Chasing the Moon

CHAPTER TEN

The problem with using up all her magic was that Diana didn’t have anything left to undo the prominent vomit stain running down her blouse.

The nice thing was that, even if she hadn’t brought about world peace, she’d brought a warm humanity to the mall. Every single person was smiling, exceedingly polite, and full of good cheer.

Ginger in women’s wear helped Diana pick out a new blouse.

“Maybe you should go home. You don’t look very good.”

“I’m fine,” Diana lied. She’d felt better after vomiting, but her legs were shaky. Her hands trembled. Along with all her supernatural powers, she’d exhausted something else. It was like a piece of her life force had been torn away. She told herself she was exaggerating, but she was only guessing. But she was immortal now. Or at least she could die only in very specific ways.

“I’m just a little woozy.” She checked a new blouse in a three-way mirror. She didn’t like the color, and it didn’t go with her slacks. But it was the cheapest in the store.

“Here, take this one.” Ginger gave her a much better match. Diana checked the tag. “I’d rather not. Even with my employee discount, it’s a bit much.”

“So don’t pay. Take it. You’re obviously having a rough day, and you do your damnedest in coats every day. Don’t think of it as a gift. Think of it as appreciation for all the terrific work you do here.”

Beaming, Ginger gave Diana a warm hug, heedless of the moist stain between them.

“You’re super, Diana,” said Ginger, “and I want only the best for you.”

Diana nodded very slowly. “Ooooookaaaay. I appreciate the offer. I do. But I can’t ask you to pay for this.”

“Oh, I’m not going to pay for it. Why pay for it? It’s just a blouse. Not nearly as important as you are. If you ask me, we place too much value on these things when what really matters is all of us, together, making the most of every moment—”

“I can’t steal it,” she whispered, so as not to get Ginger in trouble.

“Steal it?” Ginger laughed. “It’s not stealing. Not if you really need it.”

She shouted at a manager, “Hey, Shaun! Is it cool if I let Diana have this blouse?”

“Absolutely!” Shaun gave the thumbs-up. “You’re doing a super job, Diana!”

“Thanks,” said Diana.

“What was that?” shouted Shaun.

“She said thanks!” yelled back Ginger.

“Cool. Thanks for passing that along, Ginger! Great job!”

“Thanks, Shaun! You too!”

Diana didn’t want to take the new blouse, but she soon realized there wasn’t any point in arguing. Everyone in her immediate vicinity was in a state of absolute goodwill. If she kicked them in the face they’d probably compliment her on her high kicking ability, even as they spat out their teeth.

It wasn’t genuine, just an illusion she’d forced on the universe. She had no idea how long it would last or how far it had spread past the mall. But she wasn’t going to try changing it back, no matter how unnatural all this joy to the world was at heart. She’d learned the hard way that magic wasn’t controllable. Not for her, at least. If she tried to get everyone to act normal, it’d probably end up in a chain saw battle royal that she’d have to undo.

Not that she had the power to change anything. Smorgaz’s plan had worked. She was empty, unable to alter reality in any supernatural way. Although she wouldn’t have minded feeling a little less mortal at the moment.

0em" width="27">“So a bunch of us are going out for drinks after work,” said Ginger. “You should come.”

“Thanks, but I have other plans.”

“Well, I guess you can’t help that. Too bad though. Been ages since we’ve just sat around, catching up.”

Diana nodded. It had been a while since she’d just hung out with friends. Most of her coworkers weren’t much more than acquaintances, but it was a nice, normal thing to do. She would’ve gladly taken Ginger up on the offer except for the two monsters in her care. She didn’t see a way around that.

“Did you know that Vicki’s son is almost two?” asked Ginger.

“Already? Damn, where does the time go?”

“I know, right. Sorry you can’t make it. I’m sure everyone will be super disappointed.”

Diana thanked Ginger for the new blouse, walked a few steps, and stopped. If she was going to maintain her sanity, she needed a normal life. Or at least as many bits and pieces of a normal life as she could scrape together. Spending time with ordinary people who had ordinary-people concerns might just keep her grounded. Even if it didn’t have any long-term effect, it would be good for a distraction for the evening.

“Ginger, count me in.”

Ginger smiled, and even though Diana knew that smile was partly due to her own cosmic powers, she still found it reassuring.

She managed to finish her shift, even if her strength never quite returned. She stopped trembling, but she couldn’t shake the hollow sensation. By the end of the day the mall was already restored. Everyone was cheerful, but they stopped going out of their way to compliment each other. Maybe in an hour or two they’d be back to normal. Kind of a shame that it couldn’t last, but it wasn’t right. When world peace happened, she mused on the drive to the bar to meet her coworkers, if it ever happened, it shouldn’t be as absurd as someone making a wish that did it.

“That’s ridiculous,” said Vom.

She glanced over at the passenger seat. He was in her mind again.

“Sorry,” he said.

She turned the radio up in an attempt to drown out the unreliable and unrequested telepathic communication. It came and went, and while she occasionally picked up a thought from Vom, he was more often the receiver in the relationship. She preferred that, because those foreign thoughts that came to her were strange, inhuman desires. Usually involving eating something. Or everything.

She also caught one or two thoughts from Unending Smorgaz, but these were less bizarre. His most pressing need was to be fruitful and multiply, but this seemed easier to repress. Just like it was easier to be celibate than to be hungry, she guessed.

“If humanity has to wait for everyone to get on board with world peace,” said Vom, “then it’ll never happen.”

“Maybe, but just making it happen is cheating.”

He smirked. “Why?”

“Because I can’t just force my desires on the world.”

“Why not? Everyone else does.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“No, and just believing something is enough to make it a fact,” said Vom. “Oh, wait. I’m talking to a human where this is literally true. So never mind.”

She was content to let it drop, but Vom wasn’t.

“Every interaction you have with this universe is exerting unwanted influence on it. Even before you joined up with me and Smorgaz.”

“Mmmm.” She hoped the vagueness of her reply would convince him that his point was made.

“When you eat something, you’re deciding that your continued survival is more important than something else that would probably rather exist if given the choice.”

“What about vegetarians?” Smorgaz countered.

“Potatoes and carrots are still alive. They might not posses will, but they exist. And they only cease to exist when something else decides they shouldn’t. Even if that something is just bacteria.”

“It’s always about eating with you,” said Diana.

“That’s because consuming is the purest form of existence, the most primal of all desires throughout all realities.”

“Actually the most primal force throughout the universe is spawning,” said Smorgaz.

Vom chuckled. “Don’t be ridiculous. Spawning is only a tool to ensure that you will produce more mouths to consume more than the other guy.”

“No,” said Smorgaz. “Consuming is only a tool to ensure that you will spawn more effectively than the other guy.”

“Most things die if they don’t consume. They don’t die if they fail to spawn.”

“No, even with consuming, most things die. Eventually. Spawning is the only reliable method of ensuring the continuation of existence. In fact, not spawning is the only way to die.”

“What about adoption?” asked Vom. “Or cultural contribution?”

Smorgaz chuckled. “Those are all just derivatives of spawning.”

“Oh, I see. Anything important is spawning-related by default.”

“Makes more sense than everything important being consumption-related.”

Diana zoned out while the monsters continued their debate. They were still going ong when she parked the car.

“Let’s go over the ground rules, guys,” she said.

“Again?” asked Vom. “How many times do we have to do this?”

“As many times as it takes for me to convince myself that this isn’t a terrible mistake that is going to go horribly awry. So give it to me.”

“When in doubt, don’t eat it,” said Vom with mechanical indifference.

“If you absolutely have to spawn,” said Smorgaz, “excuse yourself to go to the bathroom.”

Diana nodded. “Good. And…”

“Try not to talk but be polite,” intoned Vom and Smorgaz in unison. “If anyone asks, we’re old college friends in town for the week, and we have to go back to Stockholm to complete a research paper on soil samples.”

“No, not Stockholm,” she said.

Vom sighed. “But you said—”

“I know what I said, but Stockholm is too exotic. It invites questions. We need someplace less interesting. Sacramento. Or maybe Denver.”

“I’ve been to Denver,” said Smorgaz. “It’s a surprisingly interesting place.”

“Okay. We’ll go with Kansas. Kansas is boring.”

“Really?” asked Smorgaz. “So I take it you’ve been there.”

“No, I haven’t, but it’s not important if Kansas really is boring. It’s just important that it seems boring.”

“So you’re willing to impugn a whole state for an elaborate charade?”

“Yes, I am. I’m sure the state of Kansas will forgive me just this once.”

“Can I say we used to date?” asked Smorgaz.

“No.”

“Can I say I used to be worshipped as a god?” asked Vom.

“What?” She shook her head. “No.”

“Not even if someone asks? Like maybe it just comes up randomly in the table conversation?”

“When is something like that going to come up?”

“You never know. A lively conversation can be unpredictable.”

“You’re a guy who studies dirt,” she said. “That’s it.”

“Can I be gay?” asked Smorgaz.

She covered her face and ground her teeth.

“Okay. You can be gay.”

“That’s no fair. Why does he get to be gay?” said Vom.

“You can be gay too,” she replied.

“Wait,” said Smorgaz. “We can’t both be gay. Then it won’t be special.”

She said, “Maybe we should just forget the whole thing.”

“No. It’s fine. We can both be gay. But since I thought of it, I’ll be flamboyantly gay and you will just have to be ordinary gay.”

“I can live with that,” said Vom.

“Just don’t be a stereotype,” added Diana.

Smorgaz snapped his fingers. “You got it, girlfriend.”

They climbed out of the car and walked toward the bar. Diana was already getting a bad feeling about this. She thought about turning around, forgetting the whole thing. But she’d come this far.

Her sanity hung in the balance. If she was going to avoid death and madness, she needed to find a way to ground herself. This might not be the solution, but it was worth a shot.

“How are they going to see you?” she asked. “What do you look like to normal people?”

They shrugged.

“You don’t wear any clothes,” she said. “Even if you appear like human beings, wouldn’t you be naked? I mean, why do they even perceive you as male or female to begin with? You aren’t really either, right?”

They shrugged again.

“Sometimes I wish you two were more helpful.”

“If you want everything to make sense,” said Vom, “you’re only going to be continually disappointed.”

They entered the bar, and she spotted her coworkers occupying a group of tables. They waved her over.

“So glad you could make it,” said Ginger. “And these must be your friends.”

“Yes, this is…” Only then did she realize that she’d overlooked coming up with normal human names for her monsters.

In the few seconds it took for her to come up with John and James, they stepped forward and introduced themselves.

“I’m Vom.”

“Smorgaz.”

Ginger said, “Those are interesting names.”

“Albanian,” said Smorgaz.

“I thought you looked Albanian.”

Diana understood. Vom and Smorgaz were blanks, seen however the viewer wanted or expected to see themst as long as it was a conceivable alternative to seeing what they actually were.

“I’m gay,” said Vom.

“I’m gay, too,” added Smorgaz. “Flamboyantly.”

Smiling, Ginger nodded. “I see.”

Diana sat. Vom and Smorgaz sat to her left.

This wasn’t going to work. She couldn’t relax with the monsters here. It wasn’t their fault. They were behaving themselves. But she couldn’t shake the image of Vom, in a moment of weakness, setting upon everyone, eagerly devouring them within moments. Or someone, in a moment of unusual clarity, might glimpse a clone rolling off of Smorgaz’s back. It wasn’t implausible. People were not uniformly oblivious. She could see that.

Wendall watched her from a distance. When she sat down he moved to the far end of the table. And he kept nervously glancing at Vom and Smorgaz. He might not have been able to see them for what they were, but he could certainly sense something was off about them.

She wanted to straighten things out somehow for the poor guy. He’d seen something mortal minds weren’t meant to see, and it was obvious he was having trouble reconciling himself to it. She couldn’t blame him for that. She wasted a few minutes trying to come up with a simple way to ease his troubled mind, but aside from telling him he wasn’t crazy and that the universe was filled with terrifying cosmic horrors, she was coming up short. That news hardly seemed reassuring.

Just brushing up against this horrible secret had jostled loose his sanity. Confirming it could very well destroy it.

Yet here she was, neck-deep in this madness, and she wasn’t doing nearly as badly. But maybe it was easier when you were all the way in. Perhaps a full immersion allowed her to adjust. Rather than seeing only bits and pieces of a half-remembered madness, she saw the whole thing. And that allowed her to accept it more easily, to bounce back.

More likely, she’d already gone mad and just didn’t realize it. She found some comfort in that. Hitting bottom meant the worst was over.

Diana didn’t believe it. Not for a moment. Not even enough to lie to herself about it.

Her coworkers engaged in small talk. They made jokes. Vicki showed pictures of her kid. Ginger talked about a funny thing that had happened during her morning commute. That guy from the shoe department (Steve or Bob or Fred, she could never remember his name) recommended a movie he’d seen. It was a lively, perfectly harmless conversation.

And it bored the ever-living hell out of Diana.

Although perhaps boredom was the wrong word. Small talk like this was always boring, but everyone played along, pretending to be fully invested in the mundane trials and tribulations of human existence. The unspoken social contract went like this: you listened sympathetically to other people’s problems, and they listened sympathetically to yours. While she had enough faith in humanity to believe this wasn’t always an act, it didn’t really matter if you genuinely emthized just as long as you could fake it.

She couldn’t fake it. Not the way she used to.

It was, she knew, selfish of her. These were good people with real problems that mattered to them. Only a few days ago she’d shared those problems. Little things like paying bills, relationship difficulties, and traffic annoyances. She just couldn’t relate.

It all just seemed so insignificant, so petty and trivial. It always had been, but now she couldn’t even pretend it wasn’t.

She envied all the ordinary people in this bar. She despised them. The internal conflict, along with her effort to hide it, made her queasy. Diana didn’t know why she bothered. People were obviously clueless. If they couldn’t see the monsters among them, then why would they notice her disinterest?

Meanwhile, Vom and Smorgaz were getting along just fine. Better than her. She had no idea how that was possible. They weren’t even human. Maybe that worked in their favor. That distance gave them a more objective viewpoint. Rather than judging humanity for the clueless race of cosmic microbes it was, Vom and Smorgaz could just enjoy it without reservation.

Regardless of the reason, within the hour Diana found herself the odd woman out of the conversation. It wasn’t intentional. She had so little to contribute that the natural give-and-take of an ordinary conversation just slipped away from her. She sat at her end of the table, not even pretending to listen.

Wendall sat at the other end. Only he seemed even remotely aware of the weirdness of the monsters. He’d turn his head and study Vom and Smorgaz from different angles. He’d squint and stare, and just when he managed to see them for what they truly were, he’d chicken out and look away.

He couldn’t even look at her, much less meet her eyes. He left early. Then all her coworkers left, one by one, until she was left sitting at a table with only a pair of monsters to keep her company.