'You Don't Have to Talk about Your Daddy in Counselling If You Don't Want To' by Stephanie Hutton

Jupiter is the stormiest planet. It has weather patterns that change quickly so you never know what swirly clouds might hide.

It is separated from Earth by the asteroid belt - hard and dangerous to reach.

Jupiter spins fast on its axis, so each day is short. There wouldn’t be much time to spend there on a daytrip. But if it raged, at least you could start the next day again quickly, forget it had happened at all.

Funny thing is, its year is longer than Earth’s. Jupiter takes ages to come back where it started. It’s probably not worth waiting around for.

Jupiter has four major moons. But actually, it has so many other moons all over the place that the major moons aren’t special.

Three Earths can fit inside Jupiter’s great red spot. Even if Earth got hot and fiery like it might explode, it would disappear into that red hole and you wouldn’t be able to see it at all.

Astronomers call Jupiter a failed star. Maybe that’s why it’s angry and stormy. It could never become as beautiful as the sun.

You might think you don’t like the sound of this planet; it’s too fierce, too far. Trouble is, it has a powerful gravitational force that objects just get pulled to. Then they circle around and around Jupiter forever, never getting any closer, forgetting where they’d wanted to go.

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First published in the 2017 Hysteria Anthology.