A Writing Prompt
Deafening silence. Save for the heavy breathing that boomed inside his helmet. His heavy breathing. Calm down, just calm the fuck down, he thought to himself. He still hadn’t opened his eyes since the shit went down. Micro-meteorites had hit his capsule as it hurled towards the moon. He had managed to enter a suit before the craft lost pressure. Moments later, decompression tore the capsule apart, catapulting him onward towards his destination.
Reluctantly, his eyelids opened, revealing the moon, huge against the blackness of space. A piece of debris moved past him to his left. There was nothing to grab on to. Nothing to slow him down. Traveling at 6.95 miles per second, all he could do was try to calculate how long he had before impact. Based on his last known position and current speed, allow for variance due to craft explosion...
“Shit.”
He did the math. Five times he did the math.
“Shit.”
He’ll impact the surface of the moon well before oxygen is depleted. There goes his hope of a peaceful death. It would have been so much nicer to just to drift off into sleep.
“Shit.”
The moon. It filled his vision. Growing larger with every passing breath. Closer it drew. Faster his breaths came and went. He closed his eyes. In an instant, a lifetime and memories flooded his senses. Images, sounds, and smells bombarded him. The first kiss. Senior prom. Marriage. Kids. The accident. He hadn’t noticed that he had been holding his breath during this montage of his life.
“I wish I could kiss you one last time...” he thought.
A nanosecond later, his face shield shattered, his body liquified from the impact. The vacuum of space ripping every molecule of air from his body. The cold of nothingness freezing him. Preserving him. The newly formed crater haloed around his broken form as moon dust gently settled upon him like powdered sugar.
