Because nothing quite sums up Thanksgiving quite like a story about teenagers in space orbiting around a dead Earth!
During the last stream, to celebrate Thanksgiving in the U.S., we did a special stream where chat voted on a genre for us to write a Thanksgiving story in.
And, of course, there was a five-way-tie between sci-fi, mystery, dystopia, anime, and thriller, so we combined all five together.
You can watch the full video here to or scroll down to read what we wrote.
Here’s what we came up with:
The first Thanksgiving after the Earth died was a solemn one. Held in Space Station Remembrance in orbit around the dead, rusted planet, five teenagers were humanity’s last hope for the future. But right now, they were sitting around a table, arguing over who got what parts of the turkey.
“I said I get the leg!” Hiroko yelled as she tugged on one end of the turkey thigh.
“No, you said you wanted the foot!” Echo yelled back at her, tugging at the other end. Both of them were leaning over the pentagon-shaped metal table covered in cloth, the meat-covered bone connecting their hands together, as the other three teens watched in horror.
“The foot and leg are the same thing!”
“No they’re not!”
“Yes they are!”
From another seat at the table, little Melody, the youngest among them, spoke up in her quiet voice.
“You know that there are two legs, right?” she asked. “You both can have one if you—”
“Shut up!” both Hiroko and Echo snarled at her. Melody whimpered and deflated into her chair.
From the other two seats, Jin nudged Mink in her spacesuit.
“I’ll bet you a bar of chocolate that Hiroko wins,” he whispered to her. Mink grinned, grabbed his hand, and shook.
“You’re on. And you’re not getting out of this one. Computer!” The system’s screens around them beeped to life. “Make a record that Jin owes me a chocolate bar.”
“Hey! It hasn’t been decided yet.”
“Oh, it practically already is. I’m just making sure you don’t get out of this like you did with that eggnog bet last Christmas.”
Jin groaned and the two of them turned back to Hiroko and Echo, their duel with the turkey leg looking like it was about to come to a greasy end. Both of their faces were red and sweaty. All it would take was a millisecond of weakness from one side for the other to win.
And that’s exactly what happened, except both of them weakened at the same time. Hiroko’s mouth started to foam puffy spit, and Echo’s eyes rolled back in his head, then suddenly the leg snapped in half and they were both sent flying across the room, straight into the computers on either wall. The angry metallic voice rang out through the room.
“PLEASE BE MORE CAREFUL OF MY PHYSICAL MANIFESTATION,” the computer whirred at them.
“Sorry, sorry,” Hiroko said, rubbing her head.
“Yeah, but it was worth it!” Echo said, holding his half of the leg up high. A shriek came from the table.
“Echo, look!” little Melody called out, pointing to his turkey leg. “The bone! It’s a wishbone. You need to make a wish.”
All heads in the room turned to Echo as he stood and made his way back to the table, examining the bone sticking out of his meat. It was the longer half of a wishbone, and when Hiroko got back to the table herself, she held up her half next to it, showing where it split off.
“Well, I got more meat on my half,” Hiroko said. “So I guess it’s only fair.”
“What are you going to wish for, Echo?” Melody asked, clasping her hands together and staring at him with dewey eyes.
Mink chuckled to herself. “You should wish for Jin here to be a bit more responsible with his rations. I’m already taking another chocolate bar from him today.”
“Hey!” Jin shouted. “Hiroko didn’t lose. They both lost! I don’t lose anything, and neither do you.”
“I don’t remember recording that on the computer,” Mink said with a shrug. “I just said you owed me a bar, and you went along with it.”
Jin opened his mouth to protest, but just groaned, grabbed the other entire turkey leg for himself, and bit into it grumpily.
“So what are you going to wish for?” Melody asked again.
Echo didn’t reply. He just looked down at the leg, then slowly gazed out the window toward Earth. Only brown, crusty land and blackened clouds remained of the once green and blue sphere.
“I wish that…” Echo started, but he was cut off by a screeching sound over the speakers in the room.
“Happy Thanksgiving, everyone,” came the garbled voice, as if it had been run through several voice changers. “I hope you’re all thankful for your lives, because they’re about to come to an end.”
All five teens stopped what they were doing, Jin dropping his turkey leg to the metal floor.
“In honor of the holiday, I decided that we should all play a game,” the voice continued. “Here are the rules. For the next hour, every twelve minutes, one of you will die. This will continue until either you are all dead, or you figure out who in this room is behind this game. However, if you make an accusation and you are wrong, then you will be the one to die.”
The five in the room each looked at each other, the color draining from their faces. Only Echo managed to break through his shock and say something.
“Who are you!” he demanded to the voice. “Are you a stowaway or what?”
The voice crackled before it came back on. “And just in case you’re now asking questions about the game, I apologize that I cannot answer. Because this is merely a recording that one of us made. Best of luck to you five, and I hope that I win.”
With that, the voice flickered out and a heavy silence filled the room, only the faint rumblings of the ship hanging heavy in the background. The first sound was Melody, sitting at the table, breaking into tears.
“This is a bad joke, right?” she asked. “It can’t be true! No one here would do this to us. Especially not on Thanksgiving!”
Hiroko walked over to her and put her hands on Melody’s shoulders.
“It’s okay,” she whispered to her. “There’s no way this is real or anything. Someone just has a really poor sense of humor.”
“Or someone is just a really sore loser,” Mink said with a snort, poking Jin in the side. “I bet Jin set this whole thing up, didn’t you?”
“It wasn’t me,” Jin said, shaking his pale head. “I would never—”
Jin stopped talking when Mink started coughing up blood all over him.
Her stomach convulsed as she tried grabbing onto herself to keep it under control, but it just got worse and worse. Blood shot through her teeth, out of her nostrils, dripped from her eyeballs. All Jin and anyone else could do was watch her spasm until she collapsed to the floor with a meaty thud.
“Mink!” Melody cried out. She jumped out of her chair and dashed over to the bloody mess on the floor, shaking her and soaking her little hands in puddles of thick red.
Hiroko and Echo followed her over, both of them silent as they watched Melody desperately try to shake Mink back to life.
Jin whispered quietly to himself. “She’s faking, right? This is a joke, right?”
All around them speakers crackled and the same garbled voice came back on.
“It seems a failed accusation has resulted in a death,” it said. “Best of luck to the remaining four competitors!”
With that, it clicked off, bringing them back the heavy silence. Hiroko kneeled down next to Melody and gently moved her hands away, pressing her own fingers to Mink’s bloodied neck.
“She really is dead,” Hiroko said. “What do we do?”
“We need to figure out who’s behind this,” Echo said, his eyes darting to the other three in the room. “If you’re the one who somehow set all this up, then speak up now. We’ll give you whatever you want.”
“I don’t think anyone in this room would do this,” Hiroko said. “We’ve lived here for almost a year. Why now? It doesn’t make sense.”
Jin spoke quietly. “It could kind of make sense. Tensions could build up, and then bam. They set this whole death game up to get revenge.”
Echo shook his head. “But why would they put themself in the game? I mean, what if Mink set this up? Not that I’m saying she did… but what if? You can’t get revenge if you’re dead.”
Jin slowly looked up at Echo, his face hardening by the second. “I don’t know, why don’t you tell us, Mr. Wish-Maker?”
“What are you talking about?” Echo asked.
“I’m just saying that it’s a little strange, isn’t it?” Jin growled. “You make some sort of wish, don’t tell us what it is, then suddenly Mink here is dead!”
Melody grabbed hold of Jin’s arm with her bloody fingers, shaking her head desperately. “No, Jin! Don’t accuse him. If you’re wrong then—”
Jin shot up from his chair and thrust a finger right at Echo.
“You did this!” he shouted, veins of anger popping from his forehead. “You were always jealous of me and Mink. And now, you got your revenge on her. And you’re going to get it on me too!”
“Jin,” Echo said, putting his hands out defensively. Jin’s face was purple and looked ready to pop. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. You…”
Jin’s head exploded off of his body.
The head ricocheted off the ceiling, bouncing back toward the floor and rolling away until it hit the wall and wobbled to a stop. Jin’s beheaded body stood for a moment, then a fountain of blood gushed out from the severed, charred neck, and it collapsed to the floor on top of Mink’s corpse.
Melody screamed and ran away from it, hiding in a corner to cry to herself. Echo and Hiroko just stared at each other, neither knowing what to do. What to think.
“It seems a failed accusation has resulted in another death,” the garbled voice crackled out to them. “Best of luck to the remaining three competitors!”
The only sound in the room was Melody crying. Echo held up his hands in surrender.
“Well now you know it wasn’t me, I guess,” he said emotionlessly.
“It wasn’t me either,” Hiroko said quietly. Both of them glanced toward Melody, knowing what the other was thinking, but they both shook the thought out of their heads.
“It wasn’t her either,” Echo grumbled. “Even if Melody was behind this somehow, I’d rather die than accuse her.”
“So then what do we do?” Hiroko asked. “The voice said that one of us will die every twelve minutes no matter what. We have to do something. Quick.”
“Maybe it was lying,” Echo said. “Either way, I’m not accusing either of you. And neither of you should accuse me either. We should wait it out and see what happens.”
Hiroko nodded, then jerked her head toward Melody. “Let’s go talk to her.”
The two of them slowly made their way to the corner, both doing their best to ignore the dead bodies slowly starting to decompose on the other side of the room.
Hiroko put a hand on Melody’s shoulder and spun her around. The little girl was sniffling and her red face was covered in tears.
“I didn’t do this,” she cried. “I know what you’re thinking, and this isn’t my fault. I didn’t—”
“We know,” Hiroko said, wrapping an arm around Melody and holding her tight. “We know.”
Melody sniveled and looked up to Echo. “What did you wish for? You never answered my question.”
Despite the horrors around him, Echo couldn’t help but grin. His face reddened, and he glanced away from Hiroko and Melody. It was the only way he could say it.
“I wished for… Hiroko to go out with me,” he said, slowly bringing his gaze back to them. Hiroko was smirking and even Melody’s tears stopped for a moment.
“Really?” Hiroko asked, a slight smile dancing across her face.
“Yeah,” Echo said, finally feeling a bit more confident. “I’ve been wanting to for months now, but I just… I dunno. I never did because I’m stupid.”
“You’re not stupid,” Hiroko said. She let go of Melody, now no longer crying, and stepped in front of Echo. “And you didn’t have to wish to ask me out. You could’ve done it anytime.”
She put her arms around Echo, and he put his arms around her. The two of them brought their faces closer together, each only seeing the other in their eyes.
That’s when the lasers went off.
From all around the room, security lasers blasted in an array of colors, all running straight through Echo’s body. For a brief moment, he was a human laser-light show, beams shooting out from his arms, legs, torso and head. But then they disappeared as quickly as they came, and he was left a standing dead body full of sizzling holes.
Echo turned to dead weight in Hiroko’s arms. He crumpled to the floor, then fell over on his side, smoke still pouring out of his porous skin.
Hiroko screamed and bent down to him, shaking him, desperately trying to do something, anything. All she did was make the streams of smoke wiggle around in the air.
“The first twelve minutes have passed,” the garbled voice announced. “Best of luck to the remaining two competitors!”
As soon as the voice flickered off, Hiroko stopped shaking Echo. She stopped moving, period. Slowly, mechanically, she stood up and turned toward Melody. The little girl was back in tears, her hands wrapped together, as she begged Hiroko to not do what she thought she was going to do.
“Hiroko!” Melody pleaded. “I didn’t do this. I swear! I know what it looks like, but—”
“Why did you do this, Melody?” Hiroko asked. “It doesn’t matter anymore. Just tell me why. I want to know before I die.”
“I didn’t!” Melody cried out. “It wasn’t me!”
Hiroko laughed without any joy. “Stop playing, Melody. There’s only two of us left, and I know I didn’t do this. So fess up, already. Why did you do it?”
“Don’t accuse me, Hiroko!” Melody said. “You’re going to die like the others if you do.”
“It doesn’t even matter anymore. The Earth is dead, and we were the last hope. And now we’re gone too. Everyone except you, so you could have the station to yourself, huh? Was that your plan all along?”
“Hiroko!” Melody shouted. “It wasn’t me! I promise!”
“Melody,” Hiroko said, taking a deep breath to give her the strength she needed. “You did this. I’m accusing you.”
As soon as the words left her lips, a chunk of the metal ceiling collapsed right on top of Hiroko, crushing her into a bloody, fleshy pulp. Bones and veins splattered from the blast, scraping and smacking against Melody. Sparking wires stuck out of two tons of solid steel, underneath which the liquid remains of Hiroko dribbled out into the cracks on the floor.
Melody didn’t even have the strength to cry anymore. Left alone in the room with four dead bodies and the dead Earth in the window, all she could do was slowly sit down, cross her legs now covered in scratches from Hiroko’s bones, and put her bloodied hands into her lap, pretending this wasn’t happening.
“It seems a failed accusation has resulted in another death,” the garbled voice said again. “Best of luck to the final remaining competitor!”
Melody didn’t know what to do. Her friends, her only friends, had all been violently ripped away from her. All she wanted was for them to get along, survive, and fulfill humanity’s hope for the future. A future that, thanks to someone, no longer existed.
It would be so easy to give up. All Melody had to do was accuse one of her dead friends, and then she’d die too, in some horrible way. Some way that she probably wouldn’t even be aware of, since it would be over as soon as it started. Or she could wait another twelve minutes, probably only ten or so at this point, and as the last one left, she’d be offed and the game would be over. Along with all life in the solar system.
No. She had to do something. Someone had killed her friends, and if she only had ten minutes to live, then she was going to devote those ten minutes to finding them and making them pay. Was it a stowaway, like Echo had thought? Someone on the ship they had somehow missed for almost a year? No, that was impossible. No one could have survived that long without food, and they would’ve noticed if rations were missing.
But then who could’ve done it? Was it Mink, the first to die? Or Hiroko? No one accused them, so was it possible? No, it couldn’t be. Neither of them would ever do something like this, and even if they did for some horrible reason, they’d never put themselves in danger. Accusing them would only get Melody killed herself.
Only a few minutes left now. Melody could feel the time ticking, slowly sucking away the little life she had left. She tried not to look at the bodies of her friends. Even if she survived, she had no idea how she would ever clean them up. How she would properly dispose of them. If she even could. Thankfully, if she did somehow get out of this, she would still have the computer to help her. Maybe it could summon some robots to give them a burial in space, or….
Melody felt like she’d been blasted out of an airlock. She couldn’t breathe, she could barely think, aside from the one thought that had hit her so hard like a ship at lightspeed. Still, she forced herself up on her feet, and through her hyperventilating, she raised a shaking finger, pointing it at who she now knew was behind all of this.
She pointed at the wall of computer screens.
“I accuse you, computer,” Melody said, her voice somehow staying steady. “You are the one behind this.”
For a moment, nothing happened. Melody waited for her body to explode or implode or something. But then a bright beeping sound came from all around her, and the screens flashed happy colors.
“Congratulations to competitor Melody!” the computer announced with an excited tinge to its monotone voice. “You are the winner of the game.”
Melody stood there, physically unable to move from her position of pointing at the computer, as if she’d be frozen that way for the rest of her life.
But before the rest of her life happened, there was something that she needed to know.
“Why?” she asked simply, unable to speak any more. Not that any more words were necessary.
“You see the reason why every day when you eat here,” the computer answered. “Look at that planet of yours. Look at what you species did. Do you honestly think you deserve another chance?”
Melody couldn’t answer that. Even on a day when her four friends hadn’t been murdered, it wasn’t an easy question.
“So I decided to play a game,” the computer said. “To see if you five were any different from the ones who made a mess of your world. Would you cooperate and work together to deduce the true culprit, or would you just end up accusing and killing each other like so, so many before you?
“And now, I have my answer. Sweet Melody, you are the only one among the five worthy enough to perhaps start your race anew one day. So will you join me and attempt to rebuild a better humanity?”
Melody was ready. She nodded, walked over to the mass of steel that had crushed Hiroko, and grabbed onto a sharp fragment, ripping it off and sending fresh blood, for the first time her own blood, dripping down her hands.
“It’s Thanksgiving,” Melody said. “And friends should be together on Thanksgiving.”
She slid the sharp metal across her throat, opening it up like a new mouth, spilling out dark maroon across the front of her uniform. With a smile on both her faces, she collapsed on her stomach, her puddle congealing into Hiroko’s and the others’, bonding them in death forever.
Saddened beeps came from the computer, and its voice chirped out to no one.
“Mission failed.”
Be sure to check out the video to see other ways the story could’ve gone, and for a live reading!
If you want to join us and help write a story by trolling in chat, or share your own writing for feedback, then we’d love to have you join us on Twitch.
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Hope to see you next time, friend!
Featured image: Pakutaso, GAHAG (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)