Falling Stars

Falling Stars

The steam trailed up from the coffee cup like smoke from a funeral
pyre. It rose and curled and twisted like an ethereal gray rope. Rose
had heard people wonder at the simulacra they had seen in smoke and
fire, steam and water, but Rose saw nothing in that steam but those
ghostly gray fibers. She watched them rise up above the cup, they had a
kind of energy to them for a few seconds, but when they reached too far
above the liquid's surface they dissipated very quickly. She watched
them put up a half-struggle, twisting in their death throes silently,
like victims of a mute plague. She was sifting on the bonnet of a car,
John's car, sitting there in the cold clear night, alone for the
moment. They were out in a small, dark woodland in the middle of the
night, out to watch the stars die. That's what she had thought when
John had told her about the shooting stars, she had thought she would
be watching stars die. John had laughed, told her stars never die, and
that the so-called 'shooting stars' were just meteors, bits of rock
burning up in the atmosphere. That had taken the morbid romance out of
her mind somewhat, but still she thought it would be good to see, even
if they were only pieces of rock.

Rose heard dull footsteps on the clay-earth, heard legs disturbing the
yellow grass; it was John returning from his walk in the field. He had
said it would be a better view in the field, the sky would not be
obscured by trees, but Rose had wanted to stay close to the car.

"See anything?" She called to him.

"Not yet" He was disappointed, she could tell. They were the only ones
there, no one else had bothered to come and watch, and now it seemed
the show was being called off because of poor ticket sales. Not enough
bang in a burning piece of space rock, what a shame she thought, you
fall millions of miles through space to get here and no one even comes
to your funeral.

John sat on the bonnet beside her. "Any coffee left?"

"Yes, it's in the flask" she passed it over to John, noticing she had
left the top off. They both stared at it for a few seconds. "I'm sorry"
she said, the thermos coffee was cold and undrinkable, the night air
had got in and stolen the heat like a cat burglar.

"No matter" John was again disappointed, he poured the cold brown
liquid onto the earth, and it was lost on the black ground

"It's not going to happen now is it" Rose whispered
sympathetically.

"Maybe not, but let's stay here a little longer and wait and see" Rose
had wanted to leave, there was no more coffee and it was an icy cold
night. "These damn lights don't make it any easier" John was annoyed
now, frustrated because nothing was happening. The lights he spoke of
were all around; they were not clear points of light, just a kind of
amber haze reaching up from the horizon like an artificial dawn; The
burning of a million electric forest-fires. The glow reminded Rose how
little they had gotten away from the towering, gluttonous towns and
cities. The woodland itself was surrounded on all sides by gun-toting
soldiers of civilization, sabers in one hand and petrol-soaked torches
in the other. The silence extended for several minutes and showed no
signs of abating. John slumped on the other side of the
bonnet; his shadowed face set in a look of miserable defeat. He sat
surrounded by his own thoughts; he had so wanted something to break the
monotony of everyday life. He couldn't afford the materialistic
pleasures that life had to offer, and in most cases he cared little for
them. He had never struggled in vain to put meaning to his life, he had
never faced the absurdity and senselessness of the universe head on
like the great philosophers had done, but he still felt something
missing. Something was not quite there, it was like a shadowy corner in
a room, you know there's nothing there but out of the corner of your
eye you keep seeing something move. Something missing, yes, that was
the only piece of the jigsaw John had, and it was a dismal and useless
shape to behold. He had no scientific interest in astronomy, but the
idea of seeing the stars and galactic bodies enticed him. The deep
blackness of space made him feel like perhaps there was something
important going on in the universe, something grand, something
meaningful. He hadn't put these thoughts into words though, like most
people, he had grand thoughts and epic ideas but lacked the focus and
the drive to realise what he held in his hands

"I'm going for one last look in the field" John jumped heavily onto his
feet and trudged off through the long, weak grass. Rose nodded, but he
didn't look at her. She felt slightly hurt he hadn't asked if she
wanted to go. She would have said no, but still, she wanted him to ask
her. She remained slightly shivering on the car bonnet. She looked up
into the great empty darkness above her head, not out of any great
desire to look into the heavens, but because the night around her
shrouded almost everything but the stars in a cloying mixture of peat
and tar. As she stared into that eternal night, grand thoughts began to
rise up in her mind like swimmers gasping for air, and they made her
feel slightly queasy. The blackness was amazing, beautiful, peaceful,
serene, and it stretched on for an eternity. But nothing can stretch on
for eternity, her mind told her everything had a beginning and an end,
she could only conceive of objects that began somewhere and ended
somewhere else. She tried to imagine the outer stretches of the
universe, indescribable and incomprehensible distances from her
insignificant body, logic told her there must be an end, but what end
could there be? Would a traveler come up to the end of the universe
like it was some kind of immense wall, or would they simply fall off
into non-existence? After a few headache-inducing moments she wrenched
her mind away from it all, pushed that alien swimmer under the water
and watched him flounder and eventually sink. But she could not shake a
strange feeling of disembodiment, like she was about to bear witness to
some truth that would expel everything else from her mind. At the last
moment she had grown afraid, and had torn her mind away from that
spectral portal, she told herself repeatedly there was nothing to think
about and nothing to be revealed. Slowly the panicky feelings of
alienation subsided, but it left her feeling cowardly and somewhat
curious. She slowly raised her head to the stars again, began thinking
about the epic nothingness of it all, but nothing came to her, the
universe had found her mind too structured and ordered to understand
it, it had given up and turned its back on her. She turned then, to
focus on a bright white star. The star flickered in front of her, like
a tiny candle. She tried for a moment to imagine its true size, but she
could not manage it. Closing her eyes she imagined the space around
that star, four or five unimaginably distant worlds came into view, and
as they hung suspended in the light of that foreign star, she zoomed
out and imagined a billion stars and tens of billions of more worlds
circling them. The thought made her slightly nauseous but very excited,
she trembled with anticipation, there was something out there, there
had to be, there was so much about everything that no one knew anything
about. Yes, an infinite number of stars and ten times that number of
worlds. The thought did not make her feel unimportant; it made her feel
privy to a great and fantastically immense universe. Anything that
happened to her was inconsequential, the stars and the blackness
between them, that was what mattered. At the same time, this privileged
feeling met with frustration, for she had no way of reaching those
distant worlds, no way of understanding their silent songs and no way
of ever becoming one with them, no way of knowing their secrets. She
reached out a hand into the night air in front of her, into that prison
of air and being. She was trapped on this earth, in this mind, and
there would never be any escape. The serenity and eternity of the stars
would never be hers.

Just then, John came back, his face was resigned and pale, "Come on
then, let's go". Rose stayed for a moment on the car bonnet, feeling
frustrated at the immensity and security of her prison, then she opened
the door and got into the car. John slid into the driver's seat and
started up the engine. Rose put her seatbelt on and felt it tight
against her chest; she looked forlornly at her flickering white star
out of the window. It was a perfect and rare shade of white, an immense
and powerful globe of truth, hanging pale, knowing and eternal in an
endless and absurd universe. The engine started with a muted cough, and
as Rose stared deeply into the night sky, her little star flickered
weakly once more, and disappeared into the void.