How fast do comets actually travel? Charlotte sat on the foot of her bed, hugging her coffee mug. She had been staring at her reflection in the window. She had found nothing much there. Except for the night and the rain beyond her vision. Her coffee was almost ice. Her kitchen almost empty, except for the sharp and tangy aroma of vegetable stew. Her loungeroom empty.
She was looking into herself and finding nothing in particular. She had accepted life as she was allotted it. Her husband, her house, her children, her coffin. It was her quiet time - her dead time. It had been as easy as sliding into a tar bath - this life of hers. Has she even surfaced to breathe? She coughed briefly, almost drowning in her coffee.
Charlotte had been sitting in her tangled winter bedspread. She had become embedded in its layers and fossilised. She was barely aware of herself as herself. She was barely breathing. Barely existing. It had been so simple. It had been that easy. She moved into the reflected aura of her window like star washed whiteness. Distant and untouched by such distance. She sighed. She must have died somewhere.
Yet tonight it hardly mattered. It was the night sky that she was interested in. The otherness of night. She held the idea that the comet would pass across the sky so swiftly, that she was afraid to go to the toilet or take a shower, in case she missed it. If it wasn't the phone ringing it was the comets. Or perhaps the milkman calling for debts. She had once fallen in love with the milkman because he was smiling and white.
But there were other sparklers in this night sky. She was just taking a little longer to find them than most. Or so she thought. It was the city lights. She sighed. Would she miss the comet? Who could she turn to for astronomical advice? Who wouldn't be watching television in her street at this hour? Her hour of judgment and the street was empty and overcast.
It would pass them by without even noticing. She was a practical woman. She would have to rely on her own intuition. If it was the last thing she did before she died. She strained past the emptiness of her own reflection in hopes of seeing it. She might have then thought about all the other people who didn't see it at all. Or who saw it without comprehension. Or those who disappeared into night like a firetail. But she failed to recognise the otherness from her room within a room, being too tangled up in her bedspread.
Suddenly a soft collapsed thud at her window. Two brown moths stuck to the rain glass in hovering velvet. She had left the bedroom light on to view her own reflection. Would she ever see the comet under these conditions? She only ever saw so much through her window. Only so many things ever passed by her vision, as she sat eating coffee chocolates. All to keep herself awake.
It was raining still, and the comet was coming. She would have to go outside, into the darkness where it was dangerous. Outside to where she couldn't see. It only happened so often and she wanted to be ready. No-one on the street seemed even aware. She would have to stretch out there alone. Before the elements. Leaving the evening meal to burn. The coffee chocolates were gone. She would never see the comet from in here.
She rose from her bed towards the window, dropping her coffee mug. She passed edgewise through her vague reflection. Into the moth moist glass and outwards. She stretched towards the icy sky. Beyond the cloud and shadow. Beyond the doubt and reason. There was no other place for her now. Beyond the trees that touched her door. There was nowhere existing to go back to. She had come so far down her garden path. The kitchen was burning. Her coffee mug overturned.
In crept the cats and crystal-eyed frogs. In crept the songs and rain through the shadow. She had dropped her chocolates onto the bedspread. She had opened the door to what was outside. She could never return. Her dull eyes whitened and streamed like tunnel light. Her weight pushed through the clouds and into weightlessness.
Place and time collided, rebounded and crashed through her mind. Time was endless, her consciousness shifting. In the oven the stew was shuddering. The phone was ringing. The stairs were burning. Tree frogs humming. Charlotte stepped into the sky to view the comet, her electricity bill left unpaid.
