Aeon
A man drives his car very fast down an empty road. It’s night time. It’s raining. I am standing outside, my face turned up to the sky. This is the last time I will feel the rain on my skin.
I am leaving soon, going back home. Or what was once my home. My old life seems almost a dream now, nothing compared to this one. I have no desire to go back, but nor do I have a choice. I was only supposed to be here for a short while before I returned. I have stayed far too long and they are calling me back. I don’t want to go, but if I don’t they will come for me. I don’t want them here. I have grown far more attached to this world than I could ever have imagined. If they come here they will see that. They will say that I am weak. Like a human. They will destroy my world. My home.
They don’t have love there. They don’t understand it. I didn’t understand it, not at first, but I came to in time. I have fallen in love a hundred times over, with the sky, the sea, the trees. With animals and humans and the beauty they create. The books, the music…how I shall miss the music. I see the colours and the shapes of it in the air. I feel it in my very soul. How could a world so bad create something so wonderful?
Another car drives past. There is a dog sitting on the back seat. The dog sees me and puts its paws up to the window. I start to cry, my tears mingling with the raindrops on my face. I have so little time left. I have not yet said goodbye. I’m not sure I am able to. I have a family here, a family who love me. And I am leaving them, breaking their hearts as well as my own. Perhaps this is why they don’t understand love; surely it cannot be worth the pain it causes. It is though, it is. That’s what makes this world so special, what makes humans so special. Their capacity to love.
I remember the day I arrived. I saw the sun set for the first time. I lay on the grass and gazed at it in wonder, unable to believe something so magnificent could exist in a world so ugly. I stayed there for the whole night, staring up at the sky. That’s when I began to forget why I came here. That’s when I began to think of this world as home. I found peace here. I found a place where I belonged.
I am moving now, changing. I twist and curve and begin to drift upwards, into that dark beautiful sky. Up through the clouds. Further and further away. They sense I am coming. They’ll be waiting for me, waiting to hear what I have seen. I’ll tell them what I have to, but no more. They can’t go there, not ever. It’s my world. It belongs to me now. And I’ll never let go.
Suzi Rose
Note: This was insanely rushed so apologies if there’s any mistakes or it seems…well, rushed!
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Matthew Hartwell
Great shades of The Man Who Fell To Earth, here, Suzi. You evoke that feeling of having a happy secret that hurts the heart because you can’t share it extremely well.
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Rivka Jacobs
Really nice short-short. It takes a lot of talent to do an effective short fantasy. Good job!
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Cyn
Really lovely. It sort of reminds me of the main character in “Mr. Spaceman” by Robert Olen Butler (although the short story that preceded it, “Help Me Find My Spaceman Lover” is much better than the book that followed).
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Nicolas Papaconstantinou
You pretty much compress the whole discussion & question at the core of the novel “KPax” – I never read the sequels or saw the film, so can only go on that book – into a lovely, short-short capsule.
Though it’s a sort of love-song to love & humanity, it also depresses me – my natural instinct is to see the protagonist as happily deluded rather than actually alien, in which case the literal read of the conclusion is pretty depressing!
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da da baillie
This is beautiful!
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