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Perfect Circle
by Jo Gatford
EXCERPT
I ruined the pancakes. Not just the first, but every single one: a series of misshapen full moons. I slid them from the pan right down the dog’s gullet while the baby patted my leg, singsonging uh oh, mama around his thumb.
Maybe I should have known then. Before then. Felt it in every turn on humid bedsheets the night before. Should have heard it in the baby’s morning whimper. Should have seen it in the heat-ripple white concrete as we rolled up to the security gates.
* * *
At the launch site, the air smells like burnt caramel. Metal so hot you could fry an egg on it.
Black smoke funnels up from the carcass of the capsule, sifted sideways by the wind before it can touch the sky. People gather on the freeway bridge to watch the slow smouldering wreck; the melting of hundreds of millions of dollars; the hubris of men who wished upon stars.
Out in the desert, they scurry to pitch white tents over the debris. They won’t let anyone who isn’t in a special suit closer than a hundred feet. A bearded man, who I find out later is an actual rocket scientist, takes the baby from me when I try to climb over the barrier.
There is still flour in my hair. The sand has fused into molasses. The same pancakes I make every Sunday and I ruined them all.
More people than seem necessary walk us back to the car, and the last shard of shuttle glares white hot sunlight into the corner of my eye like faulty morse code.
…
… Read the complete story in our anthology Perfect Circle.
Jo Gatford
Jo Gatford is a writer of all sorts — from short fiction to screenplays. She makes theatre whenever she possibly can and edits other people’s words for a living.
