Sneaky Flash Fiction #4: The Parachute

Another Fictionistas prompt, this time using Rory's Story Cubes

From “The Comet Book” (1587) by an anonymous artist

I’ve tried to take shelter from the coming storm. Like so many, I’ve built a wall, a physical wall of sandbags and chests of drawers and anything and everything I can push against the doors and windows. Behind my wall, I retreat into the only place where I’m still comfortable: the past. Days pass in a fuzz of old photographs, mothballed dresses, paper cuts from diary pages. Memories and dreams commingle as I doze, but never quite sleep. I think of the process as my final mental spring clean, re-examining and resurfacing people, events, regrets. I burrow beneath the weight of it all, grateful. The past is the safest place any of us can be right now.

My mind’s magnifying glass sweeps across the years, lighting on points of interest. I take the most comfort in memories of strangers, random companionship, the temporary bond that develops over shared pain. I remember faces in the crowd who gathered to watch the old movie theatre burn to the ground, and my fellow passengers who endured hours of turbulence on a transatlantic flight from hell. Under such circumstances, you turn to the person next to you. Hi, isn’t this awful, yes, I know, are you okay? I think I am, what’s your name…? Instant succor. But there’s no one next to me now.

I think of all the people who have occupied that space, within fingertip reach, and it’s you I keep returning to, old friend. My childhood compadre, partner in minor teen crimes and misdemeanors. The village was never enough to hold us. But when we escaped, we went in such radically different directions. I’m sorry I haven’t called in so long. It still hurts to think I’ll never speak to you again. 

Because I have questions. Very specific questions. I remember the moonlight harsh and bone white. It was the summer we were ten, the year of the comet. It wasn’t the only night we snuck out. We’d wait until our respective households fell asleep and then we’d creep from our bedroom windows. Time was different then. We were the only ones alive, everyone else dead asleep behind unlit windows. We roamed free, eyes wide open at 2am, racing each other to the top of the hill and the top of the five bar gate that commanded a view of every silver-grey texture in the valley.

You brought your father’s binoculars and we zoomed in on the anomalous comet restructuring our night sky. Unlike the old, static stars, it moved, perceptibly. Every 24 hours we could measure its progress across the celestial sphere. It looked like nothing else in our known universe and we were in awe of it, good old-fashioned, mortal, craven awe. We understood it was a wonder and we waited for a sign.

And lo, a sign appeared. The tiny, wispy parachute twisting in the night breezes like a sycamore seed, something organic, yet alien, floating down. You saw it first, a pale speck in the binoculars. We followed its course, the details becoming clearer over the lifetime it took to fall to earth. The glossy oblong suspended beneath the gauze. The object. The container. The secret. 

Do you remember, my darling, I wanted to run to it and wrench it open, but your fingers steeled around my arm. “No,” you said. “It’s dangerous.” How were you so wise, so young?

Time was different then so I do not know how long we sat, in awe, on the gate, until we heard rumbling engines, a military convoy, the shouts of frightened men. We hid until they passed and ran home. 

The rest is history. Now everyone knows what was inside the box.

Memory gives me my own parachute and I float above us. I wish I could wave a magic wand and dive fast and hard inside our ten year old selves and make us grab that thing and throw it in the lake where it would never be found and opened and used. Why didn’t we do something, say something, alert someone?

But, my darling, we were ten years old. How could we know it was the only opportunity we’d ever have to save the world?

Rory’s Story Cubes in today’s configuration