Ejection Day
A reading from my novel, Ejected Earth.
New Orleans | Louisiana | USA
9 June 2037 | Ejection Day
Bigger than I imagined.
As big as they said, but it wouldn’t have been Kern’s first lie.
Brown dwarf. Even the name was a lie.
None of us tried imagining any of this. How could you?
Snow in the bayou. Not since our wedding day. Ten years this Christmas.
Still…not like this.
He rose from his front stoop, shaking ash and snow from his boots—dry, delicate—revealing the handprint of a six year old boy in the concrete slab.
Still perfect.
A breath of silence slowed his pulse.
All that was promised.
All I had promised.
The low groan of the pleading earth broke his gaze from the handprint.
The sky split wide. Aurora hung in twisted green ribbons across the dim noon sky. A sudden, violent gust fanned the fire devouring the house next door.
He didn’t need to look. His shadow told him enough.
Heat pressed the side of his face. Acrid. Familiar.
The wind shifted. Gone.
He looked at his hands. They’d stopped shaking.
Why now?
No more sirens.
Didn’t think they’d ever stop.
Between lightning strikes and makeshift fireplaces, something was always burning.
Police had given up long before the fire department.
A man’s promise to provide. To protect. It was everything.
But when the food’s gone. When you’ve run out of things to burn—you protect.
The sky sizzled. His hairs stood on end.
With a lungful of burning air, he closed his eyes and faced the cloud, ready for the darkness behind it.
A bolt struck the car across the street.
He didn’t flinch.
Defeated, he dropped to his knees and wept.
There are debts a man can pay, and debts he must carry.
He had chosen his lot.
Absolution would not meet him at the end of his road. Not light. Not arms to take him home.
He’d given that away—for them.
What waited now was older than despair. Older than hope.
The dark waited.
He would meet it when he got there.
The earth stilled. The wind stopped.
An empty bottle of pills hit the snow. Not enough for all three.
Wouldn’t have taken them if there were.
He needed hell to be real.
And if it wasn’t—if the only punishment left was here—
He would meet that too.
He wouldn’t cheat the devil.
For the first time in a week, the sun slipped past the purple wound in the sky.
Another promise.
Facing the light, he prayed.
I pray she forgave me.
I pray he never knew.
This reads like grief under pressure rather than sci-fi, and that’s its strength. The brown dwarf, the sky wound, the silence all feel secondary to the promises he couldn’t keep.