Flash Fiction: 1

Following a long day replete with the exhausting particularities of moving and a little bit of cooking, Carlos took the time, one hour, to set up his new bed in his new home and was finally about to get some proper rest.

It took him one hour of sweeping, moving boxes, measuring floors and mattresses, selecting sheets and blankets in his new apartment. He was now in a new neighborhood, a different part of the city where he imagined the new life he worked hard at creating.

Wearied, at bedside, he started to undo his pants. He sat on his mattress and for a moment felt gravity tug at his cerebellum with a deliberately delicate tow. He surrendered without negotiation and lay horizontal, resting his greasy mop of a mane on a freshly washed pillow, for two seconds.

It was two seconds in which he experienced nothingness. It felt eternal. Everything was still. His heart beat in silence. He clearly saw his body floating in space, in the universal whirlpool of stars and planets with no bound. With eyes closed he couldn’t feel earth beneath him or roof above him. Only the light from lightyears of galactic travel was present in all directions.

He weighed nothing.
He heard nothing.
He smelled nothing.

Wait, he thought. He did smell something, on the stove… beans. Fuckin’ beans.

In the kitchen - burners off - check.
Back to bed. Drained.

He still slept saintly and soundly. An innumerable amount of dreams ran through his mind that night. All of them forgotten. None that he could recall if you asked him about them the next morning.

But years later and even in another home, he did and does still remember those two seconds of… just being in space… with nothing but his universal self.