As Much As The Moon Allows
By Monica Lee
The stars begin to fizz and crackle, trembling under the weight of the moon as she groans and drops lower below the skyline. Almost grainy in appearance, the stars shake as if to visually scream as they cannot with their mouths—strain evident in their futile attempts to coax and tamper with gravity, their efforts gradually redirect towards keeping themselves afloat instead of keeping the moon up.
By then, the moon cannot hear her children’s pleas, her pores soggy with sea water and clogged with sand.
“Attention, citizens. The moon has fallen. Please be wary of any sharp debris of moon shards in your immediate surroundings. We request full cooperation. The procedures will be as usual: we ask that every person immediately return home. Repairs will be finished by morning. We thank you for your cooperation . . . Attention, citizens . . .”
In lieu of the absence of moonlight, the emergency streetlights flare to life. Harsh white light beams onto the streets, causing the passersby to jerk their eyesight downwards. Mothers briskly take up their children’s hands as fathers bring out umbrellas to cover their heads. Adults purse their lips as they skirt delicately around piles of moon dust, fingers pointing in accusatory fashion before their mouths open to murmur, “Walk faster. If you don’t, you’ll end up like that– the moon will fall on you, and you’ll be crushed just like that.”
Several miles away from the main city, a boy sits surrounded by lumps of sand. Face flushed and teary-eyed, he fumbles his fingers across the sand until they find what they were searching for. They close tightly around a fist-sized slab of the moon. It pulses in his hand. He weighs it in his palm, judging the weight and spaces between each contraction. This was the perfect heart for her.
The air is still as the men in spacesuits scour the roof of every home. Debris collectors probe suspicious looking piles of dust until the metal tips of their staff hit something solid. The sounds of nervous coughs mix with the rustle of bags being opened, where bits of the moon pulse and beat in tandem once they congeal with one another inside. Too repulsed by the moving bits of the moon, the men do not notice the small boy creeping past the tattered concrete walls that lead from the abandoned beach to the desolate cliffs. Nobody voluntarily ventures into the most irreparable part of the city—the place where the first fall of the moon took place. Due to a series of failed attempts to successfully collect the moon bits without any fatal and unpredictable casualties, the clean-up expeditions gradually siphoned off to an unspoken agreement to leave that area be. Timid explorations and research warranted vague explanations—the gravity is much more dense and powerful at the heart of the city. The moon is most unpredictable there; going there is a deathwish.
The boy stumbles through the shadows. A searchlight misses him by a scant few inches, scanning the underbelly of a cliff before swooshing away. The stars left in the sky twinkle as the helicopter haphazardly flies through the murky skies and emits dim light, masking the shack between the cliff and the beach from all but the boy’s eyes. He slips through overgrown vines and hits his head against a wooden plate with a dull thump. He then remembers to duck and enters through a hidden opening into a cave-like abode.
Dry, withered flowers adorn the edges of a table, two tattered books acting as a centerpiece. The scent of rotting flowers rises into the air like a thick cloud; the boy holds his breath as he dashes past the table, careful to not touch any of the rotting wood—his mother had told him not to touch decaying things, to leave nature alone to go about its course.
But mother nature was hardly ever fair. And his mother had also told him that it was his job to right the wrongs of the world. Bit by bit, that was exactly what he was going to do.
He sneaks to the bed, his fingertips red and blotchy with white spots, breath coming out in small, cloudy puffs. The smell of sweet flowers clings to his arms, hands, head; if he surrounded the body with flowers would a sweeter stench emanate off her? Would a less pungent, more familiar scent come from her stiff hands? Would they smell like her favorite flowers? Would they remind him of when his mother formed a garland with those flowers as she delicately placed the frail chain upon his head as if bestowing a halo, sporting a smile of an angel as her hand softly cupped his cheek and laughed—
His hand clutches the slab of stone and the other a wooden soup ladle carrying muddy water. The liquid sloshes as the boy pries into the woman’s stiff, cold mouth and forces her lips open. His hot, sticky fingers keep them in the same position as he pours the water in. The piece of the moon he scavenged follows suit, making a small plop as the woman’s unresponsive throat—the boy makes her swallow.
“Any minute now,” the boy mumbles. But the woman doesn’t move. She hasn’t for a long time.
So he waits. He had been playing the waiting game for several days ever since the moon hit his mother. With shallow breaths, she had told him that the moon was planning to take her somewhere better, that it was magical—that if he just waited a little after she went away, they would be able to meet each other again in better circumstances. After she stopped moving, he passed the time with finding fascination in his heart rate starting to beat slower and slower, in how long his fingers could manage being outstretched without trembling from the cold—
The body’s arm jerks.
The moon dips into the curve of where the ocean meets the sky. The colors meld and spin into line, spinning and spinning until the sky is black. The announcement clicks on in the city, and the families head home. The sea crinkles into navy blue, and the woman opens her eyes.
She straightens. Her movements are slow and heavy, and she clumsily places her fingers against her chest. There’s a thrumming in her veins, so much power in her body, her thoughts are running a mile per second, she could jump for joy, she could scream at the top of her lungs. But someone disrupts the quiet: “Mom?”
Who is that boy?
The boy scratches his wrist. The woman stares at the floor.
“How do you feel?” the boy croaks. His eyes shift from his wrist to his fiddling fingers. The woman points to her throat. She shakes her head.
The boy points to the flowers. “Camellia. That was your favorite.” The woman spares a disinterested glance at the flowers before staring at him, scrutinizing. Mom is trying to remember who I am.
“That is your favorite.” The boy plucks five bunches in one hand and forms a garland with those flowers, delicately placing the frail chain upon the woman’s head. His voice cracks. “That’s what you like to do.” The woman blinks owlishly, the shadow of her smile seemingly about to burst at its seams. And she smiles. She looks like an angel, and the boy is sure that this is his mom. It has to be.
The woman peers down towards his hands. The boy flips the page and guides her unwavering eyes. And he reads aloud.
“Edward knew what it was like to say over and over again the names of those you had left behind. He knew what it was like to miss someone. And so he listened. And in his listening, his heart opened wide and then wider still.”
A loud rustle behind him—too close—startles the boy, and his next, clipped words roll off his tongue like a rock. He turns towards the noise: the woman—my mom. An unsettling feeling washes over his bones. Her eyes glow. They reflect light that does not exist in the cave, a glint in her eyes that looks nothing like how his mother with sanguine cheeks and dark, expressive eyebrows looked at him, or at anything. She needs time. She has all the time to adjust.
Everything moves slowly. His movements are sluggish yet his brain can’t keep up, his reaction time and speed slowing down just like how his mother was before she transformed into the woman sleeping next to him. Everything is freezing. The boy opened his eyes groggily as the moon rose up high into the sky. The world faded as darts of black crossed his vision before overtaking his sight entirely. Thankfully, the hunger that had been tormenting him had subsided long before the cold took over his body. The pangs of hunger had been reduced to a dull, familiar ache. His eyelids felt so heavy; his body like a sack of soaked cloth. Surely resting for a few moments couldn’t hurt him. So he closed his eyes.
The edges of the sky gurgle. The stars curiously buzz closer and closer to the moon, fussing over her missing pieces and messily sewn body. They crowd around her, slipping from the black clouds and dipping into her syrupy aura to flicker their lights in fear. The moon trembles in response, two seconds late to her son’s death.
The boy is dead.
Still, the woman brings the ladle towards the boy’s lips. The liquid sloshes as she pries into the boy’s stiff, cold mouth and forces his lips open. She knows the boy must have done the same for her. The boy who placed the flowers in her hair, read to her, smiled at her—flinched, coughed, starved. She should have known.
Outside the cave, the rain doesn’t stop. The sea recedes angrily, hissing with each white rock that drops from the sky to the beach.
The moon shimmers. The woman stares up into the sky: her eyes glow. She bends over and picks up each piece, weighs it in her palm, and judges the weight and spaces between each contraction. The pieces—as big as a man’s fist, too large for a child—are discarded over her shoulder. She picks up the perfect piece. This could be his new heart.
Monica Lee
7/26/22
Monica Lee is a second-year English major pursuing a psychology minor who harbors a deep fascination regarding the processing of emotions and intrapersonal relationships. With a history of having difficulty in initiating and sustaining verbal interactions, written language has become both a place of sanctuary yet reprieve from fear of miscommunication. At the very least, she hopes that her writing is able to provide even the smallest flicker of inspiration or a spark of sensation to those who read her work.
