The Interruption - A Very Short Story

I saw it yesterday, the interruption in the world. I was at lunch with friends when I noticed something wrong with my glass. Something wrong with the orange juice. I looked closer, I squinted. It was barely there, but it was there: a gap in the juice, a place where the orange colour simply ceased to exist, only to start again a tiny figment of space below.

My friends asked me what I was doing when I brought the glass to one eye, I closed the other, and looked through the orange. I handed the glass to my friends, asked them to look. They couldn’t see anything. I shrugged and swallowed the orange juice, quickly, so to cancel the interruption and forget about it.

That night I saw the same gap on my laptop. I thought it had to be dead pixels, a faulty monitor; but the gap extended to the black plastic of the frame. The laptop ceased to exist and then it existed again I got close to the gap, I squinted, but I couldn’t see through. A breeze came from the other side, though. I shut down the laptop screen. There was no gap on the other side of the screen. I opened it again. The screen came to life and the gap was gone. I did what most people do when confronted with the impossible, I ignored it and went to bed.

It’s been a bad autumn and a harsh winter, a time of financial woes and heartbreak. My company has been cutting costs, laying off people one after the other, and my girlfriend, after ten years of living together, laid off me just before Christmas. I have so many gaps within me, and I am always tired.

When I woke up this morning, the interruption was outside. I saw it from the window. It run all through the sky, through the buildings, at eye level. It was slightly larger, enough, maybe, to see through if I went close.

I put on my shoes, I threw a coat over my pjs, and got out, in the morning cold. I walked to the interruption, among strangers who blissfully ignored it. The breeze coming from the interruption was now was a wind, and it brought a scent of bonfire. I looked through.

I saw a star; one single star, glorious. But it was not really a star. It was a million angels on fire, screaming silently through space.

I went back home, where I am now. And when I finish writing this words I will close my laptop, put on some Pink Floyd, pour myself some Lagavulin, and wait.

I never used to drink in the morning, but I don’t think it matters anymore.