MicroHorror

The idiot box said doom was coming. Fire. Flood. Extinction of the whole human kind. But Rachelle didn’t pay it any mind. They were always predicting some damn thing: Judgment Day. Japan to buy Pennsylvania Avenue. The British are coming! Rachelle had better things to do than listen to all of that. The plants needed watering. Old Deacon hadn’t been out to play with his Frisbee all day. The trash was piling up. Rachelle flicked off the tube.

The Georgia sun hung like a syrupy egg yolk, a golden globe over the tall pines and mossy oak trees that canopied Rachelle’s little trailer. Deacon rolled on his back in the emerald St. Augustine grass, gnawing his old Frisbee and groaning his pleasure. They say animals know before we do when something truly bad is coming. Old Deacon didn’t have a care in the world.

Rachelle sprayed her sunflower seedlings and mature red roses with the garden hose. She watched Deacon out of the corner of her eye, trying to channel some of his joy over to her. She tried to tell herself that everything was just fine, but that queasy spot in the pit of her stomach rang out like buckshot in the country quiet, unsettling her mind. If there had been someone else there to comfort, Rachelle would have lied, just to distract herself. “Sure, sure, everything’s gonna be all right.” But that feeling there in her belly, she couldn’t deny. Rachelle looked back up to the sky. Something wasn’t right.

Metallic shadows filtered the sunlight. The emerald grass turned steely blue and quiet. The branches of the low hanging oak trees that before had simply danced with the gentle suggestions of the breeze, seemed now to shudder visibly, to shiver. Deacon dropped his Frisbee and came to Rachelle’s side. He knew. His eyes locked with Rachelle’s, conspiring with the pit of her stomach to carry the message to her denying heart and mind, that they were all soon to die.

Names flashed like comets in Rachelle’s mind. Names she’d heard all her life but that had never carried any significance until now. Jupiter. Eros. The names of those who now conspired to assassinate her world.

The newsman, with his five o’clock shadow and tie twisted to the side, had explained that Jupiter, like a magnet in a pinball machine had yanked the asteroid Eros into a direct collision course with Earth. The closest it had come before now was about 22 million kilometers. Rachelle thought of the shopping list hanging on her refrigerator. She needed to pick up milk. Then the haggard face of the newsman came back.

Not taking into consideration atmospheric friction or the orbital speed of Eros and Earth, scientists predicted roughly a 75 million megaton explosion upon impact based on a final velocity of about 40,000 kilometers per hour. This dwarfed the destructive capability of the collected nuclear stockpiles on Earth.

Rachelle reached down and ran her fingers through Deacon’s smooth brown fur. His eyes, symmetrical copper orbs, seemed to capture the expression of a scream trapped in black space. Silent. The wind lashed the treetops, snapping the once gracefully swaying branches and sending them crashing into the underbrush, now jagged bristling spikes.

Sunday afternoon turned quickly to final night. Asteroid extinction, the newsman had called it. Rachelle’s soil now tended, under the darkening sun, she lay down flat on her back with Deacon curled up close beside her. Their work was done.