White Space Season 2

be happy.
    They pulled into the garage, Cassidy knowing it felt as empty for Jon as it did for her, minus Houser and Emma, and plus all the horrible shit stuffed inside vacant memories and all crap they couldn’t say.
    They held their silence as Jon followed Cassidy into the house. She heard the front door shut behind him on her way upstairs. Cassidy walked down the hall, and into Jon’s room, peeling the sweater from her body at the threshold, then dropping it on Jon’s carpet a foot from the doorway’s opposite side. She collapsed on his mattress and stared at the ceiling.
    Jon joined her a moment later, holding his silence along with her hand, staring up at the ceiling beside her and nursing the harmony of their quiet together.
    Her breath fell into a calming rhythm, the sort that made it as easy to count as to dream, her head slightly blurry as lines between thoughts started to crumble, and she knew the promise of sleep was seconds away.
    Jon’s breathing matched hers as he, too, slowly fell asleep beside her. Suddenly Jon said, “I love you,” the first time he’d said it since the night Emma was taken from their lives.
    Cassidy felt high, but different from the kind that came in a pill.
    She stared at the ceiling, wondering what would happen next. Would they leave the island now that there was no Emma to consider? Was Jon’s I love you temporary, and would he strip it from her as he had eventually stripped it from Sarah?
    Cassidy wrestled with those, and a hundred other thoughts, all threatening to bar sleep from her body. She finally ordered herself to relax, returned to counting and dreaming, and ignored her Addict, agreeing with her better half that it was best to take things a day at a time, Jon and sobriety alike.
    Cassidy turned from the ceiling to Jon, and stared at his handsome face, and the happy smile crashing into his pillow. She curled into his lean body and fell asleep, feeling for the first time in a long while that she was truly where she belonged.

    * * * *

JON

    Jon opened his eyes in a garden.
    He thought he might be dreaming, but couldn’t be certain. The world looked like a dream, though it felt nothing of the sort. It had the woolly atmosphere of reality, and the unmistakable scent of truth, sweeter for the abundant blooms that flowered his surroundings and made him believe that perhaps he was wrong, and the dream real.
    The garden was filled with pinks and purples, lavenders and whites, greens and reds and blues. The room erupted in fountains of color, though it was empty of people, which made the vacant stone bench surrounded by lilacs and roses seem especially lonely.
    Jon went to sit, Emma raced toward him as he did.
    She jumped up, leaping into her father’s arms.
    “I’m so happy to see you,” she yelled, her voice giddy.
    Their embrace was so powerful it might have been magic. Emma had died, which made this a dream, though it wore the weight of reality and carried its scent.
    Despite the impossibility, Jon wanted the dream to be real.
    And if it wasn’t, he didn’t want to wake. Not ever. Not for Cassidy or anyone else. Not if he had Emma.
    “I thought you were dead,” Jon said.
    “No, I’m up here, on the space station, with Grandpa and Great Grandpa. And Mommy.”
    “What?”
    “Yeah, I’m with Mommy,” Emma said, her voice filled with glee. “And we miss you so, so, SO much! Grandpa said you could come, but only if you want to.”
    Jon woke.

    * * * *

EPILOGUE

    Blake Conway stepped into the dome where the old man waited.
    “Well?” Billy Conway shouted, standing far back in the room, in front of the last row of stasis chambers. “Did you do it?”
    For a 174 year-old-man, Blake’s father still looked like, and had the booming voice of, a healthy 60-year-old.
    “Yes,” Blake said. “I can’t believe his nerve. How damned ungrateful!”
    “And were you able to get him to the hospital?”
    “Yes,” Blake said. “For all anyone knows, he’s in a coma.”
    “Good,” Billy Conway said. “Perhaps this one will be a bit more loyal. Chamber 1198 open.”
    The chamber hissed open, and Blake looked at the last of Warren’s clones.
    “Yes, this one had better work.”

    TO BE CONTINUED …

IN WHITESPACE SEASON THREE

    * * * *

    Want to know when the next season of WhiteSpace comes out? Sign up for The Goners free newsletter and get updates every time we publish something new.

    http://collectiveinkwell.com/be-a-goner

Our Books

    ::Yesterday’s