Moon River

by Nicholas Knight

  It tormented him to picture Susan looking into someone else's eyes and telling another man what she swore was reserved for him alone, but he knew that she would never genuinely love anyone but herself. As much as it killed him to imagine her giving herself to another man, he finally began to accept, as painful and difficult as it was, that she had been a stranger for the five years she pretended to be his, and that the meanings of commitment and love were alien to her. She had redefined the term, alienation, for him, and completely destroyed his opinion of marriage.

  The discouraged and demolished federal agent drove recklessly down the road, after visiting the local liquor store. He had completely lost his way and entirely drifted from Dawn’s addictive scent. He had steered so far off course, that he doubted whether or not he could get back on. It got dark and his poor night vision had taken effect, so he squinted and strained to see the patch of road in front of him that was illuminated by his headlights.

  Agent Shelling had just learned that his brutal ex-wife had gotten married to one of the many male adulterers she had proudly betrayed him with, and though he hated to admit it, it still stung…he still loved her…and the fact that he still cared for her the way he did, tormented him, because he knew she would never want him back or give him a second thought. He had been emasculated, and had become a reluctant yet advocate misogynist. As he put more miles on his car, he generously sipped on the bottle of Southern Comfort, which he held warmly between his legs.

  As the night hours got later and the sky got darker, the road got emptier. Agent Shelling had the radio on, listening to a talk show where they were discussing Admiral Richard E. Byrd’s alleged encounter with an extraterrestrial race of Nazis, in a secret city somewhere in Antarctica, during 1947. He began to feel his eyelids get heavy, as he caught himself struggling and forcing to hold them open. He knew that he should pull over and rest, but his determination and bitterness fueled his energy to keep moving. His neck became really stiff, and his lower back got so sore that he shuffled and shifted in his seat to try and temporarily relieve some of the pressure and discomfort.

  He noticed that his steering wheel began to feel as if it was turning on its own. While this happened, the front windshield froze up and frosted over, which was illogical and impossible since the hot air was on full blast. Just to be sure, he placed his hand over the air vents to check the working condition of the blower, and sure enough, the heater core was operating perfectly. Yet, somehow the cabin of the vehicle had become unbearably chilled. Agent Shelling used the wipers to try and defrost the ice that had caked on his windshield, but the more he fought it, the harder it got.

  Shelling heard a deafening hiss come from nowhere, which quickly brushed over the roof of his issued, 1975 Chrysler Newport. His baby-blue car briefly glowed with magnificent radiance, as it rattled and shook from side to side, while involuntarily reacting to the saucer that had buzzed above. As this otherworldly sound passed over him, he saw a blinding white ball move ahead and then abruptly shift to the right, inevitably crashing into the field that waited off the side of the road. The disgruntled and disturbed Agent immediately panicked, instinctively trying to pull over. The obnoxious light blinded him from being able to see and something resisted when he slammed on the breaks, which refused to let him stop.

  The car was now driving itself. He could see his own breath, which was like fog coming from his mouth. His eyes widened in fear and disbelief, as he looked at the center of his front windshield and saw the painful image of his ex-wife’s face there in icy mist. Before he could fully process what he was experiencing, the car stopped all on its own. No one else was on the road, so he was the only eye witness to this unanticipated and unbelievable phenomenon, which had tragically come at the wrong time to the worst man.

  Cautiously stepping out of the car, he found himself in an open field. Though it was nearly 3am, he was in the middle of a bright and blinding circle. Above him, in the night sky, was something that could only be compared to the Northern Lights. It was beautiful but unusual. About thirteen feet in front of him, was a mass that was ovoid and opaque. He could see specks and sections that looked to be comprised of flashy chrome, but the white light concealed and overpowered much of the monopolizing detail. As Agent Shelling nervously walked closer to the light, he felt a strange warmth in the otherwise cold, Nebraska air. There were no flames, explosion, or combustion, and no threatening hint of peril in sight. As he moved in to inspect closer, the white light began to diminish and expose what appeared to be a strange craft of some sort. Though he couldn’t see any visible damage, he conjectured that the unidentified object had crash landed. The oval-fashioned spaceship appeared to be made out of a shiny metal, but one unlike he had ever seen. The foreign aircraft had a swastika embedded on the face of it. He couldn't find any evidence of a door or window.

  The FBI agent noticed a body that had clearly been catapulted from the craft, on impact. It resembled the figure of a human female, but with lime green complexion. She was completely nude, and looked, by human calculations, to be somewhere in her mid-twenties. As Agent Shelling fearlessly moved closer to her, he noticed that her body was the only part of her that looked homo sapien. She had an abnormally high forehead, while her eyes were freakishly large and solid black. The rest of her facial features and the shape of the lower half of her head were normal, aerodynamic, and oddly alluring. Most men would have turned and ran, but then again, Agent Shelling had proven repeatedly that he wasn't most men.

  He suddenly felt an insatiable anger brush over him, much in the same way that the strange light had swept over his vehicle. As he inspected the injured female extraterrestrial, all he could think about was Susan and how she had boastfully wounded and callously abandoned him. Even the way the slender, yet buxom, alien was lying in the grass, turned him on. She was resting on her side, and the firm, shapely curve of her backside immediately captured his attention. Before either one of them knew it, he had kicked his pants off and mounted her forcefully from behind.

  His phallic mojo was rising especially stiff that night, which was delightfully unexpected, as he normally dealt with erectile dysfunction. He mercilessly sodomized the green girl. She tried to fight him off, but was too weak from the traumatic crash. He reached around and covered her mouth with one of his hands. Shoving his middle finger in her lips, he demanded that she suck it with enthusiasm, as he aggressively raped her up the butt. As he violated her ass, his mind wrestled with mixed feelings of love and hate towards Susan.

  A couple of cars passed without stopping, but since Agent Shelling and the alien were where they were, all the drivers saw was the blinding light...not them or the ship. Usually, motorists would immediately slow down to get a good look at the carnage. Most people (particularly Christians) love a train wreck, as long as they’re not among the victims affected.

  After 30 minutes of solid stamina, he threw his head back and howled as if demonically possessed, while he reached blissful climax and joyfully exploded inside her tight, foreign anus. When Agent Shelling was done with her, he left her there in the country field and even bothered to pick up a stone from the ground to hurl at her. Then, in a confused state of numbness and shock, he slowly made his way back to his ugly, blue Chrysler, got in, and continued driving deeper into Nebraska, as if nothing had happened.

  “Fucking aliens,” he said, as if seeing such a thing was normal. “Why are they green, anyway? Makes no fucking sense. Their planet is red, for God’s sake,” he said aloud to himself, presuming that any and all extraterrestrials must be from Mars.

  NOVEMBER 7, 1980

  DARK MOON

  The next morning, the injured and defiled alien, along with her seemingly unharmed craft, had vanished with the daylight. Agent Shelling woke up with a debilitating migraine and an all-around achiness. His entire body was sore and feverish. Crawling out of bed, he stumbled into the motel bathroom, like a zombie, and reached for the bottle of Tylenol. Picking it up by the lid, the bottle dropped out fr
om underneath, landing on the floor and spilling the pharmaceuticals. The weakened ex-Federal employee, with one hand gripping his lower back, gradually got on his hands and knees to pick up the scattered pills.

  His tears hit the linoleum floor like raindrops, as he found himself remembering when Susan would refuse to secure the lids on containers. As the naked Bureaucrat stood back up, he felt an itchy feeling on his balls. He reached down to scratch the underside of his scrotum, only to end up screaming in indescribable pain. Looking down at his shrunken penis, he saw little, green, round-shaped sores and warts spread all over his junk. It didn't take him long to assume that he had contracted some sort of astro-venereal disease.

  "Of course," he said aloud to himself, in a sigh of cynical pessimism, just before coughing up a pool of green blood into the bathroom sink. “It would be something like this.”

  He screamed again with incomparable agony, as he continued to barf up ivy-colored slime. This went on for three hours, until he finally choked on his own space-infected blood, dying there on the filthy floor of the cheap motel.

  Dawn and Cheri were out taking a walk, once again having to maze around all the dog poop. It was after nightfall, so the excrement was harder to see for most, but not for them. Then, out of nowhere, a mother and five small children came running up to them.

  “Pardon nous, mais l'un ou l'autre d'entre vous a-t-il des changements de rechange?”

  “Sorry, but we don’t parler any Francais,” Cheri informed her.

  “Pardon us, but do either of you have any spare change?” she begged, shamelessly and aggressively.

  “No, not so much. Sorry,” Cheri answered, trying to be polite and respectful about turning them down.

  “Please,” one of the kids pleaded. “We’re hungry.”

  Cheri found it repugnant that their mother involved her many offspring in her scam. Not only should the woman not have had the kids in the first place, but the fact that she clearly continued to have them, despite the fact that she was incapable of taking care of the ones she already had, was disgusting and unsettling. Cheri and Dawn both felt for the kids, but not at all for their lousy mother. They still continued to walk, now at a faster pace, hoping that the dysfunctional family would take a hint and fall by the wayside.

  “If you two can’t part with any money, could you maybe sign a petition for world peace?” the mother suggested, showing what kind of physical shape she was in by keeping up with their healthy stride.

  “No merci,” Cheri said, now turning them down in their own language.

  Just then, the allegedly starving mother suddenly pushed Cheri with blunt force. Not only did Cheri topple and stumble to the ground, but she landed face first in a pile of dung.

  “No mercy is right,” the mother said, laughing along with her equally scheming kids. “Did you have a nice trip? Glad we finally got you both to stop for a second.”

  Dawn looked at her friend on the ground, and then looked back up at the sniggering family. A man stepped out of the shadows, who had obviously been following them and was part of the con. This guy, unlike the mother and kids, had a knife in his hand. He started to approach Dawn, to further browbeat and dragoon her into complying.

  “Maybe you should sign the petition,” he insisted, glaring at Dawn, while Cheri was still on her hands and knees, trying to spit out the feces that had gotten in her mouth.

  “Okay,” Dawn gave in. “Okay. We’re sorry. Give me the petition. I’ll be proud to sign it,” she vowed to obey the pushy, pickpocketing mother.

  She handed Dawn the dirty clipboard, with a grin on her face, pleased with herself that she was going to get another signature to use later for all sorts of sabotage and fraud. As soon as she held out the clipboard for Dawn to take, the Cherokee grabbed hold of the woman’s wrist, while punching her directly in the face with her free hand. Her male accomplice lunges at Dawn with his blade, just before she snatches the clipboard and strikes him across the face with it. Dawn had hit both of them with such force that her fist went right through the lady’s skull, and made the man’s head spin around like Linda Blair in, The Exorcist.

  “I think I’m stronger than I was before,” Dawn said quietly to herself, realizing that she didn’t simply get her strength back, but that it had doubled, if not tripled.

  Dawn just stood there, huffing and puffing, while trying to cool down so she could keep herself from wolfing out. The little accessories had all scattered, terrified after witnessing what became of their parents. Cheri didn’t want to admit it to herself, but she was scared to death of Dawn. As much as Cheri still adored her, she wasn’t blind to the fact that Dawn had changed.

  “What should we do with the bodies?” Cheri asked her. “This isn’t exactly the fresh start I had in mind for us,” she said, hypocritically.

  “Leave them there with the rest of the dog shit,” Dawn replied.

  DECEMBER 7, 1980

  LICHE MOON

  Dawn had run away from Cheri, only to find herself in a hole of pitch darkness. It felt like a pit because she was surrounded by what appeared to be a dome of sorts. This seemed to be underground, having no light sourcing from anywhere other than the menacing demon that stood before her. The creature had the physical form of a woman but was clearly not human. She held a scythe in her left hand, and had piercing eyes that were literally flames. Dawn wanted to ask her what her name was, but was too petrified with fear to bring herself to speak.

  "I am Lich," she told her. "I have been sent here to show you how to achieve immortality."

  As Lich spoke, Dawn noticed that there were no teeth in her mouth, but only filthy cobwebs in the horrifying, dark void. The demon's greasy hair suddenly, and literally, turned into snakes. To be more specific, these were coral snakes, which had red, yellow, and black bands on their slimy scales. These snakes were telling Dawn to end her life, in the same way that Satan had once encouraged Eve to betray Adam.

  "You're telling me that you want to make me immortal, but your slithering hair is telling me to take my own life? Which is it?" Dawn asked, uncertain which door this hideous demon was pushing her towards.

  Dawn stood there, buck naked, facing this hellish beast, while she felt a cold chill overwhelm her exposed body. Her eyes go funny and now see this snake woman with three heads. Lich suddenly resembles more of a prophetic dragon than a mythological being.

  "By killing yourself, you become immortal," she clarified to Dawn, as her voice became more and more of a hissing sound. "The wages of sin is death, but the wage of death is eternal life."

  Lich's scythe becomes a glowing conductor, sparking with bursts of electricity. Dawn falls back onto the ground beneath her, which is covered in human ash. The scythe is now a hollow staff that is filled with lightning, making Lich an even more intimidating foe to reckon with. The scythe rumbled with sounds of thunder, making Dawn more terrified than she already was.

  As Dawn looked at this medusa monster, she noticed that she was looking into a mirror. She also realized that the evil she was seeing was not her own reflection. The snake woman was in the mirror, but it wasn't Dawn. The mirror shakes and shatters, while Dawn nervously covers her face with her trembling hands, protecting her eyes while she remains sitting in human remains. The sharp shards fly outward towards Dawn, not unlike how sparks once flew out of Dawn for Cheri.

  Dawn wakes up from her bad dream, perching on top of her raspberry-flavored lover. Her hands are wrapped securely around the trampire's throat, as she is wolfing-out and ready to kill her. Dawn sees that her hands are full of brisk hair and razor-sharp claws. Cheri isn't dead, but she is clearly unconscious. Dawn realizes, from the disconcerting marks on Cheri’s throat, that she must have been strangling her in her sleep. Being withdrawn and distant was one thing, but now she had completely lost control of her tempting impulses. Cheri was no longer safe with her, and Dawn couldn't live with herself if she murdered her maraschino Cheri. She missed her days as a dejected and desolate drifter, before Cheri and Wol
f had disrupted her unbearable isolation. She was lonely then, watching stones ripple across the water, but at least she had only herself to hurt.

  She once stooped to desperate measures to survive, and now straddled one of the two who brought her back to life. Dawn had inexplicable and unearthly abilities that she couldn't explain, and now the thrill of that power had become impossible to resist. Dawn self-reflected, looking at her own life in an unflinching way, as she carefully crawled off of her pink-haired lover. Secrets began to emerge and unfold in her troubled head, as she finally accepted how disturbed she truly was.

  Dawn had unwillingly and unintentionally become a liability to the few she had adored. She had suffered enough prescient visions that occurred in the twilight state of her consciousness, as she woke again and again from sleep. The damage done to her mind was indefinite and irreparable, and she couldn’t allow it to materialize into something that she would regret forever. Dawn was essentially the personification of a night terror, but inside her werewolf suit was a vulnerable puppy. The only ones to ever see her tender heart were Reuben, Wolf, and Cheri. Reuben was viciously taken away from her, as was their only son. She had tragically lost Wolf.

  “I’ll be damned if I’m going to lose you too,” she whispered aloud to herself, looking at Cheri’s red neck.

  As rapturous as Dawn’s bloodlust was, her amorphous connection with her loved ones was stronger. Meanwhile, as Dawn was seriously contemplating saying her final farewell, her devoted girlfriend was having crazy dreams of her own. Cheri saw Dawn floating adrift, getting further and further away from her loving arms. The Starbuck song, Moonlight Feels Right, plays softly and subtly in the background. Cheri missed Dawn’s scent, and wished that her sexy bitch had been more trainable.