Open Mic: Excerpt, “Open Your Eyes” by Paul Jessup

From Paul Jessup’s novel “Open Your Eyes,” coming in early 2009.

Her lover was a supernova. She smiled when he came- his bright burning
light rocking her body, impregnating her with the essence of stars.
Through the metal bones of her ship she felt the gasses enter her-
felt the compound light exploding inside of her.  Her hands clawed at
the cracked vinyl of the chair, her legs spread to either side with
toes stretched out- her mouth in piercing screams of ecstasy.

Ekhi, Ekhi.

Her lover was a supernova.  And her womb- it spun with the light of
stars. She felt black holes open up inside of her- intense
gravitational weight.  She felt her mind expand- and then a stillness
as the blue light glowed and everything around her was awash in a sea
of colors.

She couldn’t make out the controls- not now.  Not even in her mind.
She lay back and let the ship fly itself, a small vessel in the
starsea, floating through the explosions around her.  Everything
sucked in, the large mass pulling in stars and planets and satellites
and docking stations and floating flop houses.

Ekhi saw the sun center of her lover- and felt herself push through to
the other side- her eyes half lidded in rapture, her warm hands on the
smooth round flesh of her stomach, rubbing in circles the home of a
new galaxy, of a new starling landscape growing inside of her.

They vaulted outward, the boneship starspat and spinning, the lights
inside of the crusted and cracked marrow cage blistering with warning
signs.  She came as they forced out- howling alive on the other side,
eyes rolling in her head like marble spheres as she gasped in the
glory of orgasm. The lights dimmed into a slow halo glow of amber blue
and then- out. Exhaled.  Like a candle flame.

The engines wound down.  The seconds unticked.  She felt time unravel
inside the great ribcage of her egia.  The ship was losing power, the
few orange lights still active only flashing mute warning signs.

Adrift- her displays dead, her radios silenced- everything in the ship
shut down and shut off.  Not enough fuel to get home.  Just energy
enough to drift and make oxygen- keeping her alive in the empty void
of space for a few more months. The oxygen vents around her wheezed in
and out, conserving as much energy as possible as it tried to keep her
alive, tried to stave off the empty void of space one more moment.

She sighed and trembled, her finger to her lip as her nerves burst in
radial songs of joy and adulation. Her body floated up- the artificial
gravity turned off to save power. Behind her the light of the nova
shone on, bright and brighter still.  My lover is dying, she thought,
and he’s taking out whole worlds with him.

Ekhi smiled and sung a lullaby to herself, the whole of space
immaculate with her lover’s last breath, the stars growing dimmer by
each moment.