Light This Candle

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“Light this candle in ten… Nine.”
Esther Levine lay flat on the steel deck beneath the lowest tier of bunks with only a stolen blanket for padding.
“Eight.”
The number of seconds left in her life?
“Seven.”
Seven by seven, all the good girls and boys went to heaven? Well, the heavens. Or was it seven magpies for a secret never told?
“Six.”
Unless she ended up broken, with bones scattered like pick-up sticks. She was losing it. Deep breath. Focus. Nothing to focus on except the fiber mesh so close above her face she could practically itch her nose against it without raising her head.
“Five. Four, engine ignition.”
It was disorienting to be lying inside something she’d seen so many times from the outside. Instead of watching the first flash of smoke and fire belching from the great bells of the rocket engines, the deck at her back rang as if she lay on a thin sheet of tin being beaten with a sledgehammer from the other side. She’d seen the last of humanity rocketing aloft a hundred, two hundred at a time until there was only…
“Three.”
“Two.”
She’d managed to blend in and stowaway on the final…
“One.”
…rocket…
“Liftoff.”
…ever!
With no helmet, her instincts told her to cover her ears. Her brain said to keep her arms flat at her sides as the heavy acceleration built. With the conflicting instructions, her hands made it to her abdomen before they were pinned against the soft flesh, too heavy to move.
The noise pounded against her very soul. The pressure strove to squeeze her flat yet shake her to pieces. Nothing to see here except the mattress above that sagged but still held, brushing against her chest.
Five hundred souls in a rocket designed for seventy-five. If they all lived, six thousand would have parted the heavens and survived. A hundredth the number saved when Moses had parted the Red Sea. This last load carried aloft no cargo, no supplies, only people—the last of humanity to escape the hell of Earth. The final lift from any space center.
Five hundred and one, but she hoped no one was counting.

Initial Publication: 12/1/2023 (Boundary Shock Quarterly)
Print pages: 52