Astray

A look outside bore the emptiness of space. The sparse background so dark it sucked me in like a black hole. I couldn’t feel or breathe, and yet my chest rose and fell. The blood I knew was there continued to  pump through my veins. I passed stars, staring into them as I floated in the endless expanse.

A view of what appeared an immeasurable obsidian ocean dotted with phosphorescent fish greeted me outside the window. The beeping sounds of the long distant signals of distress resounded in my ears as one might hear the echo of crashing waves in a seashell. 

There was nothing here. Not even oxygen resided anywhere aside from my ship. Now crushed and engines failing, the suits long lost; drifting on an asteroid shooting light-years into the distant future. 

The oxygen felt thinner. Or was that just my imagination? I took the radio in my hand one last time, the rubber casing on the sides worn down from my efforts. I pressed and said, my voice trembling, “Hello, is anyone out there?” 

Again, simple static spoke in response, and I tossed the radio down in my frustration. It floated up to bump me in the face as if to laugh at me. 

I turned to check the status of oxygen again, a habit that was wearing my spirit down to mere nubs. The lights blinked red for danger, a universal sign that made my blood boil, also red with anger; anger of being so easily dispatched. 

Thrown into the emptiness of space, into the situations and life that I had been tossed recklessly amongst. A piece of wreckage in an utterly deserted landfill. 

I had chosen this mission. Why was I doubting my choices, when they were whole-heartedly my own?

I chose the emptiness of space, to match what I sought. To match the journey I knew would come. Adrift, I stared amongst the stars, and sought to see or hear, as if sound could travel through that thick nothing. 

I wish I could be satisfied with it; a shell to call my home, a turtle to claim its shell. But just like that turtle’s flesh, I was fused to it. I could never escape it. 

The blinking red light sat beside the second symbol of danger, a pin-striped yellow and black tape against the metal. The border of the door to the outside. 

The red glow of the electric meter became a spark. 

An ember in a fireplace outside, and in my hands a stick at the end of which sat a fat marshmellow. Around me the orange flames set the faces of my family aglow. Their features laying ghostly shadows on their skin. Tribal warriors of an ancient time mirrored in the angry thrashing licks of flame. 

I grabbed the Hershey’s before my brother could claim it for his own and stuck my tongue out, melting the marshmallow to a burning pulp as I roared, holding it high and racing the inflamed candy across the night sky, a rocket in flight.

My parents looked at me with eyes wide with a wonder- 

(or was it disgust)

That became pride as I graduated from school, getting my degree twice over, succumbing to the extreme price of requiring antidepressants and lots of adderall. 

I’d always wanted this. And yet here I stood, staring at another red button. A button that screamed danger, screamed as within all those stupid movies DO NOT PRESS. But why not? When all that stood before you was the emptiness you’d known might’ve been there all along?

Again a voice whispered in my head, Never again.

And yet, this time the attempt would be final. Always, ultimate.

Another memory of red bled within my mind's curves and bends, between the pathways and neural passages a blood-soaked journey began and ended in my bathtub. Slippery, but the faucet did not drip with water. 

The smell of metal was distant. A memory of a past that was no longer alive, my senses dissembling and reorganizing to fit a future that hadn’t begun. 

My eyes however took in the deep cuts in my flesh as I jolted from shock, the blood escaping my veins so beyond the haste I thought possible.

Ragged breathing a companion to thick silence until my mo-

My mother’s screaming was the loudest thing I’ve ever heard, and darkness that seemed so alive now was so repose then. 

A turn toward the control panel, with the scattered buttons and panicked beeping from various points, the jolt of electricity in my finger from an exposed wire-

Be careful with those, my boyfriend in grad school told me. 

I know. And anyway they're just a prescription, I lied. 

We had been in the lab, working on a project late into the night. The only sound was our hushed breathing and the sizzling in the beaker before us. A spark shocked me as I reached toward the beaker filled with a dark hot liquid-

The obscurity before me seemed to glare as I glimpsed through the door’s little window. The unknown beyond sparkled and shifted as the ship’s slow descent or ascent continued.

A star blazing in glory lay not far from my location. The heat was palpable even at a light-years distance, and I pressed my body against the metal door, it’s hinges and bolts bruising my skin. 

The star’s vicious surface seemed to get ever closer although I knew it wasn’t possible for me to actually see the movement towards us, the speed we moved not nearly enough to be visible to the human-

Eyes open in desperation, I watched as my boyfriend walked away from me shaking his head in disappointment and resolution. He saw the amount of pills I would take. He didn’t understand the toll that school took on me-

The toll of the bells were so loud I felt my bones shake, and smiled as I watched my sister walk down the aisle to her soon-to-be husband. Both of their smiles felt reflected from the gigantic stain-glass windows behind them, sunlight filtering over them in vast arrays of colored light. The glass-

Broke into countless pieces, a shard slicing my cheek and my companions shouting in alarm as they commanded us to take in the thrusters. Put the shield up, don’t let those engines fail! But nothing could stop-

What was necessary.

I broke from my thoughts to stare at the emptiness that I’d always assumed belonged to me, being an astronaut an adventure that could linger amongst the thresholds of humanity. Something people could never reach and could never quite imagine. I needed it. A turtle with its shell. A part of me. I touched the handle of the door, to press it down would mean-

Death, you don’t want that, do you? I’m sorry.

I would never want that, the whispers of my parents and siblings held that lofty standard to live over me as a chastity belt would someone's virginity. How could I escape this restriction? 

Only by reaching across a boundary none but a few could cross. 

Forever adrift? Or forever nonexistent? What would it be? Both surely.

Her mind couldn’t assemble a thought without an utterance of her demise, and immediately, I watched as her ship floated--a distant wreckage-- a form emerging from the side. Shot out by the gravity rushing out and vacuum sucking in and digesting what was inside. Another was defeated, and no longer would they stretch selfish hands across our expanse. No longer could they spread poison or pollution or conflict or disease. No longer could greed overcome them until horrific behavior emerged, a tumor that if spread would kill and infect anything it touched. No more of them must survive. 

The last was gone.

I gaze up at the stars, my last thought fading from me. I blink for the last time, a figure in the distance.  Thousands of eyes open amongst the stars from beyond a thick black curtain and simultaneously wink.