and we're so alone, most of the time
[I wrote this while listening to Dan by Noah Kahan]
Carl was a pragmatist; he did not stay awake at night staring at his bedroom ceiling wondering if somewhere beyond the layers of wire and plaster and bricks the stars were still shining.
Every night at 21:45 sharp, he would unfold the singular blanket on his bed with military precision and lay down, his arms at his sides and his back flat against the cheap mattress. The white noise machine on his bedside table and his soft breathing were the only sounds that could be heard, and he preferred it that way.
Using a breathing technique he had learned in his time as a navy SEAL, he would be asleep by 22:00. He followed his schedule with the same discipline he brought to Sunday Mass. Every minute of his day was precise and regulated, because Carl was a man who thrived on routine.
Once, when they had lived on Stratt's Vat, Grace and Carl had been stuck in an elevator for almost four hours and Carl had been forced to watch his friend's composure slowly melt.
"It feels like the walls are closing in," Ryland had whispered over and over again, crouching with his hands pressed to the floor like he could physically break them out of the tiny room. Beads of sweat dripped from under his blonde hair. His voice was shaking.
Carl had spent years trying not to imagine the inside of the Hail Mary. Whenever he failed, it always became another elevator.
Now, he himself had never actually been inside, but in his sleeping mind's eye the ship's innards were a mass of tangled wires and slanted, sterile white walls.
A cage to die in.
He'd walk through the hollow metal rooms and call for his friend over, and over, and over. That's how the dream always started.
He always found the cockpit eventually. Dozens of screens greeted him, flashing all sorts of different colours that he could only assume meant nothing good as the Hail Mary's warning sirens began to blare.
The dream always ended with him finding Grace slumped on the floor, blood trickling from his nose and mouth.
Carl woke up every morning at 06:00. He folded his blanket back and washed invisible blood out sheets that had never been stained.
He brushed his teeth, mouth filled with mint that tasted too bitter to be real, thick hand clenched around the blue plastic handle.
Once, when stationed in Iraq, he'd watched his commander kill a rabid fox. It had been cornered behind a wall, all snaping teeth and blind panic.
Even after the first shot, it kept growling, ears flattened against its skull as foam and blooddripped down its jaws.
It had taken so little force to hold Grace down.
Not that the man hadn't fought.
He'd clawed at Carl's forearms, leaving faint crescent-shaped scars. Even bit once or twice, leaving marks that remained for weeks after the Hail Mary had left orbit.
He turned off the sink, water dripping slowly from his fingers.
He stayed there longer than he needed to.
Hail Mary, full of Grace, the Lord is with thee...
The words came without permission.
...blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Grace. Twisted into something holy by accident of sound. A noble hero who sacrificed himself for the greater good of humanity. That's what was written, in the history books.
Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners...
Now and at the hour of our death...
He exhaled through his nose. Slow, controlled. In for four seconds, hold for four seconds, out for four seconds.
