A red planet came into view. Carmen took one look out of the window and felt her insides explode into happiness. After all these years, they were about to make history.

Felix, Xylia, and Carmen had spent years in training to work for this one moment. They had spent fifteen years studying space and everything it it, ten years preparing their bodies for zero-g, and six months traveling in the dark void of the universe to reach Mars.

    "Guys! Get over here!" Carmen shouted. Felix and Xylia came running. Well, as close to running as they could get while floating.

    Xylia let out a squeal as soon as she looked out the window. "It's Mars! We did it! Almost. We still need to land, but we're so close I can taste it!"

    Carmen beamed while Felix let out one of his funny-sounding laughs. "To think that this was just a dream when we were kids. Now look at us!" He held his arms out to show the planet that was getting closer every second.

    "Just think," Carman imagined wishfully. "This could be even bigger than the moon landing! Now, who wants to call Houston?"

    They all looked at each other before exclaiming "Not it!" at the same time. They laughed and decided to do it all together.

    "Houston! This is The Rosso 12. We've reached Mars's orbit and are preparing to land. Do you copy?" asked Xylia.

    The crackly voice of the NASA station on Earth came on. "We copy. Stand by."

* * *

An hour into the wait, The Rosso 12 touched down on Mars. After an hour of mentally preparing and putting on their space suits, the first astronauts to reach the Red Planet were ready to make first contact.

    "What do you want your first words on another planet to be?" Carmen wondered out loud.

    Xylia stopped braiding Carmen's hair and put a finger on her chin like she was deep in thought. "I don't know," she finally said. "But I want it to be epic and remembered for centuries."

    Felix sighed and said, "Which brings us to our next question. Who's going to go out first? I vote for Carmen."

    Xylia nodded in agreement. "But," protested Carmen. "I've done the same amount of work as y'all, if not less. Why pick me?"

    "Because I've always liked you better," Xylia said, as she went to hug Carmen. "Kidning!" she defended as Felix glared at her. "The real reason is because you're like our leader. You keep us together when we feel like we'll never arrive. Now look where we are!"

    "Thanks. That means a lot." Carmen smiled.

    "Don't mention it. Plus, Xylia's right. I like you better, too." Felix laughed as Xylia gasped and started hurling insults at him while they got dressed in their skin-tight suits.

    The suits were yellow and made of a combination of strong, yet flexible, fabrics that helped keep their body temperatures regulated. They put on a mask over their heads that molded into their faces. The girls had their hair in short braids to avoid it getting tangled. It was time to explore uncharted territory.

* * *

Carmen took one step outside, the first step on Mars, mind you, and completely messed up what she planned to say. "Woah." were the first words said on Mars. She had planned to say something totally inspirational, but the planet was so different from what she expected that her brain shut down and refused to work.

"Woah's right." Xylia said as she came up beside Carmen. "This place is really freaky. I mean, I knew that it was called the Red Planet for a reason, but it looks like the whole place's been covered in blood."

Felix appeared next to the girls that were transfixed on the landscape. "First contact with Mars recorded on March seventh, 2153." he relayed into his mic.

"Hey guys," Xylia was fixated on the ground in front of them. "Is it just me, or does that ground seem like it's been recently disturbed?"

Now that Carmen thought about it, the dirt did look strangely displaced. Like someone, or something, was tunneling just under the surface, possibly waiting for some poor fools to come along and snatch them when they least expected it.

"You're right. It could just be from our rocket," Felix stated. Carmen hoped that it was just that. "But I also noticed similar patterns over there, so it's not us that's causing this." Aaaaand, Carmen's hopes plummeted so deep that she'd be surprised if she was able to hope again as Felix pointed to a seemingly bottomless pit.

"We should go. We need to explore the place, anyways." Xylia seemed way too unconcerned for a person that might be going into a trap. 

Carmen sighed and weighed her options. She could go into a deep crater and have no plan to get back up. Even with the higher she could jump, due to the lower gravity than Earth, it would still be too tall to clear with no footholds. And Carmen did not want to end up as alien chow. On the other hand, her curiosity was killing her, and Xylia was right. It was kind of her job to do stuff like this. Curiosity won, and if she did die, that was on NASA. They should have prepared her for this stuff.

"Okay," Carmen finally said. "Let's go."

Xylia started to run towards the crater. "Hurry up, slowpokes! I'm almost already there!"

Carmen didn't need to be able to see the future in order to be able to tell what was about to happen. "Xylia!" Felix cried out.

A grunt of pain along with a sickening Crunch! drowned out his warning. They ran towards where Xylia had fallen. A cloud of red dust obscured the view, but they knew Xylia was alive, due to the string of curses she was shouting to the sky.

"She's okay." Carmen nearly fainted in relief. "We're coming down to get you! How deep is it?"

"Ugh, I don't know! I was a little busy falling and breaking my arm to notice! Maybe 20 yards?"

Felix looked a little panicked. "Go back and grab a rope. We can rappel down and help her." Carmen was already running back when he said to also grab medical supplies.

Carmen ran as fast as her legs could carry her. Xylia needed her, and Felix was counting on her. She pushed for more speed and made it. The hatch opened at her touch, and she grabbed the stuff they needed.

When she got back, she found Felix pacing frantically along the edge of the crater. "Here. I got the ropes and the medical stuff. Calm down. Xylia's alive."

They secured the ropes and reached the bottom. The cloud of dust had settled and left a wide field of rocks and red dirt in its place. There was also what seemed to be a hole left in one side of the crater. The rocks in here were a darker red color like...no. Her head wasn't going to go there.

"Over here!" Xylia waved one hand by a colossal boulder. She seemed to be fine, but then Carmen noticed that after she put her hand down, she cradled her left arm.

"You broke your left wrist." It was a statement, not a question, but Xylia nodded anyway.

Felix wrapped her arm while Carmen tended to the dozens of scratches Xylia managed to get with her spacesuit on. She'd have to ask her about that later.

"Have you seen the cave?" Xylia asked. "I think we should go see it. I thought I saw something in there."

Felix shook his head. "You're not going anywhere but The Rosso 12 until your arm's better."

Carmen saw the logic in that, but the thought that there was something lurking in that cave freaked her out and she wanted to get that over, ASAP. Carmen also knew that if she and Xylia teamed up, Felix could do nothing about it.

"If you think you saw something, you should come with us so we can make sure we're looking at the right thing." If glares could kill someone, Carmen would be a goner from the way Felix was looking at her.

Finally, he gave in and said, "Okay, but if anything happens, that's on you."

Xylia nodded and they finished fixing her injuries. "What do you think you saw?" asked Carmen.

She got this haunted look on her face, like it was hard remembering. No, painful would be a better word. "I think," She paused to breathe. "A skeleton."

"That's just your imagination. See, the cave's right there! There's nothing in..." Felix trailed off as he neared the end of his sentence. At first, Carmen didn't understand. Then she saw the glimmers of yellowish-white covered by the darkest shade of red she'd seen here.

"You were right." Felix breathed these words as if he couldn't believe them. Carmen couldn't, either.

The skeleton of a human laid propped against the rocky wall of the cave. It looked to be at least a century old. Carmen could see spots where a twenty-first century space suit had stayed on throughout all those years.

"Anyone know how to read Russian?" Felix asked. Carmen looked at the cave wall above the remains of the human. Four words had been carved into the wall. And these were, indeed, in Russian. Carmen had been so focused on the creepy sight in front of her that she hadn't noticed the other one.

Xylia spoke up. She had been part of a cosmonaut and astronaut exchange program. "It says 'They are watching you'." 

Carmen backed up towards the entrance. "Remind me why I signed up for this, again?"

Felix started to speak into his mic. "Houston, we have a problem."

Xylia was the first to notice the creature that came out of the ground. She screamed her heart out and started to run. More tunneled out of the ground. Carmen was so shocked by them that she froze in place and only started to move when Felix grabbed her arm.

The martians weren't green or gray, like in the movies. They weren't even humanoid. They were covered in shaggy red fur with a blue beak. Dark purple (panels? Carmen didn't even know what to call them.) covered their backs. They slithered like snakes and used their wide beak to dig back down. Science said that all life, even on other planets, needed water to survive. Science was wrong. There wasn't water on Mars. These things also looked like shriveled beans like they hadn't drank in days, only they hadn't for their entire lives.

They popped out of the dirt in order to attack. Getting to safety was like a giant game of whack a mole, only your life was on the line and the moles were trying to kill you. Worst. Game. EVER.

One managed to get close enough to cut her space suit. A trickle of blood slowly slid down her leg. Carmen knew that it was only a matter of time before the air killed her. Her only hope was to get to the ship in time.

Xylia shouted something to her. Carmen could barely hear it over the voice in her head. "Carmen! Hurry up!"

Carmen tried, she really did, but one materialized right in front of her, and that was the moment where she truly lost all hope. Its animalistic eyes stared at her, full of rabid instincts. They were pools of pure rage and fury. I lashed out with its beck and her mask was ripped to shreds.

Survival was impossible now, so Carmen was going to do everything she could to make sure Felix and Xylia made it out alive, unlike her. She let out a feral scream and tore the monster's back panels apart with a sharp rock she grabbed from the dirt.

She collapsed from the lack of oxygen as the beast writhed in pain. The rock cut her hand as she fell. The last image she saw was her blood spilling onto the soil as eagerly lapped up her life force. It turned darker as it did, and Carmen knew. She understood why the soil turned dark, why she decided to do this, and, most importantly, why everything happened. She now knew the secrets of the universe. And the world went dark.

And so Carmen Luna Caldera died under the stars in doing the thing she loved most. Laying under the stars in her own moment of peace.

So this was a short story I wrote for ELA and decided to share with you. It may be only 4 and a half pages long on a google doc, but this thing took me a week to write, with breaks, of course. We got to dissect frogs in science, so that took a lot of my energy away. We named her Jess and she is the cutest leopard to ever exist, even with all of her eggs and chemicals used to preserve her spilling onto my hands. Who knew being excided would take away this much energy?

Where was I going with this again? Oh yeah. So I wrote this story for school and would like to know if you would like a longer version where Carmen doesn't die this early. Not that she has no chance of survival, but I like to keep y'all on your toes.

I've already expressed interest in doing Carmen's space adventure, but now that you've read this, I need feedback.

Fun fact, Panthera started as an assignment from 7th grade. Well, technically, it started as a piece of pottery I painted when I was still in elementary, but that's a story for another time. The point is... wait. I forgot. Never mind.

Have a great rest of your day!

-Orchid