A Hint of Eternity: A Short Story

 “Don’t you want to go up there sometimes?” 

“Not really.” 

“No, like, don’t you want to go shoot all the way up there, run your fingers through the clouds and stuff?”

“I don’t really want to get wet that much. Like the condensation. My hair is going to get all frizzy.”

“What about the stars though?” 

“They’re cool. They can stay. I think I’d get burned easily though. What if my frizzy, cloud-soaked hair burns off from the stars? Then I’d spend eternity looking like Albert Einstein.” 

I tried not to wince at that word. Eternity.

“A beautiful Albert Einstein,” I said quietly. She did look beautiful. The twilight haze veiled her halfway in the shadows, with only her silhouette highlighted before me. She looked like my own personal secret. I mean, she was. In this midnight meadow, we were close to isolation. If anything were to happen…no one would know. Or hear. Or smell it. 

“Wow,” she breathed, pointing up at a firefly lazily floating past. Even in the moonlight, I found myself seeing her as clear as the first day we met, when I once wondered how I could bear to keep such a bright light in my life safe, hidden. I can’t protect her in a glass jar, though. I can’t protect her at all.

“Come lay with me,” she whispered, spreading herself across the dewy grass. The moonlight stretched across her form, and every curve and every wave of her body heat hit my vision with resonating force. 

“You know you have a way of making yourself at home anywhere, don’t you?” I said, watching her set camp on the patch of grass with authority, summery blue eyes already concentrated skyward. If it weren’t for the throbbing vein in her neck and the piercing sensation of hunger in my throat, I might actually say this is heaven. 

 “So that first star is part of Orion’s Belt, I think. Or maybe it’s Cassiopeia. Either way some ancient dude probably prayed to it for bear some fruit in his loins a million years ago.” 

I smile since she’s the only person who can say a sentence like that. Laying down next to her, I hold my breath as best as could. This is as close to real life as I’ll ever get. Me, you, a meadow, and the moon. Alone at last, peace at last? 

It comes anyways. Snap. I feel my teeth drag out of my gums and pierce the sides of my tongue. I inhale a sharp breath again, gritting my nails into my sides. 

One thing you could see.Her blonde curls dipping against a nearby dandelion. One you can hear.Her pulse. One thing you can touch. I reach out my hand, rubbing my thumb softly against the ripped fabric of her jeans. One thing you can smell. Blood.

“And that one, that sparkling one over there, that’s the North Star. ‘Second star to the right’, and something-or-other. Thanks Peter Pan,” she laughs, tilting her head back and exposing dropped t-shirt, a freckled gap from neck to shoulder, and a very loud, very inviting heartbeat. 

I roll over in the opposite direction, hoping to play coy and hard-to-get, if only to spare her fragile life for a couple moments longer. 

“You suck! I’m dazzling you with my astrology knowledge and you’re napping.” I hear her veins long before I hear her voice. 

“No, I’m — what was that?” 

I jump to my feet, whipping my head left to right so fast I can hear the swishof my hair, and hear her pulse quicken ever so slightly.  

“Um, I didn’t hear anything,” she said. I glanced over quickly at her to ease my mind, and stopped dead in my tracks. 

“What?” she said, her voice raising slightly.