Esther Chilton

If you’d like to be included in this slot, please get in touch: estherchilton@gmail.com. Poems can be up to 60 lines and prose 2000 words. If you’d like to add a short bio and photo, then great. All I ask is that there’s nothing offensive.

Please give a warm welcome to a new guest to this slot – Andy Cripps. I’ve been following his blog for a while now and enjoy his unique insight and style. He’s written a short story for you, so get the kettle on and settle down for an absorbing read:

Enjoy the Ride

By

Andy Cripps

A rocket car speeding across space passes a golden moon. It’s many light years from Earth; but in the year 6021 that is a stone’s throw. Loud music is blasting and the cockpit smells of cigarettes and silky perfume.

A thought. We never could kick old habits. We’d kept the poisons that take the edge off. We are free after all… aren’t we?

You sit in the passenger seat; I can see how pale your knuckles have become.

I ask, “How far should we go?”

You reply, “How far does the cosmos span?”

A full-bellied laugh rumbles from my gut.

Engage Andominium Oxide drive.

Planets pass us as though pedestrians on a sidewalk. That glint in your eye is more clear than any star. You’re done with fear screaming from your chest; a smirk finds it way to your face. We are free out here. Cares banished to a black hole; responsibility mutinied and left on a distant desert planet.

Even with artificial stabilisers, the machine shifts our bodies this way and that as I swerve, dip, dive, loop, and weave around asteroids.

I’m distracted by you. I clip a small rock that has sprung from behind its larger brother. I try to correct, but fail. We spin.

You look at me, hoping. I’ve no time to be angry at myself, although I know how foolish I’ve been.

We’re heading towards the moon of an ocean planet. Out of control. The nausea I feel rise I swallow back down with narrowed eyes.

I hammer the steering column forward, set the engines on a surge-reverse, and flick the rudder controls up. The Aetherion GT Interstellar Cruiser shudders as though being throttled by a god. I do not pray; I’ve never been a spiritual person, even after everything I’ve seen. I trust my skill and determination, but I realise that all my skill amounts to this: the mercy of
physics, briefly delayed. I worry that this is what freedom looks like when untethered in a cosmic spin.

I’m stern, my eyes locked on the targeting screen. My arms are vibrating as I grasp the steering column that feels like some kind of berserk wild animal thrashing to get free of my grasp. We’re inbound, set to collide with the moon within forty-nine seconds… forty-eight… forty-seven… Each heartbeat is like a supernova.

Your hand reaches over and touches mine for a moment. You move it onto the column. It steadies. So do I.

I nod at you, the smirk returning.

The ship rights itself. I hammer the steering left and accelerate, adjusting the rudders. We clear it as the gravitational field begins to tug.

“That was close,” you say. Then you snort and throw a hand over the insane grin filling that beautiful face.

Are you crazier than me?

A shooting star passes by.

We meet eyes in a long stare. Yours are more exquisite than any star.

“How far from home are we?” you ask. You’re curious, not longing.

“A long way away.”

I read the mapping system. “Just over two hundred lightyears.”

“Do we have to go back?”

“That depends.”

“On what?”

“On whether you mean Earth, or society.”

“How is that different?”

“Earth is in pain… society controls it, yes, but society is everywhere. It’s on every outpost, colony, and space station.”

“So you’re saying we can never escape it? Bleak.”

“Quite the opposite. On Earth, I used to spend Monday to Friday working in a cubicle attached to twenty-three others. None of us would talk to each another. None of us dreamed of the next morning, only the weekend. I’d travel across the city on a packed transit that smelt of B.O. and that sickly menthol they pushed out the air con units to counteract it. (Which only blended with it to make something more convolution of rancid stench.)”

I’ve nearly lost you; you’re gazing at what might have been a horizon. Maybe you’re just thinking of Earth again. I smile awkwardly.

“Bear with me. When Saturday came, I’d pull on these old boots my Papa gave me… and I’d hike. I’d travel to a little village a few miles south, park up and walk near seven miles across rugged terrain until I came to this immense waterfall. There was a tree right at the top, and from the rocky ledge I could climb into its sturdy branches and lay and watch the world with only the songs of birds and the steady, swashing roar from the waters below. My point is, wherever you are, no matter how hectic and invasive everything seems, you can always just step out for a moment.”

“We could go to a planet and start again. Start our own civilisation,” you say.

“Our own little Adam and Eve story,” I reply with a chuckle and an awkward glance.

You smile at me, but, just for a second, your lip quivers.

“For now, we’re free. We have little attachments. We have fuel enough to take us many more galaxies. You choose… how far do we go?”

You look deep into my eyes. How are yours so violet?

“For eternity?”

For you, anything.

“I know a place,” is all I say.

The engine reengages. I accelerate to a more steady pace this time. It feels as though the hour could’ve been a lifetime. Your perfume is as though you’ve been dipped in rich velvet chocolate. It is the scent of my dreams.

You sit up, those purple eyes wide with wonder. There it is…

“Astrothasia. Where the grasses are gold, the seas are silver, and what grows, spans as far as the eye can see.”

“It’s so beautiful.”

“Wait until you meet the fauna.”

You nearly scream. Your delight-filled claps are your most endearing mannerism. A deer-like creature with three pronged antlers steps into the nearby thicket. It has a long flowing tail like a cat’s; and fur that is the same red hue as a cardinal bird from Earth. Fiery and free. It dances majestically into the wood. A bird not unlike a phoenix soars overhead.

Four days we spend on Astrothasia. You’ve already become a bona fide snow white. The animals love you. I knew they would.

“I never want to leave,” you say.

“But we must. Or we’d risk causing an imbalance to the place.”

“I understand that… it’s just…”

“I know.”

“Thank you. For listening… and for all of this. I never would have…” You stutter. Something sticks in your throat as you struggle to say what I already know.

“You don’t need to thank me. We are all riding that cosmic wave of life. Let us just enjoy it.”

I’d move moons for you.

“Then let’s keep riding together.” You say while taking my hand. Yours are so warm… so soft; goosebumps.

“Together,” I reply.

We have so much to see. I’m going to enjoy the rest of eternity.

***

Bio

Andrew Cripps is a writer for 10 out of 10 Magazine, an online publication rooted in hip-hop that covers music, film, television and the surrounding chaos of culture.

Most of his time, however, belongs to speculative fiction—horror, sci-fi and fantasy—though that side of the work remains, for now, unpublished. The stories tend to carry sharp corners, strange ideas and the occasional quiet jab at the real world. He also writes poetry, usually fictional, frequently fantastical.

When he’s not writing, he’s out wandering the world—walking forests, drifting through towns and cities, collecting places, conversations and odd little moments to smuggle back into stories.

Follow his WordPress blog AllCripps&Ink to delve in his weird amd wonderful mind.

Follow @Crippsycopy on Instagram to check out the business side of his creative writing.