Mullen turns and walks away. He gets into the shuttle without looking back.
When he gets home, he is whisked away, asked questions. He answers them all honestly, doesn't have to pretend to be in shock. His world that was so dirty, and full of Hannah, and real, is now sterile and suffocatingly neat.
He's still not sure how he got here – how he went from week-long holiday to permanent hell.
He thinks of Hannah still there in the dirt. She'll probably marry Arnou, have too-many-limbed babies. An image of her comes into his head of her cuddling a little octopus-baby. Even after everything, the thought is so utterly absurd that he bursts out laughing. The men on the other side of the table glance at each other, then one says, “What's so funny?”
He laughs harder, tries to explain, but he's cry-laughing now and the words come out jumbled between hiccups. Octopus. Baby. Hannah.
They look at him as if he has gone insane, and he laughs harder, gasping for breath, because he has.
He loses his job, of course. It doesn't matter. He has plenty of money, but he misses having something to do with his day. Something to take his mind off it. No one wants to employ him. They all know who he is.
He spends his days scrolling through newsfeeds with the filters off, watching the slaughter on Earth, searching the bodies and the severed limbs for her, but she's not there.
And at night, he watches old Earth movies, mouthing the words and laughing at all the right places. Sometimes, just for a second, he can even fool himself that none of it ever happened. He imagines she is in the dark next to him, and he can see her if only he turns his head.
He never does.
.
Author’s Note
This story originally appeared in anthology No Way Home curated by the talented Lucas Bale, and I would like to thank him for not only inviting me to contribute, but also for all his support and encouragement. If it weren’t for him, this story wouldn’t have been written.
Merely a Madness was my first attempt at science fiction, and I’m really pleased with how it turned out.
The good news is that No Way Home did so well that we decided to do it again! My second SF story will be coming out later in 2015 in an anthology titled Crime and Punishment.
If you’d like to be notified when it’s released, please sign up for my newsletter. I promise not to spam you, or use your address for nefarious purposes.
As always, if you enjoyed the story, I would be very grateful if you could leave a review, even if it’s only a line or two. It makes a huge difference and would be very much appreciated.
I love to hear from readers and spend entirely too much time on the internet so come along and say hello on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Goodreads, or my website.
.
Merely a Madness Page 4
