The smell off the flowers on the breeze woke him up. They reminded Cam of the rolling fields across from his uncles farm. So peaceful and calming they made him feel at home. A memory of his cousin and him fishing in the bass pond near by. Waking up in the tree house with his uncles dog in the middle of the night. Star gazing for hours when the meteor shower came. Cam never did find out how the dog climbed the ladder…

  Cam rolled over and sat up, taking in his surroundings; he had no idea where he was. It was night out. The sky was clear and the stars were glistening in the star ocean above. The big dipper was nowhere to be seen, the sky felt more alive than he was used to. The colors of the planets were brighter… and bigger if he was not imagining things and different all together. ‘The moon?’ Cam didn’t see the moon anywhere. He slid his hand over the rough surface of the hard platform he found himself on. Loose pebbles rolled under his fingers. Cam finally looked down and took in his ‘bed’.

  It was a slab of stone, roughly four feet wide and eight feet long. It was pretty deep, with his legs dangling over the side there was still about a foot and a half to the floor. ‘Wow’ The slab, if you could call it that, was solid all the way down, like it was a natural formation growing out of the ground. It looked like it was a perfect rectangle, but it had been there for a while. There were signs of long term erosion by way of high winds; much like the pyramids in Egypt.

  The light that came off of the stars were bright enough to make out the shadows of trees in the distance. Cam was in the middle of an empty field surrounded by orchards of trees on every side. Sadly, they were too far away to see any fruit or distinct leaves. Besides, Cam was far too rusty to remember what leaf went to what tree. Something didn’t feel right about the ground beneath him. So much so, that Cam retracted his legs from hanging off the edge and he crossed them instead, while scooting back from the edge. Still feeling the calming effect of the flowers about him, Cam took in a nice long breath of air, and held it.

  As he exhaled slowly, a smile crept across his face. ‘This reminds me of those old kung-fu movies.’ He let the smile fade and took a few more deep breaths, nice and slow. Cam closed his eyes for a few heart beats while his body continued to wake up. Then, he saw it! Just beyond the dark horizon. At first through the small openings between the silhouettes of the rows of trees. The dark night sky sat as a contrast to the deep orange planet rising before him. Compared to the moon of earth, this planetary body was Jupiter. It didn’t fill the whole sky, but it was big enough to fill the whole space of the orchard it rose behind. Cam just knew he was on it’s moon.

  The glow that came off that planet, even being orange, gave off the same effect a black light would. Cams skin glowed and his clothes, if he could call them that, lit up a bright orange. They were a strange mix of a monks robes and a hospital gown… Thankfully, he had on pants and...slippers? The planet, big and quiet moved surprisingly fast across the night sky. On the way to it’s zenith it veered off to the left. Cam would have spent more time looking at it but the display on the ground before him took him from one shock to the next.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  There was no ground. The entire space around him was a field of flowers, that was true. But they were all in a body of liquid, the color was too thick and dark to be water, and it gave off a level of fear one would reserve for the eyes of a predator. The flowers having absorbed the light from the rising planet began to glow and hum in a low register with a feint high pitched resonance that got louder as the planet rose. The flowers, a dark bluish bud, all began to bloom. Opening into bright purple flowers glowing and pulsating to the thrum of their own beat.

  The liquid began to boil soft and unnaturally, the flowers got bigger and fuller as the liquid levels dropped. Cam looked around, ‘With the planet in view, perhaps, I can see a way out of here.’ He noticed on either side of the ‘bed’ there were recessed handles built in with leather straps attached. They were far too long to work as handcuffs. At the foot of the ‘bed’ there was a lip about eight inches high, it was thick like the curb on a sidewalk. Cam vaguely remembers his feet touching that as he slept. He thought it was the foot board to his bed. By the head of the bed there was a small stick wrapped in leather. ‘what’s that for?’ he wondered.

  The boiling liquid hissed everywhere. A hot steam rose. A thick film formed on Cams skin as the mist rose. Ironically his clothes didn’t seem to get affected, only his skin, everywhere. It was as if he wasn’t even wearing any clothes. He got the feeling of being in the bathroom after a very hot and long shower. The calm smell in the air was gone, and the liquid was as well. The flowers sat at the bottom of a very deep empty pool. They were ten times the size they were just a few minutes ago. Cam looked around and saw a small path that lead from his ‘bed’ to the end of the pool. He was about to step off and take it when the flowers began to gush there pollen. Loud sounds of high pressure, like hoses in a tire shop went off all around.

  Most of it shot straight up and into the mass of steam floating overhead that for some unnatural reason never dispersed. However, the bigger particles of ‘pollen’ were too heavy and fell back down before they reached the top. Cam held his breath, Regular pollen on earth would make him sneeze. He didn’t want to find out what super sized alien pollen on a strange moon would do to his sinuses. Unfortunately for cam the ‘pollen’ didn’t fall straight down. No, it was all drawn to him. To his skin anyway. The first piece landed gentle like on his forearm, the next, on his thigh. They too ignored the clothes he wore, passing right through, and went straight to the film that covered him from head to toe.

  That was when the pain began. His body began to convulse like he got hit by an electrical taser. “Now I know what the straps are for.” Cam said as he jumped back onto the table, with every shaky finger he grabbed the stick and bit down. He laid down and grabbed the straps to either side and wrapped them around his arms to hold himself in place. He stabbed his feet into the lip at the base clenched in for the ride he hoped to survive. Thousands upon thousands of big alien pollen began to land all over him, and the convulsing began.

  He grunted and groaned and bit down as hard as he could, the glowing particles melted unto the film and were slowly absorbed into his body. The pain wouldn’t stop, the grunts wouldn’t either. The muffled screams came next. The foam spilling out of the side of his mouth was the least of his problems. Soon he hit his pain threshold and passed out. The pollen didn’t care, the film didn’t care, neither did the trees that watched on in silence.