Dark Matters

Microfiction: A brief guide to pretending everything’s fine.

The stars vanished from the sky one day, no one seemed to care.

My neighbor shrugged when I mentioned it, muttering what a shame it was, but his voice was hollow, as if the sky were a type of bird gone extinct, regrettable in theory, irrelevant to the day-to-day grind of life.

Everyone else took it in stride. I stopped talking about it. The looks I got made me feel crazy—unstable. Stupid, even.

But every night the blank sky pressed heavier on me, a canopy whispering of things gone terribly wrong.

My urge to speak of it eventually evaporated. I kept my terror to myself.

Instead, I shopped, I scrolled, I smiled.

How you doing? they ask.

Great, I answer. Just great.

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Thanks for the read. I post miniature stories about the WTF of being alive. Subscribe if you know the feeling.