False Sun — Part Five
By Spencer Nitkey
Fury controls me. I rip and tear through wires. Pulling and heaving, I shred the tangled beast before me. Handfuls of cords fall onto the dank cave floor. I stomp them beneath my feet to keep them from sliding back to the body. I know its name now, false star. I know its shape. False sun, false body. I will not forgive its destruction. Discontent with its dominance over the sky, it seemed to be building some massing body here, on the planet. No. I would not have it. The people whose vacant homes I destroyed would not have it. The sun eater would not create feet with which to trod upon what was left.
In the spasms of my anger and violence, my own skin tears against some errant spear of metal. I do not notice until electricity sparks through the hole in my side and impales me. A worming wire injects itself, and a brilliance of awful color irrupts into my consciousness. I fall, stunned, my body rendered limp. Between the colors, voice.
And how, body, do you deign to know my heart?
I turn my thoughts from its winsome voice.
How, body, do you seek to destroy that which you do not understand.
I move my seizing limbs to the intrusion and try to wrap my clawing hands around the wire.
Please.
Its plea makes me stop. There is an edge of desperation to it, and despite myself, it is one I recognize. What does it want with this planet?
To walk its expanse and wonder.
There is no expanse worth wandering any longer. All eyes have fled. The lives that once careened, nuclear atoms ricochetting, fusile and explosive, have been hurried away.
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Spencer Nitkey is a writer living in Philadelphia with his witch wife and a dog named after a French postmodernist. His writing has appeared in Apex Magazine, Asimov Press, The Daily Tomorrow, Diabolical Plots, Lightspeed Magazine, Nature Futures, and many more.
Copyright © 2026 Spencer Nitkey