And The Ground Below?

“Did you know,” she started, shaking her drink in her hand. She liked the feeling of the ice clinking against the glass. It grounded her. ‘Grounded.’ What a funny word. Especially considering the circumstances.

They were in the living room. Actually, an open floor plan meant they were in the large space that was, at once, a living room, dining room, kitchen, and wet bar. But she was standing in the living room section, next to the window on the far side of the sofa. It was all windows, really, like every other apartment in this block and the next, and the next, and the next. Any time of day you could look outside and see the sun reflecting sharply off one building or another. Right now, early evening, it was reflecting off the Blue Gardens block.

Look above, see the tattered remnants of the atmosphere only a short miles below where the empty nothingness of space began.

Look out, a sea of silver and glass spears poking up and out, higher and higher, threatening to fill that empty nothingness.

Look below, a sea of clouds. Today, anyway. On most days you could see a little further down. On perfectly clear days, you could see all the way down to the ground fog that hid the planet that was down there, holding them all up. Supposedly.

“Did you know,” she said, even though she was sure she’d already said it. “Did you know I have never seen the ground? Not even once?”

She took a sip of her drink before going on.

“Oh, I know what you’ll say. Of course you have! You’ve seen pictures! You’ve seen footage on the tube! And yes, of course I have, we’ve all seen that haven’t we? But have I seen, with my own two eyes, with nothing between me and it, the actual, factual ground? I tell you I haven’t. Sometimes…sometimes I wonder…”

She put her drink down on the coffee table, dangerously close to the edge, and stepped up to the window until her slippered toes were touching the glass. Careful to keep her fingers from the glass lest things get smudgy, she carefully leaned forward until her forehead was leaning on the window. Cold, but only for a second, then easy to ignore. Soon, the glare of the glass was gone, too, and there was nothing but her and the air around her and the clouds passing dreamily below. She could pretend there was no building around. Her own little sky island, sitting on top of the world, forever sailing.

“Sometimes I wonder if the ground is even there at all. I haven’t seen it. I don’t know anyone who has. Have you? Seen it?”

Only when she got no reply did she pull herself away from her window and her clouds.

Across the room her son was still standing. Still staring. Still, she supposed, waiting for an answer. Although perhaps not. His face had changed. Oh, the angles were still sharp enough to cut through the glass behind her, but they went in different directions. Left meant angry. Right and up meant confused.

“Yes, of course you haven’t. If I haven’t done something, then-”

“You haven’t heard a word I’ve said, have you?”

She picked up her drink. Shook it. Sipped. “Of course I have. I have heard every single thing you have said, starting with the gulping, heaving scream inches away from my ear inside the surgical suite. Pity none of it has ever mattered.”

“I will not-”

“You will. Of course you will. Do you think you ever had a choice?”

“You can’t-”

“I can. And I must. Don’t you understand, everything I have ever done I’ve done for you?”

Historically that had been enough to end this, but today her son only drew himself up taller, strode toward her a few paces until he was looming over her.

“You do what you for you, and then use me as the excuse,” he said, his voice barely more than a low murmur. “I am done being your shield.”

“No, you’re not. As long as I’m around-”

It was the truth. As long as she was around, there was nothing he could do to change his circumstances. He was trapped, as were they all, in glass and silver and barely enough oxygen.

Ahh, she thought, as he cut her off by squeezing her shoulders and lifting her off the ground. He knew. Thank goodness. I thought I’d raised a simpleton.

The glass of the window should not have shattered behind her. It shouldn’t have even cracked. Sabotage, she thought as she passed through the field of glass chips and into the open, freezing air.

And then she was falling, falling, too fast for thoughts to stay inside her head. All she had was the water from the clouds covering her hair and face, the roar of air in her ears as she rushed past, and a simple instinct to turn her body until she was facing down so she could finally see.

Ah, there it is, she thought a fraction of a second before meeting it.

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