Blood Moon
Inspired by the video “Weather Service” by Local58: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M75VLQuFPrY&t
The sound of glass shattering rings painfully in your ears as your recoil from the sudden explosion of shards. Blood red droplets spray everywhere, pricking you with tiny needles of icy coldness and dyeing parts of your clothes shades of crimson. Cursing under your breath, you drop to the floor, reaching for the towels that hang in front of your oven to start mopping up the puddle of wine now lightly flooding your kitchen. There goes Ally’s favorite glass, you think as you dab at the shallow pool, careful to avoid as many of the glass shards as possible, she’ll throw a fit when she finds out. After the wine eventually dries up, you grab the dustpan from the nearby hallway closet to clean up the remains of Ally’s prize glass, wondering how long it would take for your roommate to notice her grandmother’s old wine goblet had disappeared. As you sweep, you wonder if you’d have enough time to order a quick replacement through Amazon. That’s a problem for tomorrow, you think as you dump the dustpan’s contents into the trash, Ally won’t be home until then anyway. Tonight is just for me.
Though normally you’d be joining your roommate on her wild Saturday night escapades in Boston, tonight you decided to stay in and relax for a change. You had a long week at work and desperately need even a few short hours to rest your mind, despite the numerous protests from Ally, her boyfriend Harry, and the rest of your friends. Besides, their plans for tonight aren’t your cup of tea anyway – they planned on going to this big skywatching party (plus a likely side quest to the nearest dispensary beforehand) on the Boston Common for a lunar eclipse that’s tonight. While the idea of smoking weed on the Common would normally sound appealing, you don’t think that, even while considerably high, staring at a slightly-more-orange moon would make for a great Saturday night story. Instead, you’ve chosen to stay home and get some well-deserved relaxation, topped off with a bit of wine and whatever strange documentaries pop up on Netflix.
“Really living the adult dream tonight,” you mutter sarcastically as you pour yourself more wine into a new glass and, careful not to drop it again, walk slowly from your kitchen to the attached living room. After setting the glass down on the coffee table, you quickly run upstairs to your bedroom to grab a change of non-stained clothes from your dresser, briefly admiring your sweatpants-adorned self in the attached mirror. After changing, you run by your bathroom and fill the sink to soak your strained clothes. As the sink fills, you look up at the tall ceiling and its out-of-place skylight. Why architects put a skylight here is beyond me, you think. After filling the sink, you finally go back downstairs and plop yourself onto the soft couch, sinking into the cushions while fishing for the TV remote. You turn it on, and the screen brings up the local news, where a flashy, made-up anchor with way too bright teeth is giving a rundown of the lunar event tonight.
“Well as you said, Tom, tonight’s lunar eclipse is sure to be a truly out-of-this-world event! Not only will it be a total eclipse in the Boston area, but it’s also going to be a ‘super blood moon!’ This basically means the moon is slightly closer to the Earth than normal, thus making it appear larger in the sky. Combined with the red color from passing through the Earth’s shadow, this moon tonight is sure to be a truly mesmerizing two-hour spectacle! But make sure not to stare for too long – you may forget to blink!” This terrible line makes you cringe, but the anchor begins to laugh at this own joke with an undeserved passion. At least he’s entertaining one person, you think. Just then, you feel your phone vibrate. You pull it out and see a text from Ally.
“Hope your loner night is going well! Picked up Mary Jane on the way 😉 the moon looks beautiful out tonight!”
Eager to not engage in a full text conversation, you reply with a basic gif of a cartoon dancing moon and set down your phone. Out of a quick twinge of curiosity, you kneel up on your couch to peer out the window behind you towards the street. You’re able to see the moon, and Ally wasn’t lying when she said it was beautiful. Certainly larger-looking than usual, the crystal ball-like orb glistens brilliantly in the cloudless sky. It is still pure white, telling you that the eclipse hasn’t started yet. As you look around, you notice the neighbors across from you, a family called the Flints, setting up a telescope on their front yard. You are careful to not let them notice you watching them – they’re nice enough, but their 1950’s-style white suburban blandness didn’t make them particularly exciting enough for you to get to know them. The husband works for a bank in the city, and the wife is a stay at home mom, neither of which you can relate to. Plus, you’re pretty sure their two kids, boy and girl twins, dented the back of your car while playing baseball one day in the street. You don’t remember their names, and after that incident, don’t care to learn them.
Sitting back down on the couch, you refocus on your need to turn off your brain and, with the remote, jump over to Netflix to begin scrolling through to find the weirdest documentary you can find. After skipping past “Ancient Aliens” and some ghost hunting series, you eventually settle on a multiple-part special on MK-Ultra. I think that passes the weird bar, you think, putting down the remote and settling in, ready for the tinfoil hat conspiracies you’re sure to enjoy for the next few hours. But no sooner than halfway through the show’s intro sequence do you find yourself nodding off, your body enveloped in coziness and your mind slowly slipping into exhaustion and wine-induced unconsciousness…
…
You’re not sure how long it’s been since you fell asleep. You groggily check your phone and see that it’s just past 10:30pm; however, you are immediately distracted when you realize what woke you up – a strange siren-sounding beeping coming from your TV. Disoriented from your sudden consciousness, you rub your eyes and try to comprehend what’s going on. As you become more alert, you’re able to make out the words flashing on your beeping TV screen.
EMERGENCY ALERT SYSTEM
BOSTON AREA
ISSUED
WEATHER WARNING
“What the hell?”
WEATHER WARNING
The Boston Area Weather Service has issued a warning for tonight’s astronomical event, please be advised.
Officials ask to not view the event with the naked eye. Harmful side effects may occur.
Thank you.
The emergency broadcast ends, bringing your screen back to a paused inactivity screen for the MK-Ultra documentary. You simply stare at your TV, trying to make sense of the message that just relayed through the beeping sirens. What did that even mean? “Harmful side effects may occur” – what side effects? You remember back to a solar eclipse that happened last year, where scientists warned against looking directly at it because of the damage it could do to your eyes. But that was because of the sun – what could be harmful about a lunar eclipse? And why were officials only sending out warning now?
Thinking of your friends, you again pick up your phone and send a quick text to Ally – “Did you get any emergency alert? They’re saying to not look at the eclipse directly, like a solar eclipse.”
She replies quickly. “Really? That’s weird, didn’t hear anything about that. If I start to go blind, I’ll come home lol Harry will appreciate that, he’s already asleep!”
“He’s not the only one,” you laugh slightly to yourself. It made sense he was feeling the same way as you are about tonight; you always felt a better connection with him than Ally anyway. As you think about this, Ally sends another message – “The moon looks beautiful out tonight!”
You raise an eyebrow at this. Didn’t she already send me exactly that? Knowing she was probably just stoned and not aware of herself, you overlook it and send back a simple thumbs up emoji.
Feeling more puzzled, and still groggy, than anything, you decide to look out your window again to see what the Flints were doing. As you expected, they’re still on their front lawn, taking turns looking through their telescope at the moon while the others stare up without it. Knowing they probably didn’t get the alert while outside, you decide to swallow your pride and tell them about it. You lift yourself heavily off the couch and walk the few feet to your front door, opening it lazily and stepping outside. The cold air of the October night immediately hits your skin, and you hug yourself to preserve some body heat. Not wanting to go far from the comfort of your home, you call out to the Flints from your doorstep.
“Hey, uh… excuse me? Mr. and Mrs. Flint?”
All four of the Flints immediately turn their heads toward you, and Mr. Flint gives a friendly wave. “Oh, hello! Wanting to watch the eclipse with us?”
“Uh, no thank you,” you say quickly, “I’m not feeling so great tonight.” Part of you feels bad for lying, and for being kind of rude, but you’re cold and wanting to get back to your warm couch and finish your wine. “I just wanted to let you know that we got an emergency alert on our TVs. They were saying something about the eclipse not being safe to look at without some sort of… protection? I’m not really sure.” You shuffle your feet a bit and rub your shivering arms. This is extremely awkward. “Just, uh… just wanted to let you know. Sorry for bothering you.”
“You’re no bother at all, dear,” Mrs. Flint coos warmly, “thank you for letting us know, we’ll keep that in mind. Don’t want to do anything silly or unsafe with the children!” She pulls in her two children closely, who wave ceremoniously at you. Brats, you think.
“Oh, the eclipse is starting!” Mr. Flint points towards the moon, and sure enough, the very left edge of it is now very slowly turning a dark, rust red shade. As you stare up at it, you can’t help but revel in moon’s brilliant glow. With its enhanced size, it appears magical, otherworldly, like a diamond peering through the darkness. It looked so mystical, so magnificent, so…
“The moon looks beautiful out tonight,” says Mr. Flint.
You stop, immediately pulling your gaze away from the moon and looking across the street at him. Mr. Flint is staring straight up at the moon, appearing completely captivated by its glow. Okay, that’s weird, you think, the fact that he just said exactly what Ally… no. Don’t even start with that, you’ll psych yourself out. You shake yourself from a paranoid spiral, trying to ignore as much of that really odd coincidence as possible. Once again feeling very cold, you decide it’s time to go inside. “Well, have a good night,” you call out.
“Oh, no, stay!” Mrs. Flint calls back. She too was now looking at the moon. “It really does look beautiful. Come over, we can all look together!”
“No, no, I’m fine, seriously,” you say, slightly more anxiously. You’re starting to feel uncomfortable, and not just because of the cold. “Again, not feeling very well. Thanks, though.”
“Well, alright then, dear,” Mrs. Flint says as you open the door and begin to step inside, “but feel free to come out anytime!” You close the door behind you, not looking back at them.
Feeling slightly unnerved, you sit back down on your couch and run your hands through your hair. You know there’s no reason to be feeling anxious – it’s just an eclipse, nothing more – but for some reason, you cannot shake the feeling that there’s something off. You reach for the neglected glass of wine on the coffee table and take two large sips of the now room temperature drink. “Just go back to sleep,” you mutter to yourself, “there’s no sense worrying about things that make no sense.” You turn the Netflix show back on for some white noise, hoping you’ll soon be asleep and will be able to forget about all this nonsense until the morning. Soon enough, you once again find yourself slipping off, falling dreamily into the darkness of unconsciousness…
…
The siren rattles you awake and aware immediately this time. As your eyes jerk open and you sit yourself up, you once again see an emergency alert flashing on your TV screen. The beeping siren wails, causing you to wince in slight pain. You then read the words scrolling on the screen in front of you.
EMERGENCY ALERT SYSTEM
BOSTON AREA
ISSUED
CIVIL DANGER ALERT
STAY INDOORS. DO NOT L-
The screen crackles for a second as the signal seems to go out. It returns a second later with a new message.
The warning for the astronomical event has been lifted. The sky is safe to observe.
Go outside now.
The alert ends, and the same paused Netflix screen reappears. As you sit there and stare at nothing, you wrack your mind in an attempt to comprehend the conflicting emergency alert messages. The words “STAY INDOORS” only appeared for a brief moment before instantly cutting to the next message. “Go outside now…” You put your face in your hands and rub your eyes. Something was very wrong here - these strange messages, on top of both Ally and your neighbors acting oddly, were more than enough to mess with your head. As you look up and look around your now dimly-lit living room and into your kitchen, the long shadows cast by the little light emanating the single lamp beside you appear disfigured, as if stretched too long and contorted in unnatural ways. Though the light from the lamp remains still, you swear the shadows are moving, twisting, dancing around you, mocking your confusion and resurged anxiety.
Desperate to ground yourself and escape your paranoia, you grab your phone and send a quick text to Ally, asking how she’s doing. “I’ll hear back from her and know everything is fine. Everything is fine…” you whisper out loud. You decide you need to move around a bit to clear your head and get your senses back. You grab your empty wine glass and head to the kitchen to wash it off. The water is scalding hot as you rinse the glass, slightly burning your hands. It’s a rude wake-up call, a hard slap back to reality. I need to calm down, you think, everything is fine. Nothing is wrong… what am I even worried about? I’m spiraling for no reason. You flip the glass upside-down on the drying rack, watching the remaining water droplets slowly cascade down its curved edges. Ally’s just high. The Flint’s are weird, nothing abnormal there. And the TV…
The water met the rim of the glass, spreading thinly out along it. Just some kids hacking into the station, probably. Nothing more than that.
You head back to the living room to check your phone and Ally’s response. She almost always responds right away to you, so you expect the minute it took to wash the glass was more than enough time to hear back. You open up your phone –
You message was marked as read. No response.
Okay, you think, trying to remain calm, she’s busy. She’s with her boyfriend and the rest of your friends, and she’s stoned. Stop being needy and overwhelming. She’s fine, you’re fine. Everything’s fine. You set your phone on the coffee table as you mind scrambles to fight off the paranoia creeping back into your system. “Okay, okay…” you mutter, fidgeting with your clammy hands, “breathe.” You know you’re overreacting to nothing, but you can’t shake the feeling of something being off. As you stand in your living room, along with only the mocking shadows dancing around you, you catch a glimpse of outside through your window. Though you can’t see the moon from here, you can tell it must be at or near it’s peak, as the street is now bathed in a deep red glow. As you look closer, careful, unconsciously, not to get in view of the moon, you get a look at the Flints’ yard.
All four of the Flints are standing side by side, the parents on the right and the children on the left, staring straight up. Their eyes are wide with bewilderment, and as you continue to stare at them, they appear unblinking. They stand unmoving as if they were statues, and for a brief moment, you can’t help but think they aren’t breathing. But as you wonder if you should go check on them again, the boy, the son, breaks his skyward gaze and, slowly, turns his head to face you. His unblinking eyes are dilated and huge, as if they are bulging out of their sockets, and an unnaturally wide smile stretches across his face.
You immediately slam the shutters of your window closed, locking the sides together as your hands shake. “W-what the h-hell…” You back away from the window, almost tripping backwards over the coffee table. “What i-in t-the actual hell…” You grab your chest – your heart is pounding heavily. You walk back into the kitchen and turn on the light, warding off the shadows. With the added light, you notice the front door beside your living room is unlocked and immediately run over to turn the latch shut.
“Okay…” you say shakenly. You look around your house at the other windows, as well as the back door, and hastily begin locking and closing all of them. You don’t know what you just saw, but you weren’t taking any chances with having unlocked or open windows and doors.
What was wrong with his face…
As you run around the first and second floors of your house, locking every outside connection you see, you desperately try to ground yourself again. This time, it’s no use – paranoia has gripped your mind like a parasite. Your mind is racing, making you feel lightheaded, and your breath is short and quick. You’ve never seen a human face contort like that, like a mall mannequin’s face that beginning to melt off.
Once you’re sure everything leading outside is shut and locked, you race back to your living room and fall on your couch, head in hands. Your body is shaking uncontrollably as you try to push the image of the Flint boy out of your mind. Something is going on, something really bad… what’s wrong with him? Why are they all just staring up? What about –
Your phone lights up. You grab it and open the notification. It’s a text from Ally.
“The moon looks beautiful out tonight.”
You throw your phone, and as the screen shatters on the floor, your TV ignites to life as the siren blares from it.
LOOK AT TH-
DO NOT LOOK AT THE ECLIPSE.
DO NOT GO OUTSIDE.
YOU ARE NOT ALONE. HIDE.
LOOK UP, AND YOU WILL –
The signal cuts out with a sharp burst of static, and as the sound of an explosion echoes in the distance, the lights in your house are suddenly snuffed out. A thick, silent surrounds you, and as your mind races, you feel lightheaded, as if the darkness is beginning to suffocate you. You bolt up, running to nowhere, but your foot catches on the coffee table, sending you hurling forward and face-first onto the floor. You cry out in pain as you collide, and as you roll over you instantly feel a giant, bloody welt forming on the forehead of your spinning skull.
You lay there for what could have been a minute or hours, dazed by the impact and disoriented by the encroaching darkness. The only bit of light is the blood red glow peaking through the shades of your window. You’re not sure what compels you – an unwilling curiosity amongst fear – but you find yourself pulling yourself up and crawling towards the window, towards the glow. You clamor onto your couch and pause, your face inches from the window. All you have to do is open the shutters and look up. You hand reaches to pull them open, but a part of you screams out from inside your mind and breaks you from the trance as your hand pulls the shutters open. You force yourself to look not up, but straight ahead – towards the Flints’ yard.
All four of the Flints are staring at you. Their unblinking eyes are wide and wild, their irises swallowed up by huge, empty pupils. Uncanny smiles stretch across their faces, as if the edges of their mouths were forcefully pulled back, and their skin looks grey and waxy beneath the unnatural red glow from above. You force your own eyes to close, praying that when you open them, all of this will disappear. You open them and, while the glow remains, the Flints are gone.
You step slowly back from the window, your breath shallow and heart racing. Where did they go…
There’s a knock on your front door.
You stumble back in fight, barely suppressing a scream. The knocking continues – slow, without a pattern. A high-pitched, scratchy voice sounds out. “Hello, dear? Are you there?”
It’s Mrs. Flint. Her voice sounds like it’s been strangled, like her throat is filled with blood. She knocks again. “The moon looks beautiful out tonight, dear. You should come look.”
You remain silent, putting a hand up to your mouth to muffle your breathing. You’re careful not to move a single muscle. The erratic knocking continues.
“It’s your turn, dear. Come look. Come look up at the moon.”
There are a few moments of still silence. The air feels cold and heavy around you, and the darkness is agonizing. Finally, Mrs. Flint draws in a painful-sounding breath from outside your door.
“Make no mistake, dear. You will look, or They will make you. Have a blessed night – we will see you soon.”
You hold your hand over your mouth for several minutes of silence afterwards. Once you feel like you’re alone again, you immediately drop to your knees in search of your shattered phone. Ignoring Ally’s latest message – “let’s look together” – you rush your fingers over the cracked screen to dial 911. To little surprise, you are received by only static. Whatever that explosion was must have knocked everything out… You try to turn on your phone’s flashlight, but it seems to have broken along with the glass of your screen.
Pocketing your phone, you try to remember where you have a flashlight stored. “I think there’s one in my bedroom,” you whisper, your voice cutting through the silence of the darkness like a knife. You slowly begin making your way up the stairs across from the front door, creeping up every step as if the slightest wrong placement could ignite the whole house in a burst of flames. At this point, that’d be the most logical to have happen, you think. Your mind feels tattered and in pieces, unable to fully comprehend what is happening. Mrs. Flint mentioned “They…” Who the hell are “They”?
You shake your head as you reach the top step, feeling around ahead of you with your foot. It’s even darker up here without the slight red glow from the window. None of that matters now – nothing besides getting that flashlight. Then I’ll figure everything else out. Heart still pounding, but with a newfound grounding of a goal, you make your way towards your room.
As you step cautiously down the hallway, you keep your head directed towards the floor. The lump on your forehead is throbbing, and you feel a slight trickle of blood near your eyebrow, but you can’t worry about that now. The gripping paranoia is ever present, and as you near the door to your room, an aching pressure forms in your chest as you imagine what might be waiting for you on the other side of the door. Your footsteps, however light, sound like crashing boulders to you, and you can swear you can hear them echoing back to you as loud thump, thumps from the ceiling above you. Your breathing shakes a bit, but as you reach the doorknob to your room, you steady yourself with a deep breath. Exhaling, you open the creaking door and step into the room.
To your relief, though bathed in the bloody glow of the moon, the room is empty besides yourself. You walk past your mirrored dresser and cautiously towards your bedside table before sifting through the drawers, eventually finding the small flashlight you have hidden in there. You ignite the flashlight and turn to leave, and as you instinctively look at the mirror as you pass, you take in a ghastly sight – yourself. Your hair looks tangled and matted from stress, your eyes look wide and tired, and a large, bleeding lump protrudes from your temple, with a thin streak of blood falling down near your eye. You look pale of fright from not just your situation, but of yourself. You stare at yourself and can’t help but think, I look almost as abnormal, as inhuman as they did. And as you stare, you imagine that you see them staring back at you, their contorted faces grinning beside you, their half-sized bodies flanking you with hungry eyes, like wolves ready to strike their target…
You whirl around, flashlight in hand, ready to strike down the demonic children behind you. However, all you see is your bed and the bedside table. You wave your light around, checking every corner, but there’s nothing. Yet you turn back to the mirror and there they are, the twins, staring at you through your dresser mirror, their smiles even wider than before. Your heart pounding like a drum and your head feeling faint, you bolt out of the room, slamming the door shut behind you. You press yourself against the opposite wall, shaking violently against it. They were there… oh my god, they were in there…
A loud noise thunders above you and further down the hall, towards your bathroom. The pressure in your chest increasing, you aim your flashlight down toward it. A faint red glow emanates from the open bathroom door. The bathroom skylight… shit! You dash towards the end of the hallway and into the bathroom, glancing just enough up towards the skylight to see that it had been opened. As panic seizes you, the door slams behind you. You turn and see Mr. Flint, his mad eyes bulging out of their sockets and his gaping grin twisted open.
“Hello, neighbor,” a croaking, gurling voice fell out of his mouth, which barely moved as he talked. He took a step towards you. “The moon looks beautiful out tonight. Why don’t you look?”
“W-what the hell are you?!” you stammer out. You hold your flashlight, the only thing that could possibly act as a weapon, out in front of him. Your hands are trembling uncontrollably.
“I am me,” Mr. Flint gargles, as if he were drowning, “and I am Them. They wish you to be Them too. Won’t you look? We can together.”
“GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY HOUSE!” you scream, your voice shrill and shaky.
Mr. Flint shakes his head rigidly, his eyes unblinking and never leaving their gaze at you. “Shame. That’s no way to treat a guest. And we are all guests under Them. Come, I’ll show you.” He suddenly rushes at you, and before you can react, he grabs you by the throat and smashes you into the wall. His grip is iron tight, and you quickly feel your lungs grasping for air. You flail against him, pounding the flashlight against his head and face. One blow catches his left eye, leaving it bloody and swollen. His smile doesn’t waver.
Just as you feel yourself losing consciousness, as your eyes begin to roll back into your head and your lungs seize for life, Mr. Flint releases you, dropping you to the floor. Gasping for breath, you begin to crawl past him, desperate to escape. However, he catches you by the hair and forces your head roughly back so that you’re facing the skylight. You close your eyes just in time to avoid staring straight towards the blood-filled sky. You feel the urge to look rising in you, primitive curiosity prodding you to open your eyes and relinquish control. You feel Mr. Flint kneel down behind you, his ice-cold breath on your neck. “Do not be afraid. Fear is reserved for the unknown. You don’t have to be in the dark anymore. Look.” You feel your eyelids trembling, longing to open, itching to know…
With all of your remaining willpower, you throw yourself forward, tearing your hair from your skull and out of his reach. Roaring in pain, you rebound and throw yourself on top of him, pummeling his face and body with all of your strength. Mr. Flint simply laughs, staring awestruck past your and up towards the skylight. “It’s… beautiful…” he gasps as you punch and scratch his face again and again. With one final blow, you stagger back, catching your breath, pleading that your rage had been enough. Terror engulfs you again when Mr. Flint, slowly, begins to rise, his face battered and bloody, yet grinning and unblinking all the same. He advances toward you again, but you act first. You grab him by the side of his head and slam him face-first into the bathroom mirror. You smash in his head again and again as blood, brain, and glass are thrown everywhere. A horrible scream rattles your mind, and you’re not sure if it came from Mr. Flint, you, or something else.
…
For how long you lie on the floor, next to your neighbor’s broken and disfigured corpse, you cannot say. Your breathing is shallow and sporadic, your body shaky and clammy. The blood-and-matter-soaked floor stains your clothes like the deepest red wine, and the glass around you reminds you of shattered ice. Eventually, you will yourself to stand, not heading the sharp pains from your scratched hands as they make further contact with the glass. Slowly, you exit the bathroom, stumbling, exhausted, down the hallway towards the stairs, past your open bedroom door and the cool draft emanating from it, towards your coach, towards rest.
Each stair feels like descending a mountain. Once you reach the base, you nearly collapse onto the door, stopping yourself with your hands and leaving two bloody prints upon it. You head towards the kitchen to wash yourself in the sink. So close… you think, your mind moving as if through mud, then I can sleep and wake from this nightmare…
Your phone begins to buzz in your pocket. Startled, you take it out to see who the caller is. It’s Harry. You answer it, but before you can say anything, a bloodcurdling wailing erupts from it.
“Harry?!” You put the phone to your ear despite the horrifying scream. “Harry, are you there?!”
“Oh my god you answered! Please, help… it’s her! It’s Ally!” Harry yells through the phone through wails and sobs, “I don’t know what happened… I fell asleep, and when I woke up, she was standing over me, the moon behind her. Her face was twisted, demented… she wanted me to look. She killed the others… I ran! SHE’S TRYING TO KILL ME!” Henry sobs louder, sounding like a wounded and cornered animal. “SHE’S GOING TO KILL ME. PLEASE, HELP! PLEASE – ”
Harry suddenly stops. His breathing is short and shaking through the phone. “Oh god…” he quietly cries, “oh god, no… please…” His pleads grow louder.
“No, no, no, PLEASE!” his sobbing intensifies until it could rupture an eardrum, “PLEASE ALLY, NO! STOP!! ALLY – ” You hear the phone drop onto a hard surface as Harry’s screaming falls distant. Then, multiple sickening cracks, followed by silence. You wait, holding the phone to your ear, as your knees buckle and you fall to the floor, pushing your back against the lower kitchen cabinets behind you. You wait for an eternity, and then you hear a rasping voice from the other side of the phone.
“The moon looks beautiful out tonight. Don’t worry, They’ll make sure you see for yourself.” A cruel, icy laughter emits from the phone, which you once again throw across the room. It shatters into pieces against the wall. As you hold your bloody hands to your face, hyperventilating, you hear your TV suddenly burst to life from your living room. The same siren blares from it, though this time it sounds distorted and offkey. A voice rings out over it.
TO ALL THOSE HEARING THIS, DO NOT LOOK AT THE MOON. DO NOT GO OUTSIDE. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, HIDE!
There’s a brief second of static, followed by a second voice, straining and gargling, over the siren.
There is nothing to fear. Go outside now. Look up, and see what They see. Know the truth, and your fear will vanish.
Another blast of static, and the first voice returns.
DO NOT SPEAK TO ANYONE. DO NOT LOOK AT ANYONE. DO NOT LEAVE YOUR HOME OR ATTEMPT TO FIND ANYONE. THEY WILL FIND YOU.
More static.
Free will is an illusion. We will all look. It’s in our nature, to seek out the unknown. The more you know, the less you fear. Look with us.
SAVE YOURSELF. DO NOT LOOK AT THE SKY. DO NOT LOOK AT THE MOON. THEY’LL KILL US ALL!
What They want is peace. What They want is bliss. They offer to relinquish us of this burden. Take it.
IF YOU LOOK, YOU WILL DIE! HIDE!
If you look, you will be free. Look. Do not fear – we will all look together.
As the demented siren continues to blare and the second voices speaks over it, you suddenly hear loud footsteps wrack your house above you. They violently rush overhead and descend down the stairs. You see the Flint twins, eyes and smiles uncanny, appear at the bottom of the stairs. The boy reaches to unlock the front door. You start to stand to stop him, but the girl gets to you first at an unnatural speed, forcing you to the ground with a strength impossible for a child. The boy opens the door, and there stands Mrs. Flint, her eyes bulging and grin widest of all. The boy and Mrs. Flint approach you, where her daughter has you pinned against the floor. You scream and struggle, kick and flail, but your efforts are hopeless. The boy kneels beside you and helps his sister pin you down. Mrs. Flint leans over you and puts her face mere inches from yours. You feel and smell her icy and sulfuric breath as you stare, horrified, into the emptiness of her mad eyes.
“Now, my dear,” she said, her voice cracking over the blood oozing in her mouth, some of which falls onto your face and mixes with your own, “it’s time to look.”
The twins twist you around onto your stomach and begin dragging you by your ankles. You thrash and scream, spitting and coughing as you go, desperately trying to grab onto anything you can to stop them. All you can do is struggle and wail, just as Harry did, as the twins drag you outside of your house and onto the cold, eerily-luminated street. You close your eyes tight, knowing what will happen, but pleading with your mind to resist. The twins stop, pull you up onto your knees, and hold you still with unnatural strength. You keep your eyes squeezed shut as tears rush from them, mixing with yours and Mrs. Flint’s blood on your face. Your heart is pounding, and your head feels weak. Resist… you plead to yourself, resist…
You hear Mrs. Flint walk around you and stop in front of you. You feel her inches from you again. “It’s time, dear…” she whispers softly, her breath cold and voice hollow, “look.”
The twins pull what’s left of your hair back as you let out an inhumane scream. You scream and scream until your voice shatters and your lungs collapse. With this, you lose control, and for a split second, you open your eyes.
Mrs. Flint is silhouetted by a brilliant crimson light. She steps to the side, and you look towards the sky. You stare into the Blood Moon, and They stare back. Your ears fill with white noise and your pain recedes as your body and mind grow numb. A grin grows wide across the flesh of your face, and your eyes bulge with ecstasy. You have nothing left to fear. Fear is of the unknown, and They have shown you the truth of it all.
The moon looks beautiful out tonight…
Written during the autumn of 2020.
The End
