2007: a space tragedy
It’s the space station’s fault.
Even as a young girl in bordering school, I was never pushed so close to other people as we are up here.
Maybe men and women have no business being in space together, where some fool like me will fall in love, and some bitch like Linda will want to steal my man.
At first, I denied it all, telling myself that I’m not in love.
Women like me do not go through all the trouble to become an astronaut to fall for the first good looking guy who comes along.
And me and Linda went thought the academy together, suffering the same doubts all girls do when we try to play in the same ball park as the boys do.
On earth -- with other choices – I wouldn’t even look at a guy like Jeff.
He’s so puffed up on his own ego; he doesn’t have room in his head for thoughts about me.
So I tried to get away from everybody and concentrate on work, figuring I could do here what I did in high school to make up for the fact that I was not popular with the boys.
But where do you go on a space station where you don’t bump into everybody else?
Everywhere I went I ran into Jeff
And Linda was always with him.
I got so jealous I wanted to scream.
Of course, I fought the feeling, the way I fought to fight panic when I was in flight school.
I told myself that we would not be locked up in this orbiting tin can in space forever and I would find other, better men when we got back to earth
If the bitch wanted Jeff, so what?
But the more I tired to ignore the situation, the more consumed I became.
Everywhere I went I found those two together
He cooed over here like a brainless pigeon.
And she gave me looks to say that she had him when I could not
That’s when I knew I had to kill her.
I would make it look like an accident by removing some of the air from her tanks she needed to do her daily space walk. I even knew how to fix the gauge so she wouldn’t know.
I figured with her gone, he would need to turn to me for comfort, and then I would have him.
Perhaps then I would be happy – perhaps for the first time in my life.
How on earth was I to know they would go on that space walk together?
When he air ran out as I had planed, he actually tried to share his.
I watched them both die.
Their bodies floated around the station like misshapen moons.
And the worst part was the look on Linda’s face as she passed, as if death could not remove expression of joy over having him – not just for the duration of our flight but for eternity.
Mission control is sending someone to get me out of this place
So I won’t have to see the bodies floating by every few hours, the universe’s perfect couple.
And I won’t have to bear witness to Linda’s smug expression.
Perhaps the doctors will have a cure for me, some kind of brain treatment that will allow me to forget all this, allow me to forget how human even a woman astronaut can be.