3, 2, 1.
A low rumbling sound filled John Burroughs's ears and the cockpit began to
vibrate. A nervous flutter of anxiety coursed thrugh him as he again
thought of seeing... them, again. Alive. Not lying, bleeding and lifeless,
in the twisted wreck of his car. They wouldn't be killed, killed by Rh- no,
the Girl. He refused to think of her as anything else. Actually, he refused
to think of her at all.
And then, the rocket took off.
Back in Maidhaven, a wet mop shlopped onto the already pristine floor of
Newhaven High School. The tall, pale girl, Rhoda, looked back down the
hallway to where she could just see a glimpse of the janitor's television.
A pang shot through her heart as she saw John's face fill the screen before
a rocket took it's place. That was the rocket he was in. The rocket that
was taking off with the only person she truly loved, the only person she
came alive for, the only person that could make her smile or laugh. The
rocket would take him far away from her to another world, Earth 2, and he
would become the person she would never see again
A Few Days Later.
A tick, tick, tick noise filtered into John's conciousness as he woke up
from a nap. He sat for ten minutes, gripping the bed for two reasons: One,
he would begin to float if he did not do so.
Two, it was because the constant tick, tick, tick, brought back
unpleasant memories of someone he would rather forget. Trying to resolve
this dillema, he strapped himself onto his bed and closed his eyes again.
Behind his closed eyelids, a room took shape, a muddle of shapes and
colours until it became ... his kitchen. A girl, The Girl, sat before him,
a fire of passion and laughter burning in her cool water blue eyes as she
told him a story.
"So the Cosmonaut, he's the first man ever to go into space, right? The
Russians beat the Americans. So he goes up in this big spaceship, but the
only habitable part of it is very small. So the Cosmonaut's in there and
he's got this portal window, and he's looking out of it. And, he sees the
curvature of the Earth for the first time. The first man to ever look at
the planet he's from, and, he's lost in that moment. And all of a sudden
this strange ticking keeps coming out of the dashboard. So he rips out the
control panel, takes out his tools- trying to find this sound, trying to
stop this sound. But he can't find it, he can't stop it. He keeps going, a
few hours into this, it begins to feel like torture. A few days go by with
this sound, and he knows that this small sound will break him. He'll lose
his mind. What's he gonna do? He's up in space, alone, in a space closet.
He's got 25 days left to go, with this sound. So the Cosmonaut decides the
only way to save his sanity is to fall in love with this sound. So he
closes his eyes, and he goes into his imagination. And when he opens them,
he doesn't hear ticking anymore. He hears music. And he spends the
remainder of his time, sailing through space in total bliss and peace."
John almost regretted it when the memory left him, but he reminded himself
of the awful fact. No, he would not regret almost strangling her. She
deserved it, didn't she?
He sat up, all tiredness vanishing. John wondered what his wife and son
were doing that moment... Maybe they were laughing together over a joke
that only they knew about. It wouldn't be long before he could be privy to
their secrets again and enjoy their laughs and smiles. He would have his
family back. Finally.
***
Rhoda slipped her bag strap over her head as she walked out into the glistening white sheets of snow. She didn't know why she was going home, since she had nothing to go back to. Her family, even though they still cared for her, were a distant thing of the past.
Rhoda sighed, her breath a white cloud in the biting cold air. Her life was also gone, she was barely existing now, no-one truly loved her, wanted to know her. Any other person would say that life was unfair, but Rhoda was glad that it was this way, she wanted to fly under the radar. Otherwise, they might find out who she truly was.
And she definitely didn't want that.