Mini adventures. Mini Sci-Fi. Mini History. Mini Fantasy. Mini-escapes. What you can expect from the…

“Five-Minute Escape”

short Sci-Fi story.

 

THE PORTAL

Copyright Terofil Gizelbach, 2013

 

 

I’m running in a high tower, an endless white tower, and I hear the sound of boots clicking on the ramp below…

If they catch me they will kill me.

I came in the transference portal in a fiery ring, an experiment in time/space travel. I hit the ground hard, in a heap, shivering. The shivers are part of the transference process—they attack during the leap and hold on for a minute or so, incapacitating you, leaving you drained, weak…

We didn’t know. No one knew. This was our first leap.

But where? Where am I? I do not know; God, I do not know…

It is like a dream. Surreal. Towers and courtyards in stark whites, brilliant, blindingly, gypsum bright. Delineated shadows, sharp, almost razor-edged. Blue cloudless skies, so deep, so blue. A polarized sky, heavy in its blueness. Terror in its blueness. And in the quiet my footsteps, running, pursued, clattering, echoing, swallowed quickly by the air, cool air, despite the harsh sunlight.

I check my locator. The return portal has appeared somewhere above me. But I am tiring. I stop, press myself against a wall. Look down the ramp. I do not see them but I can hear them. Tapping. Nearing. I check my pistol.

They will kill me if they can.

How do I know? I had only a brief glimpse of them. Tall. Thin. Huminoid. Dressed in white tight-fitting clothes without stitching. Oddly proportioned. Strange. Otherworldly. Calves too short. Thighs too long. Flexible arms, whip thin, like tentacles. And most terrifying of all…faceless. Oval white smoothness; no features save slight indentations where mouths and eyes should be. Bump for a nose. Speech, an odd mewing. Evil. Hands, three fingers clutching a thin metal tube…a weapon? Yes, surely a weapon. They will kill me if I let them.

But I will not let them.

They round the curve. I see them. I fire. The bullet snaps off the wall and into space, through the wide windows that line the corridor. They are surprised. But they come back, pointing their metal tubes. A rush of heat sears my shoulder. I do not see a ray or a projectile but I feel the pain.

I scream. I fire again, hit one of the things. It drops. It does not bleed.

Another heat blast burns my arm. My pistol falls. I turn. I run.

They follow.

I run and run and run, but I am tiring. They will catch me.

No–

No, I see the sky! I break into the open. I am on the roof. The portal appears, shimming, a light pool into which I must dive. But it hangs in space, almost twenty feet beyond the tower, the white courtyards a mile beneath like distant squares of salt. The portal: a silver, mercurial pool in a sky lake.

Heat rushes past. They are on the roof now too. They are firing. Mewing. Closing. I have no choice. I have nowhere else to go. I run. I run with all the strength remaining to me. I run and jump from the tower, into the blueness, into the skies. I am heavy. My arms windmill to gain inches, my fingers grab at the air. My throat snaps shut. I fly—

Then…

I…

Fall. Fall screaming, fall, dying—

The portal drops to receive me.

It takes me and I am drawn back into the laboratory, into a land of colors beyond just white and blue. Faces—human faces with eyes, mouths, noses; faces of coworkers crowd near. I lie there, shivering, weak. I can not warn them. Gibberish drools out of my mouth. I can not tell them…I can not make them shut the portal down.

Abnormally long thighs…short, muscular calves…

These creatures are jumpers.

I hear the sounds of boots hitting the lab floor behind me.

THE END

*************

For another story like this one, try:http://www.gizelbook.com/five-minute-escape-short-sf-story-collectors/

For more information about the possibility of life on other worlds, please click the following fascinating links: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraterrestrial_life

ABOUT THIS BLOG… Each “Five-Minute Escape“ short Sci-Fi story in this blog series will be kept under 1500 words; most will clock in at about 500. The “Five-Minute Escape“ short Sci-Fi story will allow you to log on, take a fast trip, and get back quick to what you should have been doing in the first place…though hopefully the experience will stay with you long after you have moved on to something else. Subscribe to the blog and take a weekly…”Five-Minute Escape!” “Five-Minute Escape“ short Sci-Fi story copyrighted Terofil Gizelbach, 2013