Author: Bronte Lemaire
“Oxygen level is at 1%. Please follow the emergency protocol.”
Sarah sighed and let her head fall against the window. The stars flowed gently over her cheeks and created extra pinpricks of light between her freckles. She felt me staring and I looked away, pretending to find interest in a rusty screw in a panel. I watched her smile in the corner of my eye before looking back to the moon we were circling.
“Any last confessions?” she asked.
I clicked my tongue. “Nothing worthy of note.”
She just rolled her eyes and scooted closer, letting our knees touch. The soft whirring of dying machinery and our breathing was the only sound held in the spaceship. It was all outdated and had been left to decay by the space colony, never thinking the emergency spacecraft would ever be in use. Humans and their inability to see their own mortality is a powerful thing, and a useful thing to know when you never believed in your own invincibility.
Sneaking on was easier than breathing. Now quite literally.
“Think they’re looking for us?” I asked, gesturing to the chunk of metal floating to our left.
“They’ve got more things to worry about than two missing people,” Sarah countered, “We weren’t high on the menu anyway.”
I raised an eyebrow. “We were most definitely reserves though.”
“A light snack maybe.”
“Nah, have you seen my thighs? I’m a full course meal, thank you.”
She laughed, nearly hitting her head against the wall as it flew back. “True, true. I wouldn’t have minded having a slice if you were being served up.”
I grinned as she re-established herself, sneaking another proper look at her face as she checked the dashboard. “I’d be sure to save you the last bite.”
“Oxygen level is now under 1%. Please follow the emergency protocol.”
“God, shut up,” Sarah groaned, kicking a speaker in the wall half-heartedly.
The emergency protocol in question was reconnecting with the station and that was a no go. Even if we weren’t in danger of blending back into the screaming and starving and morally abandoned society that had formed over the past few months on the space station, the spot from the tiny ship was a far quieter and more peaceful place to die.
It suddenly became harder to look at each other, aided with the lack of oxygen flowing to our brains. But this was it, the last voyage. She took her hands in mine, both pairs scratched and scabbed but still warm.
“Any last confessions?” she whispered, her eyes like dripping blackholes, begging to suck me in.
I rested my forehead against hers as our hearts took their final beats, ready to take a bow for their final performance. I brushed the freckles on her left cheek that we once made look like the Lyra constellation with a pen we once found.
“I’m glad it was you.”