All this month, to celebrate the 5th anniversary of The Wretched and to mark the release of my new Wretched & Alone game Blood In The Margins, I’m playing through a Wretched & Alone game every day here on the blog. You can find all of the posts in this series on the Wretched & Alone tag.

Today’s game is the second Wretched & Alone game every published – or the first, technically, since “Wretched & Alone” was created so that Matt could publish a game based on The Wretched. I’m talking, of course, about The Sealed Library by Matt Sanders. If Matt hadn’t wanted to write this game, and if he hadn’t put together the W&A SRD in the process, Wretched & Alone would never have happened.

As with yesterday’s playthrough of The Wretched, I’m replacing the tumbling block tower with a dice grid. This time I’m using a 6×4 grid instead of 6×5 to see how that impacts play. The game will end when I roll the same number 5 times.

The Sealed Library

You are the sole surviving librarian of the greatest library in history. It sits in the centre of culture for an ancient land, now fallen to invaders who pillage and raze. You have barricaded the library, and you are under siege. You are hungry, scared, and desperate, but you continue to try and move important texts down into the vaults to seal them away before the barricade breaks. The fate of the combined knowledge of generations is in your hand.

In this game, the tower (or the dice) represent the invaders breaking the barricades and your work coming to an end.

The Suits

Hearts represent your opportunity to save important works of literature for future generations. Diamonds represent unexpected discoveries. Clubs represent damage to, and breaches of, the barricade. Spades represent your increasingly scarce resources.

Begin

As with The Wretched, we start by pulling blocks from the tower – or making marks on my grid. I roll a 1, so I’m starting off with just one mark on the grid. It looks like this.

Day 1

Day 1 after the barricade. The diary of Junior librarian Booker Hathaway. The doors and windows remain secure though the ceaseless banging and distant screams still fill me with dread. I tell myself some of the others left outside might have survived. Today, I must begin choosing and moving the most important works, or what remains of them, down to the catacombs. I hope my food and water will last until my task is complete.

Day 2

Cards: 8 of Hearts, 6 of Diamonds, Jack of Hearts, 10 of Spades
Tower pulls: 1

Day 2 after the barricade. The diary of Junior librarian Booker Hathaway. I began in the rooms closest to the barricades, trying to clear as much as possible before I’m forced to fall back. Those rooms don’t hold the most valuable or interesting books, but they are still worth preserving.

As I was moving through the library I passed through one of the private reading rooms and came across a magic circle drawn in salt. I recognise the runes on the floor around it – barely, of course. I once sat in on a lecture on interdimensional transport that I barely understood, and understood even less once I did the reading. I sketched the runes down anyway, though. Maybe, with nothing but time, I might be able to glean some deeper meaning from them. If I can complete the ritual then perhaps I can shift the library sideways into a pocket dimension and save myself a lot of work.

Later in the day I found a slim book of chess strategies and puzzles. I admit I’m not very good at chess, though I used to enjoy watching the Masters play. I never understood how they managed to read the game. I set up a board, and before I slept I tried some of the puzzles. The difficulty seems to vary wildly, and I’m not sure exactly what I’m meant to be learning, but they were a nice distraction from the chaos outside.

I hoped that the game might help me sleep, but my mind was abuzz all night. Not just with the ritual, but with the scene I found first thing this morning. I didn’t want to write about it particularly, because I don’t want to remember it, but I feel that I must. In one of the corridors that run along the sides of the main reading room I came across the corpse of another Junior librarian, a young man I’ve seen once or twice but never met. He was lying atop one of the invaders, his stomach split open by a sword and his guts spilled out onto the ground. It seems he had managed to give as good as he got, though – the invader had a letter opener stuck in his neck, and his arterial spray was still glistening on the wood panelled walls.

I fear that I left them there. The stench of rot was thick in the air, made no better by my own vomitus, and I could not bring myself to try and move them. I will avoid that area. I wish I knew how the invader got inside, but I have locked all the doors to that corridor and I will hope for the best.

I need to find a book in which to keep this journal rather than the empty sheets I am writing on currently. I have a handful left but I worry about keeping them together. In the morning I will big a book of lesser importance from which to make a palimpsest. Perhaps a romance novel, or something from the children’s section.

Day 3

Cards: 4 of Diamonds

While looking for a book from which to make a palimpsest – which I found, as you can see – I came across a likely looking tome, a book entitled “Thaumaterge Tiraldo’s guide to Teetotalism”. I wondered at first if this were some incredibly valuable forgotten grimoire, since I have never heard of Tiraldo.

Alas, it was not. The pages were blank and had been hollowed out to make room for a bottle of scotch that smelt incredible, frankly. I should save it, really, but I think I will not. Tonight I intend to get drunk.

Day 4

**Cards: ** 3 of Diamonds, King of Diamonds, King of Spades, 4 of Spades, 9 of Diamonds, 2 of Spades
Tower pulls: 2

I regret having drunk the scotch last night. My head feels squeezed, my stomach a knot of acid. I have been trying not to vomit all morning, and am already worried about my water supply.

The rats didn’t help. On an empty shelf somewhere in the stacks – I forget where – I spied a wand made of bone that had been discarded. I saw the runes on the shaft glimmering in the darkness and hoped that it might be useful. It still might be, but there is a severed rat’s foot attached to the end by a sliver of gristle and it dangles in a way that makes my stomach churn. And right now, I don’t need my stomach to be churning.

I should have taken that as a sign, some sort of warning in the form of a cosmic joke. When I went down to the cellar later I opened a door into a nest of rats that immediately swarmed me. Would they have attacked had I not been carrying one of their severed limbs around? I don’t know. But they bit and tore at me and I only just escaped, and I have no whisky to pour on the wounds. I fear they will become infected.

At least I found something useful in my flight away. Research students are forever bringing food into the library despite knowing they shouldn’t, and as I fled I came across the remnants of an old picnic. Much of it is gone to rot, but there was the remains of a joint of ham and some stale old bread that I happily took. The ham is on the turn, but I think I should get away with it.

This afternoon I found a termite infestation, which has the potential to undo all of my work if it spreads. With no other way to be rid of them I burned the books and the shelving that they held. Thankfully the floor throughout the library is stone. I dread to think what tomes may have been destroyed in my conflagration, but I keep telling myself that once the termites had got to them they were ruined anyway.

The combination of the hangover, the terrified flight from the rats – and the wounds from the rats – and the hard work of moving the shelves so that I could burn them mean that I am now filthy. I am itching, and I can’t tell if there are lice upon me or if it is psychosomatic. But I can’t spare the water to clean myself and my clothes, so I must persist. I only hope that if I continue to study the ritual I discovered I will be done with this sooner rather than later.

Later

Either my wound is infected or the meat I ate for dinner – meat that looked slightly too green for comfort, but which I ate anyway, god damn me – was bad. I have been awake with a terrible fever, throwing up my guts incessantly. I can barely hold the pen steady to write this entry. My stomach is in knots and I fear it is coming out of both ends. This is not how I want to die.

Day 5

Cards: Ace of Spades, 8 of Diamonds, Queen of Clubs, 7 of Hearts, Ace of Clubs, Jack of Spades
Tower pulls: 1 (+1 negated by Ace of Clubs)

A leak in the cartography section! Who knows how many priceless works have been destroyed! I am distraught.

One benefit, though, is that I have found a source of clean water. I bathed, and scrubbed my clothes, and there are no lice to be found. And now that I am clean I can see that the wounds from the rats are not infected. What a relief.

While in Cartography I also located a map of the library that I have never seen before. It is old, and likely valuable. Someone has defaced it, marking a crude X on it and a rambling trail. I have no idea where it might lead, but I do not think I want to go chasing after it when I have so much work to do. Especially not as I can hear the barbarians outside, stamping their feet and banging their shields and chanting songs. My grasp of their language is not good, but I can tell they sing about me, and my skin. I do not want to know the details.

The head librarian’s study joins onto Cartography and I spent some time going through her things, looking for anything of value. I found a very nice, very old bottle of wine, which she will of course not miss. But after the scotch I do not fancy alcohol any time soon. Maybe I will save it for a day of greater need.

Close to the outer walls I found the handyman’s nook. It was filled with tools and planks of wood used to build and repair new shelving. I took them, and added new layers to the barricades. I have no idea if they are structurally sound, but they look thick. I feel somewhat safer.

Late in the afternoon I found some beautiful works of natural history, illustrations of the flora and fauna of a land I have never heard of before. I almost felt like I could reach into the pictures and touch them.

I woke in the night after dreams of that land, of being chased through purple fields by a creature with six legs and terrible horns. Its feet thundered on the ground and I knew I must be about to die. But of course it was just a dream, and the sound was not a beast but was the incessant stomping of the invaders outside. They know that if they do not allow me to sleep I will break faster. I wish I had drunk the wine so I might have slept through it.

Day 6

Cards: 4 of Hearts, 6 of Spades, 5 of Clubs, Queen of Diamonds
Tower pulls: 1

Have you heard of Lewsanian? I am sure you have. His epic The End of Amaranthe is a work of such beautiful longing and great tragedy – the tragedy even greater in that he never finished it. The final volume was completed by Lewsanianson, and the work as a whole is thought to be one of the great masterpieces of fiction.

I have found a stunning twelve volume set. It appears to be the original manuscripts, or at least some sort of publisher’s proof, complete with marginalia and revisions. I had no idea this existed, never mind that we possessed it. I do not have time to read it in full, of course, but there are huge sections which have been crossed through and which I can only assume do not appear in the work as we know it. I wish I could spend more time with it.

I went back to the head librarian’s office. I don’t know why I continue to be pulled there. Maybe I just long for some sort of connection with someone. In her desk I found smoked bacon that actually seemed to still be good, and so I cooked it and ate it and opened her wine. The combination of pig and alcohol so soon after my very bad night made me anxious, but I’m happy to report that it was all wonderful.

I do miss the comradery here, the evening meals when we would dine and drink and discuss literature and art and poetry. I can rescue all of the books and artworks in the world but it will never bring back the people who tended to them, and that is as much a tragedy as anything.

I continue to study the ritual circle. I found a book of sigils and symbols that I think must have belonged to the head librarian – it was in her chambers, at any rate, and I think I recognise her hand. The ritual circle I found was definitely one of temporal and interdimensional displacement, and with the help of her notes I understand it much better. But I also understand that I am missing some key parts to make it function – namely a not insignificant amount of powdered diamond. I do not know how I will come by them.

I was once again woken in the night. This time the invaders have released snakes beneath the doors of the library, which found their way into my chambers. They are fools, though. The snakes indigenous to this area are not venomous, are hardly dangerous, and so I simply let them be. Maybe if any invaders get through the barricades they will find them and flee.

Day 7

Cards: 8 of Clubs, 8 of Spades

What little food I had left has started to go bad. It’s still edible, but the process is miserable. I’m longing for a slice of that bacon again, and I wish I hadn’t gorged on it. What will I do when the food runs out? Pull down the barricades and beg for mercy? Sell the treasures of our shared history for a meal? It’s amazing how little it takes to make me think about waving the white flag.

The thought of letting them in chills me. They still spend their nights stamping and screaming, singing songs about flaying off my skin and roasting me on a spit. In my hunger I wonder if perhaps they are cannibals, if I’ll be forced to watch as they feast on my limbs. What irony, that I should starve to death while being kept alive to feed them.

I sharpen stakes, and reinforce the barricades. Maybe I can be a little hungry.

Day 8

Cards: 2 of Clubs

The latest addition to the barricade are the shelves that held records of loans. I burned the records themselves so I could cook what remains of my spoiling meat, to make it last a little longer.

I am, of course, devastated that the library is no more, and I continue to do what I can to preserve its treasures. But those loan records gave me some sliver of hope. Each line in the ledgers is a book that was removed from these walls before the invaders came. Each line is a treasure that was rescued, before any of us knew they needed to be rescued.

I hope they have found good homes.

Day 9

Cards: 9 of Clubs, 4 of Clubs
Tower pulls: 1

I woke to screaming from the cellars. I dared not investigate until it stopped.

It’s carnage down there. Some invaders found a way in – where? How? I don’t know. But they ran into something that did for them as they would do for me. I can’t bear to look at the mess.

When I first came to the library I was told all of the usual initiation tales, horror stories of ancient things buried in the soil of the catacombs, creatures of bone and fang that would feast on the unwary. The older initiates sent us down there with guttering candles, daubed in chicken’s blood. A test, they said. How long could we remain down there once the light had died? Would we flee from the dark things?

We all fled, of course. We all had awful nightmares about the grave things in the undercroft. And then we aged, and new initiates came, and we put them through the same thing, all of us knowing that it had only been a game.

Except, it seems now, it was not a game.

I have barred the doors now, but first I had to know where the invaders came from. I took torches and a lantern, marked the walls of the catacombs with chalk so that I would never be lost. I spent hours down there, my heart in my throat, each step away from the library a step further into danger. I heard scuttling, scrabbling, sucking sounds from around every corner, and I have no idea if they were real or hallucinations. But I met nothing. Perhaps the creatures were sated and had retreated to their lair to sleep.

I found the point of ingress, at any rate. An ancient sewer hatch, locked on our side but forced open by the invaders. Beyond it the stink of the open sewers, the sounds of the city. I will admit that I was tempted to flee, to put this all behind me and leave the library to the invaders. But I have committed to my work, and so I closed it again and barricaded it shut.

In the cartography room I found ancient sewer plans and managed to locate that hatch. There is a waterway above it. When I put my journal down for the day today I will go back and flood that space, make sure that nobody can get in – or out.

Day 10

Cards: Ace of Hearts[^1], 5 of Hearts, 10 of Hearts, Jack of Hearts, 3 of Hearts, King of Hearts
Tokens on the Ace of Hearts: 10
Tower pulls: 3

Day 10 after the barricade. The diary of Junior librarian Booker Hathaway.

I have a confession to make. In this diary I have talked about the treasures I have been saving from the library, but the reality is that I have simply been stacking them around my bed in the room in which I sleep. Until this point I have been completely unable to open the vault, and so all my work has been pointless.

Today, finally, I found my way in. The locking mechanism was tricky, requiring several combinations and the insertion of a number of keys in exactly the right sequence. I will not write it down in case the invaders break through the barricade and find my journal. What use is there to a password if anybody can find it? But I have opened the vault now, and so I can begin actually moving things into it. For once I feel some glimmer of hope.

The first treasure I moved was a set of ancient stone tablets, thousands of years old. They chronicle the lineage and deeds of the great Brythan, a king of one of the ancient kingdoms that had to fall in order for the land I live in now to rise from its ashes. In a time of fractured nations and warring fiefdoms he alone was able to unite the tribes and bring some semblance of peace to the land that he ruled for close to thirty years.

He was usurped by his youngest son, who crushed him to death under giant rocks that still flank the south gates of the city to this day. Or did, I suppose. The invaders may have destroyed them, or used them as fodder for their catapults. Still, after moving the tablets down into the vaults I feel l know a little something about being crushed under rock.

The tablets were not the only treasure I saved today. In a short break from my work I took some time to read an old fighting manual. It comes from a land far to the west of here, a place I know little of. I certainly don’t speak or read the language, but the illustrations showed forms and movements for the common stave. I spent some time with an old broom handle working through them, imagining fighting off the invaders. It’s pure fantasy, of course. I will flee before I fight.

Towards the end of the day I went back down to the catacombs to check on the area I flooded yesterday. Some of the water has seeped into adjoining rooms, which contained crates filled with old books that I missed on my first venture down here. Among them I found a set of books bound in velvet, with no titles on their spines. Upon opening them I discovered them to be a set of the erotic illustrations of the Viscount of Stars, long thought lost. What a shame that, having found them, they have already been destroyed by water.

In the crates with the ruined illustrations were more maps and scrolls, also waterlogged and beyond saving. As I opened the crate the air filled with spores and I sprint some time choking and coughing on them. Now as I write this entry I am still suffering, and there is blood and mucus emerging from within me. I feel faint, disconnected from the world somehow. I can hear noises from above, banging on the roof. Is it the invaders? Maybe some colossal beast from beyond the stars come to liberate me. I do not know. I do not feel well.

Day 11

Cards: Queen of Hearts, King of Clubs, 2 of Hearts, 6 of Hearts, Queen of Spades
Tokens on the Ace of Hearts: 10

I have been sleep walking. Or I have been blacking out. I do not know. When I woke – half the day wasted, bathed in my own sweat, blood and gunk coating my lips – I was clutching a set of tomes written by head librarians going back centuries. It appears to be a history of the library itself. I will add this journal to it and seal it all in the vault when my work is done.

I stumbled through the library in search of food and water. I do not know where my supplies have gone. I do not really know what day it is anymore. The invaders still keep me awake at night, and my health is beginning to wane. I need to stay out of the cellars. Only bad things lurk there.

Bad things like the man who emerged from a door ahead of me. How did he get in? I do not know. He came at me with his sword, beat me with his shield. I flailed at him. I do not know how I survived, have little memory of the encounter. Perhaps the corridor was too narrow, he couldn’t swing his sword properly? I don’t know. A haze came down and when it lifted I was lying beneath him with his dead weight atop me, my thumb pressed deep into his eye, the tip of his blade piercing through my side. Another wound to fester. Another corridor I must seal and never return to.

I stripped pages from a book of poetry to make a gauze. I thought it nothing, and insignificant work I could do without. It was only when I had staunched my bleeding that I saw the title page, saw that I had torn apart a folio of Shogo;s poetry, the greatest verse by the greatest bard to ever put pen to page. An original work, stuffed into my gaping flesh to soak up the blood. They say the pen is mightier than the sword. Perhaps it can heal a wound the blade inflicted.

Is it ironic that the next treasure I found was a collection of medical texts? Maybe something here could have helped me treat my wound. I left that room in disgust. I will not save any of these works until I am healed. Let medicine earn its place in my vault.

This evening I climbed one of the towers and looked out over the city to watch the sun set. I can’t remember the last time I actually looked outside and saw daylight. For a moment it fell quiet, no screams or chanting, no sound of rooftops falling in or buildings burning. I could almost pretend that none of this was happening. But then the poems fell out of my side and the blood began to flow and I stumbled back down the stairs before I fell down them.

Day 12

Cards drawn: 3 of Spades, 10 of Diamonds, 7 of Spades, 6 of Clubs, Ace of Diamonds
Tokens on the Ace of Hearts: 9 Tower pulls: 2

My food has run out. I eat rats, if they do not eat me first. I may starve before the invaders break through. In one of the reading rooms I found a stack of books that had never been reshelved, but none seemed worth saving – penny novels, common pamphlets, nothing of literary merit. There was food, too, bread and cheese and grapes, but it was all covered in thick green fuzz. I almost ate it.

I returned to the tower to look out over the city again, only to find marks on the window ledge. I think someone has been trying to grapnel up here. I dragged shelves from the public reading rooms where the fiction lives and boarded up the window. No more sunlight for me. But while working up there I found a small chest containing keys to a section of the library that has been kept from me, and that gave me some small burst of energy again.

The forbidden magicks section may well hold my salvation. I found another ritual circle, this time alongside the text that explains it. This is some sort of temporal delayance spell, and I said the words and felt the rush that said the casting had been successful.

My first magick, and I don’t fully understand it. I know that time will pass differently for me now. Am I slower than those outside, or faster? I am too delirious and hungry to know for sure. But I have more time, anyway, to do my work. More time to save the library before the barricades come down.

Day 13

Cards drawn: 10 of Clubs, 3 of Clubs
Tokens on the Ace of Hearts: 9
Tower pulls: 1

I suppose I should write about the invaders themselves. They are present throughout this account and yet I have assumed that whoever is reading this will know all the details. Who are they? Where did they come from? Why are they sacking the city?

There used to be a great empire that spanned the known world. There were many, of course, but I am talking about one specific empire. Their leader was a god made flesh, the living personification of the sun, who burned through lies with the heat of her vision and all the other magical things people say of their living deities.

Then came a cataclysm. The heart of their empire was swallowed by sand, and the sun emperor was buried upon her throne. Her people were scattered to the winds. A new empire arose from their bones, amidst their dust, atop their sand. A new city, with the greatest library the world has ever seen.

It is said that the sun god lives again, dug up from beneath the dunes and brought to new life. And now her army crawls across the face of the world to reclaim what was once hers. And I sit at the heart of it.

I have spent my afternoon picking up shattered shelving after a rock crashed through the roof and destroyed a large section of the library – mostly fiction, which I have been dismissive of, but I can’t help wonder if there may have been some treasures there. As I worked, ravens perched on the hole in the roof and watched me. They could almost be vultures. I think they see a meal in me in the near future. I do not like it.

Day 14

Cards drawn: 9 of Hearts, 5 of Spades, Jack of Clubs, 7 of Clubs, 5 of Diamonds
Tokens on the Ace of Hearts: 9
Tower pulls: 3 [^2]

The library has an old chapel that nobody uses anymore, and beside it is a section of dusty old religious texts. I have been staying away from these despite knowing their value. I hear them whispering when I pass, the old pages rustling with their barely-contained heresies. This is the most dangerous part of the library, whether you believe in the gods or not.

I don’t remember what the book I picked up said. The moment my eyes landed on the page the ink began to run, to bleed out into the air, wrapping my vision in a kaleidoscope of colour. I saw the living sun striding through the barricade, the heat of her flames razing everything in her path, the millions of pages stored in this old building turning to ash in her wake.

I don’t know how long I lay writing on the ground. Is it the same day? I have no idea. Time is even more meaningless than it was before. When I woke there were mice nibbling at my toes, pulling at my pockets to get to the stale butt of bread I didn’t even know was there. I let them have it. What use is food to me now?

I am weak. As I write this I can smell smoke from somewhere in the library, the crackle of burning pages. There is a great roaring and cheering from outside. I will investigate it when I wake.

THE END.

April marks the 5th anniversary of The Wretched and Wretched & Alone as a system. It’s fair to say that the success of that game changed my life, and I’m still astonished that it’s endured so well in a landscape that more often than not sees games disappear into obscurity within a few days of publication (which happens to my own releases just as often as anybody else’s).

A huge part of the reason for the continuing success of Wretched & Alone is attributable to the incredible community that’s grown around these games. People continue to write and release them to this day, and every time I see a new one come out it makes my day.

To celebrate the anniversary I’m writing a new Wretched & Alone game, my first since 2021 (that was One Endless Night), which comes to Backerkit in a couple of weeks. But I also want to spotlight some of the incredible games that people have made over the past 5 years. So, over the next month, I’m going to be playing through a bunch of Wretched & Alone games here on the blog.

I’m starting with The Wretched, because it seems like the obvious place to start and I haven’t actually played it since I was first playtesting it. Then I’m going to move on to games by other people. I’m going to play a mixture of games that I already know and games that are new to me, so if you have any recommendations please feel free to suggest them in the comments!

The Wretched

The Wretched puts you in the role of the last surviving crew member of the intergalactic salvage ship The Wretched. Adrift between stars after an engine failure, your ship was attacked by a hostile alien lifeform. The crew are dead. You are alone. You journal your attempts to get the ship going again, or to repair the distress beacon and hope that somebody hears you. While you’re doing this you have to contend with the wreckage of the attack, the ship crumbling around you, and the creature that did the damage trying its best to force its way back on board the ship to finish the job.

You can fail in a multitude of ways.

The Suits

Each round (or Day, in game) you draw cards. The suits represent specific types of prompts. In The Wretched they are as follows:

Hearts: The ship’s systems Diamonds: The ship’s physical structures Clubs: The crew Spades: The creature

The Block Tower

The game as written makes use of a tumbling block tower, as do the majority of other Wretched & Alone games. These days I don’t have space to set up a tower, so I’m going to make use of a new variant I’ve been working on for Blood In The Margins that replaces the tower. This will allow me to thoroughly playtest it ahead of releasing that game, so it may change over the course of this blog series. As it stands, this is how the mechanism currently works:

Draw a 6×5 grid. Label the top row with the numbers 1-6. Each time you are told to “pull from the tower”, roll 1d6 and make a mark in the first empty space in that column. When you roll a number and are unable to make a mark because the column is full, the game is over.

Begin

Set up the tumbling block tower as you normally would for games of that nature. Roll your die, and complete that many pulls from the tower by removing a block and replacing it on the top row. The tower represents the state of your ship.

I rolled a 6 to begin with. This may be a short game. It seems the alien did a terrible amount of damage to my ship. My grid looks like this:

The deck is shuffled. It’s time to begin the game.

Day 1

Day 1, salvage ship The Wretched. Flight Engineer Taylor Windsor[^1] reporting. The other members of the crew are dead and the engines remain non-operational, though ship integrity remains good and life support systems are still active. I successfully jettisoned the intruder from the airlock, but it remains alive and continues to try to access the ship. With a little luck I can repair the distress beacon and somebody will pick me up. This is Taylor Windsor, the last survivor of The Wretched, signing off.

Day 2

Cards: 2 of Hearts

Day 2, salvage ship The Wretched, Flight Engineer Taylor Windsor reporting. I’ve had a strange taste in my mouth all day that I’ve been unable to pinpoint. I thought that maybe the food was beginning to spoil – or, worse (is it worse? I think it’s worse) that I’ve developed some sort of dental problem. That’s the last thing I need. Or maybe the second to last thing that I need. As I was getting ready for bed tonight I realised that the water smells faintly of ammonia, which means that the purification system isn’t working as it should. I don’t know whether I should try to fix it or whether poking around with something I don’t understand is going to make things worse. Maybe I should just leave it and hope for the best. Maybe it’s just a glitch and it’ll sort itself out. Maybe.

Day 3

Cards: 10 of Clubs

Day 3, salvage ship The Wretched, Flight Engineer Taylor Windsor reporting. The water still tasted like ammonia this morning. I can’t tell if it’s actually got worse or if I’m just more aware of it now that I’ve noticed it. I’m trying to stay hydrated, but every mouthful makes me gag. I can’t help but think that I’m just drinking my own piss over and over again. Who knows how long it’ll be before that becomes a real problem?

So I went to try and fix it, but I never got there. As I got down to the maintenance deck I stumbled on Anton – or what’s left of him, anyway. And I mean literally stumbled on him. The lights are out down there and I didn’t see him until my foot was in his rib cage. I had to use some of the piss water to clean up the mess I threw up next to him. Into him. I’m really glad I couldn’t see much of it, frankly.

He died holding a teddy bear. I remember him telling us his daughter had given it to him, that despite our weight allowances being really tight he couldn’t bear to leave it behind. Pun not intended. I wish I could remember what the bear was called. I took it, anyway. It might sound silly but I feel like keeping it with me will help me feel not quite so alone.

This is Taylor Windsor, last survivor of The Wretched, signing off.

Day 4

Cards: 5 of Diamonds, 4 of Hearts, 2 of Diamonds, 7 of Diamonds, 4 of Clubs
Tower pulls: 3

Day 4, salvage ship The Wretched, Flight Engineer Taylor Windsor reporting. I woke up from a nightmare. Or a memory, I guess. For a second I thought I was still stuffed inside my storage locker, my hand clasped over my mouth as that thing tore through the crew. I was soaked in sweat when I woke up, my heart nearly beating out of my chest. My mouth was like sandpaper and I had to force down some of the ammonia water.

That situation is definitely getting worse and I know I need to fix it, but even getting down to maintenance is proving to be difficult. I got past where Anton is today, but the creature – whatever it is – really ripped through this area. There’s a huge amount of structural damage, both internal and external.

How did it even get on board in the first place? I don’t know. I don’t know if I want to know, frankly. I thought maybe it had got in through the hatches where the lander modules are, so I went to check. And on the way there I thought shit, what if I can just take one of the modules and go? Just bounce, get out of here, hope somebody picks me up.

No such luck. They’re absolutely trashed. There was obviously some sort of external impact that I didn’t know about, something bad enough that I found an atmos leak while I was down there. The hull has been shredded. Really I’m lucky that I found it when it did, before it either got worse or that thing found it and pried the hole open like a tin can. I patched it up as best I could, and while I was there I jettisoned the lander modules. Maybe that thing will think I’m escaping on them and go after them.

While I was doing that I heard a burst of static over the comms, some garbled chatter from a ship out there somewhere. It went quiet before I could get a signal out, but it’s given me some sort of hope. I’m going to try and signal as often as possible. And if there’s traffic out there, then maybe if I can get the beacon up and running there will be someone close enough to pick up on it.

Not a good day, but not a terrible day either. But I still need to fix the water problem.

Day 5

Cards: 9 of Clubs, 3 of Hearts, 7 of Spades, 7 of Clubs
Tower pulls: 2

Day 5. Salvage ship The Wretched. Flight Engineer Windsor reporting. In the event of a horrible alien monstrosity getting aboard your ship, these are the five best hiding places for a man of medium height and slender build.

The inside of a storage locker. Cons include flimsy metal walls that clang when you bang into them and a door with slits in it that can easily be seen though. Under the flooring in the maintenance corridor. The panels come up easily, and the cables are insulated. It’s a tight fit but you can just lie there and hope for the best. In an EVA suit, on the outside of the ship. You’ve got to be quick to make this one work. In bed with the covers pulled up. If you can’t see it, it can’t see you. Back on earth, twenty years ago, doing that Creative Writing degree I always wished I’d done instead of going into fucking aviation.

I got woken up by the alarms blaring and the ship being flooded with CO2. Thankfully my training kicked in and I got my respirator on, which thankfully was still working. It took hours for the air scrubbers to re-oxygenise the ship enough for me to breathe.

The fire was down in the maintenance deck, my constant nemesis. My repairs yesterday were good but not good enough, and the fuse board that controls the ship lighting decided to short out. I’ve isolated it, and I’m not even going to try and repair it properly. I’m on emergency lighting now and that will have to be fine. It’s dimmer, which means I can’t see as much of the carnage. That might be a good thing.

You’d think that being woken up on the verge of asphyxiation would be enough for one day but no. I went to send my broadcast – remember I was going to do that every day? Yeah, fuck that. I started to get a signal and for a second I thought I’d contacted someone, but what I heard was just… I don’t even know how to explain it. Hissing, and spitting, and some sort of horrible animal noise that almost sounded like words but wasn’t. I think it was the thing on the outside of the ship, whispering to me. I never want to hear it again, so I’ve disconnected external comms. I don’t know how long I’ll last before I start to lose hope and need to connect them again, but I can’t be hearing that every day.

Jas is still slumped in his seat next to the comms console and I can’t bring myself to move him. I’m trying not to look at the fact that his head is on the wrong way around. The lower lighting is helping with that. I keep thinking about the last time we spoke, about the stupid snippy little argument we had about his music, of all things. He’d brought this old school ipod up with him filled with his mum and dad’s music, stuff from the early 21st century. He kept telling me I needed to listen to something – I don’t even remember what it was, now – and I told him I don’t like oldies. We had this stupid blowout about my lack of taste (his words) and his nostalgia boner for an era he never lived through (my words), and we went to bed mad. Then the creature came.

I think he’s still wearing his earbuds, but there’s no way I can bring myself to get them. But now I really want to listen to that song.

Day 6

Cards: King of Clubs, King of Hearts

I’m panicking and I don’t know what to do. I was down near the officer’s mess and I saw something move. I was deliberately trying not to look in there – it’s carnage, a real charnel pit, and I don’t want to deal with it. But something definitely moved. And later I heard it in the vents.

I’m trying to tell myself to be calm. It can’t be the creature, it’s too small, it’s probably just a rat. Ships are full of rats, right? They always have been, since we started sailing. It’s the way of the world. Where there are people and food there are rats. It has to be a rat.

I’m glad the lights are low.

I’m sleeping with that bear tonight.

Day 7

Cards: Queen of Hearts
Tower pulls: 1

I broke protocol yesterday but I was scared, okay? This is day 7. Salvage ship The Wretched. Flight Engineer Windsor reporting. More things are starting to break on the ship, though thankfully nothing else has caught fire. The water still tastes like piss. And this afternoon the doors on the the bridge failed and I couldn’t get them to open. Even the emergency failsafes failed. The magnets locked tight and wouldn’t release.

I had to break through the glass and climb through to get out. It took hours. That glass is thick, designed to keep atmos in if the ship depressurises. And I think I might have fractured my forearm trying to beat my way through it. I don’t know, maybe it’s not broken, but it really hurts.

Anyway. If I want to get onto the bridge now I need to force my way through that window. So that’s fun.

Day 8

Cards: 3 of Spades, 6 of Hearts
Tower pulls: 1

Day 8, I think. Salvage ship Somebody Please Help Me. Flight Engineer I Promise I’m Not Panicking reporting.

Since it’s so much effort to get onto the bridge I’m trying to make sure that I make full use of my time there, so today I got the scanners working again. And I immediately wished that I hadn’t. The second they came alive they started showing something big that kept disappearing from the read-out. It came back every couple of hours, and it’s really, really close. But when I opened up the comms there’s nothing out there but static. I really hope it’s a glitch, because it sure as shit isn’t a rescue mission.

Is it the creature? I don’t know. It’s definitely out there. I keep seeing its bulk going across the portholes. They’re too small and it’s too big for me to make out any real details, and it seems to know when I’m not looking directly. But it’s out there, scuttling around. I hate it and I wish it would die.

How does it survive out there? I don’t think I want to know the answer to that question.

Day 9

Cards: 10 of Diamonds, Jack of Hearts, 9 of Diamonds
Tower pulls: 3

I woke up hot and sweating. Today’s breakage: climate control. What fun!

When I went to get breakfast I found mould in some of the protein slurry we call food. There’s… nothing, really nothing I can do about that. I just sealed it up and I’m hoping it doesn’t spread, and that I can fix the climate problem before the rest of the food gets contaminated.

The water still tastes like piss, too.

I keep being diverted from my task of getting down to the maintenance deck and actually fixing some of this broken shit. I wonder if I’m deliberately putting it off, if the thought that I might fix everything is giving me hope that would be dashed if I were to get down there and find that I can’t fix everything? But if I don’t get down there then I can’t figure out what’s wrong with the distress beacon. And if I don’t do that then I can’t get the distress beacon working. Do you see my dilemma?

So today, instead of going down to maintenance, I decided to go and crawl around in the engines instead. Most of the creature’s damage seems to have been localised to the maintenance deck and I don’t think it actually got to the engine bay. And if it didn’t destroy the engines then why aren’t they running? Why isn’t this damn ship moving? I spent a full day down there trying to figure out what’s wrong but I simply have no idea. I fixed anything that looked broken but the engines honestly seem fine. I can’t see any reason why we’re dead in the water.

But we are. And I think I may have broken something while I was “fixing” things, because at some point the gravity drive failed. And so then I had to fix that, and when I did I was stupidly not mounted to anything, and so I fell and landed on my already-sore arm. Which still may or may not be broken, I have no idea.

I don’t know how much longer I can do this.

Day 10

Cards: 2 of Spades
Tower pulls: 1

I said this yesterday and I’m going to say it again. I don’t know how much longer I can do this.

Day 11

Cards: Jack of Spades, Ace of Clubs, 7 of Diamonds, Queen of Clubs, 5 of Clubs, 6 of Spades
Tower pulls: 3 (+1 negated by Ace of Clubs)

Day 10. It’s been a week and a half. I’m still alive, somehow.

I was rummaging through the crew quarters, trying to ignore the fact that I’m rifling through the belongings of my dead friends, and I found a box of new water filters in one of the lockers. Which means I can fix the water filtration system and stop drinking my own piss. That feels like a win. A small win, but I’ll take it.

I’ve been thinking about the creature. I’m trying not to but… well, how can I avoid it? It’s still moving on the outside of the ship and I’m still trying to figure out how it survives out there. Because it does. It can live in the freezing, pressureless, airless void of space. How is that possible?

And then I started to wonder. If it can live out there, does it think that space is its territory? Are we in its home? Did it attack us because it’s defending itself? The thought makes me cold despite the heat.

I don’t have time to get philosophical, though. Whether I like it or not I’m on the clock, and I need to keep busy if I want to keep sane. The emergency lighting has been really impacting my mood, so I climbed up into the crawlspace and got the main lights working again. It was a long, cramped job, but I actually didn’t hate it. I felt safer up here, out of sight among the cables, pressed up against the hull of the ship. I almost didn’t want to come down.

When I came down I felt exposed and vulnerable in the open spaces of the ship. Which is weird, because I distinctly remember feeling like this place was very cramped when I first came aboard. But I decided that I wanted to make myself a little bolthole, somewhere cramped and small and out of the way that I can sleep in. And maybe hide in, if that thing gets on board.

There’s a storage closet not far from the steps down to the maintenance deck that people used to go and smoke in. All of those closets have got extractor fans in them and fire suppression systems, because they’re all packed full of… well, things being stored, that might catch fire at any point. This one has never been used, though, so it’s a good place to light up without being caught. And I figured that might be a good place to make my nest.

Unfortunately it seems like a few people were on a smoke break when the thing attacked. And I guess it found them, because they were in bits. So I won’t be using that closet as my bolt hole, but I cleared them out and gave them a sky burial anyway. Which I should have done for Anton, but didn’t. One of them even had a rifle, which I’m now carrying around with me. I thought maybe it would make me feel safer but it actually just makes me feel ridiculous.

I need to get the emergency beacon up and running. Get help. It’s all I can think about. Dot dot dot dash dash dash dot dot dot. Beam that out into space and hope someone hears.

Dot dot dot.

Dash dash dash.

Dot dot dot.

Dot dot dot.

Day 11

Cards: 8 of Clubs, 2 of Clubs

When the thing first got on board, we only knew about it because Irena was right there when it happened. She managed to send a ship-wide emergency call, let us know we had an intruder. And then we all heard her die.

I don’t know how much time she bought us. Some, I guess. And I don’t even know where she was, because I still haven’t found her body. But I suppose I’m only alive as a result of her. So thanks, Irena. If I find you I’ll take care of you, I promise.

I’ve found her journal. Well, I say found. It was in her bunk, because where else would it be? I shouldn’t have read any of it but I just wanted to feel some sort of human connection, you know? Her last few entries were about how much she missed home, how much she wanted to see her kittens again. Which will be full grown cats now, I guess, since we’ve been out here so long.

I miss everyone.

Day 12

Cards: Queen of Diamonds[^2], 8 of Spades
Tower pulls: 3. Final pull was death.

Once again I find myself obsessed with the engine. Why isn’t it running? There’s nothing wrong with it. It hasn’t suffered any damage.

I took it all apart. Piece by greasy piece, hour by hour, I disassembled the entire damn thing and put it back together again. I’m fairly sure it all went back the way it was meant to. And it still doesn’t run.

Maybe I’ve done some damage that I don’t know about. But it wasn’t running to begin with, so what does that matter?

I didn’t see the creature properly. I have no idea what it actually is. I only know that I heard it, scuttling and slathering and hissing in that weird, multi-tonal shriek that make me want to peel my skin off.

I’ve been hearing that in my sleep. Like I heard it over the comms.

Tomorrow maybe I’ll finally go back down to the maintenance deck and actually try to fix that beacon. We’ll see. It’s nearly been two weeks. Something has to give.

This is Taylor Windsor, last survivor of The Wretched, signing off.

END TRANSMISSION.