Verlorate Will Die Alone by Mar Ovsheid
Photo by Pixabay for Pexels
There’s a soul-like core at the pit of every planet’s stomach, typically made of solid metal or elemental juices constantly shifting around molten rock. I’m the seventh youngest in my solar system, and the fire inside me is blue and made of xenon and I use it to push and shove.
“So, you’re a planet.” A comet, a passer-by called Alasamino, rolls against my guardrails.
“I guess. But mostly I’m Verlorate, so call me that.”
“What you got to offer?” Its revolutions tighten, despite the intentionally heavy atmosphere and my magnetic poles leaking pure disgust.
“I’ve been electrifying stones and caring for small reptiles.”
“You gonna give those up for sale? Want me to help?”
The visceral punch of my NO thrusts Alasamino away from me and into the orbit of my elder siblings. My family and I don’t talk much anymore, but once word gets out that I’m being uncooperative, a mediator is sent to address the situation.
“Singing reptiles, huh?” The fiery asteroid doesn’t give me a name by which to address them, and immediately comes too close.
“Back off.” I pulse out a volcanic eruption of baby blue and send the reptiles scurrying underground. The asteroid leans into my gravitational pull.
“Why not just invent birds, work your way up the tree, make something of yourself?” It brushes over a towering conifer and catches it on fire.
“I said back off.” My shaking oceans frighten the eels and snails and odd fish, and in a fit of rage I raise a monstrous tower of liquid iron and swallow the asteroid whole. Its heat and speed tear a canyon through my guts and I scream out in pain, coaxing the lavender clouds to lower and release their frigid rain. “I’m sorry, everybody.” Creatures cautiously exit their caves and stare fearfully at the sky, while plants unfurl from crouched defenses to catch the storm in their palms.
Over the next few years, a series of massive rocks proposition me for a role as my moon. I keep the clouds in place, too busy building something beautiful, and eventually they move on to a more compatible planet. The universe finally leaves me alone.
After a decade of solitude, I allow the heart of the haze to disperse, filtering the sun into kaleidoscopic light. Unmanned exploratory spacecraft have made it to our solar system, and I notice them landing on my siblings, seeking and harvesting and sending pieces of creation back to home base.
“You can fuck right off.” I zap each machine dead as they cross my horizon, frying the technology with lightning before kicking it back into space. I don’t let trash pollute the garden I’ve built for every beloved living or inanimate thing. A sibling sends a solar wind my way, carrying a question on its back.
“You know you’ll die alone, right?”
I watch my family exchanging their souls with some unknown fist of the cosmos, and I whisper a response to the messenger “I think I’m fine with that.”
Centuries pass and my siblings are colonized, civilization cutting their resources up and putting them to use. I see a hundred satellites spin around their heads as boot-prints stain their moons. Telescopes occasionally point in my direction and I give them a show, put my contents on display for a pixelated glamor shot. We get along until they try to land, and I shroud them dead with neon flames before shooting them back to the abyss.
One by one, as my siblings die, their inhabitants flee with whatever commodifiable remains they can carry. I’m dying, too, and the animals and forests will go down with me. Verlorate will be lost to dust and disintegration, existing only in the grainy telescopic images of faraway strangers. But nothing really matters beyond the ecstasy of presence— all beauty is in the life of the creation, not the eyes of those who only come to capture and consume its light. As I feel my fire fading out and the tyrannical sun closing in, I listen to the reptiles sing until they’ve passed into oblivion.
Mar Ovsheid (she/her/hers) is a spoilsport who doesn't like to run or drive. She’s had poetry and fiction published under real and made-up names in publications such as Spark: A Creative Anthology, Roi Fainéant Press and The Minison Project. Mar works as a housekeeper and has her high school diploma.