missing, and as I scanned around I noticed that in the corner, was half a bed. There was a giant hole in the building where the other half of the bed should have been. In the sheets of the half bed that remained, I noticed that a blanket was still covering something. It took me a second, but the realization almost made me throw up. I quickly scanned the room for the creature to take my mind off of the scene and saw that it was waiting for me at a window nearby. I met the creature at the window and looked out, I noticed that we were in the ruins of a neighborhood, and no more than 5 blocks away, was the evil beast, sleeping. My eyes widened, my lungs narrowed. the friendly creature teleported away, leading a trail of ink toward where it went. I followed the ink, leaving the room. I went down a hallway full of pictures that I didn't look at to not make myself feel worse about the scene in the room. I met the creature at the front door of the house. It looked, or atleast faced its body, at me.we stared at each other for a few seconds, before in some otherworldly, deep and raspy voice that came from no source. The creature managed to utter the phrase “Good luck.” before it phased out of existence and teleported elsewhere. It left a trail of ink to some far off place that it teleported to. I stood there for a few minutes, before walking down the empty street towards the beast. Surrounding me were houses completely destroyed, like some kind of war happened. Through the holes in some of the houses, I was able to make out the dead trees again, growing freely. The ground wasn't made of the brown and purple veins, it was made of ordinary pavement and concrete. Above me, rain started falling from invisible clouds. With every step I took I got closer to the beast, and before I knew it, the thing was right in front of me. 

Almost as if sensing my presence, it woke up, letting out something I wouldn't call a yawn, but something similar to one. It towered above me like a skyscraper. Its eye staring dead into my soul. The upper half of the skeleton was coming straight out of the ground, blending together as if the skeleton were part of it. It continued to look at me, before it started smiling. it was a relieved kind of smile, as if it had been waiting to see me. or at least another human. As I stared up at the beast, rain pouring into my eyes, I almost didn't notice the tentacle making its way slowly towards me until it was right in front of me. I tried to jolt away, but the tentacle wasn't trying to grab me. Rather, at the end of the tentacle, was a hand that was extended out to me, as if asking me to grab it. Paralyzed with fear, I traced the tentacle with my eyes to see where it was coming from, and noticed it was coming from the tip of the beast's finger. I looked at the hand, its purple veins pulsing every other second, with the rain falling down on it. Some twisted part of me, almost like some natural instinct, urged me to grab the hand. But I swiftly took out the syringe the friendly creature had given me, and stabbed it into the hand of the beast. It let out an angry roar that almost defended me. I was able to get half of whatever was in the syringe before the monster ripped its tentacle away, breaking the needle of the syringe, rendering it useless. The syringe appeared to have had some kind of effect on the monster. the half of its head that was pure bone turned black, with half of its torso turning black as well. The monster held its giant's hands up to its head. it covered its boney side as if ashamed of it, and after a few minutes of crying, it gave me the angriest stare I had ever seen. Its eyes looked at me with pure malice, like the only thing it wanted in the world was to inflict the same amount of pain on me that I had just inflicted on it. Before it even crossed my mind to run, the monster rose its hands above its head, only then did I decide to run, but it was already too late. The monster's enormous hands slammed into the ground, and a giant shockwave of dust and rubble swept me away into a building, where I felt a sharp pain in my shoulder before it all went black. 

I woke up to a gust of wind swooping towards me. Before I was able to open my eyes I recognized the sounds of the giant monster in agony, its cries filling the entire city. When I opened my eyes, I saw the friendly inky creature. I smiled, I had no idea what it was, but in this hellish landscape it was the closest thing I had to a friend. Before I could say anything I coughed up blood, and I quickly noticed that there was a giant rod piercing my right shoulder. I moaned in pain, and tried to free myself, but the monster broke the metal rod at its base, and then proceeded to pull the rod straight out of me. I yelled as loudest as I ever had in excruciating pain. The creature didn't seem worried however, it simply grabbed a chunk of the brown and purplish ground that was exposed under the flooring, and shoved it into the hold that the rod left. The chunk of ground the creature put in me started pulsing around, before fitting perfectly into my wound, and suddenly I felt better. My eyes focused and unfocused, like my body was reacting to the newly introduced part of me. I looked at the wound and noticed that all the purple veins were gone, it was not just a discolored patch of skin. I didn't know whether to thank the monster for helping me, or yelling at it for putting an alien object right into me. What if I got infected with some kind of virus not yet known to man? Before I could decide which to do, the creature reached its hand out to me. I tried grabbing its hand, but it pulled it away before extending it again. I was confused at first, before I realized it wanted the syringe. What was it gonna do with the syringe? The needle was broken. I handed the creature the syringe, it grabbed it, and with its other hand, it grabbed my head one last time, and its memories spoke to me. 

Thank you. Give me an opening. Ever grateful. My people won't forget. Thank you. 

The creature got up off its knees, turned around, and slowly walked towards the giant beast that was still crying out in pain. Give me an opening? What was it going to do? But before I could question it further, the creature answered my question on its own. The creature suddenly teleported to the beast’s mouth. It held on to one of the beast's yellow stained teeth. The beast was surprised, and had no time to react before the creature did what forever sealed its fate. The creature broke the syringe, and poured the contents into the monster's mouth. I don't know how, but somehow I just know that the creature was at peace in its final moments. it wasn't distraught or sad, it was relieved. The monster crushed the creature, my friend, with its teeth. The monster's face, the side with flesh, slowly melted away, revealing the other half of its not black skull. The torso of the monster completely melted away, the skull of the monster fell to the ground, dropping the now lifeless body of the friendly creature on the ground on its way down. The skull of the monster landed on the ground with a loud thud, leaving a shockwave of dust sweeping over the city, not as intense as the first. I knew then the deed was done. 

I must have blacked out again, because I was suddenly back at the entrance to the ship. I looked around confused as to how I was back, but I could only assume that somehow, it was the inky creature fulfilling its promise that I would make it back home. But then I noticed that on top of the hills that surrounded me, were other inky figures, just like the one I had befriended. They were all looking down at me, their smokey heads collectively making them look like a refinery. Then, I heard that dripping sound again, I looked back down towards my plane, and saw that there was another one of those inky dead trees near the entrance to the ship. I looked at it, and suddenly a hand came out of it, it held another syringe. Confused, I grabbed the syringe from the tree, and suddenly another hand pooped out of it and grabbed my hand. Three last memories rushed to my head. 

For your world. 

Why would I need another syringe for my world? Maybe the strange aliens had gotten something wrong. Grateful nonetheless, I took one last look at the strange planet, and noticed that the purple veins were fading from the ground. Feeling accomplished, I made my way back into the cube, where the door promptly closed following my arrival. I laid on the ground, ready to be taken back home after everything that's happened. Yet again, a mysterious amount of time passed. Days? Months? Years? I had no clue. When I awoke again, I saw that the door to the ship was already open, and the light from the outside flooded the inside of the ship. I got up, and slowly made my way towards the outside world that I was so accustomed to. It took my eyes time to adjust, but when they did I almost started crying tears of joy. I planted my feet on the grass of my backyard, and took a deep breath of the not so pure air, but it was still air I was grateful for. I looked back towards the ship one last time, but it was already gone. As fast as it appeared in my life, it left just as fast. Exhausted, I decided to lay on the grass in my backyard. It’s good to be home again, I thought. The sounds of the cars going past my house, the sounds of a party somewhere distant, it felt so good. But while I laid in the grass, I noticed something on my arm. Something that made my heart instantly drop. On my forearm, underneath my torn shirt, I saw a purple vein.