Photo by David Menidrey on Unsplash
By Zmorg, the second planet from the Sun of Zmorg, the people had long since given up on pants altogether for the more efficient Shirt, long enough to cover their Unshaven Shames but made of a lighter lace, as Zmorg was a warm planet.
Throughout this time the people were coming across many warm planets. The people preferred to first settle into the planets closer to their respective suns, which they named things such as Surt or Shiva, then Rutheford Hayes or Diogenes, until they were naming suns such things as George Mendel Jr. or Laticia Jones From Fifth Street, You Know, Laticia. Jackets became consistently lighter as the people traveled, until they were only thin strands of fabric draped across their shoulders. The fabric was passed down through generations.
Each person, on their twentieth birthday according to the local calendar, received the thread of their family.
How deep does it go? Does it carry things hidden by the Shirt?
Closer to the Sun of Zmorg was Kersplat, the planet moving ever-closer to the Sun of Zmorg. On Kersplat it was too hot to make love; this was a very common complaint on Kersplat.
By Kersplat, the people had stopped naming the suns they found.
The discontinuity of their calendars meant that some of the people were much more mature than others when they received their thread. It often went to infants, more often to the elderly or the long-past-dead. In these latter cases, people spent their lives handing out threads knowing they themselves would never receive one. Still, very few threads were ever lost.
Does it hurt? Does it move on its own?
While the people were in Kersplat, they built factories for their Shirts which hummed when they were turned off and wheezed when they were turned on. When it was less hot on Kersplat, even before many of the people had gone to Zmorg, they worked at the factories into the night. Work was easy at that time; the factories were well designed.
In Kersplat, everyone had either a thread or progeny.
On the distant planets it was common for people to lift their Shirts and uncover one another’s Unshaven Shames and to ask one another questions.
Can you eat from it? Is it a distant mouth?
The distant planetarians were importune, even salacious, even immodest, even rapscallion.
On Kersplat it was increasingly too warm to do much aside from staring at the sun and mentioning that soon Kersplat will be there.
When the people were in Skrillix they nestled together as one contiguous body in order to forget whose body was whose. After many days the smell was very bad.
How does one get inside? Must one be tiny?
Soon, they said discordantly to each other but to themselves, having left the Shirt factories and their hum behind early in the day, huddled in the threads they had clutched as infants, the Sun of Zmorg will be here.
After many days the distant planetarians of Skrillix, having forgotten whose body belonged to whom, separated. Their skin made the distinct tearing sound of cheap glue, leaving behind many welts and blemishes on one another.
Aaron Bruener is an essayist and fiction writer from Richmond, VA. He currently lives in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
