Paper Planet

I awoke to find the world has flattened. The sky was dark blue, edged with bright orange, as if someone had dipped the sleepy sky in an ocean of old sunlight. The scenery was nothing more than flat black cutouts against the horizon: trees stuffed with dreaming birds, toothpicks of telephone poles poking against the sky, and grain silos that grew into complex, menacing shapes as I drew closer.

Stripped of dimensionality, the silos could have been mining equipment, or cities on the moon. Earth had lost her familiarity. Dusk was settling over the planet, tucking shadows, light, and life away in bed. I was abroad in the world, hurtling through cold space in a small blue car as the old orange faded from the edges of the world.

Inside the car, my driver turned the pop music down while her boyfriend played Pokemon on his laptop. They whispered, not realizing I was awake. I leaned my forehead against the breath-frosted window; had they noticed the world was flat? Had anyone?

We turned sharply; the driver yelled softly in mock terror. The orange faded completely; in the blackness the sky and earth melted together. Bright red blinking lights formed a ribbon in space outside. They blinked for miles; we couldn’t see the end in either direction. Perhaps they were millions of landed alien ships whose drivers had become lost in the two dimensional, spaceless world of dusk. Perhaps they were wind turbines. I snuggled into my pillow and fell asleep again.

Next semester I'm taking creative writing, so I'm expecting posts to be more frequent. Most of what I've written this semester has been research papers and essay analysis This was written on the car ride home from Thanksgiving break. My only semi-creative piece was ten pages long, so it wouldn't have fit well in this format.