Negative Space

by B.R. Yeager

Someday I’ll wake up and it’ll be like my life’s already over, because it’ll be dozens of years from now already and I’m still the same. Sets of mirrors facing each other, expanding space and me and every moment I’ve been here. Nobody knows me, because I haven’t left anything for them, and I can’t stand to look half of them in the eye.

By the time we were twelve years old we’d already shared a lifetime together. Hand in hand, colonizing the town’s hidden spaces. Building new realities with only our shared imaginations and veils pulled over the mundane. A branch became a sword. A burnt down cabin became a witch’s house. Slurred syllables became sacred incantation.

My fingers pushed through his stiff, sullied hair, and we exchanged fresh admissions and promises beneath an alien dawn.

On takeoff I imagined the plane stripping apart into smaller and smaller flakes until it was only dust. I fell down through the atmosphere, smashing through birds and branches toward a grey car. I woke as the landing gear collided with Earth, bouncing off the strip, shaking the cabin.

I laughed. “So what’s the moral?” Another pause, and then: “One day, no one will ever know you were here.”