All Things Under the Moon Read online

All Things Under the Moon

  By JT Pearson

  copyright Joseph Pearson 2013

  CONTENTS

  All Things Under the Moon

  About the author

  Other short stories by JT Pearson

  Novels

  Contact

  All Things Under the Moon

  All things human hang by a slender thread; and that which seemed to stand strong suddenly

  falls and sinks in ruins.

  - PUBLIUS OVIDIUS NASO – ROMAN POET -17 AD

  Security is a kind of death.

  - TENNESSEE WILLIAMS – 2oth CENTURY AMERICAN PLAYWRITE

  The end of the planet sucks balls.

  - Lucas – TEENAGE SLACKER – THE PRESENT

  LUCAS

  I knew the so-called experts were lying to us. Everyone could see something strange was happening. The moon looked bigger in the sky every week. At first our world leaders refused to even address it, figuring they could just postpone dealing with our questions until they had some answers but that could only last so long. Then the spokespeople for industrialized nations furthered stall tactics by denying that there was anything unusual going on, politicians both conservative and liberal coming on TV and telling us that what we were dealing with was global mass hysteria – that we’d all convinced each other that there was something strange going on with the moon. Some of the older people here in the United States just chose to believe President Myer instead of thinking for themselves, trusting the soothing words that put them at ease, words that dripped from his lips like morphine from an IV, but the young people knew better. They weren’t so ready to trust. Finally, after months had passed, a spokesman for NASA addressed the world and came clean, confirming that it was true. The moon was getting increasingly closer to the earth. I just turned and looked at Grandma Kay after the broadcast. I didn’t have the heart to say it, that I was right all along. The weirdest thing about the whole night was that she didn’t even seem like she was worried for herself. Just worried about me. She asked me to stay home for a night and have dinner with her but I looked up my friend Hector and we shot heroin under the bridge. I’d been sober for a year and a half. I mean seriously, what’s the use anymore?

  FATHER DAVID MULLEN

  For over a decade Rabbi Jakub Sholem and I have been getting together in the park and playing chess. He’s a formidable player even though he tends to overuse his queen in my estimation. That said, even with that significant flaw in his game we’ve come out about even over the years.

  I moved my knight that was between my bishop and his king putting him in check with my bishop. The move forced him to block the line of his king with his queen. It was the only way that he could get out of check. Once he did this the next move was obvious as I took his queen with my bishop and he took my bishop with his king.

  “Lost your queen again, Rabbi.”

  “Yes. Again I have lost my queen.”

  “Just like I’ve suggested, you should hold her back a bit. Let the board play out for a while before you march her all over the battlefield. Establish the advance of other pieces.”

  “Sometimes I consider that advice, David.”

  He moved his bishop over into the line of sight with my king, the line that he had opened up by baiting me with his queen. In my excitement of taking his best weapon I had forgotten that I was using my bishop that I had just sacrificed for his queen to protect the area around my own king. The rabbi advanced his rook, having moved protection by a pawn into place several moves before to protect that spot on the board, a move that I had thought was a wasted effort, thinking that he had moved the pawn forward because he had no other ideas at the time. He trapped my king and said checkmate. I leaned forward and studied the board, shocked that he had been able to lull me into forgetting about my own defense by leaving his queen unprotected. He reached above his head and stretched and I heard the cracks and pops in his old spine. I leaned back from the board and shook my head knowing that I could do nothing but smile.

  “Well you always argue that miracles are happening every day and here is another one. I had you that entire game, Rabbi.”

  “Perhaps, David.” He smiled. “But it’s really only the end that counts. Maybe you should rethink your position on prayer and humbly ask God for a win the next time we get together. After all, you’ve lost four in a row now.”

  “Do you really think that God answered your prayer and reached in and covered my eyes so that I overlooked an obvious checkmate like that one?”

  “I don’t actually pray over chess games, Father. I was only joking. But I still do believe that you should revisit your opinion on prayer, David.”

  “There’s nothing to rethink, Jakub. When we pray God helps us to deal with what goes on down here. He doesn’t change it. Your view of God is like some kind of genie. Ask for something long enough and with enough devotion and he’ll grant you your wish. Can you imagine if God considered altering the world every time a person had a request?”

  “I can’t imagine a world in which he didn’t. God does what God does.”

  “I wish I had your kind of optimism. It might help with all of the members of my parish, all of their questions. They want to know why God would kill us all, destroy everything, this entire planet, babies and puppies and trees and fish, the whole thing, all of it. For what? Why doesn’t he just make the moon return to its natural orbit?”

  “You don’t remind them that life isn’t the most important matter to them? You don’t help them see that their spiritual life will live on along with the lives of those that they love?”

  “Pretty hard to do when a woman holds up her toddler and keeps asking why God is going to let that child die before ever experiencing the world.”

  “God should be so kind to everyone. To take them into His arms after such a short trial. The world isn’t all joy. There is much sorrow in the world to endure.”

  I really wasn’t in the mood to volley theology back and forth with the rabbi so I changed the subject.

  “I was contacted by Bishop Churl. Leaders of every country are putting together a massive event including every denomination, every religion, to pray for our continuation.”

  “Sounds like a splendid idea.”

  “I haven’t decided whether I’ll attend or not. It seems cruel to give people false hope.”

  “Even if you don’t believe that God might decide to spare the earth, David, you should go to support and comfort the people.”

  I looked at this old man that had survived the Nazi concentration camps as a boy, his mother and father both perishing at the hands of the Germans, an aunt filling in to raise him in America, and wondered how the hell he could have such a positive outlook on life.

  Paul

  I continued to tip the neon clock that sat at our bedside up and down so that it shined above us on the ceiling as I lay beside her. I watched the lucent green ghost created by the digital numbers travel from one side of our bedroom to the other. She jerked the covers crisply, crude sign language letting me know that I was bothering her. She’s angry tonight. She wants a baby and I don’t. Certainly not now, with what’s been going on with the world. I rolled over and looked out the window, grateful that I don’t have a view of the damn moon. I used to love the moon. And then I tumble from reality and the dream comes again.

  And Jennifer and I are lying on our backs in an enormous wide open space, a field, and I have my hands wrapped tightly around the weeds beneath me, as if they are the only thing left to anchor me to the earth. And the moon comes over the horizon and it fills the entire sky. And when it is directly over us I can hear Jennifer moaning like she is in ecstasy. And I want to close my eyes but I can’t so I just remain pe
rfectly still and pray that the moon will continue on, but it doesn’t. There is a low rumble that builds to a loud cracking noise, like thunder, but it is thunder times one hundred, and I cringe as I see two holes in the moon begin to form on its surface. And from the holes peer eyes – the eyes of something newborn – eyes filled with wonder. And then, an even louder rumble and a mouth forms, and I am terrified. I am so focused on myself that I haven’t noticed that Jennifer is now standing in the field and offering herself like a sacrificial goat, or perhaps more like a bride to the Volcano God. The mouth opens and I feel the warmth from its breath cascading down from the sky, washing over my body, baptizing us, a promise to join it as an eternal being, and the field reeks of must and timelessness. And an enormous tongue made of gray vegetation and twisting vines emerges and slowly snakes its way down to Jennifer. And now it’s the moon that groans with what sounds like sexual gratification. With Jennifer’s arms outstretched, her face blissful, it picks her from the field and I watch the bottoms of her dirty feet as she rapidly ascends into the heavens and disappears into its mouth. And then the eyes, the eyes of a newborn god, find me in that field, and stare down intently. When I wake I realize that it’s a bad dream…but just barely.

  We were sitting in the living room locked in the eternal debate about having a baby when we first heard that the theory that the moon was orbiting closer to the Earth, had been confirmed – that it wasn’t just mass hysteria. We really already knew it though. It captivated us as Jennifer, her eyes wide, her jaw slack, moved through the channels, pausing occasionally, looking for reporters that didn’t sound so much like they were struggling to control an instinctive sense to panic. We searched those channels like a cancer patient seeking a second opinion. We thought someone must believe that we were going to be okay but we found no one.

  For the next sixth months we watched the moon hovering above our homes, continually filling more of the sky like an enormous doomsday clock that was counting down the hours until our demise, our only respite, an occasional overcast. But the effect it had on Jennifer was unexpected.

  “We still have time. A scientist on the Today Show speculated that we still have over a year before the moon enters the atmosphere and destroys us.” She folded her arms and leaned back against the stove. “We can still do this.”

  “Still do what? Have a baby? You’re never going to drop it, are you? What do you want me to do? Throw you up on the stove and impregnate you right here, right now? Is that what you want? You’re not being rational, Jen!”

  “We paid seven hundred dollars for the bed in the other room. We might as well use it. That’s being pretty rational.” She always got a little sarcastic when we argued, like an automatic defense system kicked in to protect her feelings.

  “We already knew how bad this world might be to bring a child into and now that it’s certain you seriously still want to have a baby?”

  “You always said that we had no idea what the future would bring. Well, now we do.”

  “You want to bring a child into the world just to have it die?”

  “We all die.”

  “Not after a few months.”

  “Mosquitoes only last about a day.”

  “We’re not talking about mosquitoes, Jen. We’re talking about a baby.”

  “What difference does that really make?”

  “It does.”

  “Listen to me, Paul. I love you, and I’ve always dreamed of having a child with you, and the fact that we can see how much time we have left to accomplish that doesn’t make me want to have a baby less. It just makes me realize how badly I want it, how truly important it is to me. I don’t want to live every day mourning the end of our existence. I want to celebrate each day that we have left. Wouldn’t you love to have a little girl before you die? Please, Paul.”

  “You’re always so impractical! Aren’t you scared? You’re going to disappear! Life is soon going to be over for everybody! Have a baby right now? Are you kidding me?”

  Tears ran down her cheeks. “I’ve always wanted to have a little girl and now I never will.”

  “If you did, you’d have to name her pretty damn fast before the moon crashes into us and buries everything!”

  She wiped the tears from her face and attempted a smile. “Then we could name her Moondust.” She coughed while she was crying and it made a little snot bubble pop out of her nose that broke my heart.

  “I’m sorry that I can’t share your bizarre sense of carpe diem. I can’t participate in your madness. I’m not bringing a child into this world, Jen.”

  Leonard

  Fifteen years ago I had a fight with my son Ahmed and his new wife Anna and he hasn’t spoken to me since. I was still drinking then and I knew that I was much to blame for the quarrel but everyone should eventually find forgiveness somewhere in their heart, especially for their father. I guess he doesn’t think I was much of a father while he was growing up. He doesn’t know. He has no idea how hard things were. When I saw that the moon was moving in toward the Earth and heard the experts’ opinions, I realized that I couldn’t face death without reconciling with my son. Unfortunately Ahmed did not see it the same way and is just fine leaving this life without his father. I’ve left him phone messages, e-mails, even letters on the windshield of his car, but still no response. I went to his home and knocked. I saw the curtains move but he never answered the door. He just left his father standing out in the cold by himself. I have a nine year old grandchild named Oscar that I will probably never meet. How can a son treat his father this way when we have so little time left?

  Martha

  The glow from our new enormous moon stains everything out the window of my room with a golden haze that seems to filter through even the heaviest of blinds. I practically have to tape my eyelids shut so I can sleep at night. I’ve missed my mother so much since she died. Every night that I look into the sky and see the moon getting closer I picture her waiting for me. My daughter Carrie never has time for me now. I have no grandchildren. Maybe this is the only way we’ll ever all be together again – in death.

  JACINTA

  I sit on the porch and worry and watch Sofia who has only been on the earth for two years, as she twirls beneath the moon, drinking it in, bewitched by its astounding beauty, oblivious to our peril. The moonbeams catch her golden locks and surround her delicate porcelain face with a halo, so fitting for the enchantress that she is. She rotates and rotates like a tiny satellite beneath the ceiling of the moon, her eyes as pure and blue as glaciers reflected in the deepest of the ocean. And I know that she is God’s perfect creature and I can’t help but wonder why this is happening.

  Johnny

  Everything looks washed out, yellowed, like we’re living in a world of worthless antiques since the moon started creeping in on us. Reminds me of tattered old pictures you find in the bottom of a cluttered drawer. The neighbor kid started a damn moon cult. The kids strip their clothes off and dance all night, waving their arms and chanting crazy gibberish, high on something I’m sure. They steal the apples from my tree and crush them so they can rub the juice all over their bodies. They actually shine out there in my backyard every night. Cops won’t do anything about them. The hell with everybody. Let the damn moon come and end it all.

  Paul

  It was amazing that we continued to live our routines but we did. Most everyone went to work and the movies and out to dinner, all the while living seemingly oblivious to the loaded gun that was pointed at our heads, the Grim Reaper that was seated across from us in the diner. I guess Jennifer and I weren’t much different. As I walked home from my job at the hardware store I noticed a small crowd pooled around the window of the TV King. They were transfixed to the Pope as he announced a global prayer day.

  Leonard

  I volunteered to help build the stage and the seating in our little city for the global day of prayer. Local construction companies that donated their service ran shifts round the clock, the moonlight being so bright t
hat artificial lighting wasn’t even needed. The foreman in charge had to turn away a handful of wandering moon cultists because they didn’t have any clothes with them, telling them that it was a safety hazard. They left us with apples as they walked off. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw Ahmed helping erect the communication towers along the routes. I tried to talk to him but he pretended that he couldn’t hear or see me. For the rest of the project I worked as close to him as I could – just to spend time near him.

  Johnny

  I called the sheriff about the moon cult again. Told ‘em that the punks behind my house were stealing the apples from my tree. The sheriff stuck up for them, told me to let ‘em be. He doesn’t care about keeping order anymore. I don’t even know why he shows up for work. Our civilization’s gone to hell. There’s no more respect. The young folks don’t even have to wear clothes anymore.

  Lucas

  I pushed Hector to see if he was still breathing, a little worried that he might’ve overdosed. After the fourth time he swung his arm back at me but missed.

  “Hey, Hector, they think they can save the planet.”

  “Who?”

  “It’s me. Lucas.”

  “No, you idiot! Who thinks they can save the planet?”

  “This dude, the Catholic dude with the big hat. He was on the TV. Everybody is going to pray. The Christians, the Jews, the Muslims, probably Hindus and shit, all of them.”

  “Who the hell cares?” Hector turned over and went back to sleep.

  Jennifer

  We hadn’t spoken in days but finally I forgave Paul. I had resigned myself to the fact that I was never going to be a mother. Crawling out of our second story window with the picnic basket filled with the bottle of Pinot Noir and our best long stem glasses was awkward but neither of us plunged to our death as we clambered onto the top of our house to camp for the night. We were laying on the roof, the shingles under our backs still warm from the sun that day, holding hands, wrapped in my grandmother’s quilt, while staring at our new enormous moon and picking out craters that resembled animals the same way we used to do with clouds from a hillside with a sullied reputation when we first started dating. Out of the blue, Paul said that he’d been thinking about what I’d said and that he’d changed his mind. He said that he doubted that the global prayer day would actually get God to spare mankind but he didn’t care. If we died, the three of us would die together, as a family. I held him close as tears of joy ran down my cheeks. We soaked in the strangest, yet most romantic, ambience, finished half the bottle of wine, and then stripped our clothes off under Grandma’s quilt and got down to the business of bringing a baby into the world, two golden silhouettes on the skyline popping up for air occasionally, then going at it hungrily, feverishly, again. A few moon cultists watched us and cheered us on from the branches of an apple tree at one point but we didn’t stop and we didn’t care.

  FATHER DAVID MULLEN

  It was a breathtaking sight as I looked across a sea of people from nearly every denomination praying in unison for God’s mercy. Religious leaders prayed together, communicating over satellite. Maybe this was what God wanted of us, to bend our knees, to look to Him for our survival. After all, he had set everything in motion. Couldn’t He just as easily intervene as the rabbi believed?

  RABBI JAKUB

  Television sets tuned in everywhere as a scientist gave us the amazing news, that he had discovered an enormous asteroid traveling in our direction, and that by his estimation, after countless hours of calculating the courses and times of both the moon and the asteroid, that he believed that the asteroid was going to intercept the moon and destroy it before it reached our atmosphere. And the explosion would be so great that any fallout from the moon that reached the earth would be small enough that it would do minimal damage. What had happened was considered a bona fide miracle by even the most skeptical. The odds of an asteroid intercepting the encroaching moon were beyond fathomable. The world rejoiced. God had decided to spare us, His people.

  FATHER DAVID MULLEN

  “What a glorious day. If you want to gloat, Rabbi, you have my blessing. I’ll make an exception for this one day and I won’t even protest. I won’t say a word. You are right. Prayers truly are answered.”

  “It is a good day for all of us, David. And I know that you expect me to say that gloating is beneath a man of God but not today. I’m going to take a second to gloat.” He raised his hands to the sky triumphantly and smiled.

  “Go ahead, old man, go ahead.” I smiled back at him.

  PAUL

  The unity of the entire planet working toward one common goal had had a profound effect on the citizens of earth. Peace negotiations opened up between nations that had bathed in each other’s blood for as long as anyone could remember. Our planet seemed like it was finally becoming a family. There were enormous parties across the globe, ticker tape parades, prayer services thanking God.

  We all gathered around our televisions to watch the greatest light show of all time as the asteroid intercepted the moon and obliterated our peril. But the asteroid missed. It passed the moon by the sheerest of margins, leaving both bodies to continue on their courses. Everyone was shocked and disheartened. As the moon continued to move closer the inhabitants of the planet again counted down the days to destruction.

  Many sociologists in the past had speculated that if we were to ever look our extinction in the face the entire planet would succumb to a complete breakdown, total chaos, but knowing that our deaths were on our doorsteps had created the opposite effect. There was some looting and senseless violence but there were far more people that took the other road, the higher road. Soldiers put down their weapons and left wars to return to their families, and their superiors could see no reason to stop them. People began to explore their hearts for what really was important to them, and in most cases that was the people they were closest to. Brothers that had been alienated by distance came together. Sisters that had become too busy to keep in touch made it a priority. Parents, children, grandchildren, old friends, all renewed their bonds. Knowing that they would leave the Earth as one actually brought them closer together during their remaining precious time.

  FATHER DAVID MULLEN

  I sat across from the rabbi feeling so angry that I could barely contain myself. Angry at Jakub for giving me false hope. Angry at God for destroying his people.

  “It was like a cruel trick. God showed us our salvation and then He jerked it away from us. I was right, Rabbi, God did not answer our prayer.”

  “No, you are wrong, David. He did answer our prayer. He always answers. He said no this time.”

  On the last day of our existence Leonard heard a knock on his door. His son Ahmed, his daughter-in-law Anna, and his grandson Oscar stood outside the house. No words were needed. They embraced and Leonard wept. And then Ahmed did as well. Jacinta held Sophia as she sat in a pile of leaves, kissed the crown of her head, and stroked her hair, while Sophia teased her mother with an ant. Johnny sat on the roof of his house and chastised the naked moon cultists that danced below. They offered him apples in return. Martha sat with her daughter Carrie’s head on her shoulder on a bench in the park and fed the birds one last time. Lucas dropped his syringe and his dope into the trash and joined his Grandma Kay who had prepared a feast of glazed pork chops, mashed potatoes, squash, and lime Jell-O topped with pineapple rings - Lucas’ favorite meal since his grandmother had taken him in as a toddler. Hector got high and then went to sleep, never to wake again. Rabbi Jakub and Father David sat in the park and played chess. And Paul kissed his baby girl, Moondust, on the forehead one last time before pulling Jennifer close as the sky behind them burst into flames.