The Man On Table Ten - A Mysterious Science Fiction Tale by Luke Smitherd

Author:Luke Smitherd [Smitherd, Luke]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
Published: 2013-12-08T07:00:00+00:00

***

The next day, with her television off—the nonstop post-incident coverage was too much to take, the various theorists and religious crazies bringing it all back to her in vivid, terrifying detail—Lisa sat in her bedroom, her books surrounding her, open and ignored. How could she study? How could she think of books, knowing that the he was out there somewhere, making up his mind?

Chris had missed it, incredibly. The black cloud had disappeared so fast, and he’d been so engrossed in trying to save the old man’s life, that he hadn’t seen any of it. He’d heard about it, of course, as had everyone else in the world; the cloud, even in its brief appearance and expansion, had reached the edges of Europe, after all. Only two people knew the source of it, and one of them was Lisa. She supposed that fact made not one bit of difference in the grand scheme of things, but it certainly did to her. It meant, of course, everything.

Studying had been her first defence, her first attempt at doing something other than cry. That was the real world to her. Solid, irrefutable. It might help her forget and, as the old man had said, lessen her belief to fifty percent by the next day, and half again after that, and again after that. But all she could think of was that cloud as it spread—like a cancer, she supposed—and how the old man was exactly that: old. How long would he have left anyway, even after all of his efforts? How long—

She shook her head and slammed the book shut that she’d been failing to read.

The television was right. It was a temporary weather phenomenon. It was a solar flare affecting the ozone layer somehow. Something we don’t understand passed in front of the sun. It was somehow an unregistered volcanic eruption of previously unseen magnitude. It was just an awful, awful coincidence.

But her hands still shook, and she’d still spent all of yesterday phoning her loved ones and friends in hysterics, telling them that she loved them, arranging to travel back home tomorrow to see her parents, unnerving everyone. She would see them all, she vowed.

Studying was out for the evening. She felt tears beginning again, but she slapped herself, hard, and then dug her fingernails into her arms. That had been working; she had the scabs to prove it.

That won’t change anything though. Nothing will. Nothing can.

The clock on her desk said 7:03 p.m. In a moment of impulse, Lisa picked up the phone.

“Carla?” she said, trying to hide the tremor in her voice when her friend picked up, refusing to burst into tears and certainly not to scream. “Let’s go out. Let’s go out and get fucking smashed.”

*

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