1st Place Winner – Flash 405, June 2025: “Illumination”
Fiction
In another life, Cassie lives. She wakes up in the hospital, a slow blinking to consciousness, and the doctors say miracle. Her father drives her home and says all the things they will do to celebrate. He tucks her in that night and then sits outside her bedroom door silently sobbing himself to sleep. Her mother, so far away on her way to Mars, knows none of this. Will never know any of this. Her father convinced that to speak it out loud will bring it back into reality. They will be happy.
In another life, Cassie’s mother comes home and says, “Did you miss me?” and Cassie says, “Yes” but she has no memory of her mother. Just the photos her father showed her, the vids she’d left behind. She talked about Mars, about space, about missing Cassie.
In another life, her best friend Leia passes her notes that ask what she’s daydreaming about. Cassie writes, “Clouds,” writes, “Nothing, no one,” writes, “Sometimes I think I’ll just float up into the sky and disappear.”
In another life, Cassie follows her mother’s footsteps. Becomes an engineer. Learns to deep-sea dive. She practices holding her breath, dunking into troughs of ice water. She thinks if she can just learn to still the world around her, she could hold her breath forever.
In another life, Cassie is selected as part of an astronaut class. Her mother is so excited. So scared. Her father takes deep breaths, holds them in his chest, and congratulates her. When rockets lift off, Cassie closes her eyes and feels the rattle and rush deep into her bones. She wonders if anyone will remember her.
In another life, Cassie is picked for a deep-space mission. The farthest a human has ever gone. She wonders what the galaxy looks like so far away.
In this life, Cassie never wakes up in a hospital bed. The white ceiling so far away, the light through the window. The sound of the nurse’s shoes tapping against the floor, the absence of her heart beating. Her father curls up most nights outside her bedroom door. Her mother looks at the Earth from Mars but sees nothing but a star.
In another life, Cassie imagines trees, oceans, water, dust, the sky, as she arcs through space. Everything so far away now. She thinks, remember me, remember me.
Judge’s Comments:
I love the use of repetition and alternate timelines, how the author gives us detailed and specific possibilities of Cassie’s lives, and those last two paragraphs are both heartbreaking and beautiful.
Chloe N. Clark is the author of Collective Gravities, Patterns of Orbit, and more. Her short story collection Every Galaxy a Circle is forthcoming from JackLeg Press.
Photo by NASA