The first sensation he had when opening his eyes was the cold, but not just any cold. This was a cold that penetrated beyond the skin, beyond the bones, as though it was being torn from within. His body was stiff, as if frost had taken hold of every muscle fiber. When he inhaled, his chest refused to move fully. He was suffocating.

  He tried to rise, but his limbs wouldn't respond. Only then, after repeatedly blinking and adjusting to the dim darkness, did he realize where he was: a barren, red, desolate landscape. The ground was rough and dusty, the horizon infinite and empty. Mars.

  He wanted to scream, but there was no air. A sharp pain seared through his lungs as if they were being ripped apart. He brought his hands to his throat, and the glove of his suit... his suit? He was wearing none. His bare skin was exposed to the deadly atmosphere of the planet.

  The first change was immediate. Nitrogen bubbles began to form in his blood, a phenomenon known as gas embolism. His body started to swell grotesquely. Not like a balloon about to burst, but erratically: one hand larger than the other, his abdomen distended, while the veins in his face bulged like tangled roots beneath his skin.

  Tears sprang from his eyes instinctively, but they didn't fall. They evaporated instantly, leaving behind a dry burn and a sense of emptiness under his eyelids. It felt as if his eyeballs were being squeezed, their capillaries exploding in tiny bursts of pain.

  The next blow was absolute cold. Temperatures on Mars can drop to -100°C, and without the protection of a suit, his skin began to crystallize. The parts of his body exposed to the Martian wind were covered with a thin layer of ice, while his limbs, unable to retain heat, slowly froze. The nails on his fingers and toes detached, and a rotten blackness began to envelop the flesh that had once been alive.

  But the worst was the vacuum. In an environment without atmospheric pressure, the water in his body instantly turned to vapor. His tongue swelled and filled his mouth, almost choking him, while his lungs collapsed as they tried to inhale the nonexistent. It was as though his body was being drained from the inside out, an agony that only a man condemned could experience.

  All of this happened in the blink of an eye, barely twenty seconds since he woke up on Mars. His vision blurred, and the universe contracted into a dark, distant tunnel. He collapsed to the ground, lifeless, with a final thought: How did I get here?

  The sun softly kissed his face, and a warm glow enveloped him. He inhaled deeply, feeling his lungs fill with fresh oxygen. He opened his eyes. He was in his bed, in his room.

  Confusion flooded him. It had all been a dream. Or so he thought. He stumbled to his feet and walked to the bathroom, still feeling the weight of what had seemed so real. In front of the mirror, he stopped.

  The man looking back at him wasn’t the same. The skin on his face was dry and cracked, as if it had been exposed to an unforgiving desert for days. His eyes were red, with small spots of blood scattered in the whites. His tongue burned, and as he stuck it out, he saw tiny cracks on its surface.

  He pulled off his shirt and stifled a scream. His arms and abdomen were covered in purple and black patches, marks that looked like deep bruises but more strange, more... alien. On his right shoulder, the skin peeled off in small flakes, as if it had been burned and then frozen.

  This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  His toes were swollen, with the nails raised and dark, bruised flesh that refused to move. Each step was a painful reminder that this could not have been a dream.

  Dizziness knocked him to the floor. As he gasped for air, his mind filled with fragments of the moment on Mars: the red horizon, the unbearable pain, and the vacuum that consumed his body. This can’t be real, he told himself, but the evidence was right in front of him.

  He ran to the phone, trying to seek help, but the monotonous beeping filled the line. The screen flickered one last time before shutting off. Desperate, he stumbled out of his apartment, searching for someone, anyone.

  The street was empty. The silence was absolute.

  Suddenly, a low, persistent buzzing began to resonate in his ears. He brought his hands to his head, trying to drown out the noise, but it wasn’t external; it came from within him. It was as if something inside him was changing.

  He looked at his hands again. His skin was starting to take on a reddish hue, similar to that of the Martian soil. The black spots on his abdomen pulsed, as if something alive was beneath the surface. His breathing grew heavier, and a sharp pain in his chest forced him to kneel.

  A terrifying thought crossed his mind: What if I never came back? What if I’m still there?

  He looked at the sky, searching for answers. The last thing he saw was a reddish flash on the horizon before everything faded away once more.

  He felt a warm touch.

  It was soft but firm, a pressure on his forearm. Then came a voice, distant and muffled, as if underwater.

  "He's waking up!"

  He tried to open his eyes, but the light was too intense. As the sensation in his body returned, he realized something was wrong. There was a constant, stabbing pain in every joint, an discomfort he couldn’t describe.

  "Please, stay still," another voice said, closer this time. A hand touched his forehead, cold and professional.

  He managed to crack open his eyelids. He was in a white room, surrounded by machines beeping and buzzing around him. Three figures in white coats moved frantically, their faces covered by masks. There was a look of concern in their eyes, something he couldn’t ignore.

  "What... what happened?" he managed to whisper. His voice was a hoarse murmur, as if he had been screaming for hours.

  One of the doctors, a woman with a tense expression, answered him carefully.

  "We found you in critical condition. Your condition is... extraordinary. We need to stabilize you before we explain."

  "Look at his skin!" another doctor shouted from the back, pointing at a screen.

  He lowered his gaze to his own body and wished he hadn’t. The skin on his torso was covered in black and purple spots, as if something internal was devouring it. The veins in his arms stood out like twisted branches, and his fingers were swollen, with the nails hanging by a thread of flesh.

  "This can’t be real..." he whispered, a lump in his throat.

  The female doctor looked him straight in the eye. There was something more than professionalism in her gaze; there was fear.

  "We believe you were exposed to the vacuum of space," she said, her voice trembling slightly. "Your body shows signs of sudden decompression and partial freezing. But what’s strange is... that you’re still alive."

  He tried to process what he had just heard, but his mind was enveloped in a fog of confusion. He tried to sit up, but the pain stopped him immediately.

  "I need to know..." he gasped. "What happened to me on Mars?"

  The room fell silent. The doctors exchanged quick, nervous glances. Finally, one of them leaned toward him.

  "Mars?" he asked, with a mix of disbelief and concern.

  He weakly nodded.

  "I woke up there. I felt... I died there. I remember."

  The doctors didn’t say anything, but the monitor beside him began to beep faster, reflecting his rising anxiety. The woman took his hand firmly.

  "Listen, sir, the most important thing right now is to stabilize you. We’ll try to find answers, but you need to rest."

  He closed his eyes, not because he wanted to obey, but because his body was failing him. But in the darkness of his mind, the red landscape waited for him, the cold consumed him, and the loneliness called to him once more.