BLACKOUT

I wake up on someone’s floor, dawn light is creeping through the curtains and there’s some random next to me asleep and naked.  I reach for my mobile.  The messages on it start at ‘Hey darling, hope you’re having a good time.  Do you want me to pick you up from anywhere?’ and finish at ‘Where are you?  I’m worried sick!  It’s 5am for fuck’s sake.  CALL ME!’  It’s 7am now and I won’t attempt a phone conversation with a bird cage bottom mouth.  I’ll just go home.
 
I put my clothes on as I find them.  I’m trying to work out where and how all this began and where and how it will end.   I shouldn’t have picked up my guitar and started to write music again, that was what caused the questions.  Am I happy?  Is this it?  Is this all?  A relationship, a mortgage and a dead end job, yeah, that’s it.  What did I do to deserve three life sentences?  Maybe we should’ve had kids.  Thank God we didn’t.

What’s the alternative now?  The presence of the random says I’ve still got it, but can I use it?  If I went home and fessed up, my cage door would fly open and I’d be propelled out of it faster than a cork from last night’s Prosecco.  I’d be flung into shitty rented rooms and would sit on lumpy beds eating nutrition-free garbage from the Kebab shop.  The random would be first in a long line of shallower, younger imitations.  I’d go to the pub to live it up like the old days and find it full of strangers.  My settled down friends would think me a joke.  They went home before midnight last night.  God knows how I ended up here.

Huh, I’ll return home with a sorry smile and some elaborate story that you couldn’t make up.  I will accept the frosty silence that will stretch on to the evening and welcome the gradual thawing of relations sometime next week.  I’ll even put in an effort and invest in a romantic weekend away ...

Of course, I’ve learned my lesson.  If a night like last night ever happens again, I won’t get so drunk that I can’t remember the brief, heavenly taste of freedom.

THE WAITING ROOM

For the first time Jenna was doing something important.  She looked around the waiting room, taking note of names on badges and made eye contact with an older woman, Sarah, sitting opposite; “It’s so cool here,” she said.  There were cosy couches, a buffet and a bar they could help themselves from, while they waited.  Jenna was already clutching a glass of wine.
“A taste of things to come,” Sarah answered, biting into her chocolate cake.
“I guess we’ll get to know each other well,” Jenna scanned the room again to be met by smiles, “being chosen for the Over Populated Earth programme has been the best thing,” she gushed, “I haven’t had a job since leaving school, but they say there’s no shortage of employment on Mars.”
“The working conditions are fantastic,” Sarah stated, “I want to work, but employers have never understood my illness, that I have good and bad days.  The OPE Programme says I can choose my hours.”
“It’s great,” Colin spoke up, “I had a shaky start, I was a bad lad, but it’s behind me now.  People here don’t wanna know when you’ve got a record.  OPE didn’t even ask about my past.”
“We’ve been given a chance,” added Robert, “being older, I thought I was past it, but they’re still sending me.  I’ve heard there are greenhouses, I can still do my gardening.”
“My interest is art.  I’m finally going to be working in an industry I wanted to get a job in,” Carol asserted, “you don’t see job opportunities for artists and poets here, but no books or literature are going to Mars, so they want people to write, paint and sculpt.  We can build a whole new culture.”
“Are any of us scientists?” Alice enquired, sipping on a double whisky.
Everyone shook their heads.
“I thought it would be useful to have a scientist among us.”
“The scientists went before, to set everything up,” Jenna said helpfully, “I’m going to be working in the zoo.”
“Are there animals?” asked Sarah.
“I’ve been allowed to take my pet cat,” Carol confirmed.
Alice frowned; “We’re the second group.  Has anyone heard from the first group?”
“Only that they arrived safely.  They’re still sorting out a satellite link for everyone to use to call their families.” Sarah said.
“Does anyone know anyone from the first group?” Alice pressed, “I understand they were very much like us, people who struggled to find employment.”
“People being given a chance to help Over Populated Earth,” said Jenna.
“Art, gardens, zoos ... I remember theatres and libraries when I was younger, but they got shut down.”
“What are you trying to say?” Colin asked Alice.
“I’m amazed they can afford the billions it’s costing to send us and maintain a facility on a far away planet.”
“Mars isn’t that far,” Jenna protested.
"The Government has been putting money into this programme for years.  It had to close down everything unnecessary to support it,” Carol said firmly.
Robert fidgeted uneasily, like Colin, he was wondering what point Alice was trying to make. 

“Attention, would the Pioneers make their way to departure gate,” came the announcement.

“This is it!” Jenna cried.
“I thought you needed training before you went up into space and they’ve given us alcohol, is that wise?” Alice downed her whisky.  She followed the rest to where a uniformed member of staff waited to direct them.  One by one they passed through the gate, Jenna, Sarah and Carol wreathed in smiles, the men exchanging doubtful glances.  Alice was the last to go.