Chasing the Moon

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.

“Hey, watch it,” said Benny.

“Sorry.”

A virtual gargoyle swooped down and decapitated Swoozie’s hero. The corpse collapsed in a heap.

“What the hell?” growled Swoozie. “Get up, you stupid bastard.”

“Humans can’t live without their heads,” explained Calvin. It was easy to forget that.

“That’s crap. I don’t see why I have to be saddled with such a silly weakness just because humans don’t have the imagination to realize that their limitations are not required for a video game character.”

“These games are marketed with a human audience in mind,” said Benny.

“It’s discrimination.” Swoozie reached around space and grabbed one of the beers from the fridge without getting up from her seat. The hole in space she pulled the beverage from didn’t disappear right away. It just hovered there.

“Hey, hey, hey,” said Benny. “What the hell did I tell you about respecting the space-time continuum in my home?”

“Oh, just sweep it under a rug or something,” replied Swoozie.

Calvin reached into the hole and grabbed a beer of his own. Benny glared.

“What?” Calvin smiled. “It’s there. Why not use it?”

The teeth in Benny’s circular mouth twirled counterclockwise. His version of a frown.

“So what are we doing tonight?” asked Swoozie.

“I don’t know,” said Benny. “We could get something to eat, maybe see a movie.”

“Oh no.” Calvin waved his arms emphatically. “Not after the last time.”

Individually, Calvin’s, Swoozie’s, and Benny’s presences were corrosive tumors on thin-skinned reality. When they were together, the effect was only increased. That was why they got together only once every few weeks, only for a few hours, and rarely in the same location. Predictability could go right out the window. Or the door. Or maybe up the chimney. Or screaming into the night while riding a chicken and dragging the mangled corpse of causality behind. Because even metaphors were fair game for their influence.

The last time the three had gone to the movies, a giant lizard had stepped off the screen and roasted the audience to cinders with its radioactive breath. Within hours the city had been reduced to a smoldering ruin. Reality’s way of fixing itself eventually erased most the damage, but that sort of thing could put an undue strain on the already fragile sanity of most human minds. A concession-stand girl was still in a mental ward, haunted by nightmares of rampaging mutant dinosaurs.

Calvin had sent her a few apology cards. Unsigned, no return address, with an inspirational quote and sorry about the dreams written in the corner. Eventually he realized this probably wasn’t helping her, so he stopped.

“We’ll go see something safe,” suggested Benny. “Maybe a chick flick.”

“I don’t think so.” Swoozie formed a fe. The eyes were misaligned, different colors, and the ears rotated like pinwheels. But the mouth grimaced just fine. “If it doesn’t have ninjas in it, I’m not interested.”

“And I promised Sharon no more movies,” added Calvin.

Benny clicked his teeth.

“What?” asked Calvin. “Do you have a problem with that?”

“Not at all,” said Benny. “If you’re happy being kept on a short leash, it’s none of my business.”

“So says the insurance adjustor.”

“Hey, a worm’s gotta eat.”

“Do you?” asked Swoozie.

“Actually, I’m not sure about that,” said Benny. “Never tested it.”

“Face it, guys,” said Calvin. “We’re neutered. Let’s not fool ourselves.”

Swoozie drifted off the couch and over to the window. “We don’t have to be. Why don’t we go out and show this world how insignificant it is?”

“And where would that get us?” asked Calvin.

“It’ll make us feel better.”

“For about ten minutes. Then everything will restore itself, and we’ll be reminded that this world isn’t the only thing that’s insignificant.”

The three ancient entities said nothing for a while. For a timeless being from beyond eternity, Calvin suddenly felt very old.

They carried on with the evening, tried to have a good time and forget their problems, but the damage was done. They were all trapped in circumstances beyond their control. Calvin figured that must be how humans felt, or would feel if they weren’t saddled with their limited perceptions. They were a remarkably dim-witted species, and he envied that.

They called it a night early. Benny offered a halfhearted excuse, saying he had to get up early. Swoozie mumbled something about having to eat a dying star.

She faded to a sparkling point of light. “See you in a few weeks then?”

“I’ll have to check my calendar,” replied Benny. “Think I might be cocooning.”

“And there’s this thing I have to do.” Calvin tried to downplay it, but there was guilt in his voice.

Swoozie rematerialized. “A thing? What kind of thing?”

“Just… a thing.”

Benny’s veins darkened. “Spit it out, Cal. What are you keeping from us?”

“I might be getting out,” said Calvin softly.

“No king? For real this time?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. There’s this stellar alignment thingamajig, and it might allow full reintegration. That’s what Greg says anyway.”

“I thought you said he was a dumbass,” said Benny.

“He is.” Calvin half-smiled. “But he usually knows what he’s talking about when it comes to this sort of thing.”

“So what do you think?” asked Swoozie. “Do you think he’s right?”

“He could be. I have been feeling a little different lately.”

“Different how?”

“I don’t know. Just different.”

Calvin gazed out the window, at the moon rising. Fenris pursued. Calvin felt the boiling ache in his gut. He couldn’t quantify it with inadequate human words built upon inadequate human concepts.

“Hell, buddy,” said Benny. “Why didn’t you tell us?”

“I guess I just didn’t want you guys feeling bad about it.”

“Are you kidding us? You’re in deeper than either of us.” Swoozie slapped Calvin on the back with a twisted tentacle. “If you get out, then there’s hope for everybody.”

“We have to celebrate,” said Benny.

“We don’t have to make a big deal about this,” said Calvin.

He’d been close to integration before. But in the end it was just chaos and madness and the collapse of a civilization or two, a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing. The real reason he had been reluctant to bring it up had nothing to do with Swoozie’s or Benny’s possible jealousy. They understood how important it was to him more than anyone. He just didn’t want to get his hopes up.

“It’s probably not going to pan out,” he mumbled. “It never does.”

“Can you believe this guy?” asked Benny. “He’s about to get what we all want and he’s moping.”

“Have you told your better half yet?” asked Swoozie.

“No, I’d rather not bother—”

Swoozie vanished so swiftly that she tore a hole in the space-time continuum. A hideous many-eyed thing tried to slip through the portal and into this reality. Benny unleashed a warning shriek that made his upstairs neighbors’ ears bleed. It was the cosmic horror equivalent of “Watch out. You’re about to step into an alien universe, and it’ll be hell to scrape off your shoe.”

With a thankful screech, the thing withdrew.

Swoozie returned through the same warp in reality she had left, plugging it. She formed a pair of disembodied shoulders and shrugged. “He didn’t seem excited to hear the news.”he

“I could’ve told you that,” said Calvin.

Fenris was blessed with a single-minded stupidity. The moon, his eternal prey, occupied what little sentience he had. And that sentience wasn’t even developed enough to catch a celestial body following a fixed orbit.

“This is great news,” said Benny. “We should celebrate.”

“I thought we were going to call it a night.”

“This could be our last chance to hang out. You can’t leave your friends behind without one last night. For old times’ sake. Back me up here, Swoozie.”

“Ah, what the hell?” Swoozie said. “I can always find another star to eat.”

Benny changed out of his baseball cap. He draped a sports jacket over his back, taping it on his absent shoulders.

They found a T.G.I. Friday’s just around the corner, where they spent the rest of the evening reminiscing about the many millennia they’d shared in this common cage. Then Swoozie had one too many beers and belched forth a yellow fog, and everyone in the restaurant began to shriek and claw at their own faces. It put a damper on the mood.

As they left the establishment, reality fixed itself. Like it almost always did. That was the real annoyance that the three eldritch faced. They didn’t belong here, and the universe reminded them of that every day.

“Look at the time,” said Swoozie. “There’s a binary system in collapse, and if I don’t make it, it’ll just go to waste.”

“And I’ve got a big meeting,” added Benny.

They exchanged one last round of handshakes.

“Hope I won’t be seeing you around, guys,” said Calvin with a smile. “At least not on this particular realm of existence.”

“I hear you,” said Benny.

Swoozie vanished. Benny slithered away.

Calvin studied the moon and Fenris. The horrible thing in the sky above stared back at him. It was hard to measure, but it seemed just a little closer to its prey tonight.

Fenris howled a long, mournful cry that resonated through the universe. Lost souls, madmen, and marooned horrors felt the merest twinges of yearning in the heart of the beast.

Calvin pushed away the malaise, and with cautious optimism walked into the night.