Eden Onpeng

Paul’s car convulsed and died in the desert. Climbing out and waving away the fumes, he looked at the bright stars blazing over the hills.

These stars are fucking bright, he thought enviously.

They were out there, waltzing with each other, dying, merging, rebirthing, all in gargantuan proportions over cosmic scales of time.

And here he was, a lonely sack of flesh with a dead car out in the desert on a rocky planet, breathing air.

Beneath the starlight, shadows oozed out from beneath the towering cacti. His final argument with his brother was a mite in the face of the ancient paths of the celestial bodies that carried on, heedless of all the bullshit that happened here on Earth.

So much had come before him. And so much will come after. His brother’s life was not even a blip on the universe’s radar, and neither was his.

His hand twitched. His instinct was to pull his phone out of his pocket to memorialize this moment but instead, he dropped his hand to his thigh instead. No photos would do this justice. The cold desert air caressed his face. He let his mind wander.

A pang of loneliness sliced through him. If only his brother were here to see this too. James was no longer here. And while his big brother’s life didn’t matter on the cosmic scale, it meant the universe to Paul.

With his car broken, Paul could go nowhere until the tow truck arrived in the morning.

That night, he fell asleep beneath a bright blanket of stars and dreamt of his dead brother.