One Last Glance at the Sun

I saw red.

And then green.

The green of his eyes, caressing my hair, saying I am going to be okay and then vanishing. Sweet poison.

Peter wasn’t a friend. And he wasn’t a lover. He was a fighter.

I could see the disappointment in his eyes, every so often, usually disappointment in me. When I am trying to tell him that this is not for me, that I shouldn’t be here, with him.

But it doesn’t last for long. Right after I melt in front of him, turning into an amorphous shape of a light, spreading in all colors of red, he goes and connects one eye to another, and they become grey again. Was this time different?

So, I was standing there, in the kitchen, holding a broken piece of glass that I have broken.

I got red again.

A vanishing memory of Peter from a few seconds ago was still floating in my mind. "It's time", he said.

But where is he?

I walked through the quiet hallway.

The windows were closed.

I saw a piece of paper lying on the desk. The letter from my mother.

My stomach ached and I wanted to lie down.

She had written it a few minutes before she jumped into the ocean. They were at the beach. My dad thought she was just messing around and will come out in a few seconds, but a minute passed. And another one. And one more.

Her body was never found.

Everything in this house reminded me of her, and I sometimes suspected that Peter did it on purpose.

The last thing she wrote in the note was how much she loved Peter. How I should always trust him. How perfect of a guy he was, a guy she wanted for herself sometimes. Peter didn’t even like my mother, and that was the worst of it. I hated him for not even liking her and at the same time using all of her compliments towards him to prove to me that he is always right.

But what could I do.

What was this letter doing here, anyways? It had always been wrapped in three hidden in my last drawer. Did I let it out of there?

I kept walking.

I saw my red lipstick lying on the ground, unscrewed.

I hated that lipstick, unlike Peter.

It was blood red.

He was the only reason I kept that damn thing.

I wore it the day my mother died. It was smeared on my face after I had gotten that phone call. When Peter held me in his arms, silent.

I bent down and held the lipstick in my hand.

There was red on the wall. An arrow going up.

I got scared.

The arrow led to the mirror, which was circled in gold.

"Keep going. You can do it."

It was written by the same lipstick on the mirror.

I looked at myself in the mirror, held back by the writing on it. My grey eyes were staring at me. They looked a bit shiny. Peter said that sometimes even my rainy cloud eyes could be beautiful.

"Peter, stop it. It is not funny," I yelled suddenly.

What kind of a twisted game was that?

I hated when he did that kind of stuff to me. But this was extreme even for him.

I remembered him leaving me clues on the way to my valentine's present.

That lipstick. Or at least that was one of the things.

A game which went on for hours.

He liked to confuse me.

"Please," I whispered.

The hallway seemed to be a rounded ascent. What was happening?

It wasn’t home. It only looked like it.

I could feel it.

What the hell?

There was nothing I could do. I kept walking. He must have wanted me to do so.

I arrived to the room at the end of the hallway. The white room.

The white room was my dad’s idea, after my mother had died. A place where we could all forget about the problems of life. A place where we could be a bit dead ourselves. He made one for every house of our family. Before it was the "white room", this place had been my art corner.

I walked in.

The room was indeed white, but not exactly the "white room" we had.

I saw a huge button and then it was all I could see.

I wanted to push it. I knew it was what Peter wanted me to do.

So I did.

And then,

Then,

I

was

floating

.

All the objects in the room were lifted up, looking at me, floating too. My hair was ruffled like an octopus with millions of arms.

From the round window the white stars were staring at me.

I wanted to vomit.

I swam in the floating air towards the button and pushed it again. Gravity suddenly hit me and I was on the floor again. I opened the door so fast it slammed loudly behind me and I was back at the hallway, very sick, everything coming out of my mouth.

After, my stomach hurt even more and I was lying on the ground. I noticed something I hadn’t seen when I was here before .

A remote.

It looked like a TV remote, but the TV was missing.

I turned it on.

Everything changed.

The desk became a huge machine.

my hung black dress, to a white suit.

The whole hallway turned white.

A spaceship.

I ran.

I ran fast.

Everything seemed so strange and familiar at the same time.

The huge computer Peter and I worked on.

The food machines we often had to fix.

How long?

I stopped running suddenly when I was in a black room which had a huge bench. I sat on it.

It was overlooking the space in which we were traveling. I looked at the bright sun. it was red and bright. I wanted so much to be sucked into it, to disappear into the white shimmers, into the warmth, wrapping me with fondness.

"You did it", he said at the back.

I jumped, looking back.

There he was.

Brown hair, shiny bright smile. And those green eyes.

I couldn’t open my mouth.

"I thought I could never explain to you where you are.”

He sighed.

"So, I thought I would just show you. I am so happy you finally got it"

I started weeping.

"You drugged me -"

"Because you have lost your mind!" he yelled. "You have lost your mind. I had no choice but to calm you down so you will think you are back on earth. Thanks to the simulations they have built for us, it was easier. But we cannot do this forever, can we?"

A single teardrop was falling down my cheek, frozen.

"I had to find a solution, you know?" he said, walking around the black room, "to show you that you are right. That you really shouldn’t be here. But in addition, that you should do something about it. To help us both."

I looked back directly at the sun.

"We cannot travel back, you know that," he whispered. "We have a mission, people trust me to do it, I have to finish it. My honor back on Earth depends on it".

It hit me, and then I realized.

I was a burden.

But…

I didn’t even care.

"I love you, you know that?" he said quietly. "But there is nothing I can do to help you now. But… there is something you can do to help us both."

"Lead me to the room." I whispered.

"Good girl."

He took my hand and I stood up, taking one last glance at the stars.

He opened the door.

"There you go," he said and kissed me.

I took one last glance at him, and went in.

He didn’t say anything, just closed the door leaving me inside.

He didn’t warn me. Didn’t send a signal.

Just opened the next door, while he is inside of the ship.

I fell into the black sky.

It was one hell of a void. But for me, this was air. I wasn’t breathing the oxygen. I was just surviving.

Through this downfall, I felt alive for the very first time in my life. I felt like I was only going up.

Soon I will be knocking on the shiny door, and see my mom.

I smile, taking one last glance at the sun.