Like Matter, Like Energy

By Jennifer Loring

Jon, a psychic since childhood, has never felt at home in the world, even less so after his lover died on Winter Solstice a year ago. Since his abilities failed him when he needed them most, he turns to alcohol and rejects his family's assertion that he is a Star Child—an alien/human hybrid. When Jon's sister suggests he should look into the legend of Handsome Fellow, Jon decides that if he cannot find happiness himself, he will bring it to others.

Erukkass' people, a species of interdimensional aliens, have been observing Earth and interacting with humans for so many centuries that some Native American tribes believe their ancestors originated from the stars. After his lover passed away in what appears to be a medical accident, he accepts a scientific mission… but not for the reasons his government expects. He has located his beloved on another timeline, in another universe—ours—and he will not leave without him.

Jon returns home from work one evening to find a gift of his own—a strange young man waiting for him. Erukkass unveils one stunning revelation after another, including the truth behind his lover's death and the nature of time itself. Can he and Jon forge a future together, or will two timelines that have always intersected, no matter when or where, finally be forced to diverge?

Like Matter, Like Energy is an 18,500-word novella.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jennifer Loring
• Release date: Mar 25, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393658481

Jennifer Loring

Jennifer Loring’s short fiction has been published widely, appearing in anthologies such as Nightscript IV, Not All Monsters, and Arterial Bloom as well as online in The Literary Hatchet among many others. She holds an MFA in Writing Popular Fiction with a concentration in horror fiction. Jenn lives in Philadelphia, PA, where she and her husband are owned by a turtle and two basset hounds.  

Book preview

Like Matter, Like Energy

Jennifer Loring

Jonathan Kline saw ghosts.

More precisely, he saw one ghost, whose blurry form—in its steadfast refusal to interact with him—reinforced the violence that haunted Jon each time he closed his eyes. Metal crunching and glass shattering. The mournful scream of tires on asphalt. Flames raging but, if there was comfort to be found, Daniel had been spared a fiery end. Instead, the force of impact had propelled him through the windshield face-first and left him dead in the street of a fractured skull and broken neck, his features masked with gore. The coroner had assured Jon he’d died before he hit the pavement, as though that diminished Jon’s pain in any meaningful way. 

The ghost walked through walls and vanished in the middle of rooms. It had become such a common occurrence that it no longer startled or surprised him. Jon was used to seeing things, even if the Sight had failed him when he’d needed it most.

He gazed at the blazing blue stars of M45, the Seven Sisters of the Pleiades—though only six were visible to the naked eye—and took a long swig of beer. Therapy hadn’t worked. Pills hadn’t worked. He had lost their apartment in the city when he could no longer fathom the point of getting out of bed to go to work at the observatory, despite being one of those rare people who did what he loved for a living. Every time he had opened the door on the apartment’s contemptuous silence, he wished he would die. Once the eviction notice arrived, he’d crawled back to the reservation and deeper into the bottle. Like a final slap in the face of Daniel’s memory, he’d let himself become a fucking stereotype.

The elders recommended he return to tradition for solace. Learn the language, the ceremonies, maybe some skilled handiwork. His friend Sam was a talented tailor; why not study with her? He’d lived in the city too long, they’d said. He’d let it erase the connections to his ancestors.

The subtext: You fell for that skinny white boy and forgot who you are.

He got a job at the casino as a bartender, which he despised, but it fell in line with the sort of thing a washed-up college athlete might do. He sneaked shots when his customers abandoned the bar to try their luck on the floor. He brought those customers—the reasonably attractive male ones, anyway, both openly gay and the I swear I’m straight but want to fuck a guy variety—home and gave them what they sought. Occasionally, he ventured back into the city and the clubs, hunting for the same thing. But Daniel was still dead, and Jon was still a suicidal twenty-eight-year-old drunk living in a shitty trailer on the rez.

You didn’t see it coming, the elders said, because you forgot who you are.

Fuck them. They didn’t know him.

Two feet of snow already blanketed the ground, piled thickly alongside the roads. Delicate, filigreed flakes drifted from the sky. The glow of booze suffused Jon’s limbs, and his toes prickled. He’d neglected to put on shoes or even socks.

His tribe was one that believed all indigenous people had descended from Pleiadean Star People. Some tribes prayed to them for happiness. Some believed a Savior lived there. Jonathan believed in nothing anymore, so he spit at the stars and on numb toes hobbled into his trailer.

JON PERFORMED BOTH his tribe’s rituals—meant to release Daniel’s spirit to another dimension—and his own. The letter he wrote, guilt-ridden and apologetic, was burned with the intention of the flames releasing his negative energy. He’d let leaves from their English ivy plant fly with the wind. He even lit a lantern and watched it float into the night; he had cast flowers into the river to be borne away, taking his grief with them.

But his pain would not be placated so easily. It would leave on its own terms, with great fanfare and perhaps not until it had destroyed what little Jon still clung to. Until it had broken him completely, growing stronger each day as it fed on his seemingly endless well of sorrow, disproving the myth of time as the ultimate healer. All time did was remind him. Taunt him. Every day, Daniel became less real, more distant, a star in a stranger’s sky. Jon grasped at the memories with ferocity, fully aware they had stranded him in his current quandary, but they were all he had.

He stared up at Taurus, where the Pleiades dwelled, at one of the brightest stars—HD23514. If his people were right, their spirits returned to their interstellar homes after death, riding radio waves in search of a resting place. Not Daniel, earthbound and alone. Or worse, held hostage in Jon’s heart, unable to escape because Jon could not bear to set him free.

His cellphone rang in his jeans pocket. He let it go to voicemail. Through the 70mm lenses of the astro-binoculars Daniel had bought him their first Christmas together, the magnification turned up to its full fifteen-power, Jon peered at the Seven Sisters—hot blue and ringed with reflection nebulae. The unknowable expanse of the universe both fascinated and frightened him. Worlds forever lost, recognized only by light emitted millions of years ago. If his people had come from stars almost four hundred fifty light years away, maybe those ancestors were still awaiting a response. Someone to acknowledge their illumination and accept the invitation to seek them out. Likely why, according to traditional lore, they’d been visiting Earth for centuries and