FFM Day 28- Tripping on Major Tom

“When can you get more?” Jean asked, adjusting her phone.“No, it’s for the Underground.” The woman with the adam’s apple spilled out of the taxi onto the wet street.

“Great. Thanks, Aladdin. You always come through.”

She ended the call. Entering the building, she took the elevator to the 3rd floor, then bolted down the hallway. It had been too long since she’d seen him. She used her key, letting herself in.

“Babe?” she entered a dark apartment. Fumbling for the switch, she heard growling behind her. He wrapped his arms around her waist. She screamed, laughing, as he attacked her with kisses.

Ziggy and Jean fell onto the couch. He kissed her, slipping a square of paper under her tongue. Colors ran through her mouth, and so did he.

Shadows stretched up the walls. Ziggy popped a sheet under his tongue, his laughter sliding under her ribs as his hands slid up her chest. She used to flinch when men touched her chest, but Ziggy was safe.

“Remember when you found me?” he whispered, the world pulsing in different hues.

“I can’t forget a spaceman,” she breathed. Her lungs filled with fire, and so did the room. Stars pulsed before them, liquid edges licking at lovers.

They danced through a supernova, crying out as waves of light crashed over them. Major Tom whisking them through space.

Dancing over Mars, two becoming one, they whirled through clouds of red dust. Spiders scuttled from gashes in the ground, flying towards Earth. Jean watched a spider move behind Ziggy’s eyes, reminded of what he really was.

After the Tom faded, the two tangled up  on the sofa. Ziggy’s head rested on her chest. He was long limbs and soft lines, an androgynous star-child.

“When are you going up?” He mumbled.

“In a week.”

“I can’t believe I fell in love with an astronaut.”

“I fell in love with a revolutionary. Talk about setting myself up, my spaceman’s a rebel. I’m safer on Mars than you are with the Underground.”

“I don’t want you to go.”

“It’s all I’ve ever wanted, that red planet, Zig. It’s coming true.”

“You’re leaving me here.”

“I’m coming back!”

Ziggy pulled away, standing up.

“There’ll be nothing to come back to”

“What are you talking about?” Ziggy glared at her with eyes that had seen planets burn.

“They sold the earth” He gestured angrily. “It’s been auctioned off.”

He knelt in front of Jean, cradling her face in his hands.

“I sold the earth,” he said. “It was before you. I wanted to go home; Earth seemed a small price to pay. I said if every man on earth agreed, they could take it. Now… I wanna stay.”

“Zig, I know, they asked me, too. I was born my mother’s son, and grew to be her daughter. Then I wasn’t anything.”

“They asked...?”

“I snuck into the flight simulator, logged hours high…”

He’d been doing alright until the simulator’s door flew open, and excuses fell out of his mouth in heaps. The strangers cared little, hiding their expressions behind helmets. They were there to make an offer. ‘Why hold onto this world, after everything it’s done to you?’

“Take it. I’m going to Mars. Get me out of here.”

The spacemen made sense. Jareth agreed, and passed out in the simulator. When he woke, he left his hallucinations behind. He kept his thoughts ahead, on the red planet. He had a future.

“I can’t be stuck in a place that says I’m not human,” Jean spat. “I was in one of the camps, and I can’t go through it again.” She was crying hard. “They came down hard on the faggots. They tried to break me. I know you think I’m running-”

The door smashed open; men poured in. They filled the apartment: boots, guns and helmets. They tore her from Ziggy. She fought, earning a gun barrel to the ribs, an arm around her throat.

Ziggy screamed his throat raw, until they stuffed cloth in his mouth, pulling a black bag over his head. They dragged Ziggy out of the room. Jean screamed.

“I love you! I’ll find you-” A hand slammed into her throat, she breathed agony.

“Her, too?”

“You mean him,” One spat. “No, leave the faggot. We’re here for the Underground.”

A gun smashed into Jean’s temple, and the ceiling pulled away. She clawed at the man’s face, he hit her again.

When she woke, it was half dressed, on the floor, alone. She had the taste of Tom under her tongue.

Sunlight poured in, lighting blood on the floor, from Ziggy’s struggle. She looked for bodies, absent, and knew the truth. There were no rayguns, no spacemen, just boots on asphalt, black bags, and re-education for the ‘wicked’.

Crying, she swallowed pain down a bruised throat. When she stood, walking on trembling legs, she found her phone, in pieces - Ziggy’s cord yanked from the wall, handset smashed. She stood in his closet, naked, hugging herself. A memory played in her head.

‘Why do they call it Major Tom?’

Ziggy, a fountain of trivia, Tom under his tongue, “The first dealer was an army reject. They called him Major Tom, his drug, too. Any man who puts space in a pill gets a purple heart, in my book. God damned hero.’

Jean stared into Ziggy’s mirror. She washed her makeup off, straightening the kinks out of her hair with his comb. She had a black eye, a gash on her temple. She imagined she was in better shape than Ziggy was, or would be.

They watched banned films together, in secret theaters. There, with the Underground and a projector. They watched films of the holocaust- Jews, ‘gypsies’ and homosexuals in mass graves. They learned about themselves, and felt self-loathing trickle away.

Jean left the bathroom as Jareth. He stared at the empty apartment, looking for hope.

“I never knew his last name.”