“Will you marry me?” Lith asked.

His words hung in the air for a moment. Fayde looked over to her children, who were all holding hands with each other. She met eyes with the eldest of them, her look asking: ‘did you know?’ None of them knew. She turned back to Lith, tears in her eyes and a quivering smile on her face. Her right hand reached back and found Trevor’s, gripping it tight. She loved him. So deeply and so completely. He had been with her for twenty years. Their longest relationship by a large margin. Despite the times he had seriously fucked up, she gave him chances that she would have never given another man. To her surprise, he changed. He became the man she knew he could become. He was a wonderful father to their children. He loved her children that were not his biologically as if they were. He started supporting her endeavors wholeheartedly. All her babies and grandbaby were here with her. For the first time in a long time, she felt whole. He had done everything she asked, become everything she knew he could be, and now, finally, after twenty long years together, he had asked her to marry him in a way they completely blew her away. She knew her answer.

“Yes.” She said with a smile that was only topped by when she first laid eyes on her children the moment they were born.

Fayde put out her left hand to Lith, and he plucked the ring from its case. Holding her left hand with his, he slid the ring onto her ring finger. In this moment, to them, all was right in the world. They all wished this moment; this happiness wouldn’t end. As the ring was seated on her finger at the knuckle, the world seemed to stop. The only thing that mattered was their family. Fayde. Lith. Trevor. Enki. Matia. Guidry. Everything else could just fade away.

And then…it did.

It faded away from them. The dinner table. The Waitress. The Rooftop Bar. Le Grande Castille. Their small town. And finally, the world. Everything faded away. There they stood in a void of purest black, the only source of light being a soft glow from the ring on Fayde’s finger. Slowly at first the light began to grow, the small glow becoming reminiscent of a flashlight’s beam. It didn’t stop there. The flashlight became a headlight, which became a spotlight before a small, circular ovoid emerged from the ring.

It looked like a miniature galaxy. Not that it stayed miniature for long. Within a moment, the galaxy was as wide as Lith was tall, and it just kept on growing. Would it become the size of their home galaxy? The model galaxy’s growth was becoming exponential, as if they were watching a parody of the Big Bag happen before their eyes. Before they could make a move or ask what was happening, they all began to feel an immense pressure falling upon them. They didn’t collapse to their knees as the pressure seemed to come from all around them, threatening to turn them all into balls of flesh, blood, and bone.

Fayde and Lith were the first to notice a terrifying fact. The center of the galaxy was fast approaching them. A tiny black hole, which was soon not to be so tiny, was mere inches from their bodies. In fear of what would come next, they pushed against the force holding them in place with all of their might. If the theories of astrophysicists were true, they would be in for an eternity of pain before coming to a gory mess of an end. As the event horizon began to pass over them, everything shifted. The pressure that held them firmly in place was joined by an immense twisting and pulling sensation inside of their bodies. Soon enough, the internal pressure matched the external force, and all they could do was hold onto their fraying sanity as pain wracked their bodies, threatening to turn them into mindless, pain filled husks.

For a while, time became meaningless as they withstood the torrent of forces ravaging them. Until Lith noticed something with his body. Small red whisps were coming out of him in waves. At first Lith thought his blood was slowly being squeezed from him, vaporizing because of the forces around them. As Lith looked over his body being drained, he noticed something that put the theory to rest. Even if the blood were vaporizing, his white clothes would still have been stained red. His button-down shirt was still crisp white, however. On top of that observation, Lith had another questionable sensation. He felt as if he were getting healthier. In fact, the constant pain of his sciatica was becoming further and further in his mind. It could just be that the pain he faces now was overshadowing his sciatic pain, but they still didn’t answer the question in his head. If they were being squeezed to death, why did he feel more alive than ever?

Lith closed his eyes and tried to focus his mind on his body’s insides. He had always had a special talent for knowing what was going on inside his body at any time. He could accurately diagnose any sickness or injury before going to the doctor’s office for a confirmation or treatment plan to the point that he hadn’t gone to the doctor for anything more than a prescription that required a doctor’s signature. He relied on it so much that he jokingly gave his unique physique a name, Biofeedback. It was this unique natural talent Lith had that he now used to look inside his own body. Sure enough, Lith could feel, and almost see, the small red streams being drawn from his entire body.

He could feel so much buildup inside of himself that he was surprised his body hadn’t ripped itself apart yet. It was like it couldn’t leave his body fast enough. It still didn’t explain why he felt more alive than ever, so he focused more closely. Organ by organ, he focused his mentality on his body. He felt as if they all seemed to bleed the red whisps out of his body, yet he could not come up with an answer to what was happening. Was it just the effect of being sucked inside of a black hole? Was this what time dilation and extreme forces did to a body? He expected to feel like he was slowly being stretched and ripped apart, not the extremely equal internal and external forces he was currently under. Then something clicked in his mind. The force holding them in place started before they were hit by the event horizon. Looking back, it started to exert itself on them as soon as the world fell away from them. Were they actually under the effects of a black hole, or was it an unrelated manifestation?

Focusing back on his body, Lith looked over himself. One. Twice. Thrice. Lith focused over every inch of his internal body time after time until he finally noticed something. His organs were not bleeding. If they were, then he would feel cold and warm spots as his body dissipated the heat his blood carried across his body. His core and his extremities all felt warm, as if he were experiencing a fever. Not in that he felt sick per say, but that his body was going through a state of growth or recuperation. Could this be a clue to what was going on inside his body? His cells were exuding the blood-colored content, but was it actually blood? As far as he knew, cells were only red because of the blood that transferred resources to them, and had no red content to them at all, despite the colored diagrams from biology classes in school. But his organs were not losing any of their coloration. If the red vapor were blood, then the amount already expelled from his body would have already caused him to pass out from blood loss and his blood pressure dropping. But if it wasn’t blood, what was the mysterious vapor? Was this phenomenon outside of his bodily understanding?

While it seemed like Biofeedback couldn’t help him with the current situation, Lith had an instinctual feeling that this was not the limit of his understanding of the ongoing process in his body. In medical journals, Biofeedback was used to control parts of the body that normally worked autonomously, like the heart beating on its own or breathing. The most ordinary form of controlled Biofeedback was holding your breath which an infant can do instinctually when put in a pool, while something like controlling your heartbeat took immense concentration and potentially medical equipment. Another example being how a baby doesn’t know how to control their bladder, but a toddler generally knows how to not pee their pants. Control over the body could be exerted with stages of understanding or on an instinctual basis. Lith had the instinct to know that he needed to push the red vapor out of his body but lacked the understanding of how to do so. With no other ideas in mind, it was time to learn how to control this aspect of his body, if it were even possible.

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Before he could start, Lith needed to calm his mind. He had been in a panic from the pain, which was an instinctive response. Until this point, he was still frantically looking for answers to a seemingly endless line of questions. Now was the time to narrow down the line of questions and explore the possible answers. Pushing the pain to the back of his mind as he had numerous times before with his sciatica flares, Lith slowed his breathing, taking slow, deep breaths in and out. He quickly realized as he regained composure, each breath out also caused more of the red vapor to leave his body. It slowed with each breath in, but the vapor did not flow back into him as he breathed back in. The amount he expelled with each breath out was not insignificant, but at the rate that the red wisps were accumulating, he would be here for hours simply breathing it out. He was more likely to pass out from straining his muscles from how tight he was keeping them flexed.

Was there a point to keeping his body flexed? He had instinctively tightened his body and locked his joints to keep himself from collapsing to the floor, but if the force being applied to him from the outside was applied evenly, then wouldn’t it keep him in place? That also did not include the internal force of the red wisps potentially keeping his body rigid from the internal pressure. With these factors in mind, Lith slowly released the tension in his body. As he did, the flow of red wisps in his body slowed, and the outward momentum increased, which surprised him. The relationship was inverse. With his body relaxed, the flow out of his body was on par with the accumulation inside when his body was tense, the opposite was true with the accumulation now. It slowed to the pace of the expelled wisps when his body was tight. The process reminded him of a meditative workout. One would slowly tighten their muscles when inhaling and release the tension when exhaling. Could a meditative workout be the answer to expelling the red wisps from his body? The only way to know for sure was to try. Having just expelled a breath of air, Lith slowly breathed in while tightening all of his muscles again. As expected, the amount of red inside his body increased in accumulation while the amount leaving his body slowed. Once his lungs were full of air, he held the breath, allowing the pressure in his body to build, theorizing that the more that was in him, the more that would be expelled. Feeling the pressure reach a point where his body was full and straining again, he let out his breath slowly while relaxing his muscles slowly again. As he breathed out, a massive wave of red left his body, relieving the pressure inside his body and leaving him feeling refreshed. Lith repeated this process a few times before he noticed something new. The amount of red accumulating inside of him was slowly petering out. With each cycle the amount of red further decreased, until only a trickle remained, and then none. Just to be on the safe side of the situation, he performed a few more cycles, expelling any remnant red from his body.

With all of the red now expelled from his being, Lith rolled his neck and stretched a moment to release the exertion from his muscles. With a start, he realized that he was able to move again. He looked over to his family to see how they were fairing. To his relief, Fayde was exuding waves of red from her body as she seemed to dance in the air. The movements reminded him of the dance form she was trained in, Naga-Atem. Each movement of her hips, legs, and arms sent out waves of red in a billowing motion. They had talked about Naga-Atem on several occasions over the years they had been together. It relied on total body muscle control incorporated into dance motions. It was also one of the oldest forms of dance on Earth. Their means of removing the red from their bodies were similar in theory, only differing in execution, as Fayde also used Naga-Atem as a meditative workout. She was also able to move freely and with ease, which told Lith that she was nearly done with removing the red from her body as well. The only other member of their family showing any other signs of success was Matia, who was sporadically releasing large waves of red in a less controlled manner than what Lith had done. She would be a bit longer than Fayde, but she would make it through on her own. Of his three remaining family members, Guidry was releasing the least amount of red. Whether that was because of his age and size, or another reason was unsure, but it didn’t change the fact that his grandson was crying from the situation he found himself in. Trusting that Fayde and Matia would take care of Trevor and Enki when they were done, Lith ran over to his grandson.

“Guidry!” Lith called out as he stopped and kneeled at his grandson. He reached out and held Guidry’s wrists, putting his own wrists into Guidry’s palms. Reflexively, Guidry took his wrists in a death grip.

“Grandpa?” Guidry asked in a panic. “Grandpa it hurts.” His crying became more uncontrolled as he spoke. He was more than scared. He was terrified. “Make it stop Grandpa.”

For a moment, the red coming from the rest of his family stopped before starting back up in a more furious nature. There was no better motivation to finish than to go to the aid of the youngest member of their family. Especially for his mother, Trevor, who was now screaming as red wisps came pouring out of her with the righteous rage of motherhood, faster than anyone else’s red.

“I know. Grandpa is here.” Lith said in the most comforting voice he could muster. “I need you to listen to me, ok?”

“Is Mom yelling? Is she okay?” Tears were streaming down his face faster than the red was coming from his body.

“Yes, she’s on her way here to you. I need you to listen to me very carefully for right now. Can you do that?”

“Mhmm.” Was all that Guidry could get out between tearful snotty bursts on breath.

“I need you to take a deep breath. I know it’s hard right now. I know it hurts. But give me a deep breath.”

Through fits of snot induced coughs, Guidry managed to get in a few deep breaths and calm a bit. The coughs made the exhales do less to expel the red than Lith would hope, but as Guidry seemed to calm, the red did come out easier.

“There we go. Is that starting to feel better?”

“Mhmm. It…” Guidry paused as he let out another cough. “It still hurts, but not as much.”

“Good man. Slow breaths in and out. I’ll breath with you, okay.” Lith instructed and waited for Guidry to nod and breathe out before starting. “Breath in ‘whoooooop” he started watching Guidry mimic himself. “And out ‘wooooo’”

As Guidry exhaled, the red came out shakily but stronger than it previously had been. Lith theorized it came out shakily because Guidry’s body was still convulsing a little from his crying.

“Good job little man. Let’s do that a few more times, ok?”

“Ok Grandpa.” Guidry said a bit more calmly. The tears coming from his face had slowed, and his breathing was getting steadier as they went through a few more cycles. A moment later, Trevor was by their side.

“Dad.” Trevor said as she kneeled next to them both. “I’ve got him. Thank you.”

“Mom?” Guidry asked as one of his hands reached for her. She immediately reached out and grabbed his hand.

“I’m here baby.” She said as she wrapped him in a hug. “Mom is right here.”

Lith looked up and saw that Fayde was already coaching Enki through some basic hand and foot movements of Naga-Atem in an attempt to help him rid the red from his body. It was slow going, and Enki was a bit awkward in his movements, but it looked like he would be done soon. Lith’s eyes fell upon his daughter Matia. Who was sitting with her knees to her chest, already done expelling the red from her body. He walked over to her and sat down next to her, wrapping an arm around her and leaning her against his side. She didn’t resist, contrary to the typical behavior his rebellious teen daughter would do. They sat there for a few moments in silence before he eventually spoke.

“Good job kiddo.”

She shifted a bit before releasing her knees from her chest and wrapping her arms around his chest.

“That was terrible.” she said with a sniffle.

“I know. It was the same for all of us. But you did an excellent job figuring it out yourself.” Lith could feel a wet spot forming on his chest. He knew she was crying but decided not to say anything about it. “I’m proud of you baby girl.” He said as he lightly tightened his one arm around her shoulder before looking out into the still expanding galaxy around them.