by J. R. Rain
We’ll see about that, I thought.
I had no business being here. I had no business dreaming of the moon. What was the point?
There wasn’t a point. I had no reason to want to fly to the moon, to soar over its bleak craters and crags and valleys and steppes.
And yet…
Yet, I did. I very much wanted to. It made no sense.
It makes more sense than you give it credit, Sam.
I considered his words as I flew now just below the outer limits of the atmosphere. I knew this because the oxygen was scarce and ice had long ago formed on my wings. In fact, great chunks of it broke loose and cascaded down into the night as I flapped.
Yes, I wanted to do it. Simple as that.
But it was, of course, impossible.
Oh? thought a voice inside my head, a voice that was either myself or the beast I presently inhabited. Or maybe a little of both. And you know this how?
Truth was, I didn’t.
I was certainly going faster than I had ever gone before. Still, not fast enough to break from the Earth’s gravitational pull.
Probably not, Sam.
Then what’s my answer?
But he didn’t respond, and I knew it wasn’t his job to provide me with the answer.
Can you maybe give me a hint? I thought.
What makes you think I have the answer, Sam? I am but a simple giant bat.
I nearly laughed. I doubted the creature I had become could actually produce the sound of laughter. More than likely, it would have come out as a high-pitched screech.
The answer. I thought about that as I flapped faster and faster. I suspected my job wasn’t to know. My job was simply… to believe. And the answers would come. They would come soon.
They had to.
Far, far below, through the cloud cover and smog, the city lights twinkled. No, I didn’t know where I was, exactly. Or the names of cities below. But an inner guidance system told me exactly how far I was from home, and just how to get back there.
Pretty cool, I thought.
Yes, I am, came the voice.
I smiled as I flew—and considered everything I’d been told tonight. As I did so, one thing became abundantly clear: I was in two places at once. And perhaps, even three.
Very good, Sam.
I had been told before—by entities far greater than I—that the majority of my soul resided in the spirit world, wherever that was. That our physical bodies were a living, breathing extension of our bigger souls; in fact, our physical bodies were but a temporary vessel to be used for personal growth. Now, I was being told that a part of me was with this creature, in another world. But how much of me was with him?
An essence of you, Sam.But it can become much more, if you choose it to be.
A picture appeared in my thoughts. It was of myself and the creature… and we were indeed together on a rocky ledge, although the creature wasn’t exactly sitting. Perched was more like it. Myself, I was squatting near the ledge, naked as the day I was born, looking down at a mist-covered landscape.
Why am I next to you? I asked. I mean, I thought our bodies were sort of, you know, melded?
It doesn’t have to be that way, Sam.
Then why isn’t it this way now? Here in my world?
Would you prefer we part ways now? chuckled the creature. It would be a mighty long drop for you, although, I suspect, you would survive it well enough.
I shook my head at the absurdity of it all, and then asked: Why do you come here? I mean, you obviously have free will. Surely, you aren’t being compelled?
More ice broke free from my wings. Stronger winds than I’d ever experienced before rocked me. Rocked us. Reaching, if I had to guess, well over 300 miles per hour.
I see it as an opportunity, Sam, came the reply.
To be with you. To, perhaps, help you.
But I thought the dark masters forced you into this role? The ‘dark masters’, of course, being the entities who fueled vampires such as myself, who gave us our powers and our immortality. And all they asked for in return was total possession of our bodies. Something I had been fighting, so far, successfully.
Not forced, Sam. As I said, we saw an opportunity and took advantage of it.
An opportunity for what?
To give balance to the darkness.
You work with the Librarian? I asked.
We do, said the creature. He and others like him.
So, there really is a war going on out there? I thought. A war for mankind?
We do not see it as a war. We see it as an ebb and flow of energy. Presently, your world is ebbing away from negativity and toward something beautiful. The dark masters, as you refer to them, fear this natural progression and seek to stop it, or slow it down.
We continued flying, and I was curious to note my new use of the pronoun “we.” Yes, I now thought of the creature and myself as a sort of weird hybrid team. As we fought through a maelstrom that was surely strong enough to collapse the sturdiest of skyscrapers, I thought, We can’t fly fast enough to escape the Earth’s atmosphere, can we?
No, Sam.
So, there’s no way for us to fly to the moon?
I didn’t say that.
The answer was close. I could feel it. I just had to figure it out. No, I just had to believe.
And so I flew, high above my home world. I quieted my mind and flew in peace, easily enduring the screaming winds, the freezing cold, and the lack of oxygen.
I was no longer a mom, no longer a sister, or even a private investigator. I was something huge and forgotten, something at peace and… happy.
And as I flew, a single image popped up in my thoughts.
The flame.
It was, of course, the same flame I saw each and every time I summoned Talos… or when I summoned my own human body. I suspect he and I were forever linked by that flame. A flame that connected worlds.
I gasped suddenly.
There was something to this. The flame. Yes, the flame. It was the key to it all.
Now, with the creature frustratingly silent and the high winds somehow increasing, I suddenly knew the answer.
The flame is a portal, I thought, excited. A doorway to anywhere.
An interesting concept, Sam.
Don’t give me that concept crap. Am I right?
There’s only one way to find out, Sam.
Indeed, I thought, and summoned the flame.
Within it, I saw myself.
My human self. Normally, I would move toward her, and she toward me, and we would rejoin. But not now, of course. Unless I wished to fall for eternity, which I didn’t.
Now, with a nod toward that spunky gal I loved so much—that gal who had put up with so much and handled life and death as best as she could—I dismissed her.
She returned my nod and stepped out of the flickering flame in the center of my thoughts, vacating it.
Okay, that’s a first.But, now what the devil do I do? The creature, of course, remained mum on the subject. Fat lot of good you are, I thought grumpily.
Small laughter just inside my ears. You’re doing good, Sam.
I grumbled some more and continued focusing on the empty flame. So what was next?
Easy, I suddenly thought. Something had to fill the flame. Something had to appear within the flame. I knew just what that something had to be.
Now, as I flew high above the West Coast of the United States, a streaking, hellish beast from another world that cut through the high winds faster than most fighter jets, I saw the surface of the moon.
Within the flame.
The surface took on more shape and detail—craters and rocks and dirt all appearing in perfect clarity. As they did so, something happened. Something startling. Something that would forever change my life.
I felt myself rushing toward that image.
Rushing to the moon.
This isn’t happening, I thought.
It can’t be happening.
I’m
dreaming.
Dreaming… dreaming…
I considered pinching myself, slapping myself… anything to awaken. Anything to prove that this wasn’t happening. That I wasn’t where I now found myself. Where I now found myself perched.On the surface of the moon.
The creature remained silent as I grappled with what stretched out before me: a rolling sea of bone-white hills. Silent, I suspected, so that I could soak it all in without distraction.
Yes, I had always had an affinity for the moon. I was almost—almost—not very surprised when I finally married a man named Danny Moon.
Often, I gazed up at the heavens. But not just the heavens. The moon itself.
The moon… always.
Okay. I nodded in the vastness of space. There is a small chance that this might be happening.
Stillness.
Complete silence.
Before me and all around me was an empty, barren landscape. I expected to feel wind, or to hear… something.
I heard nothing, felt nothing.
No, that wasn’t true.
I felt cold. Colder than I’d ever felt before. I was almost—almost—uncomfortable. But not quite. Not me. Not in this form.
I found myself on a steep, craggy rock. A tor, some might call it. I looked down and saw that my clawed talons were gripping a stony overhang. As I shifted, some of the rock broke loose and fell away. But the pieces didn’t fall away in a manner I was used to. They tumbled away as if in slow motion.
In fact, the rock and dust fragments almost drifted away, as if descending slowly through the deep seas. I was imminently aware that I was witnessing something few humans—mortal or immortal—had ever experienced.
I’m here. I’m really here. The moon.
The rock fragments finally hit a bigger boulder far below me, rebounded off it, seemed to hover briefly in mid-air, then continued down, finally landing in a puff of white dirt.
I knew from my research that the moon had only a hint of an atmosphere, and nothing close to oxygen. Which I didn’t need, not in this form and not in my human form. Lucky, right?
So what now, Sam? the creature asked.
I want to fly, I said.
Then so be it.
But can I?
Stretch out your wings… and let’s see.
You mean, you don’t know?
The creature chuckled in my head. I’m learning right along with you, Sam.
And so I did as I was told. I stretched out my wings—our wings. I stretched them wide… then beat them once.
There’s not much resistance, I reported back.
Keep going. I can help you.
Help me how?
I’m not from your Earth, Sam, or even from your universe. I can fly in extreme conditions.
Even with little or no atmosphere?
Try me.
I flapped them harder and harder. Now, I sensed the creature’s excitement, as well. This was a new experience for him, too. And he loved to fly. Boy, did he.
Luckily, so did I.
I continued flapping, generating some air movement around me, but not much. Dust particles billowed and stirred. I wondered if this was the first time they had ever done so.
Okay, I thought. Here goes.
I leapt off the rocky perch and into the surrounding blackness as I sensed the creature aiding my flight. I also sensed a sort of energy field around me. Was I, in fact, flying within it? Well, whatever it was, it seemed to work.
After all, I was flying.
High above the lunar surface.
It took some getting used to.
One thing about the creature’s body: it was engineered to fly… seemingly anywhere. Through time and space and everything in-between.
I stretched my wings and glided down a rocky escarpment. My shadow raced below me, as the sun itself bathed the moon as surely as it did the Earth.
That gave me a pause for thought: yes, I was in direct sunlight now, although it was muted and etched by the blackness of deep space. The sunlight did not seem to affect me or the creature. I next wondered if it would affect Talos back on Earth. In fact, I often wondered that.
I had never transformed into the giant flying bat back on Earth during the daylight.
You are not affected by the sun? I asked.
No, Sam.
So, when I am back on Earth…
Yes, you can transform and have my full strength during the light of day.
Mind, I said. Blown.
An Earth idiom, I presume.
You presume correctly.
But I am also much easier to spot, since I am a black, giant, vampire bat and all.
Good point.
No longer concerned about the sun, I continued my flyover. Surely someone with a telescope, somewhere, was reporting a bat-shaped anomaly moving across the surface of the moon.
I grinned evilly. Have to get my kicks in somewhere.
Before me was a massive, circular ring. And it was, to paraphrase Tammy… ginormous.
I followed the circle of rock, banking slightly; whatever meteorite had hit this had been huge, deeply scarring the moon face.
I veered away from the crater, aware of one thing. I was alone. Completely alone.
A whole world…
To myself.
I liked that.
I liked that a lot.
I dipped in and out of valleys, up and over small mountains and hills and ridges. Always, there was emptiness. Always, there was the silence. And with the silence, there was peace.
The only movement was my own shadow beneath me, weaving in and out of chasms and over hills, speeding rapidly along, keeping pace.
I continued flying—and continued laughing to myself. Mostly, I continued expecting to wake up in bed at any moment.
But I never woke up.
Through the exuberant, unbridled fun of it all, a worry finally surfaced, and the creature voiced it for me.
You can return, Samantha, as easily as you arrived.
Oh, thank God.
You are a gutsy woman to come here without a thought of how to get back.
Oh, I was going to get back. I thought. One way or another.
And I did get back, too. But not before I flew some more, sweeping high and low, taking in firsthand the mountain chains and plateaus and valleys that had rarely, if ever, been seen by man.
I grinned like a fool and dove down into a deep gulley, wings outstretched, just missing the sheer rock walls, then angled up, and up and up… and exploded out of the cleft and into the black void of space.
I hovered there briefly, surveying the surface… deciding where to explore next.
I saw it. Another crater. Deeper than the one before. It was wrapped in deep velvet blackness.
I dove down, ecstatic. Yes, I was flying over the surface of the Moon. The dark side.
Requiem: a song, chant or poem for someone who died.
“If death is the great equalizer, then some of us are just more equal than others.”
—Diary of the Undead
he was the last person I ever thought I would be friends with.
Then again, when you’ve been through the shit we’ve been through together, well, maybe it’s not so surprising, after all.
But still…
We sat on the back steps of my house, facing my expansive backyard and the Pep Boys sign that hung like a god over the far wall.
Friends, of course, might be too strong a word. And acquaintances just didn’t feel right, either.
A comrade, I thought. A comrade-in-arms.
Yeah, I liked the sound of that.
“Sounds, I dunno, a little Russian.” Nancy piped up, picking up on my thoughts a little too quickly for my liking.
“Well, we’re going with it,” I said.
“Suit yourself.” She shrugged, nonplussed. “And, for the love of God, will you blink?”
Admittedly, I didn’t blink much when I was around her, since I knew it freaked her out. There was still
some sass in me. Anyway, I could go for days without blinking. Generally, I had to remind myself to do it, anyway.
I now made a big show of the action, and she laughed and shook her head.
We were sipping wine and smoking cigarettes. One of us was buzzed and possibly laying the groundwork for lung cancer. The other would never get drunk or die of lung cancer, or die of anything other than silver to the heart. That someone, of course, just happened to be me. After a few minutes of silence, I asked, “How old are you?”
“Twenty-seven.”
“You were…” I did the math “…twenty-two when you met him?”
“Something like that.”
“Old enough to know better,” I said.
She shrugged, some of her old defensiveness coming through. That she was a functioning human after what she had been through was amazing. That she could acknowledge someone else’s feelings was a surprise. After all, my dead husband’s mistress had had a helluva childhood. I almost felt sorry for her. Almost.
She exhaled a long, billowing plume of blue-gray smoke and turned to me. “How old were you when you married Danny?”
“Twenty-one.”
“Back when you were human?”
“I’m still human!” I might have snapped at her a little. “I’m just, you know, weird.”
She laughed. “You are far more than weird.”
I shrugged and smoked and wondered again how, of all people, she and I had become friends. Through Danny, of course, a man we had both slept with, shared life experiences with, and might have even loved. Well, I had loved him. I couldn’t vouch for her, although I could have if I scanned her thoughts. I didn’t. Truth was, I never wanted to scan her thoughts again. They were dark and twisted—full of memories no one should ever have. Also, the last thing I wanted to see was an image of Danny in there, with her—and them going at it like feral rabbits.
“We never went at it like rabbits, Sam. Feral or otherwise.”