The cars passed fast under the overpass, and I wondered how much damage a brick could do to someone's head. Tilly would like that; that's why she always wore the skull sweatband.
Tilly was smiling at the sky. She had a raucous laugh, but it rarely came out.
“Tilly,” I said, “I'm gonna throw that brick into traffic.”
The sun was high in the sky, but out of sight behind low clouds. A warm wind cut across the causeway. Traffic was sparse this far out of town, but cars still passed often enough below that I wondered whether we should be hanging around. Five teens probably shouldn't be slumming on an overpass, but Buena Vista Road was our spot.
Tilly covered her mouth with the sleeve of her black hoodie. The arm read “Deja Entendu.” She bit it like a cat. It stifled her laughter.
This would get her good.
I. Minutes
It had been fourteen minutes since the feed had stopped. To Lester, the silence was a gift—a memento of better days. Common courtesy invited pretend relief at the quiet, but a queasy uneasiness was already permeating the titanium bones of Strelka station, and grew with every discernable creak and with every audible draft of air. For, finally, after two years into its mission, the fly had curled into the corner: the background buzzing of the 24-hour news streams, iconic and inescapable throughout every common area of the station, had silently faded away.
Lester approached the maintenance door, hands unconsciously struggling to budge the stuck zipper of his jumpsuit. It was once Nina's jumpsuit, and it was the only Engineering suit that fit Lester's generally shorter stature. Still, it was a little loose about the sleeves.
Hendrix was already suited up and on the scene. He was cranking the wheeled latch of the door and giving Lester a thumbs up. The only other engineer on the station, Hendrix was the type to keep prepared on a moment's notice, and his jumpsuit was always on.
Bell sat in his creaky chair in his creaky corner. Beside him, the windowsill was awash in mildew and the wood sagged. But the view through the wavy float-glass was otherworldly. The upper atmosphere burned with meteoric lumps of earth and matter that screamed by like bodies. High above, beyond the squall, the sky glared back: a vacuum of raging white noise that caused Bell's eyes to water and his ears to blare with static. He turned away.
The interior of his wuthering cabin was quiet, save for the crackle of the fire and small, craven voice which emanated from the corner radio. Here, the quiet lingered, as was always the case. And as was always the case, the dying fire flickered in the shadow of the grotesque thing sitting there beside: the bulbous Baal, a collapsed slug of a creature with Uncle Sam eyes that had long ago budded from climbing stalks. Its flesh matched the color of the floor: brown and damp, like trodden leaves. The radio was sputtering its own black words of the day: “... There was— always a garden. Yes. There was always— a storm. There was, too, always a creature ... watching ...” It reminded Bell of something—some distant nostalgia long scrambled over the airwaves of memory. A blue house; a makeshift swing in a grove. He smiled to hear it.
The bulbous Baal, however, never smiled. It had no mouth.
The WyvernII drones skipped across the sanguine water like electric scarabs skittering over rippling wine. They wove between jets of silver and mist, trailing silk kites and banners and emitting blinding bursts of magnesic fire. Far above the aqueous light show was a second, celestial show of otherworldly pyrotechnics. The lights of these explosions reflected across the vast expanse of water below, melding horizon with sky.
Flynn tried to ignore the pain of being squished against the promenade railing as he watched the spectacle with the awestruck crowd bustling above the waterfront. The show culminated as the lights on the water and the lights in the sky merged spontaneously to form a blinding canvas across which was written “Sable Techtronics” in inky black. As the world began to fade back into the industrial darkness of a society beneath a polluted heaven, the blue LEDs lining the walkways and streets of the city reilluminated and the crowd began to disperse, young children now tugging at the sleeves of their parents, fingers jabbing excitedly at tablet screens. These rich families would be heading to the waterfront to return home via electric gondola. Flynn would be phoning a driverless cab.
Jesse Neilson wished someone would kick him in the jaw. He'd traced every inch of the ceiling in the fading light from the window well and had felt himself falling down every crack of its smooth plane. His clenched fists had dug so deeply into his hair that they streaked grease when he then dragged them down his face. When he opened his eyes, he found his own watercolor reflection in the portrait atop his dresser, and he thought of Adrienne. He groaned and flailed himself out of his soft bed, crashing two feet to the floor. Finding his footing, he held his aching temple as the newly toppled bottle beside his bed spilled muddy liquid like a runoff drain on the first stormy day of the season. It pooled on the carpet. Sorry, Thomas. Goodbye, Maxwell. His roommates wouldn't have to worry about crashes like that ever again.
He began moving, first yanking the off-white hoodie over his torso and then a jacket over that, then flipping the duffel bag over his shoulder, then snatching the keys from the counter, and finally making for the door. Here he stopped and returned to grab a card, beautifully stylized in flowery art with a gilded “Happy Birthday!” scrawled overtop, from his drawer.
Five and a half hours later found him far away and sitting in the cold of his car in the dark. He didn't exist. The porch light was off and so was the house. Everything was different under the glow of the stars. The moon wasn't out, and everything was different.
Brown leaves swirled on the glass ceiling, the dusking sun continually casting them in darker hues. Prancing on tiptoe, the leaves came to life, fashioning an elegant dance over an intimate audience beneath the glass. Careless, the leaves slipped over the sides and lighted on the ground just beyond the windows. Here, they lay patiently, waiting to someday fertilize the wildflowers which might spring from the nurturing soil. The whole process was beautiful—nature dancing to its own, perfect chaconne, audible only to itself.
Max watched the leaves on the ceiling flail about.
“If fairies didn't exist after all, I would cry,” said Cyan simply. And she took a shot.
He cast his gaze to the ground outside and stared at the leaves lying dead on jagged rock.
“Max! You aren't drinking?” asked Cyan.
As Cameron walked, the streetlights behind him cast fragmented versions of himself down the alley ahead. Each light that passed above rotated the figures about him. They grew tall then short, and definite then blurred. They spun slowly and without spirit, more akin to the mechanical hands of a clock than partners in a dance. He watched them and kept a steady pace. He was the sundial at dusk. The streetlights were distant stars above telling his time. He chased his shadows slowly down the lane.
His thoughts retreated to his conversation with Faye earlier that week. He still couldn't believe how suddenly she had made up her mind.
“I'm leaving tomorrow,” she'd said between drags on her vape. “I've talked to my aunt and she's willing to take me back in for a while.”
They had crossed the street so that no one could complain about her smoking on campus, although no one was out that late anyway. He'd wanted to sit right there beside her under the streetlight, but suddenly the light was sterile, and he'd felt very distant. Instead, he had sat on the curb, his back to her. His shadow stretched far away from him and blended into darkness down the street.
Graham Mathews
Mrs. Rohleder
Advanced English 1
November 18 2014