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In From The Cold



Estimated reading time — 3 minutes

Alec sat in the cold blue glow of the steel chamber, monitors projecting their indecision between camera views outside the small compound. Each switch depicting the bright white of the lunar sands under floodlight, and the unrelenting black of the empty space above. Life in the small research station was similarly dark, oppressively quiet, with nothing but the clicks of recording equipment, inconsistent hums from computer systems, and faint-

CLANG!

The sharp noise from down the hall pierced the envelope of sound that had wrapped Alec in the monitoring room, and the startle had his heart thumping up in his throat. The dizzying adrenaline surge started to calm as he figured one of the backup tapes had probably been vibrated off a shelf by the machinery nearby. Solitary life in a research station had eroded Alec’s sense of tidiness and piles were the easiest sorting method for his work.

He turned his attention back to the screens. The widescreen to the left was depicting a grid of all camera views in small format. Something on feed 42-A caught his attention.

42-A. A form was standing below the camera, looking up. Motionless.

Humanoid, by the looks of it, what would be the head seemed slightly tilted. Alec brought it up on the center view to get a better look, and felt his stomach twist violently in fear.

It was standing still, staring with empty sockets amid a freeze-dried and cracked face of blue skin. It was morbidly recognizable, just enough facial features of his late assistant to make him remember the accident, the airlock seal and the guilt, the attempt to bury the evidence, and the endless solitude that had resulted.

The tilt–obscenely fatal in its arrangement–was due to a neck fracture that had been sustained when the compartment depressurized. The eyes had burst or shriveled with the change, Alec was never sure. He didn’t want to think about it when he had put on his suit and driven the corpse out into the dunes, the direction faced by camera 42-A. He had looked at the flash-frozen skin and abhorrent shapes from the pressure change as little as possible.

But now…now he was staring right into the same grotesque death that had decided to come back. Why? And why was the body just standing there, staring, so motionless? So frozen?

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Frozen?

CLANG!!

Frozen! It wasn’t standing still, the feed was frozen! The time stamp on the video wasn’t moving, it was stuck at 16:25. Alec’s fears and mind raced as he looked to the right to check the current clock.

16:40.

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CLANG!!

The noise. The time. The rest of the feeds, those that were live, hadn’t shown anything. Alec began to panic. There was an airlock near 42-A, one of a pair, the sister airlock had been his assistant’s coffin. He brought up the access logs, noting with dread that all access keypads had been left active as there had never been anything to keep out. No one knew the codes but the two researchers…

16:28. Access granted, login SRichards, code ******

Inside. It had gained entry 12 minutes ago.

No, wait, not inside, breathed Alec with limited relief, there was no subsequent entry for the inner door. It was still in the airlock. The noise must be it beating on the door! He knew he had to engage the manual lock, keep it out, maybe it would leave.

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Summoning up any shred of courage he could manage, Alec stepped out of the monitoring room and turned to face down the sterile metal hallway that ended at the twin airlocks. The black sheen of the thick internal security barrier covered the left entry, while the functional right door sat uncovered, naked and foreboding. The frosted, thick plexiglas porthole …was empty. No hollow eyes, no broken neck or blue flaky skin staring back at him like with the camera. Just silence and solitude.

The silence…the staccato death knell had stopped.

Unsure of what this meant, Alec walked towards the door, an undecided pace between hurriedly reaching the lock mechanism and freezing in place with fear. Every step expecting the face–that horrid, cold, unliving face, bent at the wrong angle–to reappear in the dark transparent circle of the door.

He finally reached the door panel, and with unsteady hands engaged the manual lock. He even dared to peek out the porthole to confirm that it had left. Nothing to see, just the empty airlock and open expanse of sterile lit moonscape outside the external hatch, which sat halfway ajar. A light breeze crept down the hall and stirred Alec’s unkempt hair ever so slightly against the back of his neck as he continued to stare out in fear and disbelief.

It dawned on him as he heard the approaching shuffle of ragged boots on the metal planking back down the hall. The only breezes in the pressurized facility came from airlock use. Rooted in fear, catching hints of ragged research uniform and broken skin behind his own reflection in the porthole, he began to reach again for the airlock door panel…


Credited to Amused.

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86 thoughts on “In From The Cold”

  1. ·⋆·ṬåṈḳ✪Ꮆⅈཞℓ·⋆·

    HE began to reach again for the airlock door panel··· AND THEN WHAT? You can’t tell a story and just leave the end hanging like that. What happened after he reached for the airlock door panel? This started out as a really good read, but leaving the end hanging like that is like only part of the story was told and whoever wrote it just gave up and didn’t finish telling it. Very unfulfilled

  2. the hash slinging slasher

    I loved the description of the dead co-worker! This pasta seriously threaded together some really good concepts!! I personally love how the author put him in space, those kinds of stories get me… the ones with no escape. This pasta was some of the best ive enjoyed!!!!!!! really freaked me out…. Ive gotta go now, so i can sit in my room with a weapon scared brickless ^.^

  3. @addish I don’t think the moonzombiepal actually killed him, I think he opened the airlock, killing them both.

  4. Delicious, delicious space pasta. The lunar research outpost setting adds an entirely new degree of creepy isolation. I always seem to enjoy futuristic creepypasta.

    Shame upon the morons who failed to understand what was going on, but I will now offer up explanations and theories:
    1. “I don’t get it.” The overall story summary: Researcher named Alec accidentally caused his research assistant to be sucked out the airlock, causing freezing, suffocation, and all that. He panics and instinctively tries to hide the body by bringing it way out into the middle of nowhere away from the base. (That way, if somebody else comes to the base he can just say the assistant wandered off and never came back or something.) He sees the corpse on one of the video cameras then realizes the camera was frozen fifteen minutes ago. He also finds out that the zombified assistant has entered one of the outer airlocks, but has not yet entered the inner one. He goes to the airlock to stop the zombie but it isn’t there. Then he realizes the zombie has already come inside through a different airlock and it’s right behind him. So he opens the airlock himself to commit suicide so the zombie doesn’t get him.

    2. “Space zombie wtf?” Zombies ftw. You’re reading creepypasta after all, stop questioning how there can be zombies.

    3. “Why was the zombie’s neck broken?” My only theory is that either the air was sucked out of the chamber so quickly that it snapped his head to the side, or that he was sucked out of the chamber and collided with the wall or door or something on the way out. Don’t know.

    4. “This is just stupid.” See number 1. Whining that something’s stupid because you weren’t paying attention actually just makes you look worse.

  5. GAH…

    I agree with everyone who mentions the timestamp, that got me going, excited for the end…

    I even was very much willing to overlook the factual issues and whatnot in favor of a good story!

    but the ending… fucking… killed me…

    HOW could it be so captivating and in a few useless bits of fluff sentences RUIN that captivation… come on, you could come up with something more exciting than reaching for the door -.- suicidal or not…

    Its anti-climactic, if the author were going to go for that approach they should have described the death.

    “The only breezes in the pressurized facility came from airlock use. Rooted in fear, catching hints of ragged research uniform and broken skin behind his own reflection in the porthole, he began to reach again for the airlock door panel…”

    “His hand shook and his breath heart nearly stopped, his breath coming to him in short cropped gasps. His fingers fumbled with the keys and he yelped when he felt a hand tugging on his shoulder only moments before he managed to open the airlock door. The contained room already flooded with air useless to his own lungs he used what momentum he had and lunged forward, casting his body out to the unforgiving abyss, things seemed to slow… it became difficult to breathe and as his hands uselessly scrabbled at his throat and his feet seemed to lose contact with the floor, practically skating backwards through the second- open- airlock door. His vision flickered, and he gaped like a fish out of water, his last sight before losing consciousness was of his assistant’s cold vengeful form… closing the door on him again and leaving his unprotected body to the harshness of the lunar surface.”

    *will not be rereading that*

    *sigh* I don’t really know how all this science gear works so excuse me if its screwed up… but you get the idea :/ I’m not quite sure how the airlock would work, it wasn’t really described. I assume it was a number panel~

    need for closure is needed.

  6. Average pasta with delicious descriptive sauces!
    What took away from it was that Alec didn’t even find it remotely strange that his assistant was walking around even though he was supposedly dead and frozen?
    Very good descriptions though.

  7. You don’t see many 3rd person pastas. I really liked it. I wish there was a sequel or continuation or whatever. I wanted to keep reading it.

  8. A very pleasant pasta that wasn’t to long. Written very well, hope to see more like this one!

  9. A good mix of the new and the old—creative stuff (like the brilliant frozen feed, and the space setting, which is creepy as hell) and the good old, EC Comics style LOLZOMBIES setup and execution.

  10. I actually got a bit creeped out by this one… I loved how it was written and how it was something out of the ordinary, the assistant getting thrown out into space. I loved, loved, loved the frozen feed part, I felt a bit of a shock at that. Ending fell a bit flat, but over all very nice.

  11. Richard Dawkins

    Frozen Camera was a solid scare 10/10 although the ending fell a little flat. 8/10

    Everyone who didn’t understand this story should have asked mommy and daddy’s permission before going online.

  12. Hey this is really cool. Excellently written with that use of forboding sci fi setting. Enjoyable even though its pretty clear what will happen after the realization of the frozen timestamp. I think it would be nice if a story on here had a confrontation ending in the protagonist winning every now and then rather than always ending in a foggy death sentence.

  13. Have to agree, the frozen camera bit was amazingly executed. If only the author could have carried that momentum into the ending.

    Good pasta, definitely deserving of a revamped ending. Can’t wait to see it, if it ever happens.

  14. Hokay. Most positive things about the story already have been said, but I have to state this one again:

    That very moment, when it gets mentioned that the frame of the camera is actually frozen, along with the creepy image of the zombie staring into it..that was brilliant. Absolutely brillant. Along with the sounds that have been heard earlier it was a total ‘ohhh shiiii’ moment, just the way Alec was feeling it.

    Awesome.

  15. This has got to be the worst pasta I have ever read. It was predictable as all fuck, it was full of every cliche you could possibly find on this site, and it was horribly boring and fucking long. The only thing more fucking stupid than this is probably one of the joke pastas, or the stupid “I have the answer to WHO IS PHONE question” pasta. Fuck you and die.

  16. Assuming that Alec is the only guy in the station, then what is the purpose of hiding the assistant’s body?

    If her disappearance were investigated, Alec is the only suspect regardless of where her corpse is. In fact, the very act of hiding the body upgrades what could have been an accident to a likely murder.

    (Then again, we’re talking about someone who just got outsmarted by a zombie.)

  17. I didn’t get the “suicide” part. It doesn’t really hint at it that much, it was confusing. If the last sentence was removed, it would have more of a O SHI- ending, instead of passing it right along and trailing into confusion and lack of excitement. Also, It did seem like it was a little short for the style; it mentioned some sort of accident, and I expected more details at least. It was kinda short.

    Don’t get me wrong, though, it was one of the best pastas I’ve read in a long, long time. Really good. It was well-written, even if some of the space science wasn’t 100% accurate. It was good, I’d like to see more by this… pasta chef? Yes, moar pasta plz.

  18. WE NEED MOAR SPACEPASTA
    Everything on Earth has been used and used again. Its time to take Creepy into the final frontier.

  19. Alec!! That’s my World of Warcraft character’s nickname. I use it in everything!
    I haven’t even read this yet. It better not disappoint!

  20. Those that don’t get it: My first pasta, so writing could definitely use some work. No worries. Assistant killed in accident in the airlock, buried away from the base, comes back (because that’s what zombies do?) to kill Alec, makes it in via an alternate route from door Alec is looking out, Alec starts to reach for suicide via opening the inner door.

    Science guy: I figured the depressurization of the airlock would have thrown the body around, resulting in the neck snapping. Though like you said, not really being all that realistic here.

  21. Okay, first of all, cool story bro. Well written, creepy, awesome idea to set it on a moon base.

    but I can’t say this enough:
    IF YOU ARE GOING TO WRITE SCIENCE, THEN READ SCIENCE. PRESSURE DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY!

    I guess it doesn’t matter to people who don’t know better, but for anybody that knows anything about atmospheres, space, and pressure, the zombie description just kills the whole thing. Eyes exploding is almost forgivable I guess, seeing as how it is such a common misconception, but neck fracture, really? Don’t tell me that it has zombies in it so I have to ignore everything I know about physical science. That is bullshit. I guess I am done ranting. 10 minutes in google would have made this pasta awesome though.

  22. Creepy as hell, but I didn’t quite understand the ending. Sorry; I guess I’m not as intellectual (i.e. smart) as the other users.

  23. brilliant! love the space setting (very original).
    Also, I agree with Doghead on the frozen feed part. That one got me pretty good.

    Basically, brix were shat when I read that part.

  24. MisterVercetti

    Saw it coming. Really, I knew what was going to happen as soon as he realized the airlock was empty.

    Still, well-written, nonetheless.

    8/10.

  25. I really don’t understand the ending. Did the coworker get in through the other airlock? And why did he reach for the keypad again?

    1. I believe the ending was that the Assistant had already gotten in and was about to condemn Alec to the same fate by which Alec had accidentally murdered him.

  26. @Eee Alec managed to kill his coworker (assistant) while the coworker was in the airlock. He hid the body. Later the dead coworker came back to kill Alec.

  27. I liked the story itself; it was really alluring! I mean it even had my heart going when the dead companion was being described and the frozen camera bit

    But I feel the ending was very predictable, that kinda messed it up haha

  28. I liked the story itself; it was really alluring. I mean it even had my heart going when the dead co-worker was being described and the frozen camera bit
    But I feel the ending was very predictable, that kinda messed it up haha

  29. A nice idea, but over-written. As in, it had the descriptive style of a long story while having the actual plot of a very short story.

  30. This pasta was excellent. It’s the first one to actually excite me and make me want to keep reading for quite some time. Very, very well done. I enjoyed this one quite a bit. The only thing I didn’t like about it was the fact that I just could not seem to get over the funniness that you seriously wrote a pasta about a space zombie. I pictured some little kid playing pretend at the park fighting off space pirate zombie vampires and you were like “…GREAT. IDEA.” But I do love what you did with it.

    9/10

  31. When I read the title and the character’s name, my first thought was, “Someone’s been rereading The Spy Who Came in From the Cold.”

  32. Holy mother of christ this was effin amazing
    there was only one thing i had a problem with: Then who was assistant?

  33. HOLY MOTHER OF CHRIST
    blown out of the water
    just had one thing wrong with it:
    Then who was Assistant?

  34. I really, really like this one. My favorite part is how the feed turned out to be frozen, that gave me a bit of a shock. And I was totally there with him when his walk to the airlock was described. First totally solid pasta I’ve read in awhile.

  35. Finally! I’ve been engrossed with this one since it was on the forums. It has my name, so that’s a completely new level of creepy!
    Awesome story. I like the description of the co-worker.

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