Fred Aiken Writing

You know how close the words ‘anesthetic’ is to ‘aesthetic’. I get them confused all the time. Thank god for auto-correct, amiright.

Yeah, so what?

It means…that beauty was originally an alternative pain killer.

The two men watch as an asteroid heads toward the Earth. It looks like a moving sun getting closer and closer. Their eyes are attached to the asteroid and nothing else. Soft, pale speckles move across their field of vision.

One of the men moves a couple of feet to his right to get another angle on the asteroid. His eyes don’t leave the flames biting through the sky.

I imagine it’s a beauty not to feel pain.