The Shattered Genesis (Eternity) (30 page)

             
“Yeah, right. And Hitler liked to snuggle.”

             
“Did you just compare me to Hitler?” I asked as I tried to feign offense. “That's low.”

             
“No!
” She exclaimed, picking up her pillow and whacking me in the face with it. “I was just kidding. You can be very sensitive sometimes. Like when I force you to watch any movie based on a Nicholas Sparks book. You think I don’t see the man-tears but I’ve see
n them.”

             
“You’ve seen nothing!” I exclaimed in mock outrage before we both started laughing raucously
again.
             

             
The people on the other side of Alice’s bed were scowling at us. They were a couple that had clearly been married for many years. Every time I
looked over at them at night time, they were turned away from one another. I never saw them exchange a word of conversation, either. They spent a lot of time praying, speaking loudly enough to God for all of us to hear. One night, when I was feeling partic
ularly grim, I wondered if one day, after spending every waking moment together for many years, Alice and I would become like them. My parents had been toying with the idea of getting divorced and they had been high school sweethearts, if people still even
use that expression. Was that just marriage? It begins and it ends before death parts the two involved?

             
Alice and I were, for all intents and purposes, married now. We were on our own, living without the constant supervision of our parents. We were trave
ling on that journey together. Once we got to Pangea, because we were together and because we were all that either of us knew, we would be living together. We loved each other. Were we doomed to scowl at those in the midst of young love one day because the
y had exactly what we had lost?

             
Those were heavy thoughts for me at that age. But after everything, it was easy to travel down some deep cerebral path into the meaning of it all, into the past and the future. I believed that Alice and  I would be together
forever. She believed the same. As we talked about where we saw ourselves on Pangea, we believed in our longevity as a couple even more resolutely.

             
We were going to build our log cabin, hunt our food, build our furniture, and make a life for ourselves. S
ome people would kill for that chance but we hadn’t needed to. We were forced into that life by some cruel trick of fate where every other option was incinerated.

             
It was thrilling. It was terrifying. It was the best and the worst of scenarios.

             
I never wo
uld have survived those days of uncertainty without her by my side.

             
With every last piece of me, with every precious moment of my life, I miss her. It has been fifty years now and I miss her with the same painful longing. I still picture waking up with he
r beautiful face just in front of my own. I wake up reaching out to touch it.

             
She dissolves away as my hand touches her skin.

Violet

             
“Look, Maura! Look at it!” Penny exclaimed excitedly as she pushed her way through the large crowd of people gathered a
round the window at the far end of the Atrium.

             
“I see, darling. That’s something, isn’t it?”

             
“Look at the stars! They’re still so far away.”

             
I looked over at Brynna to see her covering her mouth to hide a tiny smile that had emerged. Elijah nudged her w
ith his elbow several times, practically bobbing up and down. He had always been the one obsessed with space and there he was, flying through it.

             
“Hold this.” He handed Brynna his water bottle. “I’m going to go stomp on children so I can get a better look
.”

             
Brynna laughed now and I couldn’t help but join in.

             
“We were the first to see it, you know.” James told me as he leaned against one of the pillars by the wall.

             
“You two were the first people awake?” I looked between the two of them in disbelief.

             
“I
believe so.” James replied. “Well, there was another woman up, but that’s a grim story for another time.”

             
“What happened?” I asked as my smile faded abruptly.

             
“It’s nothing.” James dispersed my need to know such a dark thing with an easygoing tone and a
shrug of his shoulder. “You and your sister, you're two of a kind. You're fascinated with all things morbid.”

             
“Her husband had a heart attack in his sleep and died.” Brynna chimed in bluntly.

             
Irritation welled inside of me. I hadn’t wanted to know that.
The fascination with morbid things that James had commented on always resulted in me feeling a high level of sadness or disgust. Perhaps it was guilt at being so enthralled by the macabre. I hadn’t needed to know that and yet, I had asked. She had told me.
Neither of us acted in my best interest.

             
Brynna should have avoided the topic for my benefit the way James had. When I was young, she exhibited some level of sensitivity on emotionally heavy things. As I got older, she became more and more forceful with
the truth. Once I had reached the age of seventeen, my feelings were not spared on anything. I sympathized for Penny, whom Elijah was holding up so she could see out of the window better. On one particular day, with no precursor to the sudden change, she w
ould find Brynna, who was warm to her now, suddenly cold and hardened. Her feelings would change from adoration and a perceived notion of safety to what bordered on hatred for having to face the scary world without her older sister’s guidance.

             
“Really?” J
ames snapped at Brynna in disbelief.

             
“Pardon me, but she’s my sister. I’ll decide what she hears and what she does not, thank you so much.”

             
“And what was the purpose of telling her that? Oh, that's right. There isn't one.”

             
Brynna shrugged and replied,
“It’s the reality of the situation. We can’t afford any naivety here. Not anymore…”

             
“Where are Mom and Dad?” I asked her, just as Elijah returned from the group, beaming like a schoolboy who had just tripped and landed on top of a particularly good-lookin
g woman. But upon hearing my question, his smile disappeared and he looked at Brynna quizzically.

             
“So, that’s what I was saying earlier to you, James.” Brynna looked up from the pamphlet she had been reading. She was a pro at pretending she hadn’t been li
stening to what someone, especially I, had said.

             
“Don’t use me to avert the situation.” James replied snidely. “You’re so skilled at answering questions, why don’t you answer hers?”

             
Her expression darkened suddenly when her eyes met his. I watched her ha
nds start shaking and braced myself for an explosion of rage. She meandered through life, suppressing every tiny feeling that crossed her heart. Her insides inflated slowly until finally, like a balloon with too much air, they burst loudly. When that happe
ned, we all knew to steer clear of her. The rages were unlike anything any doctor had ever seen.

             
But she took a slow, cleansing breath the way she had once read she was supposed to do when her anger reached that point. When she spoke, her voice was trembl
ing and jumping an octave every couple of seconds as she forced the shout back down into her stomach.

             
“This is more important.” She took another breath. “You seem to know everything about our current predicament, so let me ask you this: Why is this ship s
o intricate? It was originally intended to  be a means of escape. It was supposed to be our transportation. Why does it look like the interior of a vacation resort? I feel like I just won a radio contest.”

             
“Didn’t I explain this to you, dear?”

             
Oh boy…

             
“
People like
your parents
, who were going to escape the earth, surely wouldn’t be transported on anything that wasn’t state of the art. God forbid they travel like the rest of us. Actually, when this ship was being built originally, it was because it was go
ing to be used to transport anyone who could pay a large sum of money to Pangea for an intergalactic vacation. Instead, people like
your parents
commandeered it to escape what was going to happen. Even though what just consumed the planet was completely, o
ne hundred and fifty percent, the fault of
your parents
.”

             
My heart dropped with a resounding thud that echoed in my ears. I covered my mouth in horror, feeling my brain starting to twirl end over end inside my skull.

             
Brynna’s arms were around me and I
was being ushered to one of the many couches.
             
             
“You accuse me of insensitivity and then you pull that?” She snapped. “What is wrong with you?”
             

             
“Don’t be a hypocrite. You did the same damn thing.” James hissed at her furiously but when he spoke to me, hi
s voice was gentle. “Violet, I’m sorry. Despite what she may believe, I wasn’t doing that to upset you or her. I was just frustrated. I should have edited myself. I’m sorry.”

             
I shook my head and looked from him to Brynna and back again.

             
“It happened?” I
managed to murmur tremulously. “It happened while we were asleep?”

             
Brynna looked up at James.

             
“You were awake,
dear
, so why don’t you scar her further and tell her exactly what happened?”

             
For a moment, I really thought he was going to whack her in the f
ace. Granted, if he did, Elijah would have killed him. But thankfully, he suppressed his outburst and looked back at me, his eyes warm.

             
“Whatever it was, it shook the entire ship. They made an announcement to those of us that were awake that ‘the event’ h
ad happened. We’ll never know exactly what it was. But you had the dream, Violet, so you can surmise. Whatever it was, I’m sure it was quick, okay?”

             
“But Mom and Dad…” I was rambling now, barely able to process a word of what he had said. “Mom and Dad are
here, aren’t they?”

             
“Where are they, Brynna?” Elijah asked in a voice devoid of all emotion. “What did you do?”

             
Maura and Penny were starting to make their back to us. I saw them getting closer in my peripheral vision. Brynna would be attempting to put
an abrupt end to the conversation any minute now.

             
She answered him so quietly I barely heard her. But when she spoke, her voice was firm, unapologetic.

             
“I had no choice.”

             
My body jerked upwards so that I was standing. My heart dropped even further and y
et still managed to beat although it was no longer in my chest cavity where it belonged.

             
“You left them?!” I screamed at her and everyone in the Atrium turned to stare at us for a second, their jabbering ending abruptly so they could listen.

             
“What did yo
u do now?” Maura asked Brynna irritably.

             
Brynna normally would have given her an earful for insinuating that she must take responsibility for causing someone great emotional upset. But now, she had my arm firmly in her grasp and was pulling me towards a d
oor at the end of the hall. Once we were outside and the door had slid shut behind us, she pushed me up against a wall, her body trembling with rage.

             
“You listen to me,” Her voice was shaking along with her body, “I had very little time. I had a decision
to make and I made it. They screwed everyone, Violet. They were responsible for this. And guess what? Mommy and Daddy were going to take off and leave everyone they had screwed over behind! We just beat them to it.”