Moon Shines on Earth's Creatures

The empty glass bottle lets out a deep, hollow groan as it rolls across the hardwood, clunking each time it stumbles across a gap between the floorboards, before it clinks into a wooden crate. It rebounds slightly before settling into silence, the clear liquid within sliding across the glass and settling into a shallow pool in its belly. He looks at it with a wavering, bloodshot eye that stretches impossibly large in the rounded glass, and he thinks to himself that the last drips are 80% saliva or something ridiculous like that. Then he thinks of the glass bottle, stretched into being by a man’s breath, how those last drips are like the inevitable spittle inside a balloon, and this amuses him. He smiles a yellow smile, too tired to laugh, wheezing and sputtering.

Oh God, he groans. Even just trying to laugh makes him feel like vomiting; he can hear the liquids in his stomach gurgling with every shake. He rolls onto his back and looks up at the ceiling. Every crack of it familiar, every crooked line and seam of hardwood like the wrinkles on his face, or the way the water used to trickle down her skin over her round breasts and buttocks, over her closed eyelids, streaming off her nipples like young men diving over cliff sides, naked. And the wood is naked too, the paint peeling in all directions, spreading from that jagged hole in the roof where the rain falls through, clinging to the splintered wood before dropping onto his upturned face. He closes his eyes and remembers the feeling, the cool splash on hot, steaming flesh; the deep, satisfying huffs and the hay clinging to red, sweaty cheeks.

He opens his eyes and the sky is clear, a dark purple splashed with diamonds, cool and crisp. They shine on the glassy surface of his eyes, dazzling him, as if he were a cartoon character knocked silly. His head spins and reverberates. She is twirling him in a dance.

He feels flat, suddenly aware of the floor along his spine, lifting him like an upturned palm, offering him to the gods. He thinks of how he can see so many stars from such a small hole in the ceiling, a pinprick of the universe. And he sees the moon, a white spectre across the sky, gazing down serenely. Fuck the moon. Fuck the sky and fuck everything in it. And yet he feels still, here, cradled in a pocket of time, as if the world has stopped for this one moment. What if everyone else left in the world is lying down as he is, drunk with despair, contemplating the minutes slipping between their fingers? He feels secure in his aloneness, that others are also alone and waiting, somewhere far removed. An attic. A locked bathroom, in the bathtub, curtain drawn. Little buried ants, praying never to be found. He prays never to be found, but he knows she is looking for him already. Can she find him, here? Of course she can. She will.

He lies like that, pondering aimlessly in all directions, lost in a world without time. That was always his problem, she had told him. Too many "what ifs," nothing concrete and serious. He'd argued that there was nothing dangerous about hypotheticals, and dared her to try one, just for fun.

“If you ever died,” she had said, sitting in a coffee shop, swirling a creamy vortex thoughtfully with a stir stick, “I think I would kill myself."

"So would I," he said, and placed his hand on hers, tenderly. "Wanna keep it simple and go double?"

Laughter and flailing smack.

"You're a jackass."

But there was a twinkle in her eye.

He's too drunk to stop smiling. Maybe it's the irony, or the tears in his eyes, or maybe it's just the memory of her. Maybe it's a sob and maybe it's a drunken hiccup. He can't decide.

All he knows is that he dreads being found by her, like a boy hiding under the bed, waiting for the feet to appear, for the cover to be ripped up and the monstrous face to surge under. He rolls to his side, looks down over the edge of the hayloft, and stares at the barn's door, barred shut. Imagines her furiously pounding the door, seething. But it is too late. There's no turning back now.

He lurches up into a sitting position and immediately regrets it. His head is like a wrecking ball, dense and heavy, dropping deep and low, swinging high into the air. He thinks he might fall onto his back like a man shot through the chest until he realizes that he reason he feels he is spinning is because he is. He is sitting up, swaying his body around and around, drunkenly acting out his inner state of mind. He tries to climb onto his feet, brace himself against the angled roof, but he stumbles onto his ass. Notices the shotgun beside him.

The sight of it makes his already-pounding heart leap up harder into his throat, makes him feel like vomiting again. He had forgotten about that shotgun, didn’t want to remember it, but he knows the ultimate purpose of it being here. He just needed a drink, first. Or two. Closing his eyes, he lets his body sway on an internal ocean of booze. Tries hard not to imagine bloody pulp and crushed eggshells sneezed against the wood wall, but it all comes back to this conclusion.

He wishes he could just get on with it. But there is something about those last living moments that makes him want to enjoy himself, one last time, like a soldier drunkenly swinging a girl around, his money gambled gone, unable to look into those desperate eyes as they fuck for fuck’s sake because they both know this could be the last human touch they ever have and every moan is anguish. The complete abandonment of impending death. Only it's much more miserable alone.

But he won't be alone, he reminds himself. He leans back against the wall, sweating, swallows. Cradles the shotgun against his head. The cold nip of steel the last link to the physical world. Oh God, please just let it happen.

Then he hears it. The slow, ambling steps coming up to the barn, her dry, rasping voice, as if she's been crying too much. Her words are muffled groans. He quickly stands up, peers out the hole in the roof, only to catch a glimpse of her flower dress disappearing. It strikes him just how desolate the world seems outside. Quiet.

The barn door rattles. She's found him. He lifts the gun up to his shoulder, gets himself ready. As a second thought, kicks down the ladder so she can't climb up and stop him or make him lose his nerve. The sweat drips cold along his face.

Suddenly the door shatters, splinters flying from the hinges and she comes running in, screaming, her hair loose, teeth dark and bloody. Dirt and blood caked across the front of her dress, her hair, from her fingernails down her arms as she shrieks and claws wildly up at him. He clenches his eyes shut and screams.

The world is quiet outside. Two shots ring out, settle into nothingness. The moon peers through the barnyard roof, and shines on Earth’s creatures.