DID YOU KNOW:

It was the stars’ fault that my mother threw me off of a three-story building. 

I used to like watching stars. A long, long time ago, God said, "Let there be Light” and something 

exploded, space blooming outwards in  great blossoms of flame and heat. Time unfurled itself, a butterfly clawing out its cocoon of inexistence, beating the remains of its fiery womb out of its wings. There and then, the stars were born, like the very first flowers of a cosmic spring.

It was spring when I fell. I was a scrawny little thing – still am now, but back then, even more so – dangling and kicking, like a near-severed branch clinging desperately to the trunk of a tree. Moon-shaped welts were forming on the irritated red skin where her nails dug deep into flesh. There was this terrible noise, like the rapid and wet inflating-deflating of punctured lungs, like an animal sinking its teeth into its own bones to escape a metal trap, like my mother, sobbing and sobbing and sobbing, even though she wasn’t the one dangling off of a three-story-building. I was.  

In the space between two seconds, in the quiet lull between stillness and chaos, I saw the stars. I saw the stars. I saw the stars.

“Please,” she whispered, looking somewhere past my pleading eyes, “remove this curse on our family.

And then, she dropped me.

I fell. 

DID YOU KNOW:

The stars are falling too. 

They're perpetually falling, spiraling into unknown darkness. Are they afraid? Do they, too, cry out as they plunge, reaching for something, anything, to catch them, to hold them, to love them? They must have been disappointed: I don't imagine the empty embrace of space to be too comforting. 

I don't pity them. You have to realize: everything that has happened, has happened because of the stars. 

Your textbooks say that the stars are flaming factories, inhaling wheezing breaths of thick gases, and molding them together with the pulsing of their celestial hearts. Your textbooks say that a long, long time ago, mankind looked up at the stars and decided to harness that energy. Your textbooks also say, of course, that then, everything was a mess. No one had enough energy and there were floods and wildfires and prophets screaming for the apocalypse. Your textbooks call this the Dark Ages, and people were afraid. How could this have happened? They exclaimed. We protested in the streets. We waved signs we didn't really mean, because we were all comfortable and the floods and wildfires and screaming prophets were far in the future. The future! It was a problem for the future! Your textbooks then say that one bright woman came to the rescue, bringing the energy of the stars down to our earth. Fission Energy, it was called. Your textbooks then finish this lovely fairytale by wrapping it up in a bow, because all of your problems were solved and you had your energy back and everybody eventually forgot about the Dark Times. 

But what of what your textbooks don’t say? No one will talk about how the stars raged, furious that their secrets had been stolen. Your parents won’t tell you about plummeting birth rates as they tuck you into bed. They won’t tell you about the children born with two heads, or three ears, or no arms at all. 

They won’t tell you that Mother screamed in horror when I took my first gasp of air, flailing my disfigured limbs, as the nurse shook her head in somber pity. They won’t tell you of me, your cursed sister, with ugly, unnatural, wrong, wrong, wrong limbs at all the wrong angles. They won’t tell you of how Mother quietly prayed for me to die young, and when I didn’t, quietly prayed that you wouldn’t end up like me. 

They won’t tell you how they threw your sister off of a roof.  

DID YOU KNOW: 

I’m telling you now. 

It was the night before you were born.  

You were a “premature birth”, although by then, most predictions were inaccurate. Birth had become too inconsistent. It was more likely to predict the exact path of a tornado. Still, Mother and Father did everything they could – drank the prescribed medication as well as any herbs that were rumored to help, hung lucky charms by their window, purple feathers under their pillow, avoided going out when the sky was one color or another and all of that nonsense. It’s funny, isn’t it? Watching two individuals, raised by science, turning a blind eye to the truth and falling into the warm embrace of superstition. Numbers, I suppose, are about as cold as the stars. 

I was reading in the attic when I heard the first scream. I put down my book, just before I heard another. Gingerly, I stepped down the stairs. A string of breathy curses left Mother’s mouth as she collapsed on the sofa, fingers gripping the wrinkled leather cushions. There was a phone in her ear, and she fumbled hastily with it as it began to ring. “Paul?” She gasped into it, “Paul, are you there?”

A silence, decorated with gasping breaths. 

“Paul, something’s wrong.” She pursed her lips. Father must have said something along the lines of “I’ll be back as soon as possible” and then “call an ambulance”, because Mother replied with gasping “thank- thank you.

He wasn’t back as soon as possible. 

I remember the rest of this in shards, like someone hoisted a hammer above their head and smashed my memories into little bits of glass. Some of the shards embedded themselves deep into the fleshy goop of my mind and the others scattered across the floor, like terrifying glitter, lost. 

“Paul?” Mother had whispered, brows furrowing, sitting up. “Paul, hello? Are you there? Are you okay?”

Then, screaming, “Paul? Paul! Answer me,” and here, she stood, stumbling around the room as her hands darted to the walls for support, “answer me, please, are you okay? Just say- say something, say something, please!”

I heard myself say, “Mother? Is everything alright?” 

She turned to me, slowly. Sweat gleamed on her forehead, her hair hung around her face in messy clumps and strands, her fingernails dug into the wall, and at that moment, I knew: she was not looking at her daughter. Has she ever?  

A shard. The room, exploding into why are you here and what have you done to Paul and why were you even born you useless piece of and please, please, please, Paul, are you okay and just leave us alone, you damn curse of a child and the walls all cracked and bloomed and the stairs opened their gaping maw to swallow me whole and 

A shard. Pain. Pain, pain, pain, then I was the one screaming, because I was being dragged up the aforementioned stairs, each step a dagger slicing into my flesh and yet I still thrashed and thrashed and thrashed and 

A shard. Quiet. Mother threw me out onto the balcony. My head craned upwards, throbbing, and I saw… I saw… the stars. 

“Haven’t I suffered enough already?” Mother yelled up at them. “Haven’t you punished me enough? Please, I beg of you, get rid of this damn curse!”

The rest is history. 

I later found out that Father had gotten injured in a car crash on his way home. And yes, there was indeed a later, as I’m, obviously, writing this. For the longest time, I believed there was something wrong with me. I was told over and over that I was some curse, some freak of nature. Although the percentage of mutated babies born were skyrocketing, they were only whispered about in hushed tones and looks of disgust, so in my time in the house, I thought I was alone. 

But I was wrong. There are others, who are born, looking not quite dead but not quite human either. There are others, who have been cursed by the stars. 

How are the Dark Ages over, when there are so many like me, suffering in the dark? Or are we just the side effects of your pleasure? Why are we swept under a carpet of empty pity? Is it just so you can fly leisurely around the world? Just so you can light up your cities in the night. Just so you can consume and waste and continue living your excessive, unnecessary lives? 

In the face of all these questions, all you do is point to the stars. 

At least, in the Dark Ages, we knew we were in the dark.