Apollo 18

Directly outside of the window was a vast stretch of space, an endless one, in fact, periodically peppered with small orbs of light to illuminate the all-consuming darkness. I found it to be comforting, staring outside, from the interior of Apollo 18, snugly set in a sleeping bag atop the roof of the station. I was strapped down at this point, to prevent me from drifting around too much. It was cozy, a bit cold, but cozy.

In front of my own two eyes was an innumerable number of light years worth of unexplored territory, mostly empty. Beyond what I could perceive right now was even more. The concept was, at first, dizzying, but later on it was simply intriguing. Inside of my head I painted a portrait of an entire world that humans couldn't see or even dream of locating, just barely outside of the reach of humanity's most powerful telescopes. Right on the border.

Sometimes I would wonder about how it would feel to just drift in the expanse of space, with no tether to hold you, perhaps not even a suit to protect you. Within your own protective, non-restraining bubble, floating gently across the horizon into nothingness. Silence, even when it's so loud that you feel deafened, is always peaceful to me. What silence is there that's greater than what I could see, right before me?

Since I was a child, space drew me in like a magnet. The idea of such isolation, violently choking isolation felt less lonely than what I felt on earth. As the last member of the Apollo mission, my vision was almost perfect. Everything that I had dreamed up years ago was deathly accurate, so accurate that my surroundings felt familiar to me the moment that I stepped foot into them. It felt like home.

Everything that other candidates had failed to qualify for was effortless to me, I excelled in every class and was rocketed from Alabama to the outer spectrum of human civilization, as far away from my old life as one could possibly be. Here, alone, in a bottomless pit of emptiness.

Unstrapping myself, I inch my way out of my sleeping bag and back onto the ground, or at least what is the ground to me, and begin suit up to go outside. Although the home base is able to track whenever I exit the station, they haven't objected or even mentioned my constant travels into space, each time taking the tether further and further out, even so far that I can barely see Apollo 18, only to reel myself back in whenever the air I'm breathing feels thin.

This time, I'm thinking to myself as I step into the airlock, now fully dressed, I won't need a tether. Nothing will bound me, or keep me away from the only company I've ever really known, myself. I press the red button that closes the door behind me and then press another to drain the air from the chamber. From the screen on my wrist I enable the oxygen tank, with ten hours of fresh air in total, and then open the door to outside after four good breaths.

I take small, deliberate steps out into space. The blinding white of the station dissipates into the swallowing black of the outside, of the void. Once I've completely pulled myself outside, I close the door behind me and tighten my grip onto the handles surrounding it. They are the only thing keeping me here.

All I can hear is the humming of my suit and my own breathing, once every three seconds. These momentary bursts of sound guide me from one action to the next. Inhale, pull myself right, exhale, pull myself further right, inhale, stop. I can't resist turning to admire all that's behind me, or rather all that isn't behind me. It's as beautiful to me as Helen to Theseus. After a minute I turn back to the station and continue my movement.

It isn't long until I reach the same window I had been staring out from just earlier, and now I gaze back in and see where I once had been. My sleeping bag, without straps to secure it, drifts about the cabin. Slowly, another object begins to drift into my sight, but I ignore it and instead finally turn around for the last time and let go of the Apollo 18.

Consistently, my inertia takes me further and further away from the station and toward nothing, from what I can see. My dream comes to fruition, slowly, and finally I begin to feel at home. Around my eyes, tears bunch up and blur my vision, but I blink them away and they eventually settle to the bottom of the helmet.

With nothing left keeping me from the outside but this suit, I finally begin to remove the helmet. The hissing of air exiting is loud, but eventually it's completely absent, and I toss the helmet behind me, back to where it came from. From the inside of my suit I pull my hands from the sleeves and remove the metal ring around my neck, that had previously secured my helmet. Stretching at the collar, I completely pull myself out of the suit.

I can no longer breathe, but I don't allow that to stop me. Around my body is nothing, so much nothing that I can feel my own skin on my body, and my thoughts go from minor subtext to almost shouts that try to fill the silence all around me.

Smiling, I curl into a ball and begin to drift further and further away, from the Apollo 18 to my home, whence I came.


cancer

I remember one time during the school year, maybe in September or October, I had been sitting in my classroom alone in the morning. Not that I got there spectacularly early or anything, it's just that most of the time other students hung out in the library during the mornings and instead I went to class. Usually the teacher would show up a little bit late and, when they did arrive, speak to me just a bit before the silence returned.

This particular morning I didn't feel too great, earlier that night I had been thinking a lot, for hours really, and that kept me up. So I was tired, I guess. Usually when I tried to sleep in class I would feel sick so regardless of my exhaustion, I was keeping myself awake, probably with heavy bags under my eyes. I wonder if they were bloodshot.

A girl walks in, I don't want to say her name or anything, but she was a really cute girl, but a bit of a spoiled brat. I glanced over to her, and of course she looked back, but I averted my gaze before we locked eyes. She walked around some of the individual tables in the classroom, and then finally her meandering came to an end as she sat right right in front of me, really slow and deliberately, and then she slightly turned around and gave me this look.

So I started the conversation, sort of curious as to why she sat next to me, but it's not like I just came out and accused her of anything. I just said, 'Hey,' and she said hello back. There was another period of silence and then she began to talk to me next.

She says to me, 'How's it been, Ann?' and it takes me a couple of moments to think of a reply. My silence probably lasted a bit too long, and made me look like a dweeb, but I finally decided to speak up.

'It's been okay, what about you?'
'Business as usual, you know. A lot of school work, family plans, just the norm around this time of the year. How's your family been?'

I was quiet, again, for a second, and then I replied, 'Fine, I guess.'

She smiled a bit, and put her hand on my desk, showing me her really nicely treated fingernails, perfectly enameled, and then she looked up and met my gaze. There was this awkward second, and I think my face was probably flushed really horribly, and finally she turned back around, stood up, and walked over to the teacher. They began to speak.

I was really confused, and for a long time I've thought about that moment. Within the same class period she went back to being a brat to me and everyone else there, and I never felt the need to ask her why she spoke to me. That or I never got a chance.

Truth be told I was a big nerd back then, and talking to her made me feel different for a while. It was really weird, talking to someone way more normal than me. Nowadays I'm probably just as normal as she was, and that's pretty weird.


Uptown

You start to feel really uneasy when you're driving through a place you know nothing about. While driving to pick up a friend, I ended up lost. Even though it was 2 A.M. when he called, I still got up to get him. Usually, when someone asks me to do something, I don't have the heart to say no. Within a half an hour I was here. The houses around me were mostly dilapidated, broken or unused. Most of the streetlights had been blown out.

I had begun to reach a point of desperation where I was just taking random turns, left and right, in an effort to figure out where I was. Eventually, I began to realize that I was just going in circles, so I parked along the curb to get an idea of where I was. Killing the car, I looked down at my feet on the pedals and took a long breath. I closed my eyes. After after opening them a couple of minutes later, I noticed a figure walking up to my car. The dark form lurched its way to the car, until it became apparent that it was a woman. She moved over to my passenger's side and knocked on the window. I could tell that she was trying to say something, but I couldn't hear, so I rolled the window down, just a smidge, so we could speak.

She asks me, “Can I have a ride back to my house?, I just got out of a party and I'm scared to walk alone this late in the night.” She slurred each of her vowels. Along her pale arms were the intense track marks of a junkie. Her hair was a real wonder, a totally tousled mess of grease, tangled around itself several times. The car's began to fill with an awful smell, like a thick, powerful stench of tobacco. In the darkness, her two blue eyes were distinct. Silently, I nodded, and unlocked the door. As she opened it, her aroma wafted over in waves, each one stronger than the last. Coughing, I ask where her house is from here, figuring that my friend will have to wait. “Just go forward from here,” she says, “and take the second left. From there you're going to have to a right and my place will be on the right.” She spat out the window. “There's a yellow truck parked there, it's hard to miss it.” I nod and turned the ignition, bringing the car back to life. Carefully, I maneuvered away from the curb and began to make my way to her house.

Eventually we arrived, and as I pulled into her driveway she invited me to come inside. I knew that it was getting late and my friend probably needed me, but I accepted either way, out of politeness. We went inside and, after telling me not to be too loud (to avoid waking her mother), she poured us both cups of coffee. I thanked her and sat down on the sofa, and she sat next to me. I didn't really mind, since I had gotten used to her smell at this point, so we both lightly conversed for a while. Eventually she told me that she was getting tired and she should probably go to bed, so I told her good night and began to leave.

As I stood up, however, she grabbed my arm and asked me to walk her to her room. I fell silent, looking into her blue eyes. There was something mesmerizing about them, but I couldn't place my finger on it. We both made our way to her room, just down a hallway, and walked in. Still holding my arm, she led me to her bed, where we both laid down. The entire room was completely quiet. As we laid there, she moved closer to me, latching onto my arm. She brought her face close to mine, and we looked into each other's eyes. I could smell her breath, scented with alcohol, but I didn't move. Eventually, she seemed to be falling asleep.

I stayed in her bed for a long time, but eventually I heard some sounds outside of the room, probably of her mother, and when those stopped I snuck out of the house. Making my way to the car, I kept thinking about what happened. I felt that, although everything I did was just a natural reaction, I was still in the wrong. Like I had done something unclean. While I was driving to go pick up my friend, finally finding my way out of the neighborhood, my stomach kept turning over on itself, and my throat felt like it had a large, solid mass inside of it.

Finally, I began to drive toward the house my friend was at. I could see him sitting alone on the curb, smoking a cigarette, totally still. Soon he noticed me and stood up, waving. I stopped and he opened the door. Taking a seat, he audibly gagged, and asked me what had died in the car.