She flicks a switch, causing a buzz to slice through the million mile silence. The vessel vibrates. The ticking clock shakes off her metal desk. She sweeps the loose gears, arms, face, and numbers off the floor while she waits for the outer magnet to pull the daily bounty towards her. Not long after the mess is cleaned, an alarm sounds.
She flicks another switch, causing the metallic hunk of space junk to enter the inspection room. The elevator shimmies down the shaft. She enters and inspects the broken ship. Not long after she counts the skeletons, she cries herself to sleep.
The picture frame next to her bed shows two smiles full of perfect teeth. There are also hands with ringed fingers intertwined. When she’s awake, she misses her wife. When she’s asleep, she dreams of them together again. None of the salvaged skeletons have matching teeth nor are their finger bones ringed.
Her mornings are artificial since she lives in the abandoned battlefields between worlds. She wakes up to an alarm. The elevator shivers up the shaft. Her visitors wear metallic flesh. They do not greet her.
She leads the metallic men to the salvaged ship. They nod with their square heads and push the offering towards their docked container rocket. It is half full of other wrecked vessels. They take off after trading human food for the scrap metal.
Now alone again, she stares at the bones sleeping forever with wide open eye sockets. Sometimes she wants to lie down on the ground with them, undressing fully, skin and all. It has been so long since her mirror shattered from the violent tremors of the outer magnet. She touches new wrinkles, knowing the young women in the picture are both long gone. She eats with the dead before entering the elevator once again.
She goes up. She sits on her hard metallic chair and leans over her metallic desk full of switches. Inhaling artificial oxygen, she flicks a switch. Exhaling carbon dioxide, she sees the skeletons float out of the opened dock door. Finally, she flicks the same switch that shook her clock off the desk yesterday.
My man, you know how to write an opening sentence. Wow!