BHS Inkwell 2017-2018

football game. It didn’t take long for everything to overwhelm her, and that’s when she took the job. Space was both the farthest away and closest she could put herself in regards to Ernest. They had met nine years before, when Halley was a wide-eyed intern at the agency and Ernest was finishing his third year as lead researcher. Within a month of their first encounter, they were dating; on an unrelated note, Halley was officially hired six weeks later. Ernest was more than happy to complete his work on the ground, but Halley craved more, and maybe that’s what made them a nearly perfect match. Ernest proposed on their two year anniversary, and as Halley often joked whenever she recalled their romance, “the rest was history”. She missed him. Ernest. The outside of the pod has superheated, and Halley’s tumbling view of the world below and the sky above is engulfed in flames. The mechanized voice of the countdown program is warbled with heat and system failure, but if it isn’t wrong, Halley has twenty-eight seconds until impact. Twenty- eight seconds to decide whether to go out loudly or with pressed lips, whether to watch

her world end or find comfort in the darkness of squeezed eyelids. Twenty-eight seconds to determine whether to pray (Heaven is looking pretty good right now). Twenty-eight seconds to notice that the clock she has synced to Command Base is still functional, reading 11:59:43 pm. There are less than twenty seconds before the days change. The sensation of every organ being thrust to her throat fades, and although she is plummeting closer and closer to the Pacific, Halley has never felt more still. It is 11:59 pm, and she sighs with relief and a twisted sort of gratitude over the knowledge that- She is going to see Ernest tomorrow.

Hannah Tallant

27