“Oh” was all she said, infuriatingly. As if the world hadn't just stopped spinning. A single syllable, little more than a vowel to hammer home how our world had somehow become two that had subsequently drifted apart. I swear I could hear it reverberating in the space between us the way you would hear your voice cast back at you in church. Her subdued amen to my revelatory sermon, a congregation long since having lost faith. The apathy radiated from their faces - all of them hers - as they piously clung to the pews for some sort of salvation. Personally I don’t think God has our best interests at heart, and redemption was never in the cards, just a carrot to be dangled in front of the gullible - not that I’m judging, mind you. We all need something to believe in. But once the appetite subsides, then what? What if you find out there’s only so much carrot you can stomach in a community revolving around that particular vegetable? Who’s going to be the first to broach the subject of broccoli?

I didn’t realize the extent to which I had gotten caught up in my train of thought until the look on her face told me she’d repeated herself at least twice already. The church organ that had been slowly building to a crescendo in my head petered out into a self-conscious stutter, like the busy signal on a phone line: connection is, at this time, unfortunately impossible. I saw anger in her eyes and felt indignation welling up inside me. There had never been room for my questions, for my fears, my doubts and even now, with her setting up the building to collapse around us she would make sure that only her opinion prevailed. I remember admiring her for just that once, both a mere minute and a lifetime ago. The fire with which she spoke about understanding, about care and equality - a passion beyond what I could ever hope to muster yet all I could imagine right now was how empty the rhetoric sounded. What is the value of care when it turns out to be a one-way street?

She repeated the question once more and I could tell my lack of attention registered. Clearly this wasn’t the attitude she had expected. For a brief moment we were united in our mutual disconnect and if there ever was an opportunity to bridge that divide, there it was: a tendril of hope stretching between the both of us without ever reaching either side. All it took was for one of us to grab and anchor it, to reel the other in and proudly display their catch in one of those rare Kodak moments today's online society hungers for so much. Look what I have achieved. Acknowledge the superiority I hold over the world around me, that you can only hope to aspire to. I am the master of my domain and will not abide by any dissent. My control is absolute. The power flowing from that position seemed so enticing but in the end it required either side to yield in a game of chicken - and neither of us were ready to do so. The collision was imminent, inevitable, and the resulting fireball was going to be awe-inspiring.

Seconds passed by disguised as minutes, our eyes locked like metaphorical horns. The rising tension took on the whistling quality of a falling bomb announcing its intent to translate terminal velocity into simple terminality. Part of me still wanted to flinch, wanted Zeno’s arrow to be true and, for just this once, motion to be an illusion. For time to crawl to a halt and, if it wasn’t too much to ask, start moving again into the other direction. Back across the countless arguments, the nights spent at the bottom of a bottle and watch how our mutually assured destruction in reverse would make it look like us pulling each other from the wreckage of events with no discernible cause. In that moment, the length of an arrow, everything seemed possible.

It’s only now that I’m committing this to words and realize how pretentious I sound - always must have sounded. And I wonder to what extent that ended up being the catalyst to the end of us. At this point, however, I’m hard-pressed to care. Our personal little apocalypse has come and gone, and left an ocean between us in its wake, a vast body of time. And what is time other than a plane that can only be crossed on its own terms?

Thanks for reading! I entered this competition on a whim, not so much to win any prizes, but because working toward a deadline helps me actually create. I briefly ruminated on the prompts until the first sentence shaped itself in my head and I just let the story unfold from there, with no real plan or direction other than wanting to avoid the using the word 'distance' itself and only focus on the feel of the concept rather than explore its cause and effect within the story too deeply. Feedback is always appreciated, and I hope you enjoyed it.

Cheers,

D