Slick.
Flesh on glossy paper.
He runs his finger over the image again and presses down gently with his fingertip as if to say, “I was here.” He lifts the oversized book from the nicked and worn reading table and tilts it beneath the fluorescent light until he can see the tiny map his finger left behind, a universe within a universe. A hand briefly touches his shoulder and a hushed voice, a voice like light from the past tells him, “Sir, the library will be closing in fifteen minutes.” He rotates in his chair, a flesh and blood satellite, smiles, and watches the librarian walk back to her desk. The industrial fan humming in the corner has loosened wisps of her auburn hair so that they float around the back of her neck, swirling like gases in the dust filled air. He blinks twice.
She is a new star forming and he will name her.
The scene is a Pompeii in the making, a life caught with its pants down. The coffee waits expectantly, a thin layer of dust coating the red tablecloth and the surface of the liquid, which long ago passed from hot to lukewarm to cold.
Over the edge of the table one dainty ginger paw lifts and muscles stretch until razor sharp claws snag what was once the crisp, flaky edge of a croissant. Feline teeth pierce an exterior now hardened by time. After devouring his share of the orphaned pastry in greedy, yet genteel, bites the cat lazily licks his whiskers, crouches and springs onto the table causing the dust to rise and glitter in the early light before disappearing again into itself. Sidestepping the now empty plate he sits and raises a paw to his pink tongue. The only sounds to be heard here are the purring of the cat and the buzzing of the flies. A fly hovering above the table catches his amber eye. Tensing, he leaps. The fly escapes but the vase tips and falls to the cold, hard floor.
Dried flowers and ceramic pieces now lie beside the still and mottled hand of a woman. A woman who had once waited expectantly alongside the coffee until that flash of light and sound like a million waves crashing caused her to rise from her seat. It might have felt like being plunged into a vacuum. It might have felt like the leap your heart makes the first time you fall in love. It may have felt different to everyone, but in one exhalation the human race stopped loving, stopped breathing, crumbled beneath that otherworldly wave of light, and fell to the earth. Now the woman lies like a doll without her stuffing, discarded, upon a beautiful marble floor. A Pompeii in the making, only with no one left to discover it. No one left to lament the horror and the beauty of what remains. A large, fluffy tail brushes lightly against a lifeless hand as the ginger cat walks toward the sound of birds waking outside.
