Moon Sick

by Aniko Carmean

understand why you did what you did. Why you shut me out. You are the ocean and Lawton is the moon affecting your tides.”

  Charlotte looks over her shoulder at the butcher, who is chopping the fish into steaks with quick, downward slices of a cleaver. The man in the knit cap says something in Japanese. She responds with a string of syllables before I pull her to the side, positioning myself between them.

  “I know you love nothing more than to see fish being gutted, but you owe me at least a smidge of attention.” I cup her elbow and squeeze. “Stop squirming, before someone thinks there’s a problem.”

  “Let go!”

  I loop one leg between hers, effectively locking her right leg at the knee. “A lot like when we played Twister, isn’t it?” Her face is pale as moonrise, and just as intoxicating. I really do forgive her for everything, even for torturing me by sitting across from Lawton when we all went out for margaritas. They claimed to prefer looking each other in the eyes when speaking, but I knew what it meant

  “This isn’t Twister,” she growls. “This isn’t a game.”

  The old man won’t shut up, and I pull Charlotte closer. I need her to relax before the fish butcher becomes a problem. “In all the pictures I have from last year, you’re next to me. Lawton is off to the side or absent. Doesn’t that mean something?”

  “Only to you.”

  “Stop!” I dig my fingers into the pliant flesh of her arm and she makes a mewling sound. “You need to listen to me.”

  “I did. For weeks. Even after you started hanging around my apartment in the middle of the night, leaving behind your litter so I’d know. I kept listening after you graffitied my car with lines of poetry, but then you went too far. You scared me.”

  The fish butcher is using a small mallet, tapping it against the back of the cleaver, to drive it through the spine of the fish. It makes a savage crack. Charlotte is the ocean at low-tide, her affection for me ebbing.

  “Scared you?” I finally manage. “What do you mean I scared you?”

  “You lurked outside my office.”

  “We met after you got out of work all the time,” I said.

  “You were stalking me! I really tried to put some boundaries on our friendship…”

  “There can’t be boundaries between us!”

  “You’re moon sick.” She tilted her head up to look at me, her expression pained.

  “I’m Charlotte sick. I know you’re conflicted, wanting me like you do, but feeling responsible for Lawton.” I stopped, shook my head hard as I could. A bizarre buzzing, some internal static, was devouring my words.

  “Conflicted? Is that what you really think?” The ocean keeps no secrets. Her truth is merciless, pounding, eroding. Contempt, Charlotte’s contempt for me - an ocean.

  “I love you.”

  “Love?” Bile curdles the word in her mouth. “It’s not love to steal my keys and make a copy for yourself!”

  “Never mind, never mind,” I say, trying to pour sense through the rising static. “I’m not mad at you for misunderstanding. I could never be mad at you.”

  The butcher is on his final step in cutting the steaks, using the cleaver to slice through the bottom half of the fish. Charlotte tries to twist free. A strand of hair falls across her face. I tuck it behind her ear, fighting the urge to bite her neck to taste the sea salt of her blood.

  The old man says something to the butcher. Nodding, the butcher drops the head of the fish into a clear plastic bag with the steaks. He gives the old man the entire fish.

  Charlotte cries out, “No, wait, part of that is mine!”

  I unhinge my leg from hers. “Come on. There’s no point in whining about the one that got away.”

  “I won’t go anywhere with you!” She gives a tremendous tug, and pulls free, leaving me holding her coat. Her vacillation is visceral: run from me, or after the fish.

  She chooses to run.

  I throw her coat to the side. The static in me aches, amplified by the moonlight glistering through the shattered ceiling. “Charlotte!” I roar. My throat opens to the moonbeams. Arousal judders my blood, and my body responds.

  Charlotte looks back over her shoulder. I worry Lawton will get to her before I do, and everything depends upon me explaining how I have enough money. I could take her away from here and she wouldn’t need to worry; not about food, not about Lawton, not about the moon. I sprint after her, a wild animal on the scent of a mate. Near the shelf-stable milk, I catch her.

  “Let me go, oh God, let me go!”

  I am not gentle as I turn her to face me. I thrust my pelvis against hers. “Don’t you feel how this is meant to be?”

  “I’m married. And I love my husband, not you.”

  I shake her, holding both arms and pulling her backwards and forwards through the static that’s red as fury. She’s screaming, and I stop her noise with my own mouth. When I let go, she reels backwards, spitting as if I tasted bad.

  “You’re the ocean,” I say. “I’m a fish flopping on the shore. That’s what you do to me, don’t you understand?” I reach for her, and she slaps me. I lunge.

  “I’m going to taste you all night,” I say, springing at her.

  “Lawton!” she screams.

  Something hard thuds between my shoulder blades. I stumble, air rushing out of my lungs from the shock. A botulism-bloated can of lychees rolls past me and I raise my arms to cover the back of my head, expecting another projectile. Charlotte tries to dodge around me, but I catch her by her hair, forcing her to be my shield as I swing to face my assailant. A second can catches Charlotte on the temple. Lawton shouts, his face ashen as Charlotte slumps against me. Blood wells from the gash on her head, the tender skin jagged as the edge of a lunar crater. I am transported, euphoric, soul-starved. I lick her wound. It tastes like moonlight. Lawton rushes at me. His punch catches me on the chin. Charlotte and I both flop onto the ground, limbs entwined like the end of a game of Twister, only Lawton’s boot is on my neck.

  “I’ll. Have. All of her,” I manage to wheeze. I can feel Charlotte’s blood at the corner of my mouth. My tongue darts out, samples it.

  “You’re the lunatic.” Lawton digs his foot into my neck. “You’re the menace.”

  Charlotte sits up, touching her forehead. Her eyes are huge in her pale face. Gasping for breath, I reach across the grimy floor until I feel the warmth of her thigh. With a cry, she scuttles out of reach and her warmth fades from my fingertips even as the red haze is supplanted by an encroaching darkness. Breath is an impossibility. I shove and twist at Lawton’s boot. Dirt rains from it; I hear each particle hit the ground, soil on a coffin. I flail, but my feet are distant satellites. Lawton grinds down on my neck with more force and I can only claw weakly at his ankle. Charlotte’s weeping comes to me from a place as far away as the moon before it started falling. Lungs strain. Heart is a panicked, beached fish. The bright stuff of life burns off like meteors in the atmosphere of my mind. I follow the taste of Charlotte’s ocean into the perfect dark of an empty sky.

  Want More Surreal Fiction?

  If you enjoyed MOON SICK, you'll devour the other stories in SPILLWAYS.

  The SPILLWAYS collection includes:

  MOON SICK: The moon is falling, and while some pray for the intense celestial coitus of Luna's impact with Earth, all Fisk wants is Charlotte.

  I WAS FLOOR SEVEN: A woman discovers she is the object of a "betrayal methodology" intended to inspire an artist - and feed an unnatural hunger.

  MAUSOLEUM WHISPERS: Rollins has been dead three months, but dead isn't the same as gone.

  Look for SPILLWAYS in mid-November of 2014! Want to be notified when SPILLWAYS is published? Click https://www.oddskybooks.com/odd-literati to sign up for a reminder.

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  About Aniko

  Aniko Carmean is a Virginia girl living in Austin, Texas. She writes stories and novels in a variety of genres including horror, science fiction, and literary-artsy. Aniko is the sole proprietor of Odd Sky Books, a publication imprint dedicated to serving discerning readers of surreal fiction. Aniko's major literary influences are Italo Calvino, Shirley Jackson, Amelie Nothomb, Iris Murdoch, and Sylvia Plath. After graduating with a degree in Physics from a small liberal arts school, Aniko married her college sweetheart, and took a day job in software to support her writing habit.

  Aniko's favorite shoes are Doc Martens.

  Her favorite way to think is while is walking, favorite number is twenty-two, favorite month is October, and her favorite pastime is lingering over a hearty meal and talking with friends.

  Aniko has lived in more than one haunted house, which goes a long way towards explaining her fascination with the surreal.

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