The Red Horizon

Rose drew another faded red line on the old paper. She fiddled with the marker in her hand as she silently counted the lines in her head.

There were 278 tally marks representing the 278 days she had been on the ship. And if she did the math, that meant she had been gone from Earth for around nine months and five days. It would've been March back home. But in space, there were no months. There hardly were days; there was no sunset, no sunrise, no seasons to mark the passing of time. Only endless seconds or minutes or hours or whatever measure of time there still was. The only way she even knew how many days had passed was because of Crin who, every day, would come in and tell her.

It was a little gesture, but she appreciated it. It was those little things that he did that made him her favorite captor. Though 'favorite' was a strong word—perhaps the more accurate term was 'least hated.'

She could feel Crin's eyes on her now, watching her, observing her like the animal she had been reduced to.

God, she hated that stare.

"We'll be arriving soon today," he said from behind.

Her eyes widened and she snapped around to face him. The lengthy fish-man pushed himself off of the door and stalked closer to her. The way he stalked wasn't cruel, wasn't malicious, it was observational, curious. He was testing her.

"What?" The whisper slipped softly out of her mouth without her even realizing it.

He nodded. Instantly, her heart started pounding faster and louder than it had in months. She hadn't felt so much of anything besides numbing despair or dull anger since her first few weeks in space. She had pushed her fear so deep down that she forgot how sickening it was to feel it. She forgot that her hands could shake so uncontrollably, or that her chest could squeeze so tightly, or that her stomach could drop so low, or that her mouth could go so dry. She forgot how weak and condemned she really was.

The trip certainly wasn't a luxury cruise by any means, it was more like a shitty bus ride to an even shittier prison. She spent most of her days in handcuffs or locked in her small and bare room and when she was allowed to wander around the spaceship, she always had someone guarding her. She was never alone outside of her room, and she even had her doubts about inside of her room. Crin had told her that the others disabled her security cameras, but she could never be sure. For all she knew, he could've been lying through his jagged teeth.

However, despite the prison-like feeling of the ship, sometimes it was too easy for her to forget what was coming. Most days she didn't even think about her fate, let alone process it. A lot of times she just... couldn't. She didn't want to. It hurt too much. So, she would fall into a sense of almost security on the trip. If she thought of the trip, however prison-like it was, as just a trip, she could stomach it. At least, just for the moment.

"I talked to the others, and they all agreed to let you watch our landing." There was something stormy in his yellow slit eyes, though she couldn't tell what exactly it was. "I figured you'd like to experience it somewhere where you can see it, rather than here." He looked around as if to point out the fact that there were no windows in the white room. As if she didn't know for the past nine months that there were no windows in her room.

She scoffed. "Thanks."

There was that look again, that look that people gave caged dogs at the pound that were going to be put down: inevitability.

"Would you like to take a walk around the ship before-" he cut himself off and looked away from her. But she filled in the blank herself. Before I die.

"I... I'd like that."

For a while, neither of them talked. Crin looked too troubled by his own thoughts to even acknowledge Rose, and Rose had run out of things to say. There was one thing sitting on the tip of her tongue, but she didn't dare bring it up. Speaking it out loud made it real. She didn't want it to be real, ever.