Hey there honey bears,
Welcome to episode 2. Gravity - a story about breaking free.
Another original fiction brought to you on schedule. Honestly, that’s a miracle and one that may not be repeated moving forward. Enjoy it while you can.
I’m playing around with a strong narrative voice again with this one. Less action, more feeling - loading it up until it goes pop. Let me know how it goes.
Thanks for reading.
This is BadFiction.
Gravity
You come with your own gravity. Plates circle around you in the kitchen, bumping against the cabinets. Spoons tinkle against forks mid-air. The kettle tugs at its cord, still plugged in at the wall. When you walk through doorways, hinges creak. Door slam behind you. Plaster cracks. Bricks tremble, threating to pull themselves from the mortar.
And when you go outside...
...the
world
tilts. People stagger in the street. Cars strain to pull away, stinking the air with the smell of hot clutch. Airplanes adjust their angle of approach. Plumb lines sway, no longer plumb. Oceans lend you their tides.
You don't notice, of course. For you, it's all just background noise. Always has been. When you were young, your mother taught you that the things in your way were only put there so you could move them. She told you to lift with your hips, your thighs and the places between them. Immovable objects could be shunted out of your way if you could only move the world. Haunted by her own glass ceilings, she taught you to bend them to your will, bulging through like a soap bubble, rising, stretching the unwritten rules until they broke and all their tiny pieces fell into your orbit - an sea of shards impossible to cross (unharmed).
I am so scared of you.
I love you, of course. Don't doubt that. But sometimes at night I lay there trying to sleep and our pictures are pulled from the walls and the covers slip to your side and I have to keep on yanking them back and it's ridiculous and I'm laying there thinking how the hell did I get myself into all this and I only mean it as a joke and it's only ever a joke but you see I've been really struggling to find an answer as to why I'm still here and to be honest I'm just so cold.
I'm cold.
And I know you've got this whole thing going on and I'm glad for you - I really am - and I want you to do well in it, honestly I do, but I'm just not sure that the only place I want to be is in your orbit. I'm hanging on your outer rim when I don't even know we belong in the same galaxy.
We go to parties and nobody sees me. You meet my friends and now they are your friends, smiling politely, tip of the head, before they get dragged back into the Everything That Is You and, my god, I just want to be warm again.
I ask if we can go home and you look at me like the world is ending.
Maybe things could get better. Maybe you could teach me to be like you and then we could bask in each others orbit like twin stars. But here's the thing: I'm not a star. I don't know what I am. I just got pulled in and now here I am: floating with the rest of it.
When we get home, I pack a bag.
I want to tell you all of this. I want to be honest and open and everything a couple should be but it's hard to tell the truth to a god when they're so used to worship. Walls buckle where you walk. Earth trembles. And I keep on shaking.
One day you will kill me. I'm sure of it. Nothing can survive this sort of pressure for long.
I wait until first light before I go downstairs. The kitchen is a wreck, as always. Broken plates scatter the floor. Knives lay balanced on the edge of counter tops where your gravity dropped them and for a moment I wonder what on Earth you'll do without me.
The key is on its shelf tied down with string so it doesn't float away. I cut it free and turn it in the lock, half expecting you to burst into the room, eyes blazing, sending the crockery flying. But it turns without a sound.
I should leave you a note. But I'm not sure I really want the evidence. Better to make it a clean break. Better to slink away like a coward. Better to creep into the sunlight, where the warmth kisses my skin like a lover.
I turn back to our house. Our home. You're still in there, tucked up in bed, snug as a bug. And I'm not. Soon you'll wake and the world will start revolving around you again. But I won't be there.
I wonder how you'll take it. You could tear down the street if you wanted. Or you might not even notice - my absence nothing more than a mote in the void. I don't know what you'll do.
But the thing is, with any luck, I never will.
Gravity