The new telescope was decades in the making. It made the Hubble look obsolete, the Webb amateur. Scientists promised a disinterested public that this will let us view the beginnings of the universe. We can unlock the Big Bang! What was once solid became a smokescreen, through which a frightening number of stars could be seen. Black holes became purple. Each galaxy was registered in crispy high-def. With every new image sent back to earth, scientists came alive. Group chats exploded, phones pinged, forums unfurled with wonder. What would they be witness to today?

No one expected the eyeball. In the shot, it was the size of the moon as seen from earth, so bright it erased the stars nearby, as though it wore a thick skirt of eyelashes. Its iris wasn’t blue, or green, or brown; it was all of those colors, and others. Rust, aubergine, vermillion, onyx. The image of the eye had that uncanny quality to it, where if left on a desk or tacked to the wall, it would follow anyone around the room. Tracking in silence.

The eye was an immediate sensation. It was proof of alien life. Or of a higher power. Or evidence that Earth was all part of a simulation run by some uber-genius AI. Hashtags #fermisparadox, #getrightwithgod, and #bunkerbabes went viral. Membership to stargazing clubs skyrocketed. Money flowed like honey into the cups and coffers of space agencies around the world.

The team of scientists behind the telescope were whisked away to a private compound in Montana, which had a direct line to the president. They received calls demanding we need to see more. We have to beat the Russians to this. We need a movie! We need to send a crew! They did their best to soften expectations. They promised a series of still photographs, taken in quick succession. Milliseconds. From that, they could create a slightly jerky reel of the eye in real time.

The first film showed the eyeball blinking. This was huge; no one knew it had lids. It pulled shut like a spiral galaxy, black velvet corkscrewing until it covered the entirety of the white orb. It reopened, in reverse, like a flower unfurling in the sunlight. All of the scientists wept upon first viewing, clutching each other by the shoulders, gripping each other in the sleeve of a hug. Their faces stretched into large smiles, their eyes blinking slowly in unconscious imitation. The eight-second series gripped the world  for days.

The second film caused less of a public uproar, though the scientists were no less moved. The iris sidled to the left, with intention. Then moved back to the center, with its milky stare. And finally, before the photos cut off, it started to slide to the right. This looks like communication, the president inferred. But what is it trying to say? The scientists didn’t know. They needed more time, they needed more funding. Black money poured into their accounts from sources unknown.

What could one say about the art of the gaze? Eye contact was on the decline. Hours were spent looking at phones and computers, rather than another’s face. The scientists had to practice on each other, with glances that stretched like taffy into prolonged stares. Often, their faces moved closer by small increments. Their breaths broke the silence like soft moths bumping against a window. Then they mouth-touched, kissing, connecting. Twice, a pair of scientists ended up naked and coupling on the floor, their sweaty flesh suctioned to the white marble. One encounter, between a theoretical physicist and a cosmologist, ended in a pregnancy, the infant later named Iris.

The president didn’t know about the kissing and fucking, the intimate conversations that spilled like web-silk from the mouths of the scientists awoken to each other. For weeks, the entire compound forgot about the cosmic eye. They all took to staring at themselves in mirrors, in puddles. They walked around like clumsy puppies, paw-footed and giddy. It was only when the red phone rang that they re-emerged, though no one took the phone off the receiver. They knew what the president would ask.

The third film was easy to interpret. It was terror. The eyeball was rolling around in its space socket, if one could call it that. Frantic, unhinged. It never paused, not once. The scientists watched it first in silence, and then again in grief. They cradled each other and synced up their anxious breaths. The cosmologist put a palm to her belly. Beneath the lid of skin, her baby spun and kicked. You have to see this, Mx. President, the scientists said. But no one else should.

Once the film left their hands, however, they had no control. It did leak, of course. The reaction was not of horror or concern, but of malice, delivered via memes and self-described body language experts and  talking head segments. Where the scientists saw fear and discomfort, the public saw prey. They saw an undefended target. No one thought of the satellites pinging their signals around the sky, lobbing joke after mean-spirited joke through space dust and comets.

The last film the scientists took showed a rusty tear forming at the bottom of the eyeball. It dripped down onto the Pillars of Existence, made see-through by the telescope, and hardened like a clay-colored stalagmite. When they tried to take more shots, the eyeball was no longer visible. It was somewhere inside the hardened carapace of brown debris and with it, it took many thousands of stars, only briefly witnessed, and never again able to be studied. The line of communication broken, the president quickly lost interest and pulled funding.

The scientists were evicted from the compound, left blinking in the cold Montana wilderness, shielding their faces from the bright snow. The cosmologist and the theoretical physicist pleaded with the neurobiologist, the astro-chemist, the developmental psychologist to stay together, but the artifice of their intimacy—the close quarters, the thrill of discovery, the threat of extinction or mass salvation—was gone, and with it, their interest in each other. They looked away, looked to their phones for guidance, called taxis or family to take them home, scattering like birdseed until only the theoretical physicist and the cosmologist remained together. They absconded  under the harsh light of the unblinking sun, taking flight from anything with a lens. They wore scarves around their faces, sunglasses over their eyes. They spray-painted over any surveillance camera they came across. They promised to only look at each other and—when their baby arrived under the black scrim of a new moon—they promised to look at her, too.

Iris and her parents ended up in the mountains of Peru, living in the thin air where they could be as close to the sky as they could get. For years, whenever there was a full moon, they would stand outside, holding hands and gazing upwards, chins tilted so hard it hurt to swallow. Even though Iris didn’t know what they were waiting for, she held very still. She rarely even blinked. She didn’t want to miss it, the thing her parents lived for, whatever it was. But it slept, and never came back.

Quinn Rennerfeldt (she/they) is a queer parent, partner, and poetry/prose writer earning their MFA at SFSU. Her work can be found in Cleaver, SAND, elsewhere, Salamander, Fractured Lit, Flash Frog, and The Pinch. Their chapbook, demigoddess semilustrous, is forthcoming from dancing girl press. She is also a reader for Split Lip Magazine.

Apartment in Downtown Wilmington, N.C.

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Posted by Kelly M.

May 2024

Perfect place to go with best friend after a parent has died. Easy off-street parking for the car her mom left her that still smells like her mom did at the end – orange blossom perfume to cover up the smoke from the joints friend’s mom and friend would drive around with (for the pain). Friend would buy the weed, roll the joints in that delicate, careful way she has with things, and the two of them would laugh about their covert mother-daughter drug deals. Bathroom is modern and well-appointed. Plenty of hot water and pressure for the hours friend spends scalding her body and the hair she just cut boy-short (looks so different, but amazing on her). Two blocks away from coffee shop that makes strong cappuccinos, which are necessary after drive and also since pretty sure caffeine is the only thing keeping friend going, because she moves like she’s wearing one of those lead aprons for X-Rays. Coffee shop also has assortment of fresh baked goods friend has a bite or two of before pushing away, shedding crumbs on the breakfast table. Breakfast table is nice, maybe stone? Easy to clean. Couch is small, but perfect for sitting hip-to-hip with friend and binging Buffy. TV is good, picture with plenty of clarity to see Sarah Michelle Gellar’s flawless face (always want to ask friend, who is straight, if she’s not at least just a little attracted to SMG? But not the right time) and that commercial for dog food we can’t watch, because friend’s mother was a veterinarian. Friend and friend’s mom used to hate-watch The Dog Whisperer together, friend’s mom shouting back at Cesar Milan about all the ways he was screwing up while friend laughed. Appreciate boxes of tissues placed strategically around apartment. Good for grabbing and bringing when unsure what to do for friend when sobs jerk out of her. Mattresses are soft and comfortable – lack of sleep not at all because of bed, but due to friend’s snoring (likely a result of congestion from crying). WiFi is fast when Googling “Can someone die of grief/being very very sad?” and getting concerning articles about studies on elephants. Plastic cups in kitchen are very big, just right for mixing ginger ale and whiskeys the next morning, because friend says she wants to drink – and there’s room for heavy pours after intense first day and intense night of elephant mourning research and those times got up to put a finger beneath friend’s nose just to be sure, to feel the gentle puff of life, then fearing would wake/disturb her. Cute fish pattern on cups, their big lips make friend laugh a little and pucker her lips too and for a moment she seems like she could become maybe not entirely what she was before, but something near. Cups are also sturdy so do not break when friend suddenly throws one down and screams, “This isn’t fucking fair,” and “I don’t want to be here!” Beach is only about a fifteen-minute drive. Nice beach, good for coaxing friend out of the ball she’s made of herself in the passenger seat and down to the water’s edge, where the waves drift around the ankles neither of us bothered shaving, swishing at the fine growth of hair, as our feet slowly sink into the sand. I let myself take my friend’s hand for the first time ever and I try to charge mine with something like healing, as I squint up into the sky that is blue blue blue forever and with my heart say to it, Please, help me know what I should do.

Host, Ryan, is very communicative, and allowed us to stay for an extra three days. Would highly recommend.

Wendy Elizabeth Wallace (she/they) is a queer disabled writer. She grew up in Buffalo, New York, and has landed in Connecticut by way of Pennsylvania, Berlin, Heidelberg, and Indiana. They are the editor-in-chief of Peatsmoke Journal and the co-manager of social media and marketing for Split Lip Magazine. Their work has appeared  in The Rumpus, ZYZZYVA, Pithead Chapel, SmokeLong Quarterly, Brevity, and elsewhere. Find her on Twitter @WendyEWallace1or at wendywallacewriter.com.

I.

The summer we moved to Florida was the same summer Bug Juice premiered on the Disney channel. We were living at the Westin hotel in Fort Lauderdale. We spent our days house hunting and our afternoons swimming in the hotel pool. We didn’t have any furniture. We didn’t know where we were going to school come fall. But it was June, and then July. And every Saturday night, I’d beg my brother to let me watch Bug Juice for the twenty-two minutes it aired.

There was a curly-haired girl named Stephanie. She said the girls in her cabin were mad at her because all she cared about was boys. They called her “boy crazy.” I watched Stephanie slow dance with boys at camp; I watched Stephanie walk around twirling her hair, flirting.

In the hotel elevator, I practiced slowly blinking my eyes. I played with my hands.

I wanted to sway on a wooden dance floor in the middle of the woods.

II.

I drank a Java Chip Frappuccino every Wednesday night during Lit Theory. I hated the class, but I liked using the green straw to spoon out whipped cream and lick it to stay awake. I wore Hollister sweatpants and Target flip-flops. My favorite top was this halter top that said I love you to the moon and back across the chest.

My boyfriend was forty-two. He worked as a financial advisor at some bank in Boca Raton. All we ever did was peck on the lips because I told him I was still heartbroken over someone else. He lived in a high-rise near the beach that had a lobby and a front desk. We met because he came into the sports bar where I worked. He was eating wings and drinking beer but I knew it wasn’t really his kind of place. He slipped his number into my checkbook.

He took me to the Seminole Hard Rock Casino. He lost money, I remember. If he’d won, he was supposed to buy me a purse.

When we got home, he started yelling. I wanted to ask, Why don’t I feel real? But instead, I sat there on the edge of the bed and let him yell. It was easier to sit there and take it.

III.

A boy I dated in camp had just moved to California. He was in Anaheim, just around the corner from Disneyland. He didn’t have a car, so I drove the hour south from LA and picked him up from his halfway house. He brought a friend with him so I knew right away it wasn’t a date. He looked so different, anyway. At camp, he had shoulder-length hair that all the girls begged to run their fingers through. But when he opened my passenger door, his head was shaved into a buzz cut.

We drove to an indoor gym with trampolines and bought an hour’s worth of jump time. He was making friends with all the little kids there, helping them flip into the ball pit and running races back and forth along the canvas floor. I was sweating through my t-shirt from all the jumping.

At camp, we’d only kissed in the dark outside of the Great Hall. We’d had the kind of unspoken love that drew us together until he got kicked out for smoking weed. For the rest of the summer, he wrote me letters that I had to hide from the other girls. They thought it was ridiculous to pine for someone who wasn’t even there.

IV.

I met Andrew at a bar on a Tuesday night. Jen got mad at me and left. She didn’t have a car. She had to walk to the closest bus stop and get herself home. I kept texting her but she didn’t answer.

Andrew saw me sulking and took me to the dance floor. I hadn’t even finished my first drink when he asked if I wanted to go home. He meant my apartment up the hill.

It was the first time I had sex that hurt. He was sweating a lot. He was sweating so much his hair was wet. I kept thinking about how I’d need to change my sheets. I wondered if I had enough coins for the laundry. And then his wet hand slid across my back.

I kept texting Jen all night and she didn’t answer. I knew I’d made the wrong choice, but there was no unchoosing.

V.

The last boyfriend I had asked me out by sneaking a note into a pack of Reese’s Cups. I wasn’t in the mood for chocolate, but he kept begging me to open the fridge and have the candy he brought.

I took us out to sushi for dinner, this place in Westwood that looked like somewhere they’d film a movie. It was a two-story restaurant with crystal chandeliers and gold columns. I paid for dinner because I could.

We mostly hung out in Westwood, my neighborhood, my neck of the woods. We saw a lot of movies. We once saw a Kung-Fu movie about a Samurai who leaves home and goes on this long adventure. There’s a love interest, but he leaves her to go find his true purpose.

Halfway through the movie, my boyfriend wanted to leave. We got frozen yogurt and he said it was stupid that I only got mochi in mine. But that was how I wanted it.

When he told me he was moving, as in leaving the state, I gave him a plastic bag of stuff he’d left at my house. It was mostly full of things he could easily replace like a spare toothbrush and some vitamins. I folded up his silver bomber jacket nicely before shoving it into the bag with everything else.

Brittany Ackerman is a writer from Riverdale, New York. She earned her BA in English from Indiana University and an MFA in Creative Writing from Florida Atlantic University. She is a 3x Pushcart Prize Nominee and her work has been featured in Electric Literature, Jewish Book Council, Lit Hub, The Los Angeles Review, No Tokens, Joyland, and more. Her first collection of essays, The Perpetual Motion Machine, was published with Red Hen Press in 2018 and her debut novel, The Brittanys, is out now from Vintage. She lives in Nashville, Tennessee.