A report from the Stranded Celestial Testing Institute:

Appendices: Transcribed Text Relating to Six (6) Impermanent Letters

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March 10th

Dearest Fellow Celestials,

I am writing this message in chalk on my parents’ driveway. I still live here. I figured, since you’d be back for me soon, there’s not much point in getting a place of my own. And what if you couldn’t find me? I sit here most of each day since that fateful one. I have learned to pull my blinking back to once every three minutes as to spend more time watching the spot where you swirled out of the Bitumen mirage in your metallic disk. Last month’s heatwave feels like a lifetime ago. My heart leaps anew when I recall the reflection that grew in that silver body as you opened the hatch for me. I rushed forward and knew it was certainty that swelled my growing image. 

I have waited until a rainy night to write this message because I know how much you scorn the human perception of time (this, you must know, is an impulse we share). Heavily falling droplets – twinkling diamonds under faltering streetlights – quell the pastel puffs I make with each angular stroke. I know these words will get to you. If you come back for me tomorrow, I’ll leave the driveway to scrub the chalk from my elbows and grazed fingertips to avoid muddying your ship. I will figure out exactly how much red raw skin is enough to cleanse me of suburbia’s cheap permanence. These spaces have a way of sitting beneath skin, don’t they? Rushing through blood streams and airways via unsuspecting pores; an intoxicating sinew of lime fresh washing powder set against the drumming metronomics of impatient cherry shellac. 

Not much changes here, as you know. The slowness makes the air too heavy to breathe deeply. I cannot draw it far enough down to fill the cavity at the base of stomach (it fills instead with things unwelcome). Time passes and forms age, but they do not bend. Worse still, they do not suspect that movement is lacked. I can’t recognise anymore which one of the ladies is pulling her small dog, snuffy child, or new handbag, closer to her bosom as she crosses my patch of footpath. I will continue to wait for you; my patience and belief are not waning. I will say, though, that my mother is getting very troublesome, the longer this waiting draws on. She says, “you’re marinating in a cesspool of my own imagining!” She didn’t even notice when I slipped away in February. Can you believe it? I don’t mean to pressure you, but a small sign would be nice, to keep me going. 

Yours in body and soul,

Andy. 

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April 27th

Dear Celestial friends, 

I want to apologise, formally, for last time. You probably couldn’t understand me beneath the sobs – it all happened so fast. I didn’t mean to turn around. It was an instinct learned; unmatched to my true feeling! Each day since, I bear proudly my salted skin and sunken cheeks as odes to the severity of my remorse. When you played my mother’s voice over the loudspeaker, the forgotten softness of her embrace caught me off guard. A siren song disembodied, gutted of the eyes that ask me quietly to be eaten. I lost my footing and dived into foaming waters stilled only for an elongated second. I saw, as if from above, a hand grasping desperately for another to extract it from the swell. But perfectly manicured stoicism betrayed no want for interfering in depths that routinely claim souls far stronger than mine. But now I know what to do. If you – when you – give me another chance, I’ll know the north star. I’ve been practising so hard at tuning out those mollifying lullabies. 

My replacement last time must have done a good job, even without the light in its eyes (which I was busy using in the stars, with you). Because, when I’ve not managed to recede successfully into my bones (which I am slowly hollowing out for the purpose), wafts of my mother’s voice reach me. She sings about how things used to be, and how lovely I looked in my sundress during our February vacation. What did you do with her, by the way? My replacement? 

Looking forward to seeing you again,

Andy 

P.S., I thought you might prefer this beach sand method to chalk? High tide is creeping up quite steadily now. Soon my clumsy impressions will become churned companions alike with the footsteps that have follow me across this otherwise settled plane. 

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Jun 28th Celestials. How little these people know about non-earth matters! I had to leave my driveway yesterday because a group of neighbourhood boys started wearing tinfoil hats and taunting me. Sticks and stones, I know, but there is barely concealed violence in their prepubescent leers (thank goodness their older brothers are away at boarding school). I don’t know how it got out. Mrs next door must have heard my mother crying on the phone to her sister. Now would really be a good time to come and collect me. I don’t know if I’ll be able to sit long in the driveway tomorrow. I might have to wait up here, from the bedroom window. The place I am flashing this message from, with a torch. Anyway, it’s late, and morse code is hard. Come soon. Andy

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Sep 28th

Dear Celestials, 

I think I saw another one like me – another misplaced celestial. This one was sleeping in the biscuit aisle until the supermarket clerk kicked her out. I saw her loitering right there between the Custard Creams and Monte Carlos, again, the next time my mother forced me to go grocery shopping. Last week her face was on a black and white poster by the door, so she stood in the parking lot, palms pressed longingly against the enlarged biscuits on the two-for-one bargain board. I guess I should be grateful I was picked up in such a convenient location. Do you take us all with you? Or is it a selection process? Can you explain a little more, about all this, when you come back for me? Maybe you could get us both together, save a trip? I don’t know how long she’ll last here, either. 

Andy

P.S., It’s getting really tiring, this waiting for my life to begin. Can you make the signs a little clearer please? I’m struggling to discern them. I catch myself wondering, sometimes, if you are sending them at all. It must be all this mundanity down here; it’s a fog that slows my senses and clouds my vision (these days the horizon sometimes forgets to distinguish high from low even long after dawn has rolled darkness away). 

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Dec 11th

To the Celestials,

I wanted to tell you that I might have to get a job. It’s not because I don’t believe you’re coming. It’s just that so many other people my age are getting really nice things now, and it’s getting hard to be left behind all the time. Last week the girl three doors down got engaged, and everyone keeps saying what a good girl she is, how she deserves this. I watch from my window as they buy her gingham tea towels and beam at her like they know her. I’m not planning on doing that or anything – I know I’m only a temporary here – but I can’t help thinking that I could decorate a little. And there are such inviting roses that grow here! Enough to fill vases and vases if I had them (maybe with my new job). I picked one yesterday to prop against my dresser. Already so crimson from the blush of blood rushing to my contorted limbs (I’m getting so much better at squeezing myself into the spaces offered to me!), no one noticed the faltered tears of dried blood peppering my tattered skin. I extracted them all in the bathtub and made a pile, which I will burn later, with incense and this letter. 

Don’t be cross. I’m just explaining why it might look like I’m making a home here, from afar, when really it’s only pretend! But I’m sure I don’t need to explain, you’ll understand when you see how sweet the cross-stitched nursery rhymes look against their painted pinewood frames. 

Wishing you well, 

Andy 

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Dec 7th

To those Celestials of two summers ago,

I have been so busy here building this ceramic life! I even have a fake fiancé! Can you believe it? It will be so easy for my replacement one day if she is needed. The other side of this note is a coupon I’m about to use for mincemeat – Stacy showed me a new casserole recipe I’ve been dying to try (this note will go out tomorrow with the rest of the rubbish, after I’ve shown it to John at Finest Cuts). 

It’s unlikely I will have time to write in future. My phantom schedule and house will not keep themselves!

Ta-ta now,

Andy