Beyond the Event Horizon

Millee shot up in bed with a start, drenched in a cold sweat and extremely nauseous. She leaned over the side and immediately became ill, allowing her mind to focus on literally anything but the disgusting mess she was making on the linoleum floor of her room. White-knuckling the bedframe, the cool metal offered her an anchor, something that wasn’t soaked in sweat and uncomfortably warm—she needed the cold shock, something to pull her back to reality.

“Ughhh,” she groaned, “why do I keep having these nightmares?” She laid back in bed, placing her forearm over her eyes. “What was any of that even about? Black holes? Was I subconsciously manifesting things from my time on Earth? It was all so… negative. And the voice inside my head… At least this time, I guess, I was me and not Lailah or someone else.”

She removed her arm as she stared up at the ceiling, using her hand to push her hair out of her eyes. For a moment, she thought she caught a glimpse of a honey-colored lock but, upon further investigation—a handful of hair she pulled into her face—it was just the lighting. Still, it wasn’t enough to satisfy the lingering stress and anxiety of her most recent nightmare.

“Ok. I feel absolutely disgusting, and I’m going to have to change all of my bedding, not to mention the mess on the floor I’m going to have to wipe up, too.” She sat up again, swinging her legs over the side of the bed, stopping short of leaving entirely, but something caught her attention. “That— That’s the hoodie I dragged over the tea spill, isn’t it?” She stared at the tea-soaked hoodie, stained brown from the liquid. “It turned red when I pulled it off the bed and onto the spill, but it’s tea-colored now. What—”

She felt her heart skip a literal beat. When she turned her head back, to ensure she didn’t step in a pile of vomit, the same shadowy hands that had been dragging her into the black hole were imprinted on her legs like tattoos—she thought she was going to be sick again, not that there was anything left in her stomach she could throw up. She lifted her legs back onto the bed, visually inspecting them, looking for an answer to her recurring nightmares… and why the most recent was starting to feel less like a nightmare and more like something that actually happened.

“Ok, take a breath. There’s probably a really good explanation for this. Let’s see… The skin feels normal, and it’s not sticky or bleeding like ink…” She twisted around, examining the twisting patterns the handprints themselves made as they wrapped around the backs of her legs. “Wait— Are they not handprints after all? These look like… tiny words.”

She swiped a magnifying glass from her nightstand she’d been using to sew a small tear in one of her shirts. Placing it just above her right calf, she adjusted the distance until she could get a clear image. Part of her wanted to throw the magnifying glass away, to throw it in the nightstand drawer where she didn’t have to torture herself with unbound curiosity, but her anxiety screamed at her to examine the handprints—she had to know what they really were and, if they did say something, she wanted to know what that something was.

A moment later, she found the perfect angle and, sure enough, the handprints really were made from words—made from hidden messages etched into her skin. She moved the magnifying glass along her leg, following the trail until she came to the end of the first sentence.

The words soured in her mouth as she read them aloud. “She has such a pretty face, so of course she could never know what it’s like to go through the things the rest of us normal people do.”

There was more. “I feel so relieved we broke up as friends because it was starting to stress me out having to fake it every day.”

She continued to move the magnifying glass around. “I literally hate her so much. Why did I have to get an assigned seat next to her?”

“What do other guys see in her? Is she really worth anything more than a one-night-stand?”

“I’m going to be sick… What are these messages, and who do they belong to? What even is all this? Like, they’re all just so… hateful, so full of spite for me,” she whispered to herself. “W-who would say things like this behind someone’s back?!”

She rubbed her legs, hoping to erase the cynicism, the hate, the loathing the world seemed to have for her existence, for reasons she couldn’t understand… for reasons she didn’t want to understand. She felt robbed, lied to. How could people be so cruel when all she’d ever done was shoulder their problems? If she could just strip the top layer of skin, maybe she’d find something, the strength to finally face what she’d been avoiding for so long—something beneath the surface.

If someone lost their study guide for a test later that week, back when she attended school on Earth, she would lend hers. In return, all she asked was to have it back a day or two before the test so she could study.

“I promise!” and “Thank you so much!” they’d say—promises broken. When she’d ask for it back, she be met with blank stares and “What study guide? This one’s mine. Maybe you shouldn’t lose yours next time.” She could see where they’d scratched out her name in pen, but if she protested, she’d just get told how annoying she was. They’d tell her she needed to learn to be more responsible—rich, coming from the people who initially proved to be less responsible than her, losing important items.

“And it was always the same thing. Why didn’t I just learn my lesson and keep to myself? Why did I feel like I always had to get involved? Just to be torn down and trampled on.”

She recalled an incident aboard LLS1 where one of the elderly residents had asked if she could replace the blinds in their cabin: the sun was too bright in the morning, and the old ones weren’t blocking enough light. She’d happily obliged, even offering to put up a set of curtains to which they graciously took her up on the offer. The next day, she’d walk into the ship’s lounge, where the elderly residents usually gathered, just to be accused of favoritism when, in fact, she’d offered her help to everyone in the room—only the one resident had decided to take her up on her offer. They glared at her, mumbling under their breath how spoiled selfish she was, for failing to “read between the lines.”

She was on the verge of tears. Buried memories were beginning to resurface, and she could feel her airways narrow as anxiety formed a lump in her throat. Social interaction wasn’t her forte. She hated dealing with other people, though she’d learned to walk among them, to blend in with the crowd as best she could.

“But those are just excuses! I was forced into this role! I never asked to be here. I never asked to leave everything on Earth behind…” She pressed her hand against her forehead, pushing her matted bangs up. “This place— The Committee always downplayed those side effects from the first few missions to LLS1, and these chips in our necks… If they’re supposed to help suppress emotional attachments from before our ascension to LLS1, why does it seem to be the problem with me? Why can’t I just forget?”

She blinked the tears away as she looked around the room, hoping to find something that would remind her of who she really was, the person she had always believed herself to be. Strangely, her work nametag she usually placed on her nightstand was blank; the fancy letters she’d stuck on her door, the M shaped like a heart, that spelled out her name were gone; the photos she’d taken with Lailah were still pinned to the wall with tacks, but Lailah was the only one in them.

“My name is… gone? From everything?” She pulled one of the photos down from the wall, closely examining it. “And I’ve been removed from all of these photos, like I was never even there to take them in the first place” She turned the photo over to the back. “Even my signature from where I wrote my name has been scratched off.”

Thoughts flooded her brain, each one a different voice. She recognized all of them, yet none of them were hers. Her own inner voice felt lost amid a torrent of words that lashed at her like a whip, thoughts she couldn’t control, names and faces that had resurfaced that she wished she could forget all over again.

“I hope she disappears one day. I’m tired of trying to one-up her looks.”

“Isn’t she the girl that’s always asking the teachers for extra copies of work because she keeps losing hers? Seems kind of irresponsible to me.”

“Find someone else to eat lunch with. I don’t sit with people who so readily flaunt their parents’ money around. Must be nice to have lunch every day.”

“Look, Millee. We can’t be friends anymore, ok? I can’t explain why. Like, something about your vibes are just such an ick for me.”

The words swirled through her mind, a violent tempest that roared through her ears and shook her body not with thunder but with uncontrolled emotional turmoil. Her body shook as she wrapped her arms around herself; her teeth clattered in her skull.

“Everything I did was for the good of someone else. Why are these voices making me out to be the villain?” Her voice grew soft, quivering. “N-none of this makes any sense… Is this some kind of simulation? Am I the fake?”

Suddenly, the words rose from her legs like stickers as they hung in the air. For a moment, she was mesmerized, watching the very things, the very memories, that had wounded her heart so severely, lift themselves into the air like they were weightless. In a way, it was as if the very burdens that threatened the foundation upon which she stood were finally removing themselves from her life. Her chest felt lighter and free from guilt; her heartbeat steadied, returning to a normal rhythm; her legs felt stronger, like she could finally traverse the fragile glass upon which she’d been walking for what felt like her whole life.

Without warning, the words began to wrap themselves around her neck, restricting the flow of air into her lungs. She grabbed at them with her own hands, but they began to squeeze—tighter and tighter. She could feel the world’s seemingly endless apathy for her. For what reason, though? Why did it feel like everyone she’d ever met wished she was better off dead? The word-formed-hands continued to choke her until her lips were almost as blue as the bedsheets she sat atop.

“Let… go,” she wheezed. “Please…” Surprisingly, they did as she commanded, once again lifting themselves from her skin. “Thank God…”

The blood rushed to her head as she momentarily blacked out, but not before the words affixed themselves to her walls in rows. She watched as they crossed each other like lines, hoping that, when the spots in her eyes cleared, it would all go away. Part of her knew the prison cell-like bars were likely a permanent fixture, reaffirming how she’d always felt: trapped inside a prison of her own making, one there was no key to.