If you stay in space long enough, it starts to speak to you, in a soft whispery voice.

[[ content warning | death mention ]

There is no sound in space, you know this, and yet the voice is a voice, a real one, just on the edge of hearing. Maybe you’re just going crazy, out here all alone like you have been for…well, you don’t know how long anymore. Long enough that there’s no more food, long enough that there’s no more water, long enough that there’s almost no air.

It could be that you’re dying. You don’t feel like you’re dying. You expected there to be some element of suffering to dying, but you’re just…floating. Watching nebula drift by, bottomless black streaked and sparked with silver and purple and red and green and blue and palest yellow, all in jewel tones like a beetle’s iridescent back, like millions of millions of beetles’ iridescent backs.

You are alone, except for the voice. You think it might be the voice of space, or something in space, or the stars, or your own lonely mind wheeling, wheeling. You can never decide. The whisper carries on, and you carry on, not dead but probably dying, and the universe carries on, endlessly.

That’s the worst part, you think. The endlessness. All you want is an ending.
​
But there is none, long after all the oxygen should have gone. You remain, and the whisper remains, and space stretches on and on and on.

prompt via deepwaterwritingprompts