Night Feeding by Maya Dworsky-Rocha

Nomi knew she couldn’t eat her mother all by herself.

But the idea of calling a reclamation team made a silent scream spiral out of her chest, infinite in every direction. So she sat in the corner, tucked against the bulkhead, and watched rigor mortis slowly settle the folds of her mother’s face.

Nomi had gone ahead and cleaned her, diligently packing the waste and soiled clothing into their little unit reclamator. She even cut off most of Mom’s hair, clipped her nails, and vacc’d up every last skin flake—nothing goes to waste, everything that lives, lives in us. In perpetuity. Those were the rules Mom had taught her. The rules everyone’s mom taught them. On the station, all anyone had was everyone else.

Everything organic must be reclaimed. That was how the stationers survived in the lifeless void of space: by holding on to every single shred of life they had brought with them. Nothing grew out here but people.

Nomi knew that; it was why funerals were always so beautiful. Mom had taught her that life was the greatest gift shared by every stationer. This is what people do, she’d say, we feed each other.

Nomi knew that her mother was an important part of the station cycle, that by keeping her mother’s corpse to herself she may as well be stealing food from the mouths of babies, fuel from the station’s engines, and oxygen from the lungs of every person she knew.

But Nomi didn’t want to share her mother.

She wanted to keep every bit to herself, to fill her stomach to the aching, distended, bursting point, or linger endlessly and consume only a tiny bit every single day for the rest of her life; a private, secret ritual. Why was she expected to give this up? Only a few hours ago, Nomi’s mother had been hers.

Nomi was on borrowed time—you were supposed to call a reclamation team as soon as possible, but after the first flurry of action once Mom died, Nomi had barely been able to move. The night cycle was almost over. She’d be on-call pretty soon—shuttlebay maintenance—and Mom was due for her shift at the nursery.

People were going to notice.

Even the thought of being exposed and publicly shamed as a hoarder couldn’t make Nomi move. She’d just sat here in her cold little corner and tried to convince herself that she could do it—that she could feast on her mother, or squirrel her away in the walls, or…

Get her to a shuttle. Make a run for it.

There were rumors about people planetside; where things grew, where life just happened and you could have things. Why couldn’t Nomi keep her mother? This small indulgence wouldn’t actually destroy everything for everyone, would it? That was ridiculous. If the balance of life out here was that easily upset, didn’t it deserve to fail?

Life shouldn’t be like this—frugal and cautious and everyone’s—it should be wild and unstoppable and hers. Nomi was full of life, she was whole and burning, and she shouldn’t have to share. There shouldn’t be maintenance. There shouldn’t be rules. There shouldn’t be anybody else. What gave them the right?

Nomi knew when the shuttlebay would be deserted. She had access to a maintenance cart, and Mom was pretty stiff now; Nomi could balance her across the top and get them to a shuttle and aim for re-entry and hope for the best. And live. And her mother would never feed anyone else, ever again.

When they found her hours later, Nomi still hadn’t moved.

Her limbs were nearly as stiff as those of her mother’s corpse. She watched as the reclamation team gently spread a sheet over the cold, clean body, and felt the councilor wrap her arms around Nomi’s shoulders, rubbing them until the sobs broke loose.

“Come on,” the warm, soft woman said, “let’s get you something to eat.”