Steven Sheil
@scsheil.bsky.social
1.7K followers 1.2K following 4.1K posts
Screenwriter and director: 'Mum & Dad', 'Dead Mine'. Writer of dark fiction. Co-Director of Mayhem Film Festival @mayhemfilmfestival.bsky.social. Nottingham, UK. linktr.ee/StevenSheil Creator of @adrianchills.bsky.social
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Since then, I have come across countless other bodies, some stripped of flesh, some of bone, some of skin. And the creature I have seen many times too - each time pinker, bloodier, as though building itself layer by layer into completeness.
I believe that the creature’s survival depends on its ability to adapt to its circumstances, to create itself anew from its surroundings. Gradually it is becoming bigger, stronger, smarter.
Weaponless, stranded, I am helpless to defend myself against it.
Unless by doing what it does.
For months I have been collecting the creature’s excretions and using them as fertilizer in the improvised greenhouse I have erected in the ship’s sauna. The only plants I was able to scavenge from the ship’s garden were a handful of established kiwi fruit vines and these I have nurtured as though they were my own children.
A week ago I carried out my first harvest - a bowl of mature fruits, bred on the waste from the creature. These I devoured, from seed to skin - the skin, I soon discovered, being the repository of the most useful nutrients - savouring the sweet taste of fresh food after so long living on dried rations.
The results have been promising. I no longer need to use my suit when travelling between the broken parts of the ship; breathing has become optional. Even better, I have found that by ingesting small fragments of the debris through my newly-grown proboscis, I have been able to develop a new skin made of that same metal.
Like the creature I am becoming what I need to be in order to survive.
And if I fear that my humanity is drifting away like the corpses of my friends, into oblivion? That is just the price I have to pay for survival.]](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:4ps4orztj6irrde43x4urrgy/bafkreiardr7wdqwpwgjgk64sn2hcsaxfmyrklouiw5l6724o556wnzwqii)
