Chasing the Moon

by A. Lee Martinez

  The giant rubber hedgehog hunched beside the coffee table.

  “I know I saw it go under here,” he said. “I think it ran into the kitchen,” said Vom. “Oh, hey, Diana.” He grinned. Glimpses of red velvet showed between his sharp teeth. He spit out the sofa pillow he’d been sucking on like an industrial-sized Life Saver.

  “Sorry. Helps to keep my mind off my eating disorder.”

  He returned the saliva-coated pillow to its spot on the couch.

  “One day at a time and all that,” said Vom.

  She was annoyed, but only for a moment. Having Vom devour pillows was preferable to anything else that came to mind. She could’ve lived without his slimy drool soaking into the upholstery, but it wasn’t her couch.

  The hedgehog stood. He held a miniature version of himself in one hand.

  “Oh, hello,” said the monster to Diana.

  “Diana, this is Unending Smorgaz,” said Vom.

  “Hi,” she said.

  “Do you want to take care of this for me, Vom?” Smorgaz threw his miniature to Vom, who snapped it down in a single bite. “Thanks.”

  “No problem.”

  Diana wanted to sit down but didn’t want to sit next to Vom and his indiscriminate jaws. The air shimmered, and a recliner materialized beside her. She wasn’t sure if she had caused it or if the apartment itself had created the chair, but it seemed a moot point. She plopped into the recliner.

  “Smorgaz, could you excuse us a moment?” she asked. “I need to talk to Vom.”

  “Say no more. Think I’ll go for a walk. Anyone want anything while I’m out?”

  “Could you bring back a few dozen pizzas?” asked Vom. Diana could’ve probably wished for pizzas, but eating magical pizzas conjured up from the nethersphere didn’t sound very appetizing.

  “Sure thing. Do you want the pizza delivery guy too?”

  Vom’s stomach growled. Literally, the mouth on his gut grumbled, licking its lips.

  “No pizza delivery guys,” said Diana. “Or gals. Or puppies or kittens or anything like that.”

  Vom frowned. “Can we at least get sausage on the pizzas?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, a dozen sausage pizzas coming up.” Smorgaz trundled out the door, but she stopped him.

  “Do you have any money?”

  “No.”

  “How do you intend to pay?”

  “Pay?” Smorgaz tilted his head at an angle and a most curious expression crossed his face. “I’m sorry, but I don’t understand the question.”

  “You have to pay for them somehow.”

  “I do?”

  Unending Smorgaz glanced at Vom, who shrugged.

  “She’s unconventional.”

  Diana contemplated how Smorgaz planned on securing those pizzas, but, of course, he was a monster. Monsters didn’t carry cash. They just took what they wanted without thought for the consequences. That wouldn’t do. She couldn’t unleash a beast into the streets to terrorize every pizza delivery vehicle he stumbled across.

  She pulled some cash out of her wallet and handed it to Smorgaz. “Just seven blocks south, on the Corner of O’Brian and Swaim, there’s a little shop that sells two medium cheese pizzas for a good price.”

  “Only two?” whined Vom. “And what about the sausage?”

  “Fine.” She gave Smorgaz another few dollars and some change to cover tax.

  “What about garlic bread?”

  Se opened her wallet to let Vom see how empty it was. He slouched and stuffed the pillow back into his mouth with a pout.

  Smorgaz left.

  While she organized her thoughts, Vom noisily chewed like a petulant three-year-old.

  “Pork is meat,” he grumbled.

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Puppies are meat,” he said.

  “You’re not eating puppies. Not while I’m around.”

  “Have you ever eaten a puppy? They’re delicious.”

  “Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t everything delicious to you?”

  “I don’t care for broccoli,” he replied.

  She stared at him skeptically.

  “Just because I’ll eat it doesn’t mean I like it.” He leaned forward. “Anyway, when you get right down to it, everything in this universe is just a handful of atoms arranged in peculiar ways. Puppies aren’t different than pigs, carbon and nitrogen. It seems unfair to just eat one because of your own arbitrary cultural standards of acceptability.”

  “Arbitrary, yes,” she agreed. “But it doesn’t change anything.”

  “What about dogs? Full-grown ones, I mean?”

  “No dogs.”

  He opened his mouth, but she cut him off.

  “Just assume that if I haven’t okayed it, it’s off-limits.”

  Annoyed, he swallowed the pillow.

  “It’s clear we need to lay some ground rules,” she said. “If we’re going to be stuck with each other, we have to figure a way to make this work.”

  “Agreed.” Vom snorted. “I just don’t see why I have to make all the sacrifices.”

  “My sense of reality has crumbled. I’m bound to a monster that wants to devour everything all the time, including me. And I’m pretty sure I’m going to lose my sanity eventually. So if I’m going to have to deal with all that, the least you can do is not eat puppies.”

  Vom shrugged. “Fair enough.”

  “What I need from you now is some explanations about how all this… weirdness functions. If this is the world I have to live in, I’m damn well going to understand it. For starters, I need to know why the hell that monster tried to kill me this morning and now he’s hanging around, fetching us pizza.”

  “Do you want the complicated answer? Or the simple one?”

  A three-inch Smorgaz climbed up the wall beside Vom. He nabbed it and stuffell going in one set of jaws while talking with another.

  “The short answer is because of your connection with me, you aren’t quite in tune with your native reality anymore. It’s not a big deal, doesn’t really have a big effect on the universe. But it makes you a beacon, a shining light that draws the attention of certain misplaced inter-dimensional entities, such as myself and Smorgaz, seeking to reorient themselves in a confusing, unfamiliar world.”

  “He was confused and frightened and that made him want to kill me.”

  “He wasn’t trying to kill you. He was just attracted to the nearest thing that reminded him of home. It’s like he’s a lost rat that stumbled into someplace he doesn’t belong and he scrambled toward the nearest… rat hole he came across.”

  She snarled.

  “Maybe that came out wrong,” he said. “These rules aren’t universal. Plenty of alien things slip into your reality and either perish quickly or adjust without need of an anchoring force. But some are like me or Smorgaz, we don’t die, but we also function at such different levels that without something to ground us, we’d eventually probably do some very bad stuff. Mind you, most of that stuff would be the unintentional damage of a bewildered animal thrashing around in an ill-fitting cage.”

  “So you must have known something like this was going to happen,” she said. “Otherwise, why would you have followed me?”

  “I expected it sooner or later, but I had figured later rather than sooner. Just the same, I tagged along because… well, it’s not like I had anything better to do. And I like you. I like being around you. Being near you keeps me focused, relaxed, like a soothing melody.” Vom snapped his fingers. “Hey, that sounds a lot better than the rat-hole metaphor I tried earlier, doesn’t it?”

  “Just a bit. Let me guess… now that I’m Smorgaz’s reassuring tune I’m stuck with him just like I’m stuck with you.”

  “I’d avoid using the word stuck when Smorgaz is around. He’s a little sensitive. And when he gets this insecure he starts spawning like mad. We’ll be up to our eyeballs in clones before you know it.”

  “You don’t have eyeballs.”

  “Figure
of speech.”

  “That’s his thing then?” she asked. “Spawning?”

  “Yep. That’s his thing. Nobody does it better.”

  The sound of tearing carpet drew her attention to another pint-sized Smorgaz.

  “Yeah, you should probably get used to that,” said Vom. “Even when he’s trying to keep it under control, he usually spits out at least one Smorgaz Jr. every ten minutes. The unintentional ones tend to dissolve after about an hour, but they can be a handful.”

  The small creature raised its head and smiled at Diana as it shredded some carpet with its claws. Vom leaned forward as if to spring off the couch and pounce on the creature.

  “Oh, I forgot the new policy. Is it okay for me to eat Smorgaz’s half-formed spawns? Or are they on the puppy list?”

  She mulled it over.

  “Oh, come on,” said Vom. “You can’t seriously have a problem with that? They’re destructive little bastards who were never meant to exist in this slice of reality and have a shelf life of an hour.”

  His argument was hard to counter aside from some squeamishness on her part. But of all the things he could request to eat, this seemed most reasonable.

  “Okay, okay.”

  The small Smorgaz yipped and dashed behind the entertainment center.

  “Just as well,” said Vom. “They have a weird aftertaste.”

  There was a knock on the door.

  Vom perked up. “Is that Smorgaz? Are those the pizzas?”

  “Down, boy.”

  “I call dibs on the four biggest slices.”

  She suspected it wasn’t Smorgaz. He wasn’t a fast creature, and even if he had returned with the pizzas she wouldn’t expect him to knock. He lived here. She didn’t know what to expect, but it wouldn’t have been surprising to discover yet another weird monster entering her life. Instead it was a tall, goodlooking stranger.

  It was weirder than a monster.

  “Hi, I’m Chuck. Chuck from Apartment Number Two. Down the hall.” He glanced to his left, then his right, then down, then up. Then, just to be perfectly sure, he looked behind himself and double-checked his right flank again. “Could I borrow a cup of sugar?”

  “Number Two?” she said. “Oh, that’s the apartment with the… dog in front of it, right?”

  He nodded, put his finger to his lips. “Keep your voice down. It’ll hear you.”

  She peeked out into the hallway. The scaly creature was curled up outside Apartment Two’s door, and it appeared to be sleeping. But it didn’t have eyelids, so its bulbous dark eyes were always wide open.

  “Do you want to come in?” she asked.

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea. I just need some sugar. I’m baking a cake, and I’m a little low.”

  “Cake?” said Vom. “What kind of cake?”

  “Does it really matter?” asked Diana.

  Vom scowled. “We get it. I’m a voracious omnivore. You don’t have to keep pointing it out.”

  “Sorry. Didn’t realize you were sensitive about it.”

  “Sugar?” repeated Chuck.

  “One second. Let me go check.” She jogged into the kitchen, opened all the cupboards and drawers, but came up empty. Reality-warping magical powers at her disposal, and she couldn’t find a single sugar packet.

  Vom poked his head in the kitchen. “Check your pockets.”

  She found handfuls of sugar in her pants. She emptied a small pile onto the counter.

  “Did I do that or did you?” she asked.

  “Does it matter?”

  “Don’t suppose you have a cup on you?”

  Vom opened the freezer and pulled out an irregularly shaped mug.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  “Don’t mention it, but if lover boy happens to have an extra slice of cake lying around—”

  “You got it.”

  Diana scooped the sugar into the mug and returned to Chuck.

  “Here. Hope this is enough.”

  He took the cup. He glanced at the beast guarding his door, then silently mouthed a thank-you.

  You’re welcome, she mouthed back.

  She smiled, and he returned it with a warm, if slightly nervous, grin. He tiptoed down the hall and disappeared back into his apartment. When the door clicked shut, the dog hopped up and unleashed a long, high-pitched shriek. It sniffed along the edge of the door before snorting, retching up a glob of snot that it immediately gobbled down.

  Unending Smorgaz trundled up the stairs, past the dog, and pushed his way past Diana.

  “One side,” he said. “Hot pie, coming through.”

  “Finally!”

  Vom seized one of the boxes and jammed it halfway into his mouth, but he paused under Diana’s and Smorgaz’s watchful stares. Vom removed the pizza, set it on the coffee table, and slouched in a sulk.

  “Oh, okay,” said Diana. “You can have one pizza all to yourself, but you might want to savor—”

  Gleefully he snatched up the coffee table and swallowed the pizza box and a third of the table in one huge bite.

  “This is a great pie. Love the touch of sawdust.” His attention turned to the second pizza.

  “Are you going to eat all that?”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “It’ll only be a few hours,” said Sharon. “Are you sure you don’t want to come?”

  Calvin didn’t look up from his book. “Think I’ll skip this one, if it’s just the same to you.”

  “Everyone will be disappointed.”

  He dog-eared the page and set the book aside to help her put on her coat.

  “I wish you wouldn’t do that.” She winced.

  “I am the lord of beautiful anarchy, aren’t I? So I don’t use bookmarks, and I don’t attend every annoying pep rally Greg feels like throwing just because he’s bored.”

  “Now you’re just being snarky.”

  He helped her on with her coat.

  “You know how he adores you,” she said. “How they all adore you.”

  “Have you ever been adored by four dozen people at once? Trust me. It’s not as cool as it sounds. Anyway, if I showed up to all of these events, it’d stop being special.”

  “I guess you’re right.” She leaned in, gave him a polite hug. “Try to stay out of trouble now.”

  “I think I can manage on my own for an evening. Just going to hang out with the guys.”

  She paused. “So soon? Do you really think that’s a good idea?”

  “I’m not allowed to have friends now?”

  “You have friends.”

  “Greg and his loonies are not my friends. At best, they’re coworkers. Although really I do all the work.”

  “Yes, you do. It’s just… you know how crazy things can get when you get together with the old gang. Just promise me you’ll take it easy.”

  “You worry too much. Not like it’s the end of the world.”

  She patted him on the chest. “Make sure that it isn’t. Not yet anyway.”

  An elderly woman with wild gray hair, the nub of a green crayon clutched in withered, clawlike fingers, scrawled an endless string of numbers on the hallway just outside Benny’s door.

  She glanced up from her work and smiled. Her eyes glinted with madness.

  “Hello,” she croaked.

  Calvin nodded at her. Benny’s mere presence had this effect on people. He improved the efficiency of their squishy biological brains until they functioned like obsessive-compulsive supercomputers. This poor woman was working on an equation that disproved the universe. She had at least forty more years of scrawling to do, though.

  He knocked on the apartment door, and a fat worm with translucent skin showing pulsing, multicolored veins answered. Limbs ringed his body in peculiar asymmetry. Most ended in hands, though two were just stumps and one served as his nose. He wore a baseball cap secured to his “head” with masking tape. The rules for greater eldritch horrors varied. Calvin had no trouble passing for human, but it had less to do with his appearance
than with his separation from his more otherworldly self.

  The worm, on the other hand, required a disguise to avoid driving mortals mad. It didn’t take much: a T-shirt, a hat, sunglasses. Just something for the human mind to grab on to. Calvin wondered if the disguise itself created an illusion or if humans found the idea of a Benny, a giant, glistening maggot in a Raiders cap, so absurd that their peculiar brains decided to just accept it and move on. The end result was the same.

  Benny said, “Cal, what kept ya?”

  Calvin held up a grocery bag. “I stopped off for snacks.”

  He stepped inside, but before Benny closed the door Calvin told the woman, “You dropped a decimal point around the corner.”

  Frowning, she shuffled off to correct the mistake.

  Calvin handed the snacks to Benny. “You should probably move before you cause irreversible damage to that poor woman.”

  “I’d like to, but where am I going to find another place this good? Plus, it’s got rent control.”

  Benny slipped into the kitchen to put the beers in the fridge. Calvin had a seat next to Swoozie, who was playing video games.

  Even among eldritch horrors, Swoozie was one of the most incomprehensible. Her body was little more than a random collection of colors and alien geometries. She’d molded a pair of mismatched hands to hold the game controller, but the twisted fingers had a hard time reaching all the buttons.

  “Shit,” she said as she guided her pixilated hero off a cliff.

  Swoozie was lousy at video games. Hardly surprising since she was barely connected to this universe to begin with. She was like a puppeteer trying to control a marionette via a very, very long string and a telescope. And right now she was like a woman trying to use that marionette to control a second puppet composed of a few electrons dancing across a television screen. Sometimes Calvin envied Swoozie, who was almost free of the trap they were stuck in. And sometimes Calvin figured it had to be worse for Swoozie than for any of them. Like having to walk around with a bucket on your head for eternity.

  “Press the A button to jump,” said Calvin.

  Swoozie’s digital protagonist jumped the chasm. She hooted, and the sound caused the wallpaper to peel.