The Planet Eaters
Beneath the opulence of a lavish weekly feast, echoes of loss and longing simmer, as hope flickers against the vast, unyielding dark
Alyssa Jordan is a writer living in the United States. She likes to make surprise balls and drink coffee. In 2020, she won The Molotov Cocktail's Flash Monster contest. You can find her on Twitter @ajordan901 or Instagram @ajordanwriter.
Every week, the planet eaters and their wives would gather for brunch.
They never said their names, so Mal had taken inspiration from her niece’s favorite cartoon: Marvin Mercury, Val Venus, Eli Earth, Mike Mars, Jerry Jupiter, Sammy Saturn, Ulysses Uranus, and Ned Neptune.
A planet eater-in-training (Perry Pluto) stood by the head of the table, pouring mimosas that tasted like flowery youth.
They all wore their best clothes. For the planet eaters, this meant squeezing into human suits. The wives donned dresses and gloves. Mal wore grey to match Marvin, who followed her every move with eyes like smoke.
Across the table, Eli and his wife wore arsenic green. Mal watched as Eli picked oceanic crust from his teeth.
For a moment, she could smell ozone and scorched earth rotting in the air.
They feasted on oysters and persimmons and bread. Platters of figs and plums. Cheese ripened on the wheel. Meaty olives cured in brine. By the time Perry served them custard, Mal felt more than a little ill.
She glanced past the chandelier to the only window in the room. Somehow, she always expected to see grass and sky, but there was only empty space from the void.
Mal clenched her hands so hard that the nails broke skin.
• • •
There was a time Mal had dreamed of becoming an astronaut. For years, she had been glued to a telescope, mesmerized by the glow of distant worlds.
Her dad had brought her every book he could find about the galaxy. Together, they had built a future that would never be.
Mal lived as a hollowed out feeling. Something cored, gutted.
She stayed with Marvin in a farmhouse-style home modeled after her childhood. The first time she saw it, Mal had vomited all over her pretty dress, and slept in the bathroom. From the doorway, Marvin had studied her with eyes that had seen the universe but were devoid of life.
One day, Marvin led her to a room that hadn’t been there before.
It was small and held no furniture. On the floor was a stack of books. A painting of a fruit bowl. A single pebble of sea glass. Treasures Mal would trace over and over again.
Why did you choose me? She whispered each night.
There was never an answer.
• • •
In time, Mal came to learn how the other wives coped with their existence. One collected dust from the jacket of her husband’s human suit. She would filter the particles into separate jars. Sometimes, she tried to guess which planet or star system she held in her hands.
Others journaled or planted or read. Neptune’s wife drank during the day and smoked from long cigarette holders, the kind Mal’s grandmother used to enjoy at dinner.
Whatever it took to pretend they didn’t reap benefits from the dead.
After a while, it seemed as if Marvin was gone for longer periods, and their “weekly” brunches were fewer, but Mal couldn’t be sure—there was no way to track time in the void.
Whenever Marvin disappeared, Mal slept under the bed to keep a buffer between herself and the nightmares. She tried not to think about her family, what their last moments must have been like.
What became of them.
• • •
Were there still stars in the sky? Mal often wondered.
It dawned on her slowly, this new layer of horror: She couldn’t remember the name for it. The device she used to peer at the sky and live outside her body.
The thing her father worked hard to buy for her.
How long till she could no longer recall their faces? Did their noses really bend like that, or were their eyes a different color?
Mal slipped under the bed and gripped the carpet fibers. Instead of dreaming, she repeated their names out loud to the dark.
• • •
Perry became an official planet eater over white truffles and duck liver. Beside him sat the newest wife. Like the rest of them, she wore gloves and a dress, but hers changed color with the light, reflecting pale blue, yellow, and red.
Mal met the woman’s vacant stare.
For a moment, she remembered it so clearly. The crunch of wood over metal. Screams and blood and dust. History dying on the tip of their tongues.
They were locked into this existence till the sun burnt out, or until the planet eaters tired of them. Mal no longer knew which one would come first.
Still, she hoped.
 | A guest post by
|