Orbit

Published By: Towson University

2022

Orbit

 “Doesn’t it bother you?” 

    The question passed my lips before it had even formed in my mind. The silhouette next to me shifted, abandoning the comfortable position she had found lying in the grass of our small hill. 

    “I mean—” Jess shrugged. “Not really.” 

    Her face was hard to read in the sparse moonlight, but I could still make out the concern superimposed on her features. It was a familiar expression—it appeared whenever I talked about something like this. I propped myself up with my elbows, grinding dirt into the crevices of my exposed skin. My neck remained craned toward the sky. I didn’t take my eyes off it. I heard the slightest sigh slip from Jess’s lips, the same sigh I always heard whenever I was being difficult. 

    “It bothers you though, doesn’t it?” she asked, politely hiding her exasperation. I forced a swallow down my throat, which seemed to pull the corners of my mouth with it. 

    “I mean, how could it not?” I lifted my elbow and stretched the fingers of my right hand towards the sky, as though I needed to point out the celestial form to her. 

    “They say it’s the thing that will end all life on Earth. For good,” I elaborated. “Doesn’t it seem so... I don’t know.” Jess nodded, her eyes tracing the path of the asteroid as it streaked across the clear night’s sky. 

    “Not for like, three hundred years, though.” She shrugged again, completely indifferent. “For now, it’s just fun to look at. Marvel at. Get drunk and party and thank god you weren’t born three hundred years later.” 

    She chuckled like she’d said something funny.

    I tuned in to the murmur of the bodies below us. The flicker of firelight seemed to mimic the asymmetrical crease of light purple that Dante’s Asteroid cut across the sea of tranquil black above. There was laughter and muddled snippets of conversation. There were cups flung about and the fluid movement of arms pushing and pulling bodies into one another. There was happiness. There was reverence. 

    “But how can it not mean anything?” I asked. “Millions of years of evolution and history and art and people and progress. And we get to just stare at the thing that will erase all of that. We just stand around and celebrate the hunk of space rock that makes it all for nothing.” 

    “Christ, Mark why can’t you just—” She pinched the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger. “Why can’t you just be here? Why do you have to be three hundred years in the future with all the people who actually have to worry about that? Can’t you just be happy that you’re fine? That you get to enjoy all that progress? That you get to lie in the grass with me and experience something that only comes around once a decade?” 

    She sat upright, staring down at me. I slid my eyes away from the asteroid and connected them with hers. I fell into the deep leagues of her irises, which were rendered nearly black in the darkness. My mouth slipped into a small, tentative smile. Her lips lovingly mirrored my own, and she slid her hand across the Earth to cover mine. She squeezed my fingers tight as we reveled in the calm of each other’s gaze. 

    It was then that the purple scar of the asteroid sliced through her fathomless eyes. I felt my hand go limp in hers. I could see the heavenly form tearing through the planet’s atmosphere, swelling to the size of the sun. I could see the asteroid ripping into the Earth, nothing more now than a flash of fatal light. I could see it burning through the bodies below us, in the next instant, reducing Jess to ash in my grasp. I could see it slipping right past me, as though it knew leaving me alive was worse than taking me with her. 

    Jess sighed and her disposition shifted to pity. I felt her slide her hand from mine, leaving me alone in the damp earth. She stood up in silence, her eyes fixed neither on me nor the asteroid above. She walked gracefully down the grassy hill, shaking her head just slightly in disappointment. 

    I stared blankly into the comet's empyrean glow as it made its way peacefully across the infinite dark. I watched, briefly, as Jess slipped into the sea of bodies and laughter and happiness beneath. I thought once or twice that I could hear her laugh, but it was impossible to tell, really