Every metal has its melting point. But for even the most malleable of alloys, that point is far higher than the flash point of paper, fabric, or human flesh.

This happy thought springs to mind as my tiny Mercury space capsule, code-named ‘Annabelle 1’, hurtles toward the sun at nearly forty times the speed of sound. Well, not exactly towards it, but in an inescapably declining orbit whose destination is, nonetheless, that most sweltering of destinations.

It’s been twelve hours since the capsule’s retrorocket system failed – twelve hours. Hell, by now I should be aboard the carrier – cleaned up, sipping champagne, and on my way home.  Instead, the engines failed to slow my momentum enough to allow reentry into earth’s atmosphere.

I am Bennett. I’m twelve already and feeling every year of it. Slouched, at the moment, in the back seat of ma’s old Ford Pinto, I slurp the last of a Mountain Dew and stare senselessly at the never ending pine trees that speed by as we make our way up the Maine Turnpike. My one-year younger sister is up in the front seat. If she doesn’t get the front seat, she always pitches a fit and says she’ll get car-sick and puke and so I usually just give up and sit in the back.

It is November. Winter is here early and it’s pissed. Before the first week of this month was even over, an eight-incher had already dumped on the whole state, catching everyone, even the old timers, with their snow shovels still stuck up in the garage rafters. They are down now though, by God, and they won’t go back up overhead until nearly Memorial Day.  It hasn’t snowed again this week, but WGAN says it will by tonight, so we need to get up to Augusta and back home before the highway starts slicking up.

Where am I? Why is it so dark? Jesus, my head hurts. I hope I haven’t overslept again. Weathers’ll have a conniption if I do. I knew I should’ve stopped at two glasses of wine last night. Now I’m gonna’ be miserable all day. Why the hell is everything so dark? Wake up, Rachel. C’mon girl, get with it.

It is morning, early morning, or at least it feels that way insofar as it feels like anything, absent nearly all external cues. Rachel awakens after what feels like a fitful night’s sleep. A very dim gray light bathes her, the sort of light familiar to those who arise before dawn. Its source cannot be determined directly, yet somehow it is there in sufficient quantities to meagerly illuminate her surroundings. But unlike regular light, which offers clarity and acuity, context and reassurance, this light, so feeble and reluctant, only seems to obfuscate and confuse. It illuminates things that cannot possibly be, and in so doing, affords only fear and uncertainty.

I suspect today will be worse than yesterday. Waking from my standing half-sleep, I hear the collective incessant moaning of my companions. Their voices are softer this morning, but resonate more persistently than before, suggesting an unabated but now resigned level of pain and anxiety. It has been over twelve hours since we were packed ovine into this dank dark railroad car. I know this because the sun was nearly set when we were first put aboard, and now I can see through a wide crack in the car’s timber wall the sun as it begins its slow bitter crawl into the gray sky.

We are one hundred souls – strangers whose only ties are country and faith, but whose fates now inexorably entwine along a sad uncertain path. We are pressed so close that each tightly abuts his brethren – hands, arms, held fast at our sides. I count myself fortunate however, for I was an early boarder, and secured a position along the car’s wall. Through the ill-fitting planks I am afforded a view of the bleak passing land, and I receive a bit more fresh air. Also, I press against only three others, a veritable mountaintop of privacy, given the circumstances.

“I don’t even like animals. Why the hell do I always get the animals?” Gabe whined, walking toward the sink, tugging impatiently on the jammed fly of his black silk slacks. “Shit! Now my shirt’s caught in the zipper. Man, I just got this shirt…Goddamn it!”

“Hey, you better watch it with that GD business. The wrong person hears you, and it’s gonna be your ass, you know? Besides, better your shirt than something else getting caught in there, eh?!”

“Yeah, I know,” Gabe replied, finally extricating the fabric from the zipper mechanism. “It just pisses me off, getting stuck with animals again. Just once I’d like to prove I can do something else…something bigger, you know?”

“Hey, what can I say? I guess you must be good at it or something,” replied Peter, looking back over his shoulder as he stood at the urinal. “Dude, who does your tailoring?”

There comes an unexpected brusque knock at the front door, which really sucks what with Wheel of Fortune just coming out of commercial and Buster having astutely deduced the phrase-in-question to be FLYING FUCK (which if correct would be delightfully refreshing for daytime television and might mean that the correct phrase is in fact FLYING FROG, even though that makes far less apparent sense than his guess, but he supposes it is equally likely at this point being as how neither U, C, K, R, O, or G have been guessed yet by either contestant) besides which he is one hundred and seven Christ-awful years old and how in the hell can’t whoever is at the front door know or at least reasonably infer that it takes him no less than ten tortuous minutes to pry himself out of the barco-lounger in which he ensconces himself all day and half of the night because his cheap-ass son-in-law won’t buy him the pneumatic self-lifting chair that he (Buster) really wants and could use at some point before shuffling off this mortal coil in what promises to be a final self-soporific puff of dust, at least to hear it said.