Merely a Madness (4 page)

Mullen spends two weeks in the cafeteria before he's put on a shuttle home. He spends the time running her words through his mind, over and over again.

You can stay if you want.

Not:
I love you. Please stay.

Not:
I
want you to stay.

Hell, he knows he's obsessed, and she's not. He's always known the way he feels isn't completely healthy. He knows the big love story has always been on his side, not on hers. It's never mattered until now. He knows, but,
goddamnit,
he has
some
self-respect left, and to live here, on the Earth, among these creatures that probably don't even know what a toothbrush is …

He changes his mind a dozen times a day. He's going, then he's staying. Once he even gets as far as walking up to the Earthling guard, before he flip-flops again and turns away.

He's put in with the first batch of prisoners to be sent home. No one has paid a ransom for him. Harbin-Beck want him, but they don't want to pay. Not after what he did.

He has no value. No family. His parents are dead. He has no siblings. There was never anyone but Hannah who cared. The Earthlings send him home, ostensibly as a gesture of goodwill, but really because he just not worth keeping.

They march them out to the shuttle. It's the first time Mullen's been outside. The sky is still yellow-smudged and black-streaked, but patches of blue are breaking through. The feeling that the sky is going to suck him up returns, and this time he welcomes it. Let it. Wouldn't
that
be a way to go?

The Earthlings watch them leave. They're lined up at the side of the road. No one shouts now, or spits. They watch the little group silently. Mullen shudders.

He watches for Hannah, and then, right at the end, as the shuttle doors open, he sees her. She's dressed in Earthling clothes. She opens her mouth to say something. His heart skips a beat and his breath hitches. He turns towards her.

Evidently she changes her mind, because her mouth snaps shut.

Mullen turns and walks away. He gets into the shuttle without looking back.

When he gets home, he is whisked away, asked questions. He answers them all honestly, doesn't have to pretend to be in shock. His world that was so dirty, and full of Hannah, and
real
, is now sterile and suffocatingly neat.

He's still not sure how he got here – how he went from week-long holiday to permanent hell.

He thinks of Hannah still there in the dirt. She'll probably marry Arnou, have too-many-limbed babies. An image of her comes into his head of her cuddling a little octopus-baby. Even after everything, the thought is so utterly absurd that he bursts out laughing. The men on the other side of the table glance at each other, then one says, “What's so funny?”

He laughs harder, tries to explain, but he's cry-laughing now and the words come out jumbled between hiccups.
Octopus. Baby. Hannah.

They look at him as if he has gone insane, and he laughs harder, gasping for breath, because he
has
.

He loses his job, of course. It doesn't matter. He has plenty of money, but he misses having something to do with his day. Something to take his mind off it. No one wants to employ him. They all know who he is.

He spends his days scrolling through newsfeeds with the filters off, watching the slaughter on Earth, searching the bodies and the severed limbs for her, but she's not there.

And at night, he watches old Earth movies, mouthing the words and laughing at all the right places. Sometimes, just for a second, he can even fool himself that none of it ever happened. He imagines she is in the dark next to him, and he can see her if only he turns his head.

He never does.

.

Author’s Note

This story originally appeared in anthology
No Way Home
curated by the talented Lucas Bale, and I would like to thank him for not only inviting me to contribute, but also for all his support and encouragement. If it weren’t for him, this story wouldn’t have been written.

Merely a Madness
was my first attempt at science fiction, and I’m really pleased with how it turned out.

The good news is that
No Way Home
did so well that we decided to do it again! My second SF story will be coming out later in 2015 in an anthology titled
Crime and Punishment.

If you’d like to be notified when it’s released, please sign up for my
newsletter
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