The Nemesis drifted through the cold void of space, its engines humming with a quiet, mechanical rhythm. The three astronauts—Captain Elena Morales, Pilot Samir Patel, and Engineer Isabelle Choi—sat strapped into their seats, glancing at their monitors as they made their way back to Earth. The mission had gone smoothly, and they were nearly home. Their minds were already racing with thoughts of reunion.

"I can't wait to eat good food again" Elena joked, "Yeah I'm going to the nearest McDonalds and ordering everything on the menu!" Said Isabelle. Samir laughed and said "I second that, I've had enough of the stale food back on B".

They had spent several years on Proxima-B, there were still a couple hundred scientists there but these 3 had just finished their 5 year term on the exo-planet and were now heading home on a space ship capable of shrinking the centuries long journey to a mere 4 years.

The ship shuddered suddenly, a violent lurch that threw them all against their restraints. The alarms blared, loud and insistent, flashing red lights across the cockpit.

“Report!” Elena shouted, her voice hoarse with shock.

“There’s something... incoming!” Samir’s hands flew over the controls, trying to stabilize the ship, but the force of the impact was too much. A loud crack echoed through the hull, and a bright flare of light filled the viewport as something massive collided with the ship.

“Impact!” Isabelle screamed as the ship groaned under the strain. The systems flickered, the lights cutting in and out, and the monitors buzzed with static.

“What's happening?” Elena demanded.

“The asteroid... it came out of nowhere!” Samir shouted. "The hull is breached—engines are failing!"

“Can we still make it home?” Isabelle asked, her voice trembling.

“We have no power left. No propulsion. We’re dead in the water.” Samir’s voice was shaking now, panic starting to creep in.

A silence fell over them, broken only by the growing hiss of air escaping through the damaged hull. Elena gripped her armrests tightly, her knuckles white. She had been trained for this. She had been prepared for any disaster. But nothing could have prepared her for this.

The Nemesis began to drift—slowly, helplessly—into the blackness of space.

                         ---|~~°¶•~~|---

The hours dragged on, stretching into a suffocating, endless night. The ship was silent, except for the occasional creak of metal as the damaged vessel groaned under the strain. There was nothing to do but wait. Nothing but the void surrounding them.

“We need to conserve air,” Elena finally said, her voice a whisper in the stillness. “We’ll need to ration food and water, and we’ll need to stay calm.”

But as the days passed, they felt the weight of isolation bearing down on them. There was no communication with Earth. No response to their distress signals. They were alone. And the longer they drifted, the more unnatural it felt.

At night—if it could be called night, in the eternal dark of space—strange things began to happen. Isabelle, always the skeptic, was the first to notice. She had been working on a patch for the communication system when she heard it. The soft whispering, a faint noise in the background, like a voice just at the edge of hearing.

“Did you hear that?” she asked, her eyes wide.

“Hear what?” Samir asked, looking up from his console.

“It was... a voice. It sounded like someone... whispering.”

Samir chuckled nervously. “You’re hearing things. We’ve all been under stress.”

But Isabelle was not so sure. It wasn’t just the voice—it was the feeling. The ship felt different. Like something was watching them. The temperature dropped suddenly in the cockpit, and the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end.

Days passed. The whispers grew louder. It came at night, when the ship was at its most silent. At first, it was faint, almost imperceptible. Then, as the days blurred into one another, the voices became clearer.

They weren’t speaking English. Or any language that Isabelle recognized. It was a strange, guttural sound—alien, chilling, like the echo of a language lost to time, and it freaked her out.

“I’m not imagining this,” Isabelle said one night, her voice tight with fear. “We’re not alone.”

The temperature continued to drop, and the crew’s breath became visible in the air. The control panels flickered, and Samir’s fingers trembled over the keys as the lights flickered once again.

“Captain,” Isabelle whispered, voice breaking, “I think something’s in the ship with us.”

No reply came from either Elena or Samir, they both stared at Isabelle as if she had lost it.

A cold draft swept through the room, and the lights went out completely.

Then, a thudding sound—slow, deliberate—came from somewhere deep within the ship. Isabelle got on her feet and shouted "There's someone here!"

Elena quickly got up and grabbed her saying "Hey hey, it's alright. It's just the Oxygen deprivation. It's going to be alright". Samir also got up and said "I'll go check ok? Don't worry it'll be fine". And with that he went to do a quick check up on the other areas of the ship.

A few moments later a guttural scream ran through the ship, and not just any scream–Samir's scream.

Isabelle whimpered and said "W-what the hell? What's happening to Samir?". Elena, who was also utterly terrified, realized she had to be the braver of the two, Isabelle had clearly lost it and was now mumbling nonsense like "They're here, they are coming..."

Elena said "Calm down Isabelle, I'll go check on Samir, he probably got stuck in falling debris since the ship is in pretty bad shape." Isabelle whimpered in fear but nodded her head, and so Elena also left to see what had happened.

A few moments later her scream also rang through the halls. Isabelle shouted in fear as the lights suddenly came back on. She curled up and whimpered in fear, taking out the protective dagger every astronaut was entrusted with, staring as the door slid open and both Elena and Samir walked back in...except something was wrong.

Their feet, legs, arms and heads were all twisted and conjoined around each other in an unholy amalgamation of moving parts as they slowly approached her.

The whispers also started to increase, now with Samir and Elena's voices being added to the endless cacophony. Isabelle screamed and jumped at the amalgamation ripping and tearing it with her knife and bare hands until it was finally ripped to shreds.

The voices had kept in increasing, they started screaming when she attacked the creature that used to be her fellow crew mates and now they had increased to the point that she couldn't hear anything else. She screamed out loud "Stop..stop it please!"

She looked down at her bloody knife, suddenly death didn't sound so bad after all. She hesitantly raised the knife before stabbing it into her heart..1 stab..2 stabs..3 stabs..and at the 4th stab her heart finally gave out and she fell onto the ground next to the shredded bodies of her compatriots.

3 Earth Weeks later

The Shuttle attached to the ruins of the Nemesis as the 24 Astronauts of the rescue mission boarded the broken down ship. To their horror they found 2 of the crew mates absolutely shredded and killed from knife wounds and a third that had commited suicide with said knife in her hands.

"We've checked the footage and have confirmed that the name of the third crew mate was Isabelle, and she has slaughtered her fellow compatriots probably because of horrifying visions caused from oxygen deprivation" said an astronaut.

A second one replied "You don't have to tell Me, I saw the footage as well. She screamed something about things whispering and boarding the ship and then took out her knife and starting stabbing the other 2 who were trying to console her...I guess this endless Abyss got to her after all, now come on lets tow this ship back to Earth, I have a feeling it's going to be a long weekend".

Author's Notes:
A very special thanks to _wordswitch who helped me by giving me the idea and a small script which I based this story off, go check her channel out and give her a follow. I wanted this story to be a horror that is very much real and not fiction. And I believe I succeeded, thank you all for reading!