Outside

The smooth greased-metal sound of sealbolts whirring into place as the inner airlock door clenched itself into a solid seal between the cabin and what was about to be hard vacuum, the metal thud barely audible in his helmet assuring the deer that depressurization was a guarantee. Trellis grabbed the cuff around his suit glove and wiggled it just to be sure it was snug and locked into place.

[Inner seal confirmed. Pressure equalization in progress.]

“Nervous” was maybe close to the right word. After all, hard vacuum is pretty much the end of it, really. You can tell yourself this is routine, I’ve done this a hundred times all you want, but nothing is stopping metal fatigue or a loose suit seal from resetting your expectations.

The heads-up display in his suit helmet lit up, orange and yellow and subtle, meters showing available power, available respimix, vital signs, a compass, a clock sparking to life. “Everything a growing spacer needs to feel secure,” his trainer had told him.

He took a deep breath. A gauge on the wall counted down the time to cycle. The breath was reflexive — the suit was perfectly capable of generating the necessary breathable atmosphere to ensure he was comfortable — but it never stopped Trellis from doing it every single time.

In that moment, as the timer ticked down, the deer reached for the maglock toggle on the suit’s thigh. The button gave without a second thought, and the suit’s HUD confirmed the disengagement with a pop-up notification. Trellis applied the gentlest little push angling off the deck plate and began to rise, his gloved hands brushing against the top of the airlock.

He was floating.

[Magboot disengage not recommended] the display reprimanded. He keyed the ACK button on his wristpad. He knew.

The timer exhausted itself, the yellow triangle light winking out, turning to a green circle. The outer airlock door clunked apart, the metallic whirring of the sealbolts unbinding themselves and retracting as the door slid open to reveal the vacuum of space.

Thumbing the toggle again, remagnetizing himself, Trellis stepped out onto the catwalk and began making his way to the tidally locked front of the seed vault station.

“I love the color,” he would say to the other caretakers when they’d ask what his spacewalks were for. They didn’t know he’d been in contact with the Lyricians at Phobos Lab to help rebuild some of the agridomes there, smuggling seed packets in their returned supply canisters. They didn’t know it was to look at the verdant patches on the Martian surface near New Orion or Holyoke Green.

He gripped the railing and stared at the red planet’s surface. The station would be passing Syromyatnikov Plateau soon, the bringer of war’s largest boreal reserve, and their fruit forests were coming into season.

Trellis reveled in its verdant reaches.

Morning

It felt like every bump in the gravel on the way out of Trellis’ driveway telegraphed itself directly into the seats of Flake’s little runabout, the sounds of creaking plastic and shuddering frame filling the cabin.

“Just a little farther,” Flake muttered.

“It’s my driveway! I know how far it is,” Trellis replied.

“That was more for the car than for you,” the jay crowed, clearing the final pothole and emerging onto the forest service access road leading to the freeway. “Good lord! When are you gonna pave that thing?”

Silence from the passenger’s seat. Trellis was gazing back at his home, furrowing his brow and narrowing his eyes to see its lights through the thick haze of the morning fog. “Why would I pave a driveway I barely ever use?” he muttered.

“Oh, come on now, soursticks. You go to the nursery like twice a week. Besides, that little truck of yours has gotta be about thirty years old by now! You’re gonna shake that thing apart. You can’t just neglect your access road, y’know.”

More silence. Not a word. Their friend’s focus was clearly elsewhere, and attempting to jar it loose would take more than snide commentary about property upkeep.

Moments passed as quickly as the roadway signs and turn-outs. Flake thumbed the radio presets, not really to listen as much as to fidget. The deer slouched against the window, watching the sun cut knives through the mist in the trees.

He sighed. The mood in the cabin changed. The bird flinched at the noise, unexpected.

“You miss him, don’t you,” Trellis asked, quietly.

Flake stiffened, sat taller in the seat, and the vehicle swerved slightly when their grip on the wheel tightened with the motion. The seat belt’s limiter ratcheted. “I don’t want to talk about this. Not with you, Trel.”

“We’re going to have to, you know.”

“We’re not.”

“It’s been six years.”

“I’m aware.”

“You know he still calls, right? He’s been asking about you. Wants to get together with the two of us for dinner.”

Slowing to a stop at an intersection, the steller’s jay palmed the right hand blinker and checked their corners. They sighed, touching their forehead to the wheel as another vehicle blasted through the stop sign in the opposite direction. “Trellis. He wanted to tear ass around the country, see the sights. I wanted to stay right where I was. It was an addiction. Marder was never going to be a good fit. I don’t miss him any more than I miss smoking.” They raised their head, turned to look at the deer, only saw silver mane furtively shifting towards the passenger window. Flake frowned. “Can we please change the subj–”

“Fine, fine. Sorry to bring it up,” Trellis replied, cracking the window. “I just…I wonder. I wonder what things would be like if you and I–”

“Never would have happened,” Flake interrupted.

“It almost did.”

“It didn’t almost did. We fooled around. We knew better. You, you, you and I were never…Trel, we were never that way.”

The blinker shut off as the runabout rounded the corner, swinging on to the exit ramp in the dawn’s early light, the sun starting to burn the fog off the freeway. The drive was mostly silent, save for the static crackling over the light jazz and occasional chatter on the radio. Trellis was focused on the trees as they flashed past the window, taking little notes in his journal, doing little sketches of the evergreens and the leafy trees giving up their protective garnishing in anticipation of the coming snow.

Flake, of course, was focused on the road. But they allowed themselves a stolen glance at their lifelong friend, college roommate, confidante, aloe source, sometimes rescuer of the wayward houseplant here or there.

And the jay smiled.

We probably could have been that way, though, Flake thought to themselves. Maybe. Just not then, and not there. The love Flake felt was more friendly than fiery, but it was there all the same. Trellis had to know that, somehow, the jay figured.

“Coffee sound good?” Flake asked. “Then the farmer’s market?”

“Coffee sounds great,” Trellis replied, wistful.

Summer

God, it was hot. The kind of hot that makes you wish winter still existed. What was left of the day’s sunlight bored through the slats in the vertical blinds, cutting across the apartment’s carpet like fiery blades. Spaceplanes took off and landed, seemingly infinitely, at the spaceport visible from the small apartment’s windows, the loud roars of afterburners drowning out the less-loud drone of the box fans stuck in the window, trying desperately to force hot air out of the western-exposed hotbox of a living quarters.

Flake splayed out on the couch, ice-sweaty water bottle clenched tight in their left hand, television remote in the right, flipping through channels and only pausing long enough to press the damp plastic vessel against their forehead. It wasn’t enough to ease the bird’s hangover, but then again, neither was the twelve-hour nap they started at seven o’clock in the morning. ‘

Keys jingled in the door lock, the jay only acutely aware of it thanks to their temporarily heightened sensitivity to…well, everything. The door handle turned, the slick grinding of metal-on-metal mechanisms clunking into place thundering in the bird’s ears like the march of a thousand New Terran soldiers marching across the plains.

“When did you get in?” came the voice from the foyer, deep and northern, thick and gravely like the ash of a forest fire sifting through a breeze

“When I felt like it,” moaned the bird.

“Jesus,” Trellis frowned. “Are you staying hydrated at least?”

An arm thrust weakly upwards from behind the back of the couch, rattling a water bottle full of ice cubes.

“Well, at least you have that going for you,” the deer mused. “Are you okay?”

The arm fell back to its place. Flake opened their beak, sprayed some water in it, choked it down. “As okay as I can be, given that I’m out of work, I’ve got no place to go, I’ve turned to my only friend within five hundred klicks, and I’m not aboard some godforsaken jobs transport to the new frontier,” Flake said, affecting those last few words as if delivering a marketing pitch. “Thanks for not changing the locks.”

The deer chuckled. “Thanks for not changing anything.”

Spring

“I’m tired of work, you know? It feels like nothing I do ever leads to anything getting done,” his friend moaned.

Trellis sat patiently, stirring his coffee and listening to his old college roommate talk about his work, his love life (christ, he thought), his hobby, whatever streamed from his consciousness. Mostly he sat stirring his coffee, cold after so many minutes of waiting to get a word in edgewise, and thinking about his plants.

“Anyway, you know how it is. Chicken one day…hey, uh, are you there?” Flake asked, talon tapping on the table.

The deer, shaken from his navel gazing, let the stirring stick go, briefly watching it spin around listlessly in the coffee. “S-sorry.”

“Nah, nah, don’t worry about it. What’s on your plate these days? How’s the flower shop?”

“Spring’s around the corner. The plants aren’t used to it being so nice so early. Global warming…”

“Yeah,” said his friend, gazing out the window at the rain. “Terrifying.”

Trellis tapped his stick against the side of his coffee cup and gently laid it down on the table, as if that would somehow improve the quality of the already dead beverage. He took a pull from the cup, sucking down the grounds. “This coffee…detestable.”

Flake laughed. “What, you don’t like pour-over? Got any plans?”

“You know I don’t like pour-over and you know I don’t have plans.”

“Want to get together for drinks tonight? The Shady Pine has some really out-there new wave jazz trio doing a downtempo set.” He waved his hands in the air when he said “out there” as if to emphasize the oddity.

“No, Flake.”

“Five dollar cover,” the bird sing-songed. He waggled his eyebrows some. “Eh? Ehhh?”

“No, no. Evening in. Sorry. Maybe another time?” Trellis frowned.

A sigh. “Sure thing, man. I understand.”

“Thanks.”

– – –

Trellis McCormick boarded the bus home, took out his little black book, and started doodling.  Little tiny sketches of trees, plants, grassy patches the bus passed by. He wrote the names in the margins.

Scotch broom.

Douglas fir.

Weeping willow.

The rain picked up. What was simply background noise and streaks on the windows had turn into full blown wipers-on-high interrupting-idle-conversation rain. It beat against the leaves of the trees and the blades of grass in his neighborhood. The bus slowed down to cope with the weather and Trellis perked up.

He took a pull from his water bottle, then offered an empty toast to the windows and the plants beyond them as the bus rattled down the forest road. “Spring,” he whispered to no one in particular. “It’s here,” he smiled.

Hazel

She’d been here before, she realized, taking a long drag from her cigarette. It was a long time ago, but she definitely remembered this place. Fargo’s been here, too, she mused. Still is. I can smell him on the wind. God, what a shithole.

The Shellbox was a shithole. A three-story converted munitions depot from the wars of last century, the base that used to surround it having been demolished for hundreds of kilometers in every direction, leaving nothing but this dingy hangout for Europa’s lowest lives.

“You’re gonna need to spit that out, ma’am,” said the bouncer, sneering and leering. Six foot eleven and probably about 400 pounds of steel cable, the black bear watching the door looked like he enjoyed popping arms out of sockets on his off time.

Hazel didn’t flinch, took a long drag off the cigarette in her muzzle, and blew the smoke out her nostrils. She was nowhere near as tall at 5’2, or as bulky at a waifish 111. “This a no smoking facility?” she grumbled.

“No.”

She placed a hand on the push-plate. He placed his arm across the doorway. “You’re not on the list.”

“There isn’t a list.”

The bouncer leaned down to match her, eye to eye. The red wolf could feel his hot breath on her muzzle, nearly choking on how moist it was. “Listen, ma’am. You’re not coming in.”

“Why’s that, lunchmeat?”

“Because I don’t like you,” he growled. “You look like trouble.”

She took her hand off the door. “Tough,” she said. “I’m supposed to meet a client here.”

“Cancel.”

“Get out of my way,” she hissed.

He started to show incisors, a half-formed grin on his face. The smallest chunk of an “oh, yeah?” escaped his maw before her left hand was on his collar. A mechanical whirring came from underneath her shirtsleeve, and before he knew what hit him, she’d thrown him to the ground. In the same motion, her pistol came out and pressed itself directly behind his round ear.

“I do not have time for this shit,” she said, clicking off the safety. The little coil derringer began to charge itself, blue lights flickering to life. She leaned in, snarling. “I’m not here to cause trouble but I absolutely will! Now are you gonna cooperate or am I going to spray your thinkmeats on the goddamn pavement?” she sneered, pushing warm steel even harder into his temple.

The wind had been knocked out of him. He struggled to exhale a breathless “okay.”

She spit her cigarette out at the back of his head and threw open the door. By the time he had realized he could get up, she was already gone.

Late

It’s 4:18.

Meyer rested with his arms behind his back, propping himself up, lit cigarette haphazardly nocked between his fingers. He brought it to bear against his lips, falling backwards and spilling himself across the crabgrass-laden median in the parking lot. He laughed at himself, a slurring, miserable laugh.

He was waiting for the ride back to his apartment.

He’d been drinking.

He was alone.

– – –

The alarm, more shrill than usual, cracked across his ears like the sound of a thousand blaring war horns. The mid-morning sunlight, strips of overwhite light cutting through the vertical blinds, hit him right square in the eye.

His left ear twitched. He swiped lazily at his cellphone, doing nothing to quiet it but knocking it to the floor instead. It clattered across the hardwood and into the laundry.

Meyer rolled over onto his back with a heaving groan, cowering in the crook of his elbow as the light bounced across his body. He stayed that way for a moment, mind slowly adjusting to the fact that he needed to be awake despite the overwhelming signals coming from his body to call in sick. He’d screwed up, again. Too hard on a Thursday, he whined internally.

The phone’s alarm did not shut off. He didn’t care. He stumbled to the bathroom anyway, cranking the shower as high as it could go. He left the fan off and sank to the bottom of the stall, sitting there in the nude, letting the hissing of the shower drown out the alarm and the hangover and the light from the bedroom window and the awful smell of vomit in the back of his sinus.

– – –

He pulled a dirty sports t-shirt over his head. Rifled through his underwear drawer and found a pair of boxer briefs he hadn’t worn yet. Pulled a pair of jeans out of his laundry hamper and tugged them on. Shoved his feet into a pair of slip-on skate shoes; he didn’t have any clean socks and it was mid-summer so it wouldn’t have mattered.

He leaned down at the laundry pile and grabbed his phone. He turned off the alarm and checked the time, and if his fur could have gone any whiter, he would have turned invisible.

He was very late.

“Shit, shit, shit,” he grumbled, thrusting the device in his back pocket. “She’s gonna kick my ass this time, no doubt about it.” He shoved his wallet haphazardly into his pocket with a handful of change and wadded-up bills.

Palming the keys off his side table, Meyer was halfway out the door before he remembered his glasses.

He nearly forgot to lock the door.

He was on the bus towards the music store within five minutes, barely keeping himself from being one of those people that catches a mouthful of exhaust fumes.

– – –

“You know what time it is, Brad?”

It took exactly one second after the door chime finished its job before Meryl bellowed in the general direction of the front of the store.

Meyer winced, partly from the hangover and partly from the shame. “Y-yeah, s-sorry.”

“Whatever.” She rounded the counter, scratching under her ears, yawning a bit. Her mottles shifted like specks of red wine vinegar in bread oil. “I need you on the phone with the repair center. They’re slacking. I got parents blowing up my phone because I haven’t had anyone to answer calls or man the counter for the last two hours, Brad.”

“Meryl, I’m sorry, I know, I didn’t get up unt–”

“Get coffee, get to work, and when I’m done catching up from the two hours of balancing the books I missed covering your shift, we can talk about how passing out in an Applebee’s parking lot off mozzarella sticks and rum punch made you late.”

Meyer froze. “H-how did y-”

She looked at him, eyes wide, brow bent in frustration, drawing a circle in the air around her own muzzle. He clasped his hands over his own.

“And next time when you clean yourself up, wash your face,” she scowled as she pivoted back to the office.

maybe (fiction)

The train pulled away from the platform, lumbering and lurching forward on its launch, away from the city and into the fog.

We were silent for a while. Maybe it was fifteen minutes. Maybe it was thirty. I wasn’t paying attention, lost in my own fog.

I reached for my partner’s hair, barely grazing his ear. His response was immediate, frosty, and painful.

“Don’t touch me,” he said.

I winced as if I’d been stabbed. It had just dawned on me that I’d erred moments before we boarded. His words stung my core with the venom of a thousand snakes.

He cringed and pressed into the furthest edge of his seat, shoulder against the window, as if he was hoping to somehow osmose through the glass to get away from me.

“I’m sorry,” I frowned. Maybe all of this was my fault. Maybe I should feel ashamed. I didn’t know, not right now.

“I don’t care,” he said, not staring at me. He was staring out at the cars, the houses, the tracks. Maybe he was talking to my reflection in the glass. Maybe he was talking to himself. Maybe he was talking to the window. “What you hid from me was selfish.”

I was glad he wouldn’t look at me. I was I looked at the carpet. I looked at the seat in front of me. I couldn’t look at him. I couldn’t bear the tear-stained cheeks, the wet eyes, the pained expression. He was weeping again. Quietly, but I could hear it in his voice.

Time passed. The silence was deafening. Other passengers were making light conversation, talking about their jobs, their travel plans. Their pedantic blathering was soothing in a way that only served to make me feel more tense.

Maybe it was another hour. Maybe it was two. I was, for the moment, in stasis, trying not to think about things.

“I can’t live without you,” he sobbed. “I don’t know what I’m going to do once you’re gone.” He turned back to me and it was as if he’d stung me all over again. His expression was that of a lost child and a grieving widow rolled into one.

His pain was palpable. It was touching and terrifying. I didn’t know what to say. Maybe I should try to console him. Maybe I should say nothing. Maybe I should say everything. Maybe I should hide in the bathroom. Maybe I should pull on the flask in my bag. Maybe I should cry, too. Maybe I should do nothing.

“I’m sorry,” I said, and I put my arm around him. This time he didn’t recoil. He embraced me and sobbed into my shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

Hello!

After having this website set up for like two years I think I’m finally going to start publishing content to it now. I hope that’s okay.

I’m Flake! Or Neal. Whatever.

I’m going to post an older vignette I wrote and then I’ll probably post something else and so on and so on.

Anyway, bye!