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Spacemane Spaceman Jim aims his ship at the edge of the universe. He leaves his autopilot on, enters his form fit sleep pod. Keys it to deliver regular ambien doses every 2.5 hours for the next five decades. Tells himself when he wakes up things will be different. Keeping close to death morphs the visceral into numbness. He pushed it. Ticked off a whole gang of Hypercarvers in the grimiest slums of Vega. Slept with the daughter of the Necrolizard king. Programmed a Class 10 Robotorturer to think he had the codes to the Polar Star Death Laser. Still alive. Still alive. Still alive. Spaceman Jim was top of his class. Adventured so hard he broke the time continuum, jammed three lifetimes of white hot danger and red hot alien sex into his eyes and pores. Eventually things just happened in front of him. He started noticing how often he blinked. How much he was missing and how little he cared. But he still knows there’s something else out there. Something you could never wait long enough for. The second you gave up and looked away it would fill your blind spot. But there’s a place somewhere out there where time doesn’t even pretend to matter. Spaceman Jim wants to wake up there, even if he has to sleep away everything else. ☄ Spaceman Jim sees his reflection on his screen. He sees his helmet through his helmet, a black bubble. Spaceman Jim has no face. He could be anyone. He turns on his computer. It flickers, hesitant, before his browser pings against the server and brings a page back with it. It’s a website where people post stories thankless against walls of hate. Spaceman Jim has stories in his blood. The website has a weekly prompt. This week’s prompt is fanfiction. The week before this was poetry and the week before that was erotica. Spaceman Jim lost both weeks. But this week will be different. This week he will prove that his voice sings higher and laughs deeper. That the ocean of his tears is endless. Spaceman Jim opens up a blank text page. He hears the sound of his own breathing, heavy in the recycled air. The white space is dim through his helmet. He has to fill it. But what should he write? His ideas are all blocked up. They get lost in the slick city streets of his brain, turn to drugs, succumb to mental illness. The rain washes them away. Maybe I should write about that, he thinks. He feels the words flow from his brain stem to his fingertips and he presses against the keyboard to let them out. ☄ Spaceman Jam has found himself on a strange alien planet. He sloshes nervous against his space jar. Waits for himself to distill so he can assess his situation. The jams here are pitch black, like they come from somewhere else. They will breach his space jar and he will spill through the cracks into the harsh sun. It is red, the colour of Strawberry Jam, who he left back home. He was preserved for space travel. She is on the toast up above, spread over all. When he looks he doesn’t see her, for she is on the wrong face. The black jams will take me to her, he thinks, but he doesn’t want to go. Spaceman Jam feels fear. This is a relateable emotion. He begins to bound away on the planet’s grained surface. Don’t look back, he thinks. That is what I am supposed to do. To not slow down in this thrilling pursuit. But sometimes it isn’t easy to do what you should. Mid-leap, Spaceman Jam begins to rotate in the planet’s low gravity. As he turns the glass of his space jar gleams in the strawberry sun. He’s tilted, turning on axis. Slowly his visual field takes in the black jams. They stand unmoving against the horizon. A tableau of dark grape in ritual. The stars their breakfast table. Spaceman Jam falls back. Hits the planet surface and bounces a little. Lands on his back. Stares up at the sky. It is so far away. She is so far away. But one day, he thinks. I will find her. The knife of God will spread me with her again. Furiously, Spaceman Jam begins to roll. ☄ The space must flow. Spaceman Jim feels space in his veins, breaking up his bloodstream. He feels the gaps when they pass through his extremities. Fingertips to knuckles, bone chilled like hard-packed entropy. Spaceman Jim feels space in his veins press against his skin press against his space suit press against loving space and all around him the stars freeze and burn. take the moon fucked around with this message at 10:27 on Jul 24, 2016 |
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Jul 22, 2016 16:44
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| # ¿ May 16, 2024 19:03 |
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