Collected Short Stories (2011) by Sarah Langan

Author:Sarah Langan [Langan, Sarah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Jerry
Published: 2011-09-09T14:59:19+00:00

3

Outside that day, an entire flock of birds crashed through the Vaughan’s detached garage on Fort Triumph Street. Seagulls, thousands of miles from either ocean.

Sarah microwaved popcorn for dinner. The whole family fell asleep in front of the television. She dreamed about how she’d never cooked nutritious meals, and that this neglect had carved her children’s bellies with scurvy holes, into which insect mothers had laid their eggs.

“Well, how in the heeeck are we gonna survive?” The Oprah Winfrey Holo-Host asked her science guest, esteemed astrophysicist Ipswitch Gustavson, the next day.

Sally peered out from under Sarah’s breast. She was a tiny, helpless thing that smelled like sweet milk. Bradley sat cross-legged and too close to the television. She noticed that his hair was especially staticky, like he was touching a novelty Eye of the Storm.

On the television, Gustavson frowned, like he couldn’t figure out if the hologram’s creators were imbeciles, or just writing her program that way for good television. “The anomaly—Black Betty, after my daughter who died of mercury poisoning from Santo Monico rice—she’s rolling in fast, and she’s getting bigger.”

“Well, what does that mean?” Oprah asked with exaggerated, amused concern. Her shimmering eyelid winked.

“She’s like a bucket of paint, splattering in real time, at this very moment across the Milky Way. As she rolls toward us, she’s changing our laws of physics, and pulling Earth and the rest of the solar system off orbit. Even if we could exist under the new laws of this alternate universe, we won’t have a sun, or the ground under or feet, or a food supply…”

“Is this fake, like global warming?” Oprah asked.

Gustavson shook his head. “I give the human species ten years on the outside. Probably less.”

Sarah got up from the couch, walked very slowly to the kitchen, and vomited in the sink. The water swirled, all wrong.

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