Second Person Story Intro
Toxic gas fills the chamber, choking your lungs. Light streams through the singular porthole to the outside of the ship, the bright blue light of the star outside illuminating the deadly yellow haze. You feel the drifting of your massive metal coffin, the star ship Bauldair drifting forever through space. Stomping boots echo around you, growing closer each second.
Do you still hold on?
Do you give in to the darkness?
In these last moments, what do you think of? Family? Friends? Your old life on Earth?
Against the haze, a shadow appears. Blotchy darkness against the blue light. Your throat is in excruciating pain, your voice lost long ago to the poison.
Do you struggle?
The shadow approaches your body and places an object against your back. You hear a voice call out, the voice distorted by the figures suit and incomprehensible due to your pain. As you feel yourself slipping from consciousness you hear a voice whispering into your ear, “Thank you.”
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The first thing you hear is beeping, over and over again. Just beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep… Hundreds of beeps accost you as you slowly drift from unconsciousness back to reality. The next sound that you can make out is a regular clicking noise, each click followed by rushing air. Click, woosh, click, woosh… These sounds continue for what feels like hours.
Gravity begins to give you a sense of direction, it tells you that you are lying down. Something is pressed against your back and head. You feel tightness all across your body, something held against your skin. The sensation is subtle, hardly noticeable. You drift between sleep and lucid consciousness as time ticks away, the beeping ever present.
It is hours, maybe days before your mind begins to become coherent, though the past is a hazy mess of disconnected thoughts.
Is it an effect of the toxic?
Did that actually happen?
Your body begins to ache as if triggered by your thoughts. A painful sensation crawls across your skin like laying in a pool of infected blood. Your eyes snap open and reality crashes upon you. As your eyes dart from corner to corner of the room, you piece together where you are. A hospital, laying in a hospital bed with the lights off. The only light in the room comes from the beeping device, a squid looking computer with wire tentacles stuck to your body, measuring you carefully. The word ‘Error’ fills most of the screen, blinking in time with the beeps.
On one side of the room is a cabinet with a counter. A sink sits centered next to containers of swabs and rags. With immense work you are able to sit up and take better stock of the room, seeing the closed door on the other side of the room and see yourself in the mirror against the wall.
It’s a tall mirror, allowing you to see your entire body as you lay in the hospital bed. Your face is obscured by a breathing apparatus, the device that is making the clicking sound. You recognize it, one of your friends aboard the ship had to wear one when their lungs collapsed.
What friend?
When did it happen?
Did it even happen?
A headache assaults you as you think back to your past. Images assault your eyes, disconnected thoughts all fighting each other to be the focus of your attention and none succeeding. One thought begins to take root stronger than the others, a singular purpose forcing other thoughts away, though the purpose is unclear you feel a deeper connection to the thought. Something primal that drives you. A number that is core to your being. The numbers 2548 and 1597.
Why are they important to you?
What do they mean?
Why do you care about them?
The numbers sit centered in your mind.
I wrote this a while ago, and this is as far as I wrote. One of the problems faced with making a 2nd person story is that you have to predict what everyone might do given the situation. My friend gave me the idea to ask the reader questions to help guide them to the thoughts you want them to have at the specific point in the story. Hope you enjoyed it!