Thirty seconds.
“Do you really want to know why I keep doing this shit over and over?” he almost screamed as he turned towards her, feeling fire in his belly, angry at her, angry at the station, angry at everything and everyone. She opened her mouth but he gave her no chance to answer.
“I love you. I'm fucking selfish, and I love you. You've known me for a few hours but I've seen you every day for over forty four years.”
Her eyes were wide.
“Forty four years,” he said, wiping tears from his burns, salt from the skin. “Forty four years, eight months, twelve days. Of course I kept counting, of course. Every day. What else did I have to do? I can't save you! We got off here once around thirty eight years ago, and it was still for nothing. I only keep going to see you. It's all just a way of spending time with you. This is my walk in the park, my first kiss, my romance. Blood and guts, death and dying, rot and stench and you and me... I love you.”
The look on her face was the mirror that he needed, the mirror that showed much more than the simple picture of his features that he saw every morning of the same day. It showed his true, unflinching insanity.
Zero.
A switch flicked in his mind at the same time as the airlock slid open, revealing the entrance to the ring of escape pods that curled around for hundreds of metres. All the lights were red... except for one. One working escape pod, the same as last time. One green light in the red sea.
He grabbed her arm in a vice like grip, biting his own lip so hard that he drew blood. The taste of iron filled his mouth as he dragged her into the corridor and threw her into the pod, before climbing in after her.
“What are you going to do?” she asked, not fearfully but in the same way that an opponent would look for a weakness. The only other time he had got this far had been so different. He'd been a hero. What am I now? He had shown his deepest scars and repelled her, his only reason for living.
“We're going to have eighteen hours together, eighteen hours, and then it'll all start again,” he said coldly, standing over her as blood dripped from his mouth. “Again. Again. Again. Again.”
“We can't escape...” she said, her voice hollow.
He wasn't what mattered to her. He never would be. There was only one thing she wanted, the thing he had given up on years ago.
Escape.
He looked at his watch. A few moments.
“You don't know me, but I know you,” he said, breathing deeply. He wiped the blood from his lip. “A different set of questions every day, every time we ate the last supper. Your sister's name is Jeannie. You prefer reading fiction to watching the news. You broke your ankle at the age of fourteen which stopped your involvement in athletics that year, so you stayed in bed reading science journals and dreaming of one day making a bold discovery. Above all you want simplicity in your life.”
Nothing, she still said nothing.
“This is it, the most time we've had together in a day for years. It was what I have been driving for, what I sacrificed all those poor souls for. Don't you have anything to say?” he asked, feeling his eyes close. What a waste... tomorrow... maybe tomorrow...
“I'm sorry,” she said simply.
One last breath, a last moment.
Different. This time had been so different.
What could he say?
“Thank you.”
A day like any other, changed to a day like only one other, changed to...
“A unique day. Is it really so simple?” he said to himself, looking down at the woman that he loved.
He quickly stepped out of the pod and pressed the door override. The metal slid into place as a hiss of air signalled the break of pressure on the other side. The small window showed Cathy's frantic blows on the glass, her mouth working silently behind the soundproofing.
As the pod fired itself away into the darkness he finally allowed himself, after forty four years, to cry.
The moment of almost silence was like Heaven, with the buzz of the air-conditioning as the only interloper, creeping into his senses and dragging him awake. It was just one day, one more... but it would never be the same as yesterday.
“You don't know how lucky you are,” said the old man, his face a mass of wrinkles as he concentrated on swabbing the blood from the grazes on Cathy's arms. She didn't reply, staring ahead at the window that looked out onto the stars. From here, it seemed as if nothing had changed... yet everything was capable of change, all it took was time.
“Any family?” he asked. The sting of antiseptic was a welcome distraction from her thoughts.
“A sister, Jeannie. She's on Earth.”
“Oh... well that's good,” said the doctor. He carefully dressed the wounds before inquiring further. “No family on the station?”
“No,” she said, closing her eyes, fatigue washing over her. “Why do you ask?”
“Well, I probably shouldn't say, but after the initial escapees there were only two others that made it out of there before the station was lost... not enough air for two though, and we couldn't bring the pod on board to repair the filtration system without risk of infection. Poor couple died in each other's arms a couple of hours before the quarantine was up.”
She looked at the old man, her eyes searching his features for something... something she found in the curl of his mouth, the quick glance of his eyes. She willed him not to speak, to tell her something else, anything else... but the words came, each one a hammer blow.
“The resemblance is uncanny...”
###
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Author Bio:
Jacob Prytherch is an author of science fiction, horror and weird fiction. He started writing due to a love of Bradbury, Tolkien and Gaiman, and carries on writing due to restlessness. He currently lives in Birmingham with his wife and two daughters, writing as much as he can in the darkness before they wake up. Coffee is both his friend and his enemy.
Just One Day Page 9
