Nightmare sky, p.7
Nightmare Sky, page 7
That’s a different kind of loneliness. The soul-crushing kind that wants to keep you locked in the deepest pit of despair. Moth knows that loneliness. Moth has walked those corridors of absence, and if she can save something from the same fate, she will do it. Even if it’s a mummified ragdoll with no life left inside.
There is only one downside to being so far underground, and that is her disconnection from Musca. The sky messages are muffled when she’s in her rabbit hole, and it is only that modest pocket of stars that keeps her emerging back into the nightscape. If not for Musca, Moth would dwell with her adopted dead on every day of the calendar. She crawls through labyrinthine tunnels, navigates muck-strewn iron rungs, and finally emerges, struggling with all of her limited strength to shove the manhole to the side and climb free of the depths. There’s a bundle on her back, tucked into a beaten knapsack, all bent and folded, and to some it would appear as nothing but twigs and a round protrusion in the inky colors of the night. Moth encounters no one as she walks into the tree line, and so no one sees that it’s a cinnamon-scented mummy that bounces on her back.
The wind sounds like wolves tonight, and the howls don’t stop. She trudges undeterred even as it pulls at her hair and threatens to unspool her across the precarious rocks that she climbs. Moth has to get clear of the canopy, because she wants to look upon the stars, and she wants to see that wonderful galactic Fly fluttering in the firmament.
She is loved under the starlight of Musca, and laughter blooms in her soul. Her brain doesn’t feel untethered and poorly wired when the constellation is visible. There isn’t pervasive emotional pain and the sense that she wasn’t given a proper chance in life. It is all washed away, and that starlight touches something in her that has never before been touched.
She gains new elevation, and her efforts bring her into a clearing where the branches sway and the grass is so tall it reaches past her shins. There’s no light pollution up here, and the city can’t taint what’s above. There is nothing but a pitch-black portrait filled with small pinpricks of light, candelabras burning in the heavens, and the dark in Moth doesn’t feel so dark anymore. It’s bearable, and it fades. She can’t count on all ten fingers how many times she has stared at Musca on lonesome nights, but this night isn’t like the others. There’s something new.
There’s a luminescent streak in the sky coming directly from the Musca constellation, electric blue in color, turquoise faded and seen from afar, and it tumbles down in a line across the canvas of black. Moth has never seen one before, and it takes her a moment to comprehend that she’s witnessing a falling star. Just a little piece of space rock entering the atmosphere, but the glow is beauty to behold, and Moth realizes quickly that there’s an opportunity to be seized here.
There are many things in this world that she doesn’t understand, but she knows that falling stars are made for wishing, and she must make her wish before the window closes. She doesn’t know when she’ll get a chance like this again.
Moth closes her eyes, bits of sleep crust caught in her lashes like stardust, and she whispers silently to herself. She twirls and clutches at her chest, and she wishes on that falling star, pouring everything she can into the act of wishing.
When she opens her eyes, the faded blue light isn’t so visible anymore, and it seems the magic has departed. Nothing feels different. Trees, wind, and stillness.
There comes a sound, a creaky dry sound, like a hinge that hasn’t been oiled in a century, and the scent of cinnamon grows more powerful in Moth’s nostrils. A broomstick of an arm reaches out across Moth’s shoulder, and fleshless fingers cup the girl’s cheek, the bony digits lightly caressing her skin. She smiles, and she leans her face deeper into that welcome embrace.
The corpse gives affection as the night wind sings, and that is enough for Moth.
Wishes do come true.
FLOAT
FLOAT
VANN ORCKA
An American getting your name wrong is cute the first time, but after a while, it gets old, right? Especially when you just got done hooking up. We’re currently in the post-sex snuggling phase. I’d like to move on to the post-sex small talk, but that’s a tall task for a girl like me.
We’ve been joined at the lips since the foreign exchange students got here two weeks ago. In my head, I keep saying “Jewell-ee-uh,” Even though I know it’s pronounced “Yool-ee-uh.” She’s from Germany and I’m a fourth-year German student. I can connect those dots, and yet, I can’t. If I’m not careful, I’m gonna say it wrong again and look like a complete dick.
Ich kann ein bisschen Deutsch, but she knows English better than I know German, so that’s our language of choice outside of Frau Werner’s class. Talking to her is impossible—not because of language barriers or anything like that—because my heart climbs into my throat, and my tongue throbs so big that the words don’t come out right.
A paint bucket splatter of stars hangs above us. She clutches my sweater and nuzzles a little closer like a dog making its bed. Her leg coils around mine, she presses into me, and the trampoline squeaks. It’s chilly, but she’s my blanket. Music pulses from the party inside as the wind lifts my bangs off my forehead.
If I could just say her name, the rest of the words would come flowing out. So, I take a deep breath—her curly hair rising with my chest—and I speak.
“Jewell-ee-uh, can I ask you something… Oh my fucking god. Did I just—?” I cover my face with my hands and my cheeks heat up.
She pulls them away, lifting the curtain to reveal my shame, then kisses me on the forehead. “It’s okay. I know Americans are stupid.” She pulls back and shows me the crooked smile that always makes my legs numb. “You said you wanted to ask me something?”
“Oh, it feels kind of stupid and cheesy now.”
“I like stupid and cheesy!”
“Alright, you asked for it, so here it goes. Aren’t the stars just amazing?”
She laughs and grabs my hand. “Absolutely.”
I take a deep breath. “Sometimes, I look around at, you know, fucking everything, and it’s all just so shitty. I mean, all of this horrible stuff is happening in our day-to-day lives. It’s suffocating. And every single person you know and love is going to die. And the earth is dying, too. And we’re all just…watching it happen.”
Julia squirms. “Uh…”
I’m not sure why, but I laugh. “Sorry, what I mean is…Do you ever look at the stars and feel hope? When I think about how small we are in the scope of the universe, all my problems feel a little bit smaller, too. And that’s nice.”
“No, I—”
“Maybe one of these megalomaniac billionaires will be on one of their orbital joyrides, jerking off in zero gravity, and they’ll decide to use their incomprehensible wealth to fucking do something. They’ll look down at earth and think, ‘Hey, maybe I should help.’ I don’t know. Probably not.”
“I don’t think about stuff like that.”
“Jeff Bezos jerking off in space?”
Julia laughs. “No, about how small we are. My cousin told me this story…” Julia pulls her knees into a hug. She chews her lip and looks down at the trampoline, its dark texture swallows the moonlight. “When you think about it long enough—how small you are—does your head get fuzzy, and you feel like you’re going to faint?”
“Yeah, kind of.”
“Do you stop right when you get too lightheaded?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, if you don’t stop—you keep going, following that…What’s the phrase you told me?”
“Rabbit hole?”
“Yes, rabbit hole. If you keep following that rabbit hole, something bad happens.”
I sat up and faced her. “Pfft—what do you mean something bad happens? What is it, some old German fairy tale or something?”
“It’s not a fairy tale. Look, you believe whatever you want to believe, it doesn’t matter to me.” Julia turns away, but it only makes her more adorable.
I inch closer and lean my head on her shoulder twirling the curls of her hair around my finger. “I’m sorry. If I ask you to lay down and look at the stars with me, you’re not going to have a panic attack, are you?”
She laughs and punches me in the leg. “No, that still sounds nice.”
Our bodies fit together like a puzzle. I look at the stars and all the bullshit of the world fades away. It’s just me, the stars, and Julia.
An ant crawls across her hand. She notices it, but instead of crushing it, she just leaves it there.
Julia is her own person with her own past. She grew up in a different country than me, with a different family, in a different town. Seventeen years of memories formed her into who she is, and she’s amazing. I will never be able to understand what it’s like to be her, just as she will never understand what it’s like to be me.
When I look into her eyes, she looks into mine. She sees me. She sees me in a way I will never be able to, no camera or mirror will ever come close. I can’t get over the fact that I’m a person in Julia’s world and she actually likes that I’m in it.
Just over there, where that incessant music pulses, there are about thirty horny teenagers drinking, smoking weed, and grinding on each other—making memories they’ll cherish for the rest of their lives, all because Cory Stapleton’s parents trusted him to not throw a party while they went away for their anniversary.
This is only one house in the neighborhood. Beyond every front door is a different family, and each one of those family members has their own past and their own history and their own eyes through which they see the world. And their realities are different from each other, because the way they see things bend and shape their experiences.
There are about forty neighborhoods in my city, sixty-two cities in my county, and eighty or so counties in Michigan. There are fifty states. America is just one country, and there are so many countries. Think about how many people are on earth!
And earth is just one planet. There are eight planets in our solar system. Over one hundred moons. The sun, of course, and who knows how many comets and asteroids. The stars—there are just so many fucking stars. It’s so beautiful and…
My head gets lighter. Julia warned me not to dig into the rabbit hole, but as a result of my history and my eyes and my life, there’s a little part of me that always wants to be right. Not to mention the part of me that lights up when I tell someone else they’re wrong. It’s gross, but I don’t fight it. I dig deeper. My breathing ramps up. My chest rises and falls like an asthma attack, reaching for the stars above me.
Our galaxy is just one galaxy. There are hundreds of billions of galaxies in our infinite universe, and the universe is expanding. It can go forever and there will be no end. It’s not a circle—it’s a line—and it never stops. Ants are ants to me, and I’m an ant to earth, and the earth is an ant to the solar system, and the solar system is an ant to the universe, and the universe is an ant to nothing, because it goes on forever.
I look down and see myself. I’m lying on the trampoline with Julia and we’re getting smaller. Julia’s resting her head on my chest, but my chest isn’t rising and falling. It takes her a second to notice and she sits up.
She screams and shakes me, but I can’t feel anything, because I’m above it, watching it happen. She jumps off the trampoline and runs into the house. My body lies abandoned like a doll that fell out of a stroller in a parking lot.
The lights in the house flick on and a dozen kids run out. One kid jumps onto the trampoline—I can’t tell who because everyone looks like ants now—and he pushes on my chest like he’s doing CPR, but I don’t feel anything. Julia screams and sobs into someone’s arms, and a well of sadness rises in me, because I want to be the one who holds her when she cries.
The house is just one house in a network of houses connected by these gray lines we call streets. The blue and red lights of an ambulance trace the lines. It snakes along the path like a Hot Wheels car and reaches the house. Two ants get out of the ambulance and run to the backyard.
I can’t see what happens next. They’re too small. All that’s visible are the houses and the main road that connects this neighborhood to the next. A sea of neighborhoods and schools and stores broken up like shattered glass.
The air is heavy. My body wasn’t breathing down there, I realize that now. I think I’ve been up here for a while, because I’ve become acutely aware of my chest clenching tighter than a vise grip. I’m high enough to see Michigan, a little hand waving goodbye as I float into the stars.
I’m not lightheaded anymore, just the opposite. All the weight in my body is rising toward my brain. My head expands like a balloon, and my body is the string. It follows wherever my head goes, loosely dangling in its wake.
The stars, the sun, and the moon are my neighbors now. I feel big like them, and the earth is the ant. My head is a balloon the size of an asteroid, and my body is the string… and I’m floating.
And then I pop.
HER SISTERS, THE STARS
HER SISTERS, THE STARS
PATRICK BARB
Every man, woman, and child on board the space ark knew the punishment for witchcraft: Death.
Across generations, dating back to the Mass Exodus, the law remained clear on that point. So, when the Tribunal handed down her sentence, the Witch’s face showed no trace of surprise. She took her fate in stride. Later, standing alone and silent in the decontamination chamber, her breath escaping from thin, rations-starved lips to fog up the domed helmet of the old spacesuit they’d locked her in, she waited for her sentence to be carried out.
“I’ll remind you, there’s no sound out there,” the Governor had said to the Witch after the verdict was handed down. “No one will hear you.”
After a moment, the suit’s internal microclimate processors activated and cleared the fog away from the faceplate, revealing the airlock door in front of her.
Above her, warning lights flashed red, and a pre-recorded countdown, a ghost from several lifetimes ago, spoke in harsh, robotic tones that reverberated off the chamber walls. At zero, the decontamination flush system activated. The Witch stood, silent except for her breathing, as the airlock’s wheeled mechanism spun around and around.
Hydraulics gasped as the airlock doors opened...
“My sisters burned like the stars.
“That happened long ago, long before my birth, on a place mentioned in whispers and songs and whispered songs.
“Their skin, hair, even their bones and teeth, once turned to ashes and cinders, were blown away, scattered by the winds.
“Still, I imagine the weight of all they left behind. I imagine it clumped together in a stumbling, gray mass, looking like some shaggy, shedding homunculi. Or a housecat.
“I feel that creature, rubbing its flank against my leg, not begging for, but still expecting my attention. ‘Acknowledge us,’ it says without saying.
“That purring, that unsound, tickles my brain and the back of the throat—gentle, but insistent. It’s the voice of my sisters trying to sing. It’s the harmony of all who burned like stars, stars that even after death give light to worlds we’ll never see.”
All citizen-passengers, whether crew members or not, lined up before the wide viewing windows on the ark’s main decks. They stood united, silent witnesses to the Tribunal’s righteous justice.
With a single, phlegmy cough, someone broke the reverential silence. At that same instant, the airlock expelled its atmosphere and the Witch, flinging them into the endless, ever-present black of space.
Several citizen-passengers, concerned about breaches of protocol in the sight of holy justice, raised eyebrows in response to the cough and its unintentional synchronization with the punishment.
Still, for others, there was a nagging sense of “That’s it?” The latter group’s disappointment hung above them like a poisonous cloud in the sweet recycled air of the ark.
The Governor, along with the rest of the Elders, the Protectors of the Ark who all just happened to serve as the members of the Tribunal, stood on the ark’s command deck, sharing a feeling of vindication.
Not that they let it show. They set their lips in the official fashion, all sharp corners and perpendicular lines. The untethered Witch drifted away from the ark. She floated and flipped, her bulky spacesuit prison somersaulting with a comical grace. She moved farther and farther away from the ark.
Until she didn’t.
In discussing the Witch’s punishment with the other Elders, the Governor had quoted extensively from the ancient texts which only he could view in full. “If the accused is lost in the cold vastness of space, then she is not a witch. And may God have mercy on her soul. But if the accused remains in proximity to the ark, held close by some unseen, demonic force, then…”
When the Witch stopped short and jerked forward, as though pulled by some invisible, umbilical force, fire danced in the eyes of the Governor and his cohort. They refrained from smiles or snickers of righteous glee. After all, this was a solemn and sacred duty they’d performed.
She was a witch. Their faith had seen them through to the truth.
And the rest of the citizen-passengers? Since none of them could remember a time of witches or even a time when anyone had ever gone outside the ark, they watched in muted acceptance, believing that was simply what happened every time.
“My sisters burned into piles of ashes. And the winds blew, sometimes shrieking and wailing—a toddler’s tornado tantrum—and other times as gentle as that same toddler tossing the ashes up in pudgy-fingered handfuls only to let them fall once more to the ground, accompanied by a cherub’s giggle, tickling the ear before passing on.
