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[writingpromptswithkate]

Taylor Swift’s “Lover” - A First Impressions Review

Let's face it: Taylor Swift is one of the biggest music stars in the English-speaking world. That trend is not showing signs of reversing any time soon, so we might as well get used to the idea that it's her world and we're all here just living in it.

So let's talk about Lover, the much anticipated and much-much marketed new album following her musically and socially divisive last entry, reputation. Lover contains the usual Taylor Swift album fare: that is to say a bunch of love songs and a few jabs at her various haters. Let's start with the jabs, because the album does and what's good enough for the ol' T-swizzle is good enough for me.

We open with “I Forgot That You Existed”. This one is definitely directed at a specific person, but you could just about toss a coin with Kanye West written on one side and Calvin Harris on the other. Lyrical cues are just vague enough that either would do. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter though; this track is not that much worth thinking about. She forgot that they existed, except for writing and recording a whole song about it, and I've now forgotten that this song existed, except to bitch about it for a minute on the internet.

Further entries in the hater-jab category include “The Man” and “You Need To Calm Down”, which are directed at The Patriarchy and Haters On Twitter, respectively. Of the two, “The Man” is more to my music aesthetic taste, even if it rings a bit hollow lyrically. Would her race to the top of the music industry have been easier if she was a man? Likely. Would the media make less of a thing out of her personal relationships if she was a man? Definitely (but if I learned anything at all from Hiddleswift it's that at a certain fanbase size being a man is no defense against sharks in a blood frenzy). But it all leaves a bad taste in my mouth because, well... Did I really come here to listen to one of the most successful women in the world sing about how she's not privileged enough? It's not that she doesn't have a point; it's that about 99% of people listening to this song are dealing with the same or worse problems in their own industries, only we don't have half her wealth or status to carry us. So forgive us if all the POC, women, LGBTQ+, disabled, chronically ill, neurodivergent, and/or poor folks out here think maybe she needs to calm down.

I want to move on to the love songs now, because much like spelling, those are more fun.

Something I have come to appreciate about Swift is how, beginning with Red, many of her love songs have taken on a personal edge. Some details are straight-up autobiographical. Things don't have to be 'real' to be good, but in music, it sure helps.

So: “Cornelia Street”. It's such a specific detail, right there in the title. There's a line about throwing open a window and feeling the autumn air, and it sounds real. In “Afterglow”, when she sings about being wrong and picking fights, that feels real. When she sings about loving America but also loving a “London Boy”, well, that one seems like the free space on the Real Taylor Swift bingo card. Many artists pull real details from their lives to fuel their music, but not all artists can make those details sound real on record. This is a line Taylor Swift has walked beautifully, both in this album and in its predecessor reputation.

Many of the love songs on this album, regardless of their 'realness' score, also have an undercurrent of anxiety not present in reputation.”Death By A Thousand Cuts”, the aforementioned “Afterglow” and “Cornelia Street”, “Cruel Summer”, and the deeply moody “The Archer” all deal to varying degrees with heartbreak, not as a present trial but as a dreaded future possibility. With lines like 'saying goodbye is death by a thousand cuts', 'hope I never lose you, hope it never ends', and 'help me hold on to you', Taylor Swift has never sounded more like she has something to lose.

The most real and most anxious song on the album, though, isn't an overtly romantic love song. In fact, it might be a song of a non-romantic love entirely. “Soon You'll Get Better” feels so real that I got goosebumps and cried, and then fought the urge to Google 'is Taylor Swift's mom okay?' *note: at no point does she mention her mom, it's just that she sounds completely lost without whomever the song is about, in a way that reminds me of people who have lost a parent.* The minimal backing instruments only add to the hopelessness. It's about frailty and mortality, and if you ever needed a reminder that Swift came up in country music, well here's, as the poets say, your sign.

Switching gears here: special mention now to “Miss Americana & The Heartbreak Prince”, which is just a fun piece of music, as well as definitely the name of an anime[citation needed]. Is it a little bit ridiculous that a grown woman likens her relationship to some petty high school drama? Well, yes, obviously, that's why it's fun, and also why it needs to be an anime title. I don't have anything to justify this guilty-pleasure feeling except that sometimes a song hits you in just the right spot, somewhere at the intersection of car karaoke jam and big mood, with a dash of silly.

It feels weird not to mention “ME! (feat. Brendon Urie of Panic! At The Disco)”, which is a song title I wanted to type just once in full so I could use two exclamation points. I don't have much to say about “ME! (etc)” that was not already said by someone when the single came out. I've heard it called “Blank Space in reverse”, as in 'darling I'm a [daydream] dressed like a [nightmare]', and that's the aptest description I could offer. One thing about it I can say now that I couldn't before is that it feels out of place in the context of the album. It's placed between two much mellower tracks, so album listening feels disjointed and unbalanced. It definitely feels like a 'missing link' track designed to prepare the reputation listeners for Lover without actually being a proper fit with the rest of the album.

Lover ends on a hopeful note with a track called “Daylight”. Personally, I think it's delightful that we're ending with this, and meanwhile, reputation ends with “New Years Day”. Both songs carry the theme of entering into or rediscovering something new, in which the past informs but does not bind. Does it draw a parallel between the two albums? Yes, of course. Is that parallel justified? Also yes. Her jab songs on Lover are still directly related to her reputation, after all, and all the love songs with any intended autobiography are written about the same person. reputation is a harsher album: the angry songs are angrier and the love songs are more intense and direct; Lover's jabs are more dismissive and its love songs more pleading and vulnerable. It's a bit like getting HATE tattooed on one set of knuckles and now here comes LOVE on the other hand to balance it out. For maximum effect you really have to take the two as a set.

[writingpromptswithkate]

What Happened At Carnelian Bay

Part V.

Transcript of video recordings taken by Lizzy Styles, GoPro HERO7 owner, 25(?) February(?) 20xx(?), ????*

I think I figured out what that other video was getting at. I had to backtrack up Stag Drive, there’s a neighborhood just up the hill... Some of the houses are--they’re just gone. But I was able to find a path...

Aubrey, you wanted a follow-up story, well here’s your follow-up: I am going to be the first person in over two months to enter Carnelian Bay. 

I’m going to turn off the recording while I hike the rest of the way into town, okay? Be right back.

(pause in recording)

(sounds of panting) The snow has been getting worse. Talk about a bad day for a hike, huh? Look, there’s a vacation rental agency right there and I could have walked right by it. 

You know what’s worse? I know, for a fact, that Tahoe is right there, right off the highway. But I can’t see it at all. It might as well not even be there. It feels like it’s not even there. Like I could walk out there right now and just keep walking in snow for miles and miles...

(sigh) ...The highway’s completely deserted. I know I just spent the better part of an hour in the damn woods, but I’m back on 28 and I haven’t seen any cars yet. For right now I’m just going to keep walking, okay? 

(pause in recording)

I guess I figured out why there were no cars... I’m at the corner of 28 and, uh, Agate Road. There’s some kind of, erm, barricade? I can’t even tell for sure what it’s made of. This looks like a piece of concrete? Some corrugated metal over here?

Why would someone build this here? Three possible reasons: keep something out, keep something in, or herd traffic up Agate Road. Or a combination of the above.

I can’t easily get around this thing, the snow off the road is way too deep; and frankly I haven’t had a tetanus booster lately, so we’re not going to try climbing over it. Yeah, I’m going to see what, if anything, might be up Agate Road.

(pause in recording) 

The answer is “not a damn thing” unless you really like mountain cabins. I’m standing right outside another vacation rental place, is that all the business there is in this town? I haven’t seen any other signs, but then again in this weather I have to be right on top of them in order to see anything.

(sounds of a door opening; bell chimes; boots scraping on a mat) Okay, let’s see if these people have a map. I haven’t had a phone signal since I got here; I have no idea where I am, other than “inside Agate Bay Properties’s front office.”

Come on, come on, we’ve got business cards, flyers, some sort of travel package promotion... a-ha! Map. (sounds of paper being unfolded) Okay, Agate Bay Properties on Agate Road... I must be here. Now if I was a scared population trapped in a tiny lakeside town, where would I hole up?

Maybe this little grocery store. Maybe this church. People who have boats might go down to the waterfront to try escaping that way. It would be stupid, with this much snow and fog, but people might do it.

There are only a few places in town that look big enough to hold a lot of people if they tried to stick together. Is there a pen around here? (sounds of rummaging through desk contents) Number one: this Sierra Boat Company building. Number two: just up the highway, the Health and Human Services building. Number three: the Carnelian Woods Townhouse Association. 

Assuming the roads are clear enough to get through, I should stop by that little grocery store first. Then come down Victoria and try to get back to the highway so I can see about these other places. Okay. Game plan.

(in the distance, a thunderously loud sound not unlike the footsteps of an elephant on a rampage. Much closer, clattering sounds as of small office tools and desk decorations being shaken by earthquake tremors.)

(inarticulate interjections) Wha-what the hell was that? What is going on in this town?

(a voice that is not Lizzy Styles) “Hey, what are you doing in here?!”

[writingpromptswithkate]

What Happened At Carnelian Bay

Part IV. 

Transcript of audio recording made by Lizzy Styles, 25 February 20xx, 2:31 am.

Lizzy here. (yawns) It’s two-thirty in the morning.

I talked to that night manager Seanathon. He insists that no one has touched the GoPro since his conversation with me about it two days ago. But he did mention that since it wasn’t found until well after I checked out, there’s no guarantee whoever tried to steal it didn’t use it. He seemed bewildered about my even asking about it. I told him there was a new video on it that I didn’t take, and his reaction was something like “A mystery? How exciting!” (deep, exasperated sigh)

I also managed to find Darrius Perreira. He pulled in just before one with the Tahoe Vista delivery. He declined to be interviewed, but he offered one comment: (sound of rustling paper) ahem. “Listen lady, I don’t know what you think I mighta saw, but I didn’t see nothin’. There wasn’t nothin’ to see but a big damn hole where the road’s supposed to be. You can go check it out if you really want, but I seen enough of it.” That’s all... it’s weird though. I can’t mimic the way he said it, but he sounded defensive... I think maybe he did see something. He saw something and for whatever reason he’s too scared to talk about it.

I need to go see the highway for myself. 

----

Transcript of a telephone conversation between Andrew Silva-Hayes, recent customer, and Seanathon Moore, assistant night manager of Red Wolf Lakeside Lodge, dated 25 February 20xx, 6.04 am.

Moore: Red Wolf Lodge, how can I help you?

Silva-Hayes: Could you please transfer me to the room Lizzy Styles is staying in?

Moore: Let me just look that up. (sounds of keyboard typing) I’m sorry sir, we don’t have a guest by that name staying with us.

Silva-Hayes: ...What about Elizabeth Styles?

Moore: Certainly sir. (sounds of keyboard typing) No, I’m sorry sir, we don’t have anyone by that name either.

Silva-Hayes: Could you double-check the last name? Styles with a Y, not an I.

Moore: I’m sorry sir, we don’t have anyone named Styles staying with us at this time.

Silva-Hayes: Ah shit.

Moore: Are you certain you have the correct hotel, sir?

Silva-Hayes: Not at all, I just thought she’d go back there. Look, she was supposed to call me last night and she didn’t. I’ve been trying to reach her cell for the last hour and it keeps telling me her number isn’t in service.

Moore: Maybe she turned her phone off? It is rather early.

Silva-Hayes: No, she never turns her phone off, not for anything. Never!

Moore: I’m sorry sir, I’m afraid we can’t help you.

Silva-Hayes: (frustrated groan) Yeah well, thanks anyway.

--end call--

[writingpromptswithkate]

What Happened At Carnelian Bay

Part III.

SECURITY FEED VIDEO DESCRIPTION: 24 FEBRUARY, 20xx, 8.32 PM. The front desk of the Red Wolf Lakeside Lodge, Tahoe Vista, CA. Assistant Night Manager Seanathon Moore stands at check-in. Receptionist Clara Bergman is seated beside him, operating computer. A customer, later identified as Lizzy Styles, approaches the front desk and checks in. ANM Moore reaches under the front desk and produces a small box. Styles opens the box, takes out GoPro HERO7, briefly inspects it, replaces it in box, and puts box in her overnight bag. The three subjects continue to converse for approximately two minutes. ANM Moore gestures and leads Styles away from check-in desk. Bergman remains seated at computer. At 8.50 pm, ANM Moore returns to front desk. At 8.53, ANM Moore leaves front desk and returns to managers office.

----

Transcript of audio recording made by Lizzy Styles, 24 February 20xx, 8.48 pm.

This is Lizzy. It is... 8:48 at night, on February 24th. I have checked in to Red Wolf Lodge and recovered my GoPro. I’m going to review the pictures and footage while I make my notes. (sounds of a laptop being removed from bag) While this thing boots up, some review notes about Carnelian Bay: 

Carnelian Bay, California, formerly Cornelian Bay, founded in the late 1800s, renamed in the early 1900s. It has a year-round population of about 600, plus tourist trade, being on the shore of Lake Tahoe. It is estimated that about 900 people were in town when storms destroyed the highway last Christmas. Since then there has been no contact in or out of town, except for the boat, 86 Tahoe Blues, that washed ashore in Kings Beach earlier this month. Oh, gosh, note to self: find out if Joseph Macombe is among the bodies they found. He owns the boat, or owned the boat. Find out.

(cough) Before the arrival of Europeans, the land was occupied by Washoe natives. Archaeological evidence puts ancient Washoe peoples in Kings Beach for sure. Not clear yet if they settled the specific area that is now Carnelian Bay.

(sounds of keyboard typing, Windows standard system sounds, rustle of cables moving) Okay, here we go. I’ve got the GoPro plugged in. I mentioned in previous notes that I disabled the automatic transfer feature, so we’re doing this manually.

These are photos from my vacation with Andrew... ah, here we go. There are several pictures I took of 86 Tahoe Blues, including a few of local police investigators at the scene. 

The person who discovered the highway wash-out was Darrius Perreira, overnight freight trucker, aged 39. Before the wash-out, his route took him through Carnelian Bay at about 3:30 am. There’s a very small grocery chain here, with locations in Kings Beach/Tahoe Vista, Carnelian Bay, and Ridgewood.  Perreira alternates his delivery days between each town. On Christmas morning, he was working an emergency overtime shift, delivering small amounts of crucial goods to both Carnelian Bay and Ridgewood. His Tahoe Vista delivery days typically put him here at about 1 to 1:30 am. I know he’s been interviewed before about this, but I should see if he can be reached.

There’s a video on my GoPro that I did not take. I’m going to play it while we’re recording... (sounds of computer mouse clicking)

(sounds of driving) Okay, it looks like someone set up the GoPro like a dash cam, we’re in a car, on a snowy road. It’s...maybe twilight? Maybe just before dawn? Oh, we just passed a sign, it’s... Highway 28. It’s really hard to read the signs because of the snow, it’s almost a blizzard. (sound of vehicle coming to a stop, door opening) We’ve reached an orange warning sign that the road is closed. Whoever’s filming just picked up the camera and is getting out of the car...truck? Whatever. We’re hiking. We’re behind the ‘road closed’ sign now.

This should be the way into Carnelian Bay, right? Oh. Oh. Holy shit.

The road just disappeared. I can’t see where it starts up again, and I can’t see down far enough to tell where the ground is. The camera is panning right... the whole mountainside looks like it’s been gouged out, like by a knife or something. Why is the camera lingering so much on here? It’s like there’s something I’m supposed to be seeing but I just have no clue. There’s nothing there.

The video ended. Just like that. No explanation, no real audio. It feels like some kind of modern day treasure map. What kind of treasure could possibly...?

I kind of want to check it out. I should talk to the police here first, and Perreira if I can find him. I should probably also double check with Seanathon Moore that no one at the hotel has tried to use the GoPro since they found it.

I’m going to watch the video a few more times to see if I can get any more details out of it, but for now, Lizzy signing off.

--end recording--

[writingpromptswithkate]

What Happened At Carnelian Bay

Part II.

Transcript of a telephone conversation between Lizzy Styles, freelance journalist, and Aubrey Cootes, editor-in-chief of the San Francisco Chronicle, dated 23 February 20xx, 8.22 am.

Styles: Hello this is Lizzy Styles.

Cootes: Ms. Styles? This is Aubrey Cootes, we met recently at the Chronicle New Year’s Gala. I got your number from Marcus Holloway.

Styles: Yes, of course, Ms. Cootes, what can I do for you?

Cootes: I’m actually calling about a story you wrote. Last week we ran your piece about that boat they found in Kings Beach. The one from Carnelian Bay.

Styles: Do you need me to make any corrections, Ms. Cootes?

Cootes: No, that’s not the issue. Lizzy— may I call you Lizzy?

Styles: Sure.

Cootes: The thing is, I’ve been trying to get my people to follow up on your story, but no one and I mean NO ONE, on staff wants the assignment. I mean, who can blame them, right? Who wants to go to Tahoe and not have time to ski? (laughs)

Styles: I mean, for sure.

Cootes: So what I’m getting at is this. Would you be at all interested in following up the piece yourself?

Styles: ... Um, I was only able to write that piece because I happened to be in Kings Beach for Presidents Day weekend. I can’t just drop everything to go back.

Cootes: There’s no way to get you back there? We would all be really grateful for a follow-up piece.

Styles: With all due respect, Ms. Cootes, there’s no way I can afford to go back to Tahoe this soon. I’m sorry you’re having trouble with your staff, but I don’t think I can help you.

Cootes: ...

Cootes: We would be prepared to reimburse you for your travel expenses. Gas, hotel, and meals minus alcohol.

Styles: Let me think about it and get back to you. If I go, there are arrangements to make, you understand.

Cootes: Of course. Please let me know by the end of the day.

Styles: Will do. Bye for now.

—end call—

——

Transcript of a telephone conversation between Lizzy Styles, recent customer, and Seanathon Moore, assistant night manager of Red Wolf Lakeside Lodge, Tahoe Vista, dated 23 February 20xx, 9.14 am.

Styles: Hello?

Moore: Hello, is this Lizzy Styles?

Styles: Yes this is she. Who am I speaking to, please?

Moore: Hi Ms. Styles, I’m Seanathon Moore, from the Red Wolf Lodge, I believe you stayed with us last week?

Styles: I’m sorry, did you say Seanathon?

Moore: (chuckles) That’s right ma’am. Mom wanted Jonathan, Dad wanted Sean, so here we are.

Styles: And you never thought to go by Sean professionally...?

Moore: Oh I thought about it, but it would just break Ma’s heart.

Styles: Can’t have that.

Moore: No ma’am. Anyway, the reason I’m calling is because we found a device on our grounds late at night on the nineteenth, with the initials L.S. on them. We’ve been calling everyone with those initials who stayed with us from the fourteenth to the nineteenth.

Styles: ... That device wouldn’t happen to be a GoPro HERO7, would it?

Moore: Oh thank goodness. I’ve been making phone calls for the last two hours and no one has had any idea what I’m talking about.

Styles: Yeah, thank goodness the reservation was in my name and not my boyfriend’s.

Moore: (chuckles) Yes, indeed ma’am.

Styles: I was wondering what happened to that. I thought maybe someone stole it.

Moore: I hope that wasn’t the case, but if it was I’m glad they didn’t get away with it. We would be happy to investigate that for you if you’d like to file a complaint.

Styles: No need for that, Seanathon.

Moore: If you wish. So would you like us to ship the GoPro back to you? We could have it to you by the end of the week.

Styles: Actually... Listen, I have to go back to the area on business anyway. I can come pick it up.

Moore: Of course, we can hang onto it until you stop by.

Styles: This is kind of last minute, but you wouldn’t happen to have a room free through the end of this week, would you? If I’m coming by anyway, I might as well stay with you again. Tomorrow night through Sunday morning?

Moore: Let me just check on that for you real quick. (sounds of keyboard typing)

Moore: Yes, if you want you can have the same room you stayed in last time.

Styles: That would be great, thank you, I’ll take it.

Moore: Perfect. Would you like to put the room on the same card as last time?

Styles: Yes, that’s fine. But could you make a note that I’ll need an extra copy of my bill at the end, for reimbursement purposes?

Moore: Absolutely, not a problem at all. (sounds of keyboard typing) Thank you for your reservation, Ms. Styles, we look forward to having you stay with us again. We’ll hold the GoPro at the front desk so you can get it when you check in.

Styles: Thanks a bunch, Seanathon, you’ve been very helpful.

Moore: Thank you for saying so. Is there anything else I can help you with today?

Styles: Nope. See you tomorrow night.

Moore: Goodbye ma’am.

Styles: Goodbye.

—end call—

——

Text message sent from Lizzy Styles, girlfriend, to Andrew Silva-Hayes, boyfriend, dated 23 February 20xx, 9.47 am.

Styles: I have to go to Kings Beach to follow up the story. Leaving tomorrow morning, gone until Sunday night. If I don’t see you before I go I’ll call you when I get to hotel. Love ya (kissing emoji)

——

Text message sent from Andrew Silva-Hayes, boyfriend, to Lizzy Styles, girlfriend, dated 23 February 20xx, 9.49 am.

Silva-Hayes: I thought we had a date Friday night??? the hell

——

Text message sent from Lizzy Styles, girlfriend, to Andrew Silva-Hayes, boyfriend, dated 23 February 20xx, 9.50 am.

Styles: Babe this is for work. I can’t not go.

——

Text message sent from Andrew Silva-Hayes, boyfriend, to Lizzy Styles, girlfriend, dated 23 February 20xx, 9.58 am.

Silva-Hayes: Is this because you wrote a story when you were supposed to be ON VACATION. You never stop working. It drives me crazy.

Whatever. Do what you want.

I’ll just be here. Waiting for you like always. (frowning emoji)

[writingpromptswithkate]

Two Moons Are Better Than One

----THE FULL TEXT BEGINS BELOW [KEEP READING]. WORD COUNT: 10678. PLEASE SEE TAGS FOR TRIGGER WARNINGS.----

Part I.

It was the light. It had to be all the extra light. What other explanation could there be?

According to Twitter — excellent news sourcing, I know — the second moon was first spotted by the Okayama Astrophysical Observatory, one of several campuses belonging to the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, or NAOJ. Normally the Okayama facility specializes in solar telescopy, but what are you gonna do when a second god damn moon appears in the sky?!

They, that is the Japanese astronomers who discovered the second moon, sent out two official communiques on the matter: the first to their own Prime Minister, and the second to an astronomical committee at the United Nations. That committee sponsored telescopic observatories all over the world, including a few discreet donations to NAOJ. As ridiculous as the second moon phenomenon sounded, the Japanese astronomers felt it only right they should let the committee know.

There was a third communique sent that night: a text message from Dr. Yoshida of Okayama to Lt. Avakian of Kadena Air Base in Okinawa. The text message read as follows:

Look out the window (*´◒`*)

Lt. Avakian, upon receiving the text, did in fact look out her window. Within ten minutes all of Kadena Air Base was awake and outside.

The problem with the second moon was that it was, unmistakably, a second moon. There was no room to argue that it was a comet, or a planet out of its normal place, or even a giant killer asteroid like in the movies. It was big. In fact it was as big as the real moon. Just as big, and just as bright, and with the same odd pits and craters all over it. It was as if the moon were a cell, and it had just undergone mitosis.

Immediately, the world was alert. University-sponsored telescopes all over the globe began observing the second moon as the planet turned and night came over new regions. As far as anyone could tell, the new moon was about as far from Earth as the original, was truly about the same size, and apparently of the same or similar composition.

Some said it was a gift from God. Some said it was a sign of end times. Some worried about gravitational anomalies and irregular tides.

In the tiny, backwater mountain village of Jamestown, damn near halfway around the world from NAOJ and its telescopes, utility truck driver Nate Walsh just worried about getting enough sleep to not be groggy at work.

Nate was a simple man. He worked hard and he liked a cold beer at the end of the day. He liked to go to bed early on weeknights so he could get up again at the butt crack of dawn and drive his truck. He drove all over the mountain checking power lines and transformers and reporting which poles were damaged by snow over the last winter. He did honest work and he made his living.

And how was he supposed to make his living when the neighbor’s fool dog was howling itself hoarse baying at a second god damn moon?

It was no wonder Nate awoke next day with dark circles under his eyes and no patience whatsoever for the neighbor’s dog. He hated that dog to start with; fool thing was always barking, night and day, at squirrels or raccoons or nothing at all, and now at the damn moons. It was an uppity little terrier dog with an uppity terrier bark and it didn’t belong in the mountains anyway. Nate grumbled to himself as he poured his coffee. It was a two-cup kind of day for sure.

All anyone would talk about that day was the second moon, and by lunch Nate was heartily sick of it. Yeah, a second moon was weird, but that did not make it portentous; it was just inconvenient. Maybe next time the moon wanted company it could have the courtesy to keep the light volume down. Some of us have to work.

Hannah the office girl kept claiming it was a sign from the gods. Which gods, she never quite said, but it was generally understood that Hannah trucked with all that neo-Wiccan spiritual mystic whatnot. Nate never understood it himself, but from a woman he once dated he gathered that it involved a lot of collecting rocks. How rocks might help Hannah identify a sign from the gods was uncertain. She sounded convinced, though. Questioned about it further, Hannah revealed that the message from the gods was actually buried in the dream she had on the night the second moon appeared.

It was at this point in the conversation that Nate felt himself slipping out. Collecting rocks was one thing: rocks were tangible and could even be pretty, so alright go nuts with the collecting. Dreams were not so much of either. Nate almost never remembered his dreams, and when he did it was always an unpleasant recollection. Running from monsters, and that one where you try to move or lift something but your arms have turned to jelly. So when Hannah dropped “the D word” Nate was definitely out.

That night was worse than the last. See, last night the moon — now moons, Nate corrected with disgust — was waxing up from first quarter. The moons would not be full for another five or six days, and until then they’d just be getting brighter and brighter.

In between restless tosses, Nate made a mental note to buy himself some of those blackout drapes.

The neighbor terrier was howling again, more frantically than last night. He made another mental note to buy some ear plugs.

Part II.

The Japanese astronomers started calling it Utsushitsuki, the ‘copied moon’. The English-speaking internet photoshopped a wolf head onto it and called it Moon Moon. Conspiracy theorists called it a hoax. Hannah the office girl called it a manifestation of the duality of nature: light and dark, summer and winter, male and female, God and Goddess, etc.

The second morning after the discovery of the second moon, Hannah was late coming into the office. This in itself was a rarity: Hannah was well aware that her non-traditional beliefs did not endear her to her conservative coworkers; she made sure not to give them any reason to dispute her efficacy in the office. In three years, she had only ever been late once, stuck on the highway into town behind a nasty accident involving a Dodge Laramie with a towed boat blocking both lanes.

Car accidents were not rare in this part of the mountains: tourists came up from the bay and the valley and not a damn one of them knew how to take a real mountain road turn. Things got bloody when the winter snow and ice set in.

But that was winter, and accidents involving trailer and boat towers typically happened in summer. This was neither, and Hannah had no such excuse.

She finally showed up, more than an hour late, looking as worn out as Nate felt after two nights’ bad sleep. Hannah made her apologies and shuffled to her desk and kept her eyes down while she switched everything on.

Nate happened to be in the office, Thursday being his big paperwork day, so he had a front-row seat to the spectacular chewing-out of Hannah by their manager Robbie. She was nearly in tears by the end. Nate didn’t like tardiness any more than Robbie did, but he thought Robbie was being a real dick about it. Now, Robbie was a bit of a dick anyway, he was famous around the office for it, but he was never this much of a dick. He was threatening Hannah with official citations, and saying that if it wasn’t a busy time for them and they could afford to train a new office girl he would fire her right now.

Nate thought that was a bit much, for only a second tardy offense in a three-year period. He concluded that Robbie must be in as bad a mood as Nate himself was in, owing to lack of sleep.

Eventually, of course, Robbie ran out of things to threaten Hannah with, and he stormed back into his private office huffing with exhaustively spent rage. Nate chose this break in the storm to deliver some of his paperwork to Hannah for filing.

“What happened, anyway?” Nate asked conversationally while trying not to look at Hannah’s shining, red eyes.

“I don’t know. I don’t remember what I did last night. I just… woke up almost two hours late this morning… next to the wood pile off the back porch.”

“Two hours late? But you were only one hour late for work…?”

Hannah looked down. “Yeah, well, I skipped my morning shower so I wouldn’t be two hours late.”

“Huh. Wouldn’t‘ve known.” Nate never spent much time in proximity to Hannah to notice if she smelled, nor did he ever particularly stop to notice whether her hair looked clean or greasy. She had it back in a ponytail today, which was as good a cover as any for greasy roots.

He did notice, now that she had brought up the shower, that she had rather more than usual undereye raccooning from eyeliner or mascara or what-have-you. He mentioned this when she replied with a sullen “yeah, right”.

Hannah then excused herself to the restroom, and when she returned, face slightly red and damp, much of the black smudges under her eyes were cleaned up.

Not a half hour after this, Hannah called Nate back to her desk with a dispatch.

“Power outage all over downtown Sonora, looks like someone crashed into a pole and took out a transformer. Downed lines. CalTrans is on the way to help redirect traffic. Fire department is on the scene already.”

Nate was out the door almost before Hannah finished speaking. He double checked his toolbox and gear and then hopped in his truck.

It was a lot worse than “someone crashed into a pole”.

Downtown Sonora streets were much like any other downtown streets in that they were narrow and featured a great deal of parallel parking. Or rather, they were supposed to feature parallel parking.

This looked more like the entire street at once forgot what parallel parking was and just stopped their cars wherever. Including up on curbs, in the exact center of the street over the lines, and in several instances halfway inside the downtown businesses. More than one car had crashed into a pole, and more than one transformer was taken out. Far too many of the downed lines lay draped across the tops of cars. Far too many of the cars were emitting smoke and other gases, not to mention dripping a variety of noxious-smelling fluids, the odor made all the worse by their mixing with each other and with the smell of electrical burning.

It was the burning smell that really got Nate’s attention. Downed power lines plus oil and/or gas leaks would be utterly disastrous for the densely packed downtown area. He needed more than just the local fire department.

Cell service was abysmal up this way, and Nate’s calls kept failing before he could get through. It did not help that everyone in every shop on the street was probably trying to do the exact same thing. He eventually got through to Hannah by text:

Real bad up here. Call calfire, need backup asap. At least six poles down. Too many lines. Too many cars.

Nate had nowhere to turn his truck around, so he backed it out of the street until he got to an alley he could use for a three-point turn. He couldn’t go back to the office, so he found a bank with a decent size parking lot a few blocks away from the wreckage and waited for backup, or for Hannah to text back.

When she did, it was not a welcome sight:

Got thru to calfire but they can’t get up here, dist 3 and 5 both on big fire across Fresno and Merced cos. Fires all over the state, no extra men.

No CalFire support.

And more fires all over the state.

What about the natl guard?

She said she’d let him know. And come back to the office if it wasn’t safe to do work there without backup or fire support. Hannah would call or text everyone out in the field and get them back to home base to regroup.

Nate was about to start his truck when an explosion from downtown shook him to his bones.

So the power lines had reached the gas leaks.

The sound of police sirens were already well within earshot; no doubt police had already been on the way while Nate and Hannah texted.

Another explosion sounded, this time accompanied by screams.

There was nothing Nate could do without backup and a lot more equipment. The police, and CalTrans when they got here, would get the people out of the way so Nate and his colleagues could do their jobs.

He started up his truck.

Part III.

By the time Nate returned to the office, PG&E had cut power to nearly all of downtown Sonora. It was unclear how many explosions and small fires had started in the mean time, but this would help.

Hannah was on the company’s Twitter feed. They followed all the CalTrans and CalFire accounts as well as other public utilities and a variety of news sources.

Turned out that most of the state was having an even worse time than Sonora.

There were no real explanations, only speculation about what had actually happened. It was as if everyone on the road at once all lost their damn minds and crashed into whatever they could reach. Almond orchards off of I-5 had Hyundai Elantras and Toyota Camrys wrapped around their outer trees like obscene Christmas decorations. Small SUVs, the RAV4s and the Kia Sorentos and such, had hopped curbs in Monterey and driven straight into the ocean, straight into the protected areas belonging to the Aquarium. Fresno was on fire. Woodland was on fire. Amazon packages littered highways all over the state, dropped from sarcastically smiling Prime shipping containers no longer attached to their trucks. Los Angeles was in gridlock — much more than normal gridlock — and there were rumors of open gang warfare in certain neighborhoods. Traffic lights were down, power poles were down, PG&E was cutting power everywhere, and no one was getting enough data to post pictures or videos. Every scrap of information was text-based.

Hannah read the collections of headlines and reports with an increasingly wavering voice as more of their coworkers arrived from routes all over the county. Eventually she got to a point where she could not speak anymore. Her lips pressed tight together, her tears spilled over, and she mutely shook her head. Her fingers had long since curled around the blue lace agate she kept at her desk, and now she was gripping it so hard she was liable to break her own metacarpals. Nate put his hands on the back of her chair and wheeled her far enough away from the computer that he could take over the reading.

“It’s not just California,” he reported grimly, as tweets from national news sources started coloring the feed. “‘President declares national emergency as… as international airports shut down… due to crashes and explosions on runways.’”

“Jesus Christ,” said one of Nate’s fellows.

The lights went out. PG&E was cutting power to Jamestown, too.

The computers stayed on: battery backup to prevent data loss. Thirty seconds later the emergency generators kicked on. The lights flickered back to life.

“Alex, turn the lights back off. We don’t know how long we’ll need those generators to last, or if we can get more fuel for ‘em.” Might as well not waste power where they did not need to. Alex seemed to agree; she was quick on her feet hitting all the switches in the building. Almost all of them.

The last light left on was in Robbie’s office. Given the mood he was in this morning, no one much wanted to go in there, but Alex was brave. She also had ten years seniority over Robbie, not to mention about thirty pounds’ weight advantage. Alex was one of the most masculine women Nate had ever met, and she was tough as nails.

So when Alex screamed upon opening Robbie’s office door, no one much knew what to make of it. There was an absurd moment where everyone thought she was doing it for a prank.

She stepped away, light switch untouched, her face ashen. Nate moved past her into the office.

Robbie had no apparent wounds. No burns or cuts, no cord wrapped around his neck. And yet he was, without a doubt, dead. Nate tried to take his pulse at neck and wrist, but there was none to take. He was barely discolored: a little pale was all. Nate had never seen his face so slack. Robbie always seemed to have a stick up his ass, and a tense face to match. Now he could be sleeping. It was horrifying.

Nate could not deal with a dead body, not now, maybe not ever. His mind went defensively blank at the thought of what to do with Robbie.

No, he could not be thinking of the dead. He had to think of the living.

Robbie kept petty cash in a box in the bottom of his desk. The key lived right next to the box. Nate took out all nearly three thousand dollars. He started making piles of it, approximately even, one for each person in the office. For each living person— no. None of that.

“Take the cash, go buy ice and bottled water,” he told everyone as he distributed the money. “We don’t know how long we’ll be without power but it’s all over the country. You think they’d prioritize us over LA? San Francisco? New York? Washington? We’re nothing compared to them. We might have to go without for a while. Get non-perishable snacks. Whatever you can make last a long time.”

“We shouldn’t split our resources,” Alex protested. “How about this: everyone go home, get your families, and come back here? We have a generator to keep warm at night and to keep the fridge running. We already have some flats of water here, and a little bit of backup fuel. We should get more of each if we can, and more food.”

“If we do that I’ll need help moving my parents,” Hannah squeaked. “They’re older and my mom’s on oxygen.”

“I’ll help you with your parents,” Nate offered. “I don’t have family here, but if we stop by my place I can grab blankets and paper towels and things like that.”

Hannah nodded. “Let’s go by your place first then. Once we get mom and dad in the car we shouldn’t take them out again until we’re here.”

“You two get going first,” said Alex. “Scott and I’ll be behind you but first… let’s see if we can get Robbie out of here.”

Nate was just as glad not to have that job. It was disturbing enough that Robbie was dead, more so since it was wholly unclear what killed him. He could not stomach the thought of touching his cold skin again.

“Come on, Hannah. We’ll take my truck, save the gas in your car for now.”

For most of the drive, where the treetops parted over the roads Nate could clearly see in the sky the daytime ghosts of the twin moons, looking down on him like a pair of smug spectral eyes. It was enough to drive anyone crazy, he mused. Hannah mostly kept her eyes down, but whenever she did look up at the sky, she clutched her agate stone tighter in her palm.

Part IV.

“Your neighborhood is so quiet,” Hannah remarked in a hushed voice as Nate pulled his truck into the driveway.

“It’s a little too quiet right now,” came Nate’s gruff reply.

Maybe he was just being paranoid. He was never home in the middle of the afternoon on a Thursday, maybe the level of quiet was normal. Maybe the terrier that barked all night was only able to do so because it slept through the day. That had to be it.

The power was out, he noticed immediately when he entered. Everything electrical has a hum: the fridge, the TV, the small orange nightlight plugged into the hall. It’s the kind of white noise thing nobody notices until one day it’s not there. Nate was acutely aware of the lack of it. No wonder the neighborhood felt too quiet.

He set Hannah in charge of the hall closet, where big Costco sized packs of paper towels and toilet paper rolls waited wrapped in plastic. It took her two fully loaded trips to get it all hauled into the bed of Nate’s truck.

Nate was making a rather more thorough tour of his house, hunting down blankets, camping gear, water bottles. He met Hannah in the kitchen. She had pulled in two coolers from the deck.

“I thought between your house and mine we could get these filled” she explained.

“Good idea. The cabinet to your left has nonperishables—grab that box of Ramen.”

“You need boiling water to make Ramen,” Hannah protested, but even as she said it Nate was pulling an electric kettle down from another cabinet.

“It’s for camping: electrical or battery. I know there’s bowls in the break room so no worries there…”

After the easy nonperishables they moved on to the produce. The vegetables would spoil quickly without power but fruit would hang on a few days either way.

“Do we have any idea what’s really going on?” Hannah muttered to herself over a small pile of apples.

“We really don’t.”

“All those people… Oh, Goddess.” Hannah sniffed and put her sleeve to her eye. She was not fully crying yet but she was close. “Do you think it has anything to do with that second moon?”

Nate shrugged. “I don’t see how it could. Yeah the extra light keeps me awake at night, but it’s not driving me that crazy. Not like… Robbie.”

At the mention of the name Hannah gave a loud dry sob. “Oh Robbie. That was awful.”

“He yelled at you and threatened to fire you,” Nate reminded her.

“Yeah but he didn’t deserve to die… You know? Back in the day? People used to think the moon caused madness. That’s why they called it lunacy, like lunar.”

“So twice the moons means twice the madness?”

Hannah flinched at his sharp tone, and he immediately felt ashamed of himself. He had to keep reminding himself that she was having an even worse day than he was. Speculating about the situation might not be helping, but snapping at someone who was already scared and upset was even less helpful.

“Sorry. It’s just, this Bird Box shit has me on edge.”

“Yeah. No, no worries,” Hannah mumbled. “Bird Box? You think it’s something like that? Monsters you can’t see until you can, or that manifest as your worst fear or whatever?”

Nate shrugged. “Honestly I have no idea. I don’t know if it’s the moon, or monsters, or a zombie apocalypse virus. I just know that people are dying and we have no idea what’s triggering it.”

“It seems like most of the people who’ve gone crazy so far did it while they were driving. But Robbie didn’t go anywhere today…?”

“We don’t know that. The people driving are just the ones who have caused damage, the ones people are tweeting about. Who knows how many more people are going crazy right now in their own homes?”

Hannah’s face turned grim. “We should hurry up and get to my folks.”

Nate could only agree. They threw the coolers into the back of his truck.

They tried to get the radio to work while Hannah directed the way to her house, but less than half of the usual stations were transmitting. Most of the ones that came through were in Spanish. The traffic advisory channel on AM came through, but there was nothing it could tell them that they could not observe with their own eyes.

Nate understood what Hannah meant by his neighborhood being quiet when he arrived at her house. Hannah and her family lived on the edge of a trailer park right off the highway; they would be subject to traffic and truck noise at any and all hours of the day.

Right now though, with the streets already clogged, with all the remaining traffic slowed down, and without the familiar hums of electricity, her neighborhood was also unnaturally quiet.

Or it was.

A gunshot sounded nearby. Right in front of them, actually. It came from Hannah’s house.

Stricken, Hannah fumbled for the door handle and practically fell out of the truck. She ran in a blind panic to her front door.

Nate was only a few steps behind her; he grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her back before she could touch the screen.

“Whoever. Is. In. There. Has. A. Gun.” He said each word deliberately. Hannah sobbed again.

“Mom. Dad,” she croaked pitifully. And Nate was not without pity. But he also could not let her run into danger blindly. It was a single-wide for God’s sake; where could she run? Where could she possibly hide?

An answering sob came from inside the house. It was, at first, inarticulate wailing. Like the cry of an inconsolable baby filtered through adult lungs. Gradually some words began to filter through the cries.

“Irene…” the voice cried out between blubbers.

Hannah began thrashing against Nate’s grip on her. “That’s my dad!” she screamed at him, just before breaking free and running into her house.

Nate hesitated for a second, torn between going after Hannah and protecting himself against being shot.

Hannah’s scream was the tie-breaker, and Nate tore after her without thinking.

Entering Hannah’s parents’ living room was like entering a labyrinth of dusty tchotchkes and brass picture frames that together covered so much of the walls you almost couldn’t tell what an unpleasantly dark, dated shade of fake wood paneling was under them. A kitchen to the right sported dark cabinets with brass hardware, and the trend continued down the hall to the left with paneled walls and brass doorknobs.

It was from that direction that Hannah’s scream had apparently come, and Nate threaded his way around small laundry piles and stacks of magazines until he reached the end of the hall.

The door to the master bedroom stood ajar, and just inside it: Hannah, standing with her back pressed against a picture frame on the wall, staring in mute terror at the floor.

Hannah’s mother, who must have been Irene, lay on the floor, dead or nearly so. She was surrounded by a pool and a spray of her own blood, her discarded oxygen tank a few feet away beside the bed.

And sitting on the bed, with hollow eyes and a decrepit hand wrapped around a 9mm pistol, was an old man. He was staring down at Irene in shock.

“Dad?” Hannah finally squeaked out. The old man flinched but he did not look up.

“Mr. Jennings?” Nate prompted. Hannah’s dad flinched again.

“Mr. Earl Jennings?” Nate said again, after a brief whispered appeal to Hannah for her dad’s first name. At the sound of his first name, he finally looked up.

“I had to do it,” he wheezed in despair. “I had to do it. She was going crazy. She was… oh, Irene.”

Nate turned toward Hannah, but her face was white and her lips were sealed, and she would not or could not speak.

“What do you mean, Mr. Jennings? What do you mean, she was going crazy?”

Mr. Jennings wailed. “She was talking all this crazy talk, about how the whole world had to be cleaned. She said she was going to the moon while the world was cleaned, and when it was done bein’ cleaned she was gonna come back and be queen here. On a new clean Earth. She was…crazy. She took off her oxygen mask and hit me when I tried to put it back on her.” And truly, ugly bruises were forming on Earl’s face and arms. “She started screamin’. And then. Then she just stopped. She went all silent and cold-like. Then she said. She said.” He paused.

“What did she say, Mr. Jennings?” Nate prompted after a few moments of nothing but Earl sobbing.

Earl took a shuddering breath. “She seemed calm. But she took a knife from the kitchen. And she said the world had to be cleaned, and she’d do the cleanin’ if she had to…Oh God. She was gonna kill me, I could see it in her eyes. Irene…” he broke off again into inarticulate wailing.

After a few minutes he subsided, and he finally looked up at Hannah. “I’m so sorry baby. I’m so sorry.”

He held the pistol up to his own temple and pulled.

Hannah screamed. Nate screamed. Earl did not scream. The force of the shot flung his body down against the mattress. The blood sprayed out and flicked all over Nate and Hannah’s clothes.

Nate turned as quickly as he could, threw his arms around Hannah and pushed her head against his shoulder, forcing darkness over her eyes. He was not quick enough to spare her the sight of her father’s death, but at least she would not be able to keep looking at it. It also prevented Nate from having to look at the body any longer than necessary. He was actually feeling like he might be sick if he did not get them out of this room quickly.

Hannah sobbed and screamed into Nate’s shoulder and alternated between struggling against his grip on her and clutching his shirt. She let him herd her out of the master bedroom, but her legs gave out in the living room and she collapsed onto the threadbare sofa.

She stayed there, curled up and sobbing, for at least another ten minutes. Nate was powerless to do anything but sit there next to her, trying as hard as he could to get the image of Earl’s last moments out of his mind. The image would not go away.

First Robbie, now Hannah’s parents. Was the whole world going crazy?

Part V.

Even though at length she recovered enough of her wits to stand, Hannah was incapable of going through the house to look for supplies. Nate could hardly blame her, but since the task had to fall on him, he was sorry he failed to close the master bedroom door when they left it.

Nate took Hannah out to the front porch and sat her down on the steps. He put the lap quilt from the couch around her shoulders.

“Stay here a minute. Deep breaths. Try to keep your eyes closed.”

“Still thinking it’s like Bird Box?” Hannah said, her voice completely hollow.

“Let’s not take any chances about it, huh? I’ll be back out in a couple minutes.”

Nate himself had to take a deep breath before heading back inside. It was not so much that the air smelled different with all the blood it it; it’s just that he knew it was there. More to the point, he felt like a grave robber. What kind of scum disrespects the dead like that?

That was not true, he told himself; it was Hannah’s house too, and whatever he took from the house was for her survival. He was not stealing from the dead. He would not even go into the master bedroom again; he would restrict himself to the kitchen, bathroom, living room and hall closet. Places full of household goods, not personal possessions. 

Hannah’s parents had more nonperishable food in their kitchen than Nate normally kept, but that did not make it easy to decide what to take. Canned goods were not the most practical due to their weight. Neither were noodles that were not instant. That said, between the granola bars, trail mix, and toaster pastries, Nate could put together a small lightweight feast. An obliging cupboard full of plastic shopping bags made it easy to pile the lot by the front door while Nate moved on to the closet.

It occurred to Nate, in a stroke of uncommon thoughtfulness, that Hannah would probably like to have a few essential toiletries with her, especially since she was likely to have to go without a shower for days or weeks. There was a green backpack in the hall closet, maybe Hannah’s own from high school, that would do. He grabbed her toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant, hair brush and elastics, face wash and moisturizer – he definitely would not have known to grab the moisturizer on his own, but luckily they were right next to each other. He had poked his head into the cupboard under the bathroom sink to see if there was anything else she might need when he spotted a box of tampons. Might as well grab them too, he decided: even if she did not need them now, she might need them in a few days, or next week…

He had not wanted to go into Hannah’s bedroom – that was a private space where he had no business – but in going over the house he was keenly aware that he had not found Hannah’s jacket. Blankets were well and good, but she needed an option with sleeves. So he went in.

Her room smelled like incense and a strange combination of scented candles. She had so many candles. Many of them had little black flecks of something on top: tiny pieces of ash? There was an altar of sorts on top of her dresser: a mirror, more candles, a variety of crystals and rocks with strange symbols painted on them. There was a battered three-subject notebook with a pen stuck into its spiral. Maybe a diary? Without really thinking about it, Nate picked it up and shoved it into the green backpack. Without thinking through any of it, he also picked up a pink crystal the size of a kiwi and packed that too. Hannah liked collecting rocks; that was about as far as Nate understood Wicca. Maybe having one of these rocks would give her comfort.

She had just watched her parents die, and Nate thought a rose quartz was going to give her comfort? He huffed out half a laugh at the absurdity of it. Still, he did not take the crystal back out of the backpack.

The jacket, his original target, was hanging on the back of the door the whole time. He grabbed it on the way out.

Part of him was afraid that he would walk out onto the front porch and Hannah would be gone, or worse that she would be there, but be violently insane like her mother.

Hannah’s reaction to shock was much more like her father’s: she was just sitting there, staring blankly, hands limp in her lap. Tears continued to run down her face but she had no more energy left to sob. Nate had loaded everything they were taking from her house into the last few open square feet of his truck bed, and in the mean time she had not spoken, stood up, or even blinked as far as he could tell.

“Hey. Hannah,” Nate said quietly, his hand on the quilt over her shoulder. A bit louder but still gently: “Hannah. Hannah Jennings. Look at me, Hannah.” She finally looked. Whew, so she was not completely catatonic after all. “It’s time to go, Hannah.” It felt strange to keep saying her name over and over, but Nate had read somewhere that repeating a person’s name helped to keep them grounded in reality. He hoped that wasn’t just something made up for a novel or a movie.

It seemed to be working in her case: Hannah nodded. She even tried to stand under her own power, but that did not work out terribly well. Nate supported her back to the truck and lifted her in. When he got in on his side, she had made no motion to fasten her seat belt, so Nate ended up doing that too.

They drove in silence back to the office. Near silence, anyway: once in a while Hannah gave a loud sniff. There was nothing Nate could say, so he kept quiet. 

There were five other vehicles parked at the office when they arrived, not counting crazy drivers who had rolled up over the curb: Hannah’s dark green Honda Civic, Alex’s red Dodge Durango, Scott’s black Jeep Cherokee, Robbie’s dark grey Nissan Altima, and one of the company trucks, a white Chevy Silverado several years newer than Nate’s grey one. Nate backed his truck into the handicap parking spot close to the door. No one else was going to need that spot for a while.

Hannah, though far from okay, recovered enough that she offered to help unload when Nate shut his truck off. Nate didn’t figure he needed the help, but he equally figured that doing something productive would keep Hannah from falling apart again. He told her to get the paper towels and toilet rolls into the supply closet, and then to organize the food as he brought it through to the kitchen.

They walked in on Alex and Scott in the middle of a loud and heated discussion.

“That’s why I told you to try calling him, the little fucker blocked me!” Alex yelled.

“If he’s gone, he’s gone! What makes you think he’ll answer me if he blocked you?!” came Scott’s reply.

“What’s going on?” Nate interjected.

“Finally!” cried Alex. “I was starting to think you two left us, too.”

“What do you mean, left?”

“I mean, that little shit Hector hasn’t shown up, and he’s blocked my number. No sign of Martin yet, either.” At this Alex threw a dirty look in Scott’s direction.

Nate groaned. So it was going to be like this, huh? “Alright, Scott, you try calling Martin, I will call Hector.”

We’re sorry, but the number you have dialed is not in service at this time…

Nate tried texting.

Message not deliverable.

So much for Hector.

This was what Nate had originally wanted, wasn’t it? He told each of them to take money, get water, and hunker down at home. That’s exactly what Hector did. At least, Nate hoped that’s what Hector did. The alternatives…

No time for this. Nate hauled in more bags of food, more blankets, more water bottles.

“Hey, Martin! Glad I caught you, buddy,” came Scott’s voice from inside Robbie’s office. “Oh is that right? Huh. Thing is, we were kinda countin’ on you, man… What? No, that’s not… Martin, come on… What the hell are you talking about, dude? Slow down, you’re not making any sense… Yeah, I know, the moon’s real nice…dude? You can’t drive to the moon…No that wasn’t a dare! Martin! Come back, come on man, let’s talk about this… Martin! Martin?! Shit! Fuck, shit, fuck.”

There was a window between Robbie’s office and the main office. Nate saw Scott pull the phone away from his head as a look of pain and horror passed over his face. More than ten seconds later, Scott put the phone back up to his ear.

“Martin? Buddy, you there? Martin? Answer me, goddammit! …Fuck you…” Scott’s voice broke and he put the phone down for good.

He stepped out of the office and met Nate’s questioning look.

“I think Martin’s dead.”

“What happened?”

“If I had to guess: car crash.” Scott sounded as wooden has Hannah had earlier.

“Jesus.”

“What the fuck is going on?!” Scott exploded. A muffled crashing sound answered from the direction of the kitchen, as if a large Costco sized box of Ramen noodles had been dropped, collided with the edge of a table or counter-top, and then fell on the floor. A skittering, as of a dozen packets of dried noodles sliding around on linoleum, followed the crash.

“I don’t know, man, but considering the day we’ve all had, maybe keep it down a little? We need to stay calm.”

“Calm, hell! You didn’t have to carry Robbie out of here into the woods! I did that! I’ve never cleaned up after a dead body before in my life, but that’s the day I’ve had, Nate! Don’t tell me to fucking stay calm!”

“Not that it’s a competition, but you definitely have not had the worst day of anyone in this building right now, so will you kindly keep your fucking voice down.”

“You think you’ve had a worse day so far? Or are you talking about the filing girl you clearly want to fuck so badly? Is that how you can stay so calm, Nate? Have you already fucked her and you’re too mellowed out to care that Robbie and Martin are dead, and probably so is Hector?” Scott turned away and started stomping toward the break room and kitchen.

Nate thought Scott was storming off to cool down for a few minutes, so he did not follow. But then came Hannah’s yelp, followed by the thud of something heavy hitting the kitchen floor, and he was sprinting across the office.

“Maybe,” Scott was growling. His voice sounded thick like he was talking around a wad of saliva. “Maybe Nate has the right idea after all. Maybe I’d mellow out some, too…”

“Are you crazy?” Hannah shrieked from the floor.

By the time Nate entered the kitchen, Hannah had flailed and crawled until her back was against the cupboards, but Scott continued to advance on her. All the while he was pulling his belt off. His hands were occupied; Nate took the opportunity to charge.

Nate and Scott went down in a heap, but there was a problem in that Nate had no Step Two to this plan. Scott was taller, heavier, and definitely not thinking straight. His fist collided with the side of Nate’s head. Lights burst behind Nate’s eyes, and he finally understood why cartoon characters had stars around them after a head injury. The world was spinning blurry lights; Scott’s growls and Hannah’s screams sounded a world away. 

He became aware that Scott was trying to stand up again, and without any other plan in place, Nate tackled him again. For a moment they were nothing but flailing limbs, until a gunshot pierced the air and cleared even Nate’s foggy head.

Suddenly Nate’s knee would not hold up his weight. He staggered, then fell to the floor. His pants felt too warm; he hadn’t wet himself, had he?

He was, very dimly and vaguely, aware of the shape of Scott rising to his feet. He was screaming something else now, but Nate could not hear the words.

Another nearby sound came to him, the sound of Alex’s voice? He could not tell what she was saying either. All that was clear was that Alex and Scott were talking to each other.

There was another gunshot. A great shuddering thud as Scott hit the floor. A scream. Hannah’s; Nate knew her scream too well, even in this state.

“Nate? Nate. Hey. Stay awake, Nate, stay with me.” Hannah’s voice was near his head. She was sobbing again. How did she have enough water left in her to sob?

“Keep pressure right here,” Alex’s voice came from somewhere above his hips. “I’m really sorry Nate. I was trying to get Scott, I heard what he was saying to you about Hannah, and… Hannah, keep pressure right here! Keep it together, come on. I’ll be right back with first aid.”

Despite all of Hannah’s begging him to ‘stay with her’, Nate felt his consciousness slipping. He couldn’t keep his eyes open anymore. What was that bright silvery light? God damn it, it looked just like those two moons. Wouldn’t they ever just let him get some sleep?

Part VI.

So…he was dead, right? He had to be dead.

He was floating, for one thing. It felt like he was floating directly over his body, with his feet still sort of anchored to himself; but it looked like he was looking at the planet Earth from outer space.

Nate tried to take a step. His foot felt like it weighed very little, and yet it was tethered by elastic band to…something. He could lift his foot, no problem, but he could not move it anywhere to set it down again. There was no walking, wherever he was.

And wherever he was, it had to be Hell, right? There was no fire or brimstone, but neither were there any pearly gates. A big black empty nothingness looking at the Earth from afar: that was much more hellish than heavenly.

Maybe it was one of those in-between places: Purgatory or Limbo, or Tartarus.

The thing is: Nate could not remember for anything how he had died. He remembered getting shot. But that had been in the leg; surely that had not killed him?

Wait, he had been punched in the head, and that could have done it. Scott was a big man.

There was something peaceful about this place. Maybe there were no angels on fluffy clouds, but Nate felt well rested, and that had to be a feeling from Heaven.

And the Earth looked so still from this distance. So smooth. Like there wasn’t a single bad thing going on in it. No wars, no men in suits hoarding all the money, certainly no apocalypse-level events driving everyone crazy. From up here, up here on the moon, Nate realized with a start, the Earth looked so…clean.

Nate looked to his left, and nearly fell over himself.

There was the second moon. It was so much closer, so much bigger. Its bright silver surface matched the soil under Nate’s feet, and he was seized with a sudden panic. Which of these moons was the real moon, and which the imposter? What if he was standing on the fake moon after all?

Keep it together, Nate. Keep calm.

What did it really matter which moon he was on? He was on the moon!

You’re not dead. Dead people don’t go to the moon. Maybe you’re dreaming but you’re not dead.

And if he was not dead, maybe he could get back to Earth.

Why go back? Why go back to all that pain and madness? You could stay here, Nate.

Stay here? Where did that come from? Nate thought he was just thinking to himself, but that thought was not his.

Had any of those thoughts been his? They seemed so him-like at the time.

Calm down, Nate—

“Don’t tell me to calm down!”

…That’s exactly what Scott said.

“No…” but Nate was lying to himself there. He remembered what Scott had said. Then he remembered what Scott had done. Nate felt sick.

“Who are you? Why am I here?”

Why are any of us here?

“Are there more of you, or was that just philosophy?”

The thought that answered Nate was not in words, but in feeling. Roughly translated, the feeling was I don’t understand what you mean by more.

Then, what more could you ask for? We are already all.

“What the fuck does that mean?”

Calm down, Nathan. Don’t distress yourself.

Nate made a concerted effort to cool his temper before replying. “I just want answers. I want to know why things are so messed up on Earth. Why all those people had to die.”

The same feeling of confusion broke against his mental space. You answered your own question. The Earth was, as you put it, messed up, already. Humans did it. Now humans must pay their debts. It will end when balance is restored.

“That’s bullshit. How does killing everyone restore balance? What about the people trying to save the planet?”

Humans cannot save this planet. Humans can only consume and destroy it.

“Why do you even care what we do to this planet? I don’t want the Earth destroyed either, but shouldn’t we humans get to be the ones making that decision? We’re the native species here, not you!”

A thunderous rumble rolled through Nate’s head and brought him to his knees. It was like a chuckle from the throat of God.

You think so?

The pain in Nate’s head would not let him answer. His vision was become blurry around the edges. He turned his gaze back toward Earth. Toward home.

Dawn was just breaking over the Sierra Nevada ridge. Nate could almost see the colors as they turned from grey to peach to blue. He could almost hear Alex and Hannah’s voices.

Nate’s vision blacked out completely. In return, the voices became much clearer.

“—before data cut off was that Air Force One went down. They’re pretty sure the President is dead.” That was Hannah’s voice for sure.

Alex was in the same room but further away. “At least one good thing came of all this.”

“I’d take the President back if it meant I could have my parents too.”

“Jesus, I’m sorry Hannah.”

Hannah didn’t say anything but she made a little noise like mm-hmm.

Alex tried to change the subject. “Hey, I’ve never thought to ask before: is it offensive when we say Jesus or God around you?”

“Nope, not at all. Invoke the name of your savior, or take his name in vain, it doesn’t mean anything to me.”

“So when you say things like ‘oh my Goddess’, which Goddess is that?”

“Mother Earth. The Greeks called her Gaia.”

“Is that why you collect crystals?”

Hannah chuckled. “The Earth Mother has power; the crystals are part of her; they channel her energy. Take this one, for example.” There was the sound of a zipper, a rustle of paper and fabric. “The rose quartz. This one channels compassion.”

“Since when is the Earth compassionate?” Alex sounded skeptical.

“She’s not all the time. Earthquakes and volcanoes and rockslides are all terrifying and brutal. But she also gives us soil to grow our food in. She nourishes us, gives us life. Isn’t that compassion?”

“I see…” she sounded like she did not quite see. “You were just carrying that around in your backpack?”

“No. Nate put it there.”

“Why in the world…? I didn’t think he believed in any of that.”

“I don’t know.” Hannah was quiet, thoughtful. “He was going through the house. Looking for supplies. He knew to grab my Book of Shadows. Maybe he was trying to send a message with this…”

“I’m sorry, your book of what now?”

“Book of Shadows. My spellbook. It was on my altar next to my favorite crystals.”

Nate dimly recalled the spiral notebook he had thought was a much-used diary. Part of him wanted to get up and insist that he had no idea what it was and that he had no intentions of sending encoded messages. The other part of him sort of wanted to see where Hannah was going with this.

“Why the rose quartz?” she muttered to herself.

“What did you say rose quartz was for? Compassion?”

“Compassion, healing, nurturing. Basically all expressions of love. It’s spiritually connected to the heart chakra.”

“If we live through this you’ll have to explain properly what a chakra is. Anyway, I think if he was trying to send a message, the simplest one would be that he loves you.”

“That would be the simplest but that doesn’t mean it’s correct,” Hannah said.

Meanwhile what Nate was thinking was: no, the simplest answer is I have no idea what your rocks mean, I just thought you’d like it.

Getting her a rock just because she’d like it was an act of compassion though, so at least his choice was thematically on point.

Nate thought it would be a bad idea to “wake up” while they were talking about him, so he waited until Alex asked something about the state of their supplies and Hannah said she would go and check. He “woke up” shortly after he heard the door to the break room open and close.

“Rise and shine, buddy,” Alex greeted him. “Good to see you didn’t die after all.”

Nate groaned and pushed himself up. He was embedded in a nest made of most of the blankets they had brought, so the task was easier said than done.

“What happened?” he asked.

“What’s the last thing you remember?”

“Um. Scott punching me in the head.”

“Ah. Okay.” Alex straightened herself up. She was leaning against one of the desks. Her jacket was on but the sleeves were pushed up, her hands were dirty, and she had a blanket of her own around her shoulders. Her hair, though short, looked a complete mess. “I brought a gun with me from home. I figured, what if looters show up? We should have some protection. I was looking for a place out of the way to stow it when I heard you and Scott start fighting.

“It’s not that I really wanted to kill Scott. He’s argumentative but he never seemed like a bad person. But I saw him hit you, and I heard what he said about Hannah, and I figured he’d gone crazy and couldn’t be reasoned with. So I shot at him. I’m really sorry I hit you, man. Good news, though: it was a complete graze, no bullet in you, no bone damage that I can tell. Meat only.”

At this, Nate looked down at his leg. Alex had applied a field dressing of sorts. The hem of his boxers on the left side was caked with dried blood.

“Where are my pants?”

“On the chair over there. We had to get them off you to dress the wound…” Nate followed the line of Alex’s pointing until he spotted his jeans. He could tell they were heavily bloodstained because the right leg was blue and the left leg was black. Nate was relieved to discover that all the blood was what had made his pants feel warm before. He had not wet himself after all. Small miracles.

“After Scott pushed you down I had a clear shot. I took it. Scott’s dead. I dragged him out back after we were done taking care of you. Hannah’s gone through almost all the bleach in the closet trying to get the stains out of the break room floor.”

“Now that you mention it I can smell the bleach. How is she venting it?”

“We’ve got the door propped open and we opened the front windows. We didn’t want to use the generator to run A/C.”

“Good call. I’m sorry you had to do that. To Scott I mean.” Nate was not sorry that Alex saved his life, but the rest of it, yes.

“Me too. But he wasn’t right in the head anymore. Scott would never have attacked you or Hannah. He went crazy like the rest of them.”

“I hate to ask, but, would you do me a favor and shoot me if I get like that?”

Alex grimaced. “Sure thing, buddy. Same thing, you to me?”

Nate nodded. “Yeah, definitely.”

They sat in morbid silence for a moment.

“Hey listen I need to ask you something,” Alex leaned in conspiratorially. She lowered her voice. “Is there something going on between you and Hannah?”

Having heard the conversation when they thought he was asleep, Nate knew perfectly well where this was going, but he decided to have a bit of fun with it. He leaned in and lowered his voice too.

“Why? You thinking of making a move?”

Alex snorted. “Nah, she’s not my type. I like ‘em a bit less helpless. But a guy with a savior complex could really go for a girl like her.”

“Too bad I don’t have a savior complex.”

Alex raised her eyebrow at him. “You don’t think so?”

Nate flinched. He was reminded forcibly of that awful dream he had had about the moons, and a voice, maybe the voice of God, mocking him.

Alex misinterpreted his flinch. “You do like her, don’t you? Even if you haven’t made a move?”

Nate was not quite sure how to answer at first. Hannah was… not strikingly beautiful but certainly pretty; no genius but smart enough most of the time; a hard worker, though unambitious; sweet and attentive. And who was Nate to demand a woman be any more than those things? He wasn’t strikingly handsome himself, nor of above average intelligence; he worked hard but was no schemer for power, and he took care of those who cared for him. They would be a well-matched pair, he considered. He had done far worse for himself with his first, extremely short, marriage.

The answer to the question of whether he liked her, then, was yes. But he knew that wasn’t what Alex was really asking. Alex thought he had deliberately given Hannah the rose quartz to signify love. When she asked “do you like her?” what she really meant was “do you, or could you, love her?” To that Nate did not yet have an answer. The fact of it was: the explosive end to that short first marriage had rather ruined his opinion of the whole institution, and of dating beyond the casual, short-term sort. Hannah was a good girl, wife-quality even. She deserved someone of husband-quality. That was assuming there was a single husband-quality man left in the world when they reached the post-apocalypse, of course.

“We make it through this, get the world put back together, I’ll let you know,” he finally said. But he said it with a conspiratorial little smile, to put Alex’s imagination on the right track.

Alex straightened back out. Then her face went slack.

“Too bad, Nathan.”

Nate lurched backward. The voice that came out of Alex’s mouth was not Alex’s voice. Nor did it sound like the voice from the dream. But then again that voice had been in Nate’s head; it had been almost in his voice.

But it was, undoubtedly, The Voice. The Voice of the thing that believed humans deserved to be wiped out.

“Too bad w-what?” Nate stammered. He tried to recover enough motor function to reach over and grab his jeans. He got them at last, pulled them on, and tried not to be disgusted by the crusty feeling all over his left leg.

“We were thinking about leaving pockets of humanity alone. Wiping out a whole race is so exhausting. But if you and the girl aren’t a breeding pair, what would be the point in letting you continue?”

Seeing Alex’s face move to the words of a voice that was not hers was horrific, but not nearly as much as seeing the muscles in her neck spasm as her throat tried to make her voice sound like The Voice.

“You would let us live if we were a couple? I thought you hated humans; why would you want us to make more?”

The Voice gave a grotesque laugh that left blood dripping slowly from Alex’s mouth.

“We did not always hate you. When you were few, you did not harm the planet as you do now. If you do not wish extinction, we would return to this state, as a compromise.”

“Extinction?” Hannah had returned from the break room. She froze, horrified, when she realized where The Voice was coming from.

“Yes, little one. You may join us, or you may go extinct, or you may stay with this man and try to save your wretched race.”

Alex began clawing at her own throat. Trying to tear out or silence The Voice. With a lurch Nate realized that she was conscious of everything the horrible Voice was doing to her, aware of every word her throat and mouth were forced to say. She fought for control, but it seemed like The Voice was choking her for her efforts.

“Nate,” she gasped. “You. P-promised…”

“Alex…”

“DO IT.”

“Yes, Nathan. DO IT. Destroy your friend to save her if you wish. It makes no difference: her soul is already with us.”

“Nate?” Hannah’s hand was on his arm.

“She asked me to kill her if…”

“If she was taken by us. And she has been. Your kind parasitized ours in time before memory; now our kind will feed on you. On her.”

The gun was just sitting on the desk. It would be so easy to grab it.

“Nate she’s suffering. End it for her,” Hannah pleaded.

“Yes Nathan, end it for her. End it, or we will end you!”

Alex’s body began to rise like a grotesque marionette. It lurched forward on limp feet; Nate heard the ankle bones crack. A scream came out in Alex’s voice, just Alex’s voice. The scream started with pain, then moved into rage.

Nate was paralyzed. It was Hannah who had the wherewithal to grab the gun. She put the barrel against Alex’s face like her father had done the day before, and pulled the trigger.

Alex went down in a crumpled mess of limbs. Hannah dropped the gun and reflexively kicked it across the room. Nate fell to his knees. He felt like he could barely breathe.

“Your kind…were always good fighters. Multiply again, little parasites…we will be back to feast again…”

The Voice sounded exactly as garbled and wrong as any voice would, coming out of what was left of Alex’s face and jaw. Nate struggled not to throw up at the sight of blood bubbles welling up with each fading word.

“Nate? Nate, come on, stay with me.” Hannah was at his side, her hands on either side of his face.

“Hannah, you…?”

“I heard what you promised her earlier. You weren’t going to let each other go the way Scott went. I wasn’t going to let that happen either. Not to her, and not to you.”

He was losing the ability to keep his own head up. He leaned against Hannah’s shoulder and put his arms around her waist.

“Don’t let that happen to me, Hannah. Please don’t let it—“

“Shh. It’s over. Whatever that thing was, it said before that we could live. It’s gone. It’s over.” She had one arm tight around his shoulders and her other hand stroking his hair like a startled pet. “It’s over,��� she repeated gently.

They moved Alex out of the building within the hour. That was it for Nate’s lifting power until his leg healed up some more. Hannah changed his dressing and they sat on the nest of blankets in the main office for the rest of the day. Hannah periodically brought out food, or helped Nate limp to the bathroom. Nate began reading aloud a mystery novel Martin had left in his desk.

When night fell, the sky looked darker.

He asked Hannah to confirm what he was seeing and she agreed with him.

There was only one moon in the sky.

----END OF TEXT----

<< Return to Works

[writingpromptswithkate]

Two Moons Are Better Than One

Part VI.

So...he was dead, right? He had to be dead.

He was floating, for one thing. It felt like he was floating directly over his body, with his feet still sort of anchored to himself; but it looked like he was looking at the planet Earth from outer space.

Nate tried to take a step. His foot felt like it weighed very little, and yet it was tethered by elastic band to...something. He could lift his foot, no problem, but he could not move it anywhere to set it down again. There was no walking, wherever he was.

And wherever he was, it had to be Hell, right? There was no fire or brimstone, but neither were there any pearly gates. A big black empty nothingness looking at the Earth from afar: that was much more hellish than heavenly.

Maybe it was one of those in-between places: Purgatory or Limbo, or Tartarus.

The thing is: Nate could not remember for anything how he had died. He remembered getting shot. But that had been in the leg; surely that had not killed him?

Wait, he had been punched in the head, and that could have done it. Scott was a big man.

There was something peaceful about this place. Maybe there were no angels on fluffy clouds, but Nate felt well rested, and that had to be a feeling from Heaven.

And the Earth looked so still from this distance. So smooth. Like there wasn’t a single bad thing going on in it. No wars, no men in suits hoarding all the money, certainly no apocalypse-level events driving everyone crazy. From up here, up here on the moon, Nate realized with a start, the Earth looked so...clean.

Nate looked to his left, and nearly fell over himself.

There was the second moon. It was so much closer, so much bigger. Its bright silver surface matched the soil under Nate’s feet, and he was seized with a sudden panic. Which of these moons was the real moon, and which the imposter? What if he was standing on the fake moon after all?

Keep it together, Nate. Keep calm.

What did it really matter which moon he was on? He was on the moon!

You’re not dead. Dead people don’t go to the moon. Maybe you’re dreaming but you’re not dead.

And if he was not dead, maybe he could get back to Earth.

Why go back? Why go back to all that pain and madness? You could stay here, Nate.

Stay here? Where did that come from? Nate thought he was just thinking to himself, but that thought was not his.

Had any of those thoughts been his? They seemed so him-like at the time.

Calm down, Nate—

“Don’t tell me to calm down!”

...That’s exactly what Scott said.

“No...” but Nate was lying to himself there. He remembered what Scott had said. Then he remembered what Scott had done. Nate felt sick.

“Who are you? Why am I here?”

Why are any of us here?

“Are there more of you, or was that just philosophy?”

The thought that answered Nate was not in words, but in feeling. Roughly translated, the feeling was I don’t understand what you mean by more.

Then, what more could you ask for? We are already all.

“What the fuck does that mean?”

Calm down, Nathan. Don’t distress yourself.

Nate made a concerted effort to cool his temper before replying. “I just want answers. I want to know why things are so messed up on Earth. Why all those people had to die.”

The same feeling of confusion broke against his mental space. You answered your own question. The Earth was, as you put it, messed up, already. Humans did it. Now humans must pay their debts. It will end when balance is restored.

“That’s bullshit. How does killing everyone restore balance? What about the people trying to save the planet?”

Humans cannot save this planet. Humans can only consume and destroy it.

“Why do you even care what we do to this planet? I don’t want the Earth destroyed either, but shouldn’t we humans get to be the ones making that decision? We’re the native species here, not you!”

A thunderous rumble rolled through Nate’s head and brought him to his knees. It was like a chuckle from the throat of God.

You think so?

The pain in Nate’s head would not let him answer. His vision was become blurry around the edges. He turned his gaze back toward Earth. Toward home.

Dawn was just breaking over the Sierra Nevada ridge. Nate could almost see the colors as they turned from grey to peach to blue. He could almost hear Alex and Hannah’s voices.

Nate’s vision blacked out completely. In return, the voices became much clearer.

“—before data cut off was that Air Force One went down. They’re pretty sure the President is dead.” That was Hannah’s voice for sure.

Alex was in the same room but further away. “At least one good thing came of all this.”

“I’d take the President back if it meant I could have my parents too.”

“Jesus, I’m sorry Hannah.”

Hannah didn’t say anything but she made a little noise like mm-hmm.

Alex tried to change the subject. “Hey, I’ve never thought to ask before: is it offensive when we say Jesus or God around you?”

“Nope, not at all. Invoke the name of your savior, or take his name in vain, it doesn’t mean anything to me.”

“So when you say things like ‘oh my Goddess’, which Goddess is that?”

“Mother Earth. The Greeks called her Gaia.”

“Is that why you collect crystals?”

Hannah chuckled. “The Earth Mother has power; the crystals are part of her; they channel her energy. Take this one, for example.” There was the sound of a zipper, a rustle of paper and fabric. “The rose quartz. This one channels compassion.”

“Since when is the Earth compassionate?” Alex sounded skeptical.

“She’s not all the time. Earthquakes and volcanoes and rockslides are all terrifying and brutal. But she also gives us soil to grow our food in. She nourishes us, gives us life. Isn’t that compassion?”

“I see...” she sounded like she did not quite see. “You were just carrying that around in your backpack?”

“No. Nate put it there.”

“Why in the world...? I didn’t think he believed in any of that.”

“I don’t know.” Hannah was quiet, thoughtful. “He was going through the house. Looking for supplies. He knew to grab my Book of Shadows. Maybe he was trying to send a message with this...”

“I’m sorry, your book of what now?”

“Book of Shadows. My spellbook. It was on my altar next to my favorite crystals.”

Nate dimly recalled the spiral notebook he had thought was a much-used diary. Part of him wanted to get up and insist that he had no idea what it was and that he had no intentions of sending encoded messages. The other part of him sort of wanted to see where Hannah was going with this.

“Why the rose quartz?” she muttered to herself.

“What did you say rose quartz was for? Compassion?”

“Compassion, healing, nurturing. Basically all expressions of love. It’s spiritually connected to the heart chakra.”

“If we live through this you’ll have to explain properly what a chakra is. Anyway, I think if he was trying to send a message, the simplest one would be that he loves you.”

“That would be the simplest but that doesn’t mean it’s correct,” Hannah said.

Meanwhile what Nate was thinking was: no, the simplest answer is I have no idea what your rocks mean, I just thought you’d like it.

Getting her a rock just because she’d like it was an act of compassion though, so at least his choice was thematically on point.

Nate thought it would be a bad idea to “wake up” while they were talking about him, so he waited until Alex asked something about the state of their supplies and Hannah said she would go and check. He “woke up” shortly after he heard the door to the break room open and close.

“Rise and shine, buddy,” Alex greeted him. “Good to see you didn’t die after all.”

Nate groaned and pushed himself up. He was embedded in a nest made of most of the blankets they had brought, so the task was easier said than done.

“What happened?” he asked.

“What’s the last thing you remember?”

“Um. Scott punching me in the head.”

“Ah. Okay.” Alex straightened herself up. She was leaning against one of the desks. Her jacket was on but the sleeves were pushed up, her hands were dirty, and she had a blanket of her own around her shoulders. Her hair, though short, looked a complete mess. “I brought a gun with me from home. I figured, what if looters show up? We should have some protection. I was looking for a place out of the way to stow it when I heard you and Scott start fighting.

“It’s not that I really wanted to kill Scott. He’s argumentative but he never seemed like a bad person. But I saw him hit you, and I heard what he said about Hannah, and I figured he’d gone crazy and couldn’t be reasoned with. So I shot at him. I’m really sorry I hit you, man. Good news, though: it was a complete graze, no bullet in you, no bone damage that I can tell. Meat only.”

At this, Nate looked down at his leg. Alex had applied a field dressing of sorts. The hem of his boxers on the left side was caked with dried blood.

“Where are my pants?”

“On the chair over there. We had to get them off you to dress the wound...” Nate followed the line of Alex’s pointing until he spotted his jeans. He could tell they were heavily bloodstained because the right leg was blue and the left leg was black. Nate was relieved to discover that all the blood was what had made his pants feel warm before. He had not wet himself after all. Small miracles.

“After Scott pushed you down I had a clear shot. I took it. Scott’s dead. I dragged him out back after we were done taking care of you. Hannah’s gone through almost all the bleach in the closet trying to get the stains out of the break room floor.”

“Now that you mention it I can smell the bleach. How is she venting it?”

“We’ve got the door propped open and we opened the front windows. We didn’t want to use the generator to run A/C.”

“Good call. I’m sorry you had to do that. To Scott I mean.” Nate was not sorry that Alex saved his life, but the rest of it, yes.

“Me too. But he wasn’t right in the head anymore. Scott would never have attacked you or Hannah. He went crazy like the rest of them.”

“I hate to ask, but, would you do me a favor and shoot me if I get like that?”

Alex grimaced. “Sure thing, buddy. Same thing, you to me?”

Nate nodded. “Yeah, definitely.”

They sat in morbid silence for a moment.

“Hey listen I need to ask you something,” Alex leaned in conspiratorially. She lowered her voice. “Is there something going on between you and Hannah?”

Having heard the conversation when they thought he was asleep, Nate knew perfectly well where this was going, but he decided to have a bit of fun with it. He leaned in and lowered his voice too.

“Why? You thinking of making a move?”

Alex snorted. “Nah, she’s not my type. I like ‘em a bit less helpless. But a guy with a savior complex could really go for a girl like her.”

“Too bad I don’t have a savior complex.”

Alex raised her eyebrow at him. “You don’t think so?”

Nate flinched. He was reminded forcibly of that awful dream he had had about the moons, and a voice, maybe the voice of God, mocking him.

Alex misinterpreted his flinch. “You do like her, don’t you? Even if you haven’t made a move?”

Nate was not quite sure how to answer at first. Hannah was... not strikingly beautiful but certainly pretty; no genius but smart enough most of the time; a hard worker, though unambitious; sweet and attentive. And who was Nate to demand a woman be any more than those things? He wasn’t strikingly handsome himself, nor of above average intelligence; he worked hard but was no schemer for power, and he took care of those who cared for him. They would be a well-matched pair, he considered. He had done far worse for himself with his first, extremely short, marriage.

The answer to the question of whether he liked her, then, was yes. But he knew that wasn’t what Alex was really asking. Alex thought he had deliberately given Hannah the rose quartz to signify love. When she asked “do you like her?” what she really meant was “do you, or could you, love her?” To that Nate did not yet have an answer. The fact of it was: the explosive end to that short first marriage had rather ruined his opinion of the whole institution, and of dating beyond the casual, short-term sort. Hannah was a good girl, wife-quality even. She deserved someone of husband-quality. That was assuming there was a single husband-quality man left in the world when they reached the post-apocalypse, of course.

“We make it through this, get the world put back together, I’ll let you know,” he finally said. But he said it with a conspiratorial little smile, to put Alex’s imagination on the right track.

Alex straightened back out. Then her face went slack.

“Too bad, Nathan.”

Nate lurched backward. The voice that came out of Alex’s mouth was not Alex’s voice. Nor did it sound like the voice from the dream. But then again that voice had been in Nate’s head; it had been almost in his voice.

But it was, undoubtedly, The Voice. The Voice of the thing that believed humans deserved to be wiped out.

“Too bad w-what?” Nate stammered. He tried to recover enough motor function to reach over and grab his jeans. He got them at last, pulled them on, and tried not to be disgusted by the crusty feeling all over his left leg.

“We were thinking about leaving pockets of humanity alone. Wiping out a whole race is so exhausting. But if you and the girl aren’t a breeding pair, what would be the point in letting you continue?”

Seeing Alex’s face move to the words of a voice that was not hers was horrific, but not nearly as much as seeing the muscles in her neck spasm as her throat tried to make her voice sound like The Voice.

“You would let us live if we were a couple? I thought you hated humans; why would you want us to make more?”

The Voice gave a grotesque laugh that left blood dripping slowly from Alex’s mouth.

“We did not always hate you. When you were few, you did not harm the planet as you do now. If you do not wish extinction, we would return to this state, as a compromise.”

“Extinction?” Hannah had returned from the break room. She froze, horrified, when she realized where The Voice was coming from.

“Yes, little one. You may join us, or you may go extinct, or you may stay with this man and try to save your wretched race.”

Alex began clawing at her own throat. Trying to tear out or silence The Voice. With a lurch Nate realized that she was conscious of everything the horrible Voice was doing to her, aware of every word her throat and mouth were forced to say. She fought for control, but it seemed like The Voice was choking her for her efforts.

“Nate,” she gasped. “You. P-promised...”

“Alex...”

“DO IT.”

“Yes, Nathan. DO IT. Destroy your friend to save her if you wish. It makes no difference: her soul is already with us.”

“Nate?” Hannah’s hand was on his arm.

“She asked me to kill her if...”

“If she was taken by us. And she has been. Your kind parasitized ours in time before memory; now our kind will feed on you. On her.”

The gun was just sitting on the desk. It would be so easy to grab it.

“Nate she’s suffering. End it for her,” Hannah pleaded.

“Yes Nathan, end it for her. End it, or we will end you!”

Alex’s body began to rise like a grotesque marionette. It lurched forward on limp feet; Nate heard the ankle bones crack. A scream came out in Alex’s voice, just Alex’s voice. The scream started with pain, then moved into rage.

Nate was paralyzed. It was Hannah who had the wherewithal to grab the gun. She put the barrel against Alex’s face like her father had done the day before, and pulled the trigger.

Alex went down in a crumpled mess of limbs. Hannah dropped the gun and reflexively kicked it across the room. Nate fell to his knees. He felt like he could barely breathe.

“Your kind...were always good fighters. Multiply again, little parasites...we will be back to feast again...”

The Voice sounded exactly as garbled and wrong as any voice would, coming out of what was left of Alex’s face and jaw. Nate struggled not to throw up at the sight of blood bubbles welling up with each fading word.

“Nate? Nate, come on, stay with me.” Hannah was at his side, her hands on either side of his face.

“Hannah, you...?”

“I heard what you promised her earlier. You weren’t going to let each other go the way Scott went. I wasn’t going to let that happen either. Not to her, and not to you.”

He was losing the ability to keep his own head up. He leaned against Hannah’s shoulder and put his arms around her waist.

“Don’t let that happen to me, Hannah. Please don’t let it—“

“Shh. It’s over. Whatever that thing was, it said before that we could live. It’s gone. It’s over.” She had one arm tight around his shoulders and her other hand stroking his hair like a startled pet. “It’s over,” she repeated gently.

They moved Alex out of the building within the hour. That was it for Nate’s lifting power until his leg healed up some more. Hannah changed his dressing and they sat on the nest of blankets in the main office for the rest of the day. Hannah periodically brought out food, or helped Nate limp to the bathroom. Nate began reading aloud a mystery novel Martin had left in his desk.

When night fell, the sky looked darker.

He asked Hannah to confirm what he was seeing and she agreed with him.

There was only one moon in the sky.

—The End—

<<Part V

[writingpromptswithkate]

Two Moons Are Better Than One

Part V.

Even though at length she recovered enough of her wits to stand, Hannah was incapable of going through the house to look for supplies. Nate could hardly blame her, but since the task had to fall on him, he was sorry he failed to close the master bedroom door when they left it.

Nate took Hannah out to the front porch and sat her down on the steps. He put the lap quilt from the couch around her shoulders.

“Stay here a minute. Deep breaths. Try to keep your eyes closed.”

“Still thinking it’s like Bird Box?” Hannah said, her voice completely hollow.

“Let’s not take any chances about it, huh? I’ll be back out in a couple minutes.”

Nate himself had to take a deep breath before heading back inside. It was not so much that the air smelled different with all the blood it it; it’s just that he knew it was there. More to the point, he felt like a grave robber. What kind of scum disrespects the dead like that?

That was not true, he told himself; it was Hannah’s house too, and whatever he took from the house was for her survival. He was not stealing from the dead. He would not even go into the master bedroom again; he would restrict himself to the kitchen, bathroom, living room and hall closet. Places full of household goods, not personal possessions. 

Hannah’s parents had more nonperishable food in their kitchen than Nate normally kept, but that did not make it easy to decide what to take. Canned goods were not the most practical due to their weight. Neither were noodles that were not instant. That said, between the granola bars, trail mix, and toaster pastries, Nate could put together a small lightweight feast. An obliging cupboard full of plastic shopping bags made it easy to pile the lot by the front door while Nate moved on to the closet.

It occurred to Nate, in a stroke of uncommon thoughtfulness, that Hannah would probably like to have a few essential toiletries with her, especially since she was likely to have to go without a shower for days or weeks. There was a green backpack in the hall closet, maybe Hannah’s own from high school, that would do. He grabbed her toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant, hair brush and elastics, face wash and moisturizer -- he definitely would not have known to grab the moisturizer on his own, but luckily they were right next to each other. He had poked his head into the cupboard under the bathroom sink to see if there was anything else she might need when he spotted a box of tampons. Might as well grab them too, he decided: even if she did not need them now, she might need them in a few days, or next week...

He had not wanted to go into Hannah’s bedroom -- that was a private space where he had no business -- but in going over the house he was keenly aware that he had not found Hannah’s jacket. Blankets were well and good, but she needed an option with sleeves. So he went in.

Her room smelled like incense and a strange combination of scented candles. She had so many candles. Many of them had little black flecks of something on top: tiny pieces of ash? There was an altar of sorts on top of her dresser: a mirror, more candles, a variety of crystals and rocks with strange symbols painted on them. There was a battered three-subject notebook with a pen stuck into its spiral. Maybe a diary? Without really thinking about it, Nate picked it up and shoved it into the green backpack. Without thinking through any of it, he also picked up a pink crystal the size of a kiwi and packed that too. Hannah liked collecting rocks; that was about as far as Nate understood Wicca. Maybe having one of these rocks would give her comfort.

She had just watched her parents die, and Nate thought a rose quartz was going to give her comfort? He huffed out half a laugh at the absurdity of it. Still, he did not take the crystal back out of the backpack.

The jacket, his original target, was hanging on the back of the door the whole time. He grabbed it on the way out.

Part of him was afraid that he would walk out onto the front porch and Hannah would be gone, or worse that she would be there, but be violently insane like her mother.

Hannah’s reaction to shock was much more like her father’s: she was just sitting there, staring blankly, hands limp in her lap. Tears continued to run down her face but she had no more energy left to sob. Nate had loaded everything they were taking from her house into the last few open square feet of his truck bed, and in the mean time she had not spoken, stood up, or even blinked as far as he could tell.

“Hey. Hannah,” Nate said quietly, his hand on the quilt over her shoulder. A bit louder but still gently: “Hannah. Hannah Jennings. Look at me, Hannah.” She finally looked. Whew, so she was not completely catatonic after all. “It’s time to go, Hannah.” It felt strange to keep saying her name over and over, but Nate had read somewhere that repeating a person’s name helped to keep them grounded in reality. He hoped that wasn’t just something made up for a novel or a movie.

It seemed to be working in her case: Hannah nodded. She even tried to stand under her own power, but that did not work out terribly well. Nate supported her back to the truck and lifted her in. When he got in on his side, she had made no motion to fasten her seat belt, so Nate ended up doing that too.

They drove in silence back to the office. Near silence, anyway: once in a while Hannah gave a loud sniff. There was nothing Nate could say, so he kept quiet. 

There were five other vehicles parked at the office when they arrived, not counting crazy drivers who had rolled up over the curb: Hannah’s dark green Honda Civic, Alex’s red Dodge Durango, Scott’s black Jeep Cherokee, Robbie’s dark grey Nissan Altima, and one of the company trucks, a white Chevy Silverado several years newer than Nate’s grey one. Nate backed his truck into the handicap parking spot close to the door. No one else was going to need that spot for a while.

Hannah, though far from okay, recovered enough that she offered to help unload when Nate shut his truck off. Nate didn’t figure he needed the help, but he equally figured that doing something productive would keep Hannah from falling apart again. He told her to get the paper towels and toilet rolls into the supply closet, and then to organize the food as he brought it through to the kitchen.

They walked in on Alex and Scott in the middle of a loud and heated discussion.

“That’s why I told you to try calling him, the little fucker blocked me!” Alex yelled.

“If he’s gone, he’s gone! What makes you think he’ll answer me if he blocked you?!” came Scott’s reply.

“What’s going on?” Nate interjected.

“Finally!” cried Alex. “I was starting to think you two left us, too.”

“What do you mean, left?”

“I mean, that little shit Hector hasn’t shown up, and he’s blocked my number. No sign of Martin yet, either.” At this Alex threw a dirty look in Scott’s direction.

Nate groaned. So it was going to be like this, huh? “Alright, Scott, you try calling Martin, I will call Hector.”

We’re sorry, but the number you have dialed is not in service at this time...

Nate tried texting.

Message not deliverable.

So much for Hector.

This was what Nate had originally wanted, wasn’t it? He told each of them to take money, get water, and hunker down at home. That’s exactly what Hector did. At least, Nate hoped that’s what Hector did. The alternatives...

No time for this. Nate hauled in more bags of food, more blankets, more water bottles.

“Hey, Martin! Glad I caught you, buddy,” came Scott’s voice from inside Robbie’s office. “Oh is that right? Huh. Thing is, we were kinda countin’ on you, man... What? No, that’s not... Martin, come on... What the hell are you talking about, dude? Slow down, you’re not making any sense... Yeah, I know, the moon’s real nice...dude? You can’t drive to the moon...No that wasn’t a dare! Martin! Come back, come on man, let’s talk about this... Martin! Martin?! Shit! Fuck, shit, fuck.”

There was a window between Robbie’s office and the main office. Nate saw Scott pull the phone away from his head as a look of pain and horror passed over his face. More than ten seconds later, Scott put the phone back up to his ear.

“Martin? Buddy, you there? Martin? Answer me, goddammit! ...Fuck you...” Scott’s voice broke and he put the phone down for good.

He stepped out of the office and met Nate’s questioning look.

“I think Martin’s dead.”

“What happened?”

“If I had to guess: car crash.” Scott sounded as wooden has Hannah had earlier.

“Jesus.”

“What the fuck is going on?!” Scott exploded. A muffled crashing sound answered from the direction of the kitchen, as if a large Costco sized box of Ramen noodles had been dropped, collided with the edge of a table or counter-top, and then fell on the floor. A skittering, as of a dozen packets of dried noodles sliding around on linoleum, followed the crash.

“I don’t know, man, but considering the day we’ve all had, maybe keep it down a little? We need to stay calm.”

“Calm, hell! You didn’t have to carry Robbie out of here into the woods! I did that! I’ve never cleaned up after a dead body before in my life, but that’s the day I’ve had, Nate! Don’t tell me to fucking stay calm!”

“Not that it’s a competition, but you definitely have not had the worst day of anyone in this building right now, so will you kindly keep your fucking voice down.”

“You think you’ve had a worse day so far? Or are you talking about the filing girl you clearly want to fuck so badly? Is that how you can stay so calm, Nate? Have you already fucked her and you’re too mellowed out to care that Robbie and Martin are dead, and probably so is Hector?” Scott turned away and started stomping toward the break room and kitchen.

Nate thought Scott was storming off to cool down for a few minutes, so he did not follow. But then came Hannah’s yelp, followed by the thud of something heavy hitting the kitchen floor, and he was sprinting across the office.

“Maybe,” Scott was growling. His voice sounded thick like he was talking around a wad of saliva. “Maybe Nate has the right idea after all. Maybe I’d mellow out some, too...”

“Are you crazy?” Hannah shrieked from the floor.

By the time Nate entered the kitchen, Hannah had flailed and crawled until her back was against the cupboards, but Scott continued to advance on her. All the while he was pulling his belt off. His hands were occupied; Nate took the opportunity to charge.

Nate and Scott went down in a heap, but there was a problem in that Nate had no Step Two to this plan. Scott was taller, heavier, and definitely not thinking straight. His fist collided with the side of Nate’s head. Lights burst behind Nate’s eyes, and he finally understood why cartoon characters had stars around them after a head injury. The world was spinning blurry lights; Scott’s growls and Hannah’s screams sounded a world away. 

He became aware that Scott was trying to stand up again, and without any other plan in place, Nate tackled him again. For a moment they were nothing but flailing limbs, until a gunshot pierced the air and cleared even Nate’s foggy head.

Suddenly Nate’s knee would not hold up his weight. He staggered, then fell to the floor. His pants felt too warm; he hadn’t wet himself, had he?

He was, very dimly and vaguely, aware of the shape of Scott rising to his feet. He was screaming something else now, but Nate could not hear the words.

Another nearby sound came to him, the sound of Alex’s voice? He could not tell what she was saying either. All that was clear was that Alex and Scott were talking to each other.

There was another gunshot. A great shuddering thud as Scott hit the floor. A scream. Hannah’s; Nate knew her scream too well, even in this state.

“Nate? Nate. Hey. Stay awake, Nate, stay with me.” Hannah’s voice was near his head. She was sobbing again. How did she have enough water left in her to sob?

“Keep pressure right here,” Alex’s voice came from somewhere above his hips. “I’m really sorry Nate. I was trying to get Scott, I heard what he was saying to you about Hannah, and... Hannah, keep pressure right here! Keep it together, come on. I’ll be right back with first aid.”

Despite all of Hannah’s begging him to ‘stay with her’, Nate felt his consciousness slipping. He couldn’t keep his eyes open anymore. What was that bright silvery light? God damn it, it looked just like those two moons. Wouldn’t they ever just let him get some sleep?

--the story continues--

<<Part IV  | Part VI>>

[writingpromptswithkate]

Two Moons Are Better Than One

Part IV.

“Your neighborhood is so quiet,” Hannah remarked in a hushed voice as Nate pulled his truck into the driveway.

“It’s a little too quiet right now,” came Nate’s gruff reply.

Maybe he was just being paranoid. He was never home in the middle of the afternoon on a Thursday, maybe the level of quiet was normal. Maybe the terrier that barked all night was only able to do so because it slept through the day. That had to be it.

The power was out, he noticed immediately when he entered. Everything electrical has a hum: the fridge, the TV, the small orange nightlight plugged into the hall. It’s the kind of white noise thing nobody notices until one day it’s not there. Nate was acutely aware of the lack of it. No wonder the neighborhood felt too quiet.

He set Hannah in charge of the hall closet, where big Costco sized packs of paper towels and toilet paper rolls waited wrapped in plastic. It took her two fully loaded trips to get it all hauled into the bed of Nate’s truck.

Nate was making a rather more thorough tour of his house, hunting down blankets, camping gear, water bottles. He met Hannah in the kitchen. She had pulled in two coolers from the deck.

“I thought between your house and mine we could get these filled” she explained.

“Good idea. The cabinet to your left has nonperishables—grab that box of Ramen.”

“You need boiling water to make Ramen,” Hannah protested, but even as she said it Nate was pulling an electric kettle down from another cabinet.

“It’s for camping: electrical or battery. I know there’s bowls in the break room so no worries there...”

After the easy nonperishables they moved on to the produce. The vegetables would spoil quickly without power but fruit would hang on a few days either way.

“Do we have any idea what’s really going on?” Hannah muttered to herself over a small pile of apples.

“We really don’t.”

“All those people... Oh, Goddess.” Hannah sniffed and put her sleeve to her eye. She was not fully crying yet but she was close. “Do you think it has anything to do with that second moon?”

Nate shrugged. “I don’t see how it could. Yeah the extra light keeps me awake at night, but it’s not driving me that crazy. Not like... Robbie.”

At the mention of the name Hannah gave a loud dry sob. “Oh Robbie. That was awful.”

“He yelled at you and threatened to fire you,” Nate reminded her.

“Yeah but he didn’t deserve to die... You know? Back in the day? People used to think the moon caused madness. That’s why they called it lunacy, like lunar.”

“So twice the moons means twice the madness?”

Hannah flinched at his sharp tone, and he immediately felt ashamed of himself. He had to keep reminding himself that she was having an even worse day than he was. Speculating about the situation might not be helping, but snapping at someone who was already scared and upset was even less helpful.

“Sorry. It’s just, this Bird Box shit has me on edge.”

“Yeah. No, no worries,” Hannah mumbled. “Bird Box? You think it’s something like that? Monsters you can’t see until you can, or that manifest as your worst fear or whatever?”

Nate shrugged. “Honestly I have no idea. I don’t know if it’s the moon, or monsters, or a zombie apocalypse virus. I just know that people are dying and we have no idea what’s triggering it.”

“It seems like most of the people who’ve gone crazy so far did it while they were driving. But Robbie didn’t go anywhere today...?”

“We don’t know that. The people driving are just the ones who have caused damage, the ones people are tweeting about. Who knows how many more people are going crazy right now in their own homes?”

Hannah’s face turned grim. “We should hurry up and get to my folks.”

Nate could only agree. They threw the coolers into the back of his truck.

They tried to get the radio to work while Hannah directed the way to her house, but less than half of the usual stations were transmitting. Most of the ones that came through were in Spanish. The traffic advisory channel on AM came through, but there was nothing it could tell them that they could not observe with their own eyes.

Nate understood what Hannah meant by his neighborhood being quiet when he arrived at her house. Hannah and her family lived on the edge of a trailer park right off the highway; they would be subject to traffic and truck noise at any and all hours of the day.

Right now though, with the streets already clogged, with all the remaining traffic slowed down, and without the familiar hums of electricity, her neighborhood was also unnaturally quiet.

Or it was.

A gunshot sounded nearby. Right in front of them, actually. It came from Hannah’s house.

Stricken, Hannah fumbled for the door handle and practically fell out of the truck. She ran in a blind panic to her front door.

Nate was only a few steps behind her; he grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her back before she could touch the screen.

“Whoever. Is. In. There. Has. A. Gun.” He said each word deliberately. Hannah sobbed again.

“Mom. Dad,” she croaked pitifully. And Nate was not without pity. But he also could not let her run into danger blindly. It was a single-wide for God’s sake; where could she run? Where could she possibly hide?

An answering sob came from inside the house. It was, at first, inarticulate wailing. Like the cry of an inconsolable baby filtered through adult lungs. Gradually some words began to filter through the cries.

“Irene...” the voice cried out between blubbers.

Hannah began thrashing against Nate’s grip on her. “That’s my dad!” she screamed at him, just before breaking free and running into her house.

Nate hesitated for a second, torn between going after Hannah and protecting himself against being shot.

Hannah’s scream was the tie-breaker, and Nate tore after her without thinking.

Entering Hannah’s parents’ living room was like entering a labyrinth of dusty tchotchkes and brass picture frames that together covered so much of the walls you almost couldn’t tell what an unpleasantly dark, dated shade of fake wood paneling was under them. A kitchen to the right sported dark cabinets with brass hardware, and the trend continued down the hall to the left with paneled walls and brass doorknobs.

It was from that direction that Hannah’s scream had apparently come, and Nate threaded his way around small laundry piles and stacks of magazines until he reached the end of the hall.

The door to the master bedroom stood ajar, and just inside it: Hannah, standing with her back pressed against a picture frame on the wall, staring in mute terror at the floor.

Hannah’s mother, who must have been Irene, lay on the floor, dead or nearly so. She was surrounded by a pool and a spray of her own blood, her discarded oxygen tank a few feet away beside the bed.

And sitting on the bed, with hollow eyes and a decrepit hand wrapped around a 9mm pistol, was an old man. He was staring down at Irene in shock.

“Dad?” Hannah finally squeaked out. The old man flinched but he did not look up.

“Mr. Jennings?” Nate prompted. Hannah’s dad flinched again.

“Mr. Earl Jennings?” Nate said again, after a brief whispered appeal to Hannah for her dad’s first name. At the sound of his first name, he finally looked up.

“I had to do it,” he wheezed in despair. “I had to do it. She was going crazy. She was... oh, Irene.”

Nate turned toward Hannah, but her face was white and her lips were sealed, and she would not or could not speak.

“What do you mean, Mr. Jennings? What do you mean, she was going crazy?”

Mr. Jennings wailed. “She was talking all this crazy talk, about how the whole world had to be cleaned. She said she was going to the moon while the world was cleaned, and when it was done bein’ cleaned she was gonna come back and be queen here. On a new clean Earth. She was...crazy. She took off her oxygen mask and hit me when I tried to put it back on her.” And truly, ugly bruises were forming on Earl’s face and arms. “She started screamin’. And then. Then she just stopped. She went all silent and cold-like. Then she said. She said.” He paused.

“What did she say, Mr. Jennings?” Nate prompted after a few moments of nothing but Earl sobbing.

Earl took a shuddering breath. “She seemed calm. But she took a knife from the kitchen. And she said the world had to be cleaned, and she’d do the cleanin’ if she had to...Oh God. She was gonna kill me, I could see it in her eyes. Irene...” he broke off again into inarticulate wailing.

After a few minutes he subsided, and he finally looked up at Hannah. “I’m so sorry baby. I’m so sorry.”

He held the pistol up to his own temple and pulled.

Hannah screamed. Nate screamed. Earl did not scream. The force of the shot flung his body down against the mattress. The blood sprayed out and flicked all over Nate and Hannah’s clothes.

Nate turned as quickly as he could, threw his arms around Hannah and pushed her head against his shoulder, forcing darkness over her eyes. He was not quick enough to spare her the sight of her father’s death, but at least she would not be able to keep looking at it. It also prevented Nate from having to look at the body any longer than necessary. He was actually feeling like he might be sick if he did not get them out of this room quickly.

Hannah sobbed and screamed into Nate’s shoulder and alternated between struggling against his grip on her and clutching his shirt. She let him herd her out of the master bedroom, but her legs gave out in the living room and she collapsed onto the threadbare sofa.

She stayed there, curled up and sobbing, for at least another ten minutes. Nate was powerless to do anything but sit there next to her, trying as hard as he could to get the image of Earl’s last moments out of his mind. The image would not go away.

First Robbie, now Hannah’s parents. Was the whole world going crazy?

—the story continues—

<<Part III  | Part V>>

[writingpromptswithkate]

What Happened At Carnelian Bay

Part I.

Freak Storms Destroy Highway, Cut Off Carnelian Bay

CARNELIAN BAY, Calif.— Early Christmas morning, at approximately 3:13 am, authorities received word from trucker Darrius Perreira that a large section of California Highway 28 had been washed out, apparently by storm or flood damage. Satellite images from later that morning confirm Perreira's assessment of the state of the damage to the highway.

Satellite images also confirmed a second point of destruction to Highway 28. The result is diastrous for residents and tourists of Carnelian Bay, as the two points of major damage fall directly north and south of the town.

Highway 28 is the only year-round open road connecting Carnelian Bay to the communities of Ridgewood, Tahoe Vista, and King's Beach. Other access points, Carnelian Bay Ave. and Shivagiri Rd., are closed during the winter due to snow and ice unmanageable by most motorists.

Long-haul freight trucker Perreira was delivering produce and other groceries to the town of Carnelian Bay when he was stopped by the impassable damage to the roadway. He also carried groceries bound for Ridgewood. Luckily for the citizens of Ridgewood, another supplier was able to make a grocery delivery from the south.

As of 5:32 pm, there has been no contact by phone or Internet from those trapped in Carnelian Bay, and no calls have successfully connected with either landlines or mobile phones in the town.

—Story last updated at 5:40pm, 25 December 20xx

Over One Month Later, No Contact From Carnelian Bay

CARNELIAN BAY, Calif.— It has been more than one month since the freak storm that washed out two areas of California Highway 28, effectively cutting off the town of Carnelian Bay from any access by road. It has also been more than one month since any contact has successfully been made with residents or visiting tourists.

There has been no progress yet on repairing the damaged highway from either direction: continuing storms, as well as intermittent fog from Lake Tahoe, prevent even survey crews from estimating the extent of the damage.

Freight trucker Darrius Perreira, whose normal route includes deliveries all around the North Lake Tahoe area, said of the road work delays, "I get it, you can't do that kind of work in winter, but Jesus, can't we do anything to help those people not starve to death?"

Perreira's words have been echoed on many sides: by HOAs all around the North Lake Tahoe area, by state legislators, even by disaster relief groups. Governor Stevens of Nevada has suggested the use of the National Guard to provide air drops for food and supplies to Carnelian Bay.

Satellite images continue to monitor the region to determine if any other sections of Highway 28 have similarly been destroyed or appear to be at high risk.

—Story last updated at 9:25am, 28 January 20xx

Boat Runs Aground In Kings Beach, Registered To Carnelian Bay Tourist

KINGS BEACH, Calif.— In a shocking first piece of news out of Carnelian Bay in almost two months, early this morning a boat, cheekily named 86 Tahoe Blues, was found run aground near Kings Beach State Recreation Area. The craft, a small speedboat mainly used for water-skiing and tubing, had a long, narrow hole torn through its hull. It was found listing badly to one side and nearly sunken in the relatively shallow water.

Most disturbing of all, however, was not the boat itself, but the people aboard. There were no living persons on board the 86 Tahoe Blues. There were six dead bodies.

The bodies, which are yet to be positively identified, were found by Mrs. Harker of Sacramento, CA, who was out for a morning jog with her Siberian Husky when she spotted the craft in the water. She described the bodies as "horribly torn up, shredded, like they were attacked by some kind of animal". Harker asked not to be photographed for this article, or for her first name to be published.

Police investigators have not yet released the names of those found on the 86 Tahoe Blues. At this point all they have revealed is that it appears the remains are all adult, or at least "of adult size".

The boat is named after the 1986 flooding of Reno, NV, which is reported to have killed thirteen people and injured ninety-six more. It is believed by Reno residents that both of those counts might have been lower had Nevada officials at the time been able to divert water from flooded urban areas into Lake Tahoe. The push to "Keep Tahoe Blue" prevented this from happening. The boat is registered to Joseph Macombe of Verdi, NV. It is unclear at this time if Macombe is among those found aboard the 86 Tahoe Blues, or if the political ideas implied by his boat's name are in any way related to its attack or running aground.

—Story last updated at 12:14pm, 17 February 20xx

[writingpromptswithkate]

I found a site with some very neat prompts and now the only trouble is I can’t decide which one(s) to use.

But!! Given the mysterious/suspenseful nature of these particular prompts, perhaps it’s better that I not give away which exact one or in which exact order I will be using them. 😈

[writingpromptswithkate]

Two Moons Are Better Than One

 Part III.

By the time Nate returned to the office, PG&E had cut power to nearly all of downtown Sonora. It was unclear how many explosions and small fires had started in the mean time, but this would help.

Hannah was on the company’s Twitter feed. They followed all the CalTrans and CalFire accounts as well as other public utilities and a variety of news sources.

Turned out that most of the state was having an even worse time than Sonora.

There were no real explanations, only speculation about what had actually happened. It was as if everyone on the road at once all lost their damn minds and crashed into whatever they could reach. Almond orchards off of I-5 had Hyundai Elantras and Toyota Camrys wrapped around their outer trees like obscene Christmas decorations. Small SUVs, the RAV4s and the Kia Sorentos and such, had hopped curbs in Monterey and driven straight into the ocean, straight into the protected areas belonging to the Aquarium. Fresno was on fire. Woodland was on fire. Amazon packages littered highways all over the state, dropped from sarcastically smiling Prime shipping containers no longer attached to their trucks. Los Angeles was in gridlock — much more than normal gridlock — and there were rumors of open gang warfare in certain neighborhoods. Traffic lights were down, power poles were down, PG&E was cutting power everywhere, and no one was getting enough data to post pictures or videos. Every scrap of information was text-based.

Hannah read the collections of headlines and reports with an increasingly wavering voice as more of their coworkers arrived from routes all over the county. Eventually she got to a point where she could not speak anymore. Her lips pressed tight together, her tears spilled over, and she mutely shook her head. Her fingers had long since curled around the blue lace agate she kept at her desk, and now she was gripping it so hard she was liable to break her own metacarpals. Nate put his hands on the back of her chair and wheeled her far enough away from the computer that he could take over the reading.

“It’s not just California,” he reported grimly, as tweets from national news sources started coloring the feed. “‘President declares national emergency as... as international airports shut down... due to crashes and explosions on runways.’”

“Jesus Christ,” said one of Nate’s fellows.

The lights went out. PG&E was cutting power to Jamestown, too.

The computers stayed on: battery backup to prevent data loss. Thirty seconds later the emergency generators kicked on. The lights flickered back to life.

“Alex, turn the lights back off. We don’t know how long we’ll need those generators to last, or if we can get more fuel for ‘em.” Might as well not waste power where they did not need to. Alex seemed to agree; she was quick on her feet hitting all the switches in the building. Almost all of them.

The last light left on was in Robbie’s office. Given the mood he was in this morning, no one much wanted to go in there, but Alex was brave. She also had ten years seniority over Robbie, not to mention about thirty pounds’ weight advantage. Alex was one of the most masculine women Nate had ever met, and she was tough as nails.

So when Alex screamed upon opening Robbie’s office door, no one much knew what to make of it. There was an absurd moment where everyone thought she was doing it for a prank.

She stepped away, light switch untouched, her face ashen. Nate moved past her into the office.

Robbie had no apparent wounds. No burns or cuts, no cord wrapped around his neck. And yet he was, without a doubt, dead. Nate tried to take his pulse at neck and wrist, but there was none to take. He was barely discolored: a little pale was all. Nate had never seen his face so slack. Robbie always seemed to have a stick up his ass, and a tense face to match. Now he could be sleeping. It was horrifying.

Nate could not deal with a dead body, not now, maybe not ever. His mind went defensively blank at the thought of what to do with Robbie.

No, he could not be thinking of the dead. He had to think of the living.

Robbie kept petty cash in a box in the bottom of his desk. The key lived right next to the box. Nate took out all nearly three thousand dollars. He started making piles of it, approximately even, one for each person in the office. For each living person— no. None of that.

“Take the cash, go buy ice and bottled water,” he told everyone as he distributed the money. “We don’t know how long we’ll be without power but it’s all over the country. You think they’d prioritize us over LA? San Francisco? New York? Washington? We’re nothing compared to them. We might have to go without for a while. Get non-perishable snacks. Whatever you can make last a long time.”

“We shouldn’t split our resources,” Alex protested. “How about this: everyone go home, get your families, and come back here? We have a generator to keep warm at night and to keep the fridge running. We already have some flats of water here, and a little bit of backup fuel. We should get more of each if we can, and more food.”

“If we do that I’ll need help moving my parents,” Hannah squeaked. “They’re older and my mom’s on oxygen.”

“I’ll help you with your parents,” Nate offered. “I don’t have family here, but if we stop by my place I can grab blankets and paper towels and things like that.”

Hannah nodded. “Let’s go by your place first then. Once we get mom and dad in the car we shouldn’t take them out again until we’re here.”

“You two get going first,” said Alex. “Scott and I’ll be behind you but first... let’s see if we can get Robbie out of here.”

Nate was just as glad not to have that job. It was disturbing enough that Robbie was dead, more so since it was wholly unclear what killed him. He could not stomach the thought of touching his cold skin again.

“Come on, Hannah. We’ll take my truck, save the gas in your car for now.”

For most of the drive, where the treetops parted over the roads Nate could clearly see in the sky the daytime ghosts of the twin moons, looking down on him like a pair of smug spectral eyes. It was enough to drive anyone crazy, he mused. Hannah mostly kept her eyes down, but whenever she did look up at the sky, she clutched her agate stone tighter in her palm.

—the story continues—

<<Part II  |  Part IV>>

[writingpromptswithkate]

Two Moons Are Better Than One

Part II.

The Japanese astronomers started calling it Utsushitsuki, the ‘copied moon’. The English-speaking internet photoshopped a wolf head onto it and called it Moon Moon. Conspiracy theorists called it a hoax. Hannah the office girl called it a manifestation of the duality of nature: light and dark, summer and winter, male and female, God and Goddess, etc.

The second morning after the discovery of the second moon, Hannah was late coming into the office. This in itself was a rarity: Hannah was well aware that her non-traditional beliefs did not endear her to her conservative coworkers; she made sure not to give them any reason to dispute her efficacy in the office. In three years, she had only ever been late once, stuck on the highway into town behind a nasty accident involving a Dodge Laramie with a towed boat blocking both lanes.

Car accidents were not rare in this part of the mountains: tourists came up from the bay and the valley and not a damn one of them knew how to take a real mountain road turn. Things got bloody when the winter snow and ice set in.

But that was winter, and accidents involving trailer and boat towers typically happened in summer. This was neither, and Hannah had no such excuse.

She finally showed up, more than an hour late, looking as worn out as Nate felt after two nights’ bad sleep. Hannah made her apologies and shuffled to her desk and kept her eyes down while she switched everything on.

Nate happened to be in the office, Thursday being his big paperwork day, so he had a front-row seat to the spectacular chewing-out of Hannah by their manager Robbie. She was nearly in tears by the end. Nate didn’t like tardiness any more than Robbie did, but he thought Robbie was being a real dick about it. Now, Robbie was a bit of a dick anyway, he was famous around the office for it, but he was never this much of a dick. He was threatening Hannah with official citations, and saying that if it wasn’t a busy time for them and they could afford to train a new office girl he would fire her right now.

Nate thought that was a bit much, for only a second tardy offense in a three-year period. He concluded that Robbie must be in as bad a mood as Nate himself was in, owing to lack of sleep.

Eventually, of course, Robbie ran out of things to threaten Hannah with, and he stormed back into his private office huffing with exhaustively spent rage. Nate chose this break in the storm to deliver some of his paperwork to Hannah for filing.

“What happened, anyway?” Nate asked conversationally while trying not to look at Hannah’s shining, red eyes.

“I don’t know. I don’t remember what I did last night. I just... woke up almost two hours late this morning... next to the wood pile off the back porch.”

“Two hours late? But you were only one hour late for work...?”

Hannah looked down. “Yeah, well, I skipped my morning shower so I wouldn’t be two hours late.”

“Huh. Wouldn’t‘ve known.” Nate never spent much time in proximity to Hannah to notice if she smelled, nor did he ever particularly stop to notice whether her hair looked clean or greasy. She had it back in a ponytail today, which was as good a cover as any for greasy roots.

He did notice, now that she had brought up the shower, that she had rather more than usual undereye raccooning from eyeliner or mascara or what-have-you. He mentioned this when she replied with a sullen “yeah, right”.

Hannah then excused herself to the restroom, and when she returned, face slightly red and damp, much of the black smudges under her eyes were cleaned up.

Not a half hour after this, Hannah called Nate back to her desk with a dispatch.

“Power outage all over downtown Sonora, looks like someone crashed into a pole and took out a transformer. Downed lines. CalTrans is on the way to help redirect traffic. Fire department is on the scene already.”

Nate was out the door almost before Hannah finished speaking. He double checked his toolbox and gear and then hopped in his truck.

It was a lot worse than “someone crashed into a pole”.

Downtown Sonora streets were much like any other downtown streets in that they were narrow and featured a great deal of parallel parking. Or rather, they were supposed to feature parallel parking.

This looked more like the entire street at once forgot what parallel parking was and just stopped their cars wherever. Including up on curbs, in the exact center of the street over the lines, and in several instances halfway inside the downtown businesses. More than one car had crashed into a pole, and more than one transformer was taken out. Far too many of the downed lines lay draped across the tops of cars. Far too many of the cars were emitting smoke and other gases, not to mention dripping a variety of noxious-smelling fluids, the odor made all the worse by their mixing with each other and with the smell of electrical burning.

It was the burning smell that really got Nate’s attention. Downed power lines plus oil and/or gas leaks would be utterly disastrous for the densely packed downtown area. He needed more than just the local fire department.

Cell service was abysmal up this way, and Nate’s calls kept failing before he could get through. It did not help that everyone in every shop on the street was probably trying to do the exact same thing. He eventually got through to Hannah by text:

Real bad up here. Call calfire, need backup asap. At least six poles down. Too many lines. Too many cars.

Nate had nowhere to turn his truck around, so he backed it out of the street until he got to an alley he could use for a three-point turn. He couldn’t go back to the office, so he found a bank with a decent size parking lot a few blocks away from the wreckage and waited for backup, or for Hannah to text back.

When she did, it was not a welcome sight:

Got thru to calfire but they can’t get up here, dist 3 and 5 both on big fire across Fresno and Merced cos. Fires all over the state, no extra men.

No CalFire support.

And more fires all over the state.

What about the natl guard?

She said she’d let him know. And come back to the office if it wasn’t safe to do work there without backup or fire support. Hannah would call or text everyone out in the field and get them back to home base to regroup.

Nate was about to start his truck when an explosion from downtown shook him to his bones.

So the power lines had reached the gas leaks.

The sound of police sirens were already well within earshot; no doubt police had already been on the way while Nate and Hannah texted.

Another explosion sounded, this time accompanied by screams.

There was nothing Nate could do without backup and a lot more equipment. The police, and CalTrans when they got here, would get the people out of the way so Nate and his colleagues could do their jobs.

He started up his truck.

—the story continues—

<<Part I  | Part III>>

[writingpromptswithkate]

Prompt:

Part I.

It was the light. It had to be all the extra light. What other explanation could there be?

According to Twitter — excellent news sourcing, I know — the second moon was first spotted by the Okayama Astrophysical Observatory, one of several campuses belonging to the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, or NAOJ. Normally the Okayama facility specializes in solar telescopy, but what are you gonna do when a second god damn moon appears in the sky?!

They, that is the Japanese astronomers who discovered the second moon, sent out two official communiques on the matter: the first to their own Prime Minister, and the second to an astronomical committee at the United Nations. That committee sponsored telescopic observatories all over the world, including a few discreet donations to NAOJ. As ridiculous as the second moon phenomenon sounded, the Japanese astronomers felt it only right they should let the committee know.

There was a third communique sent that night: a text message from Dr. Yoshida of Okayama to Lt. Avakian of Kadena Air Base in Okinawa. The text message read as follows:

Look out the window (*´◒`*)

Lt. Avakian, upon receiving the text, did in fact look out her window. Within ten minutes all of Kadena Air Base was awake and outside.

The problem with the second moon was that it was, unmistakably, a second moon. There was no room to argue that it was a comet, or a planet out of its normal place, or even a giant killer asteroid like in the movies. It was big. In fact it was as big as the real moon. Just as big, and just as bright, and with the same odd pits and craters all over it. It was as if the moon were a cell, and it had just undergone mitosis.

Immediately, the world was alert. University-sponsored telescopes all over the globe began observing the second moon as the planet turned and night came over new regions. As far as anyone could tell, the new moon was about as far from Earth as the original, was truly about the same size, and apparently of the same or similar composition.

Some said it was a gift from God. Some said it was a sign of end times. Some worried about gravitational anomalies and irregular tides.

In the tiny, backwater mountain village of Jamestown, damn near halfway around the world from NAOJ and its telescopes, utility truck driver Nate Walsh just worried about getting enough sleep to not be groggy at work.

Nate was a simple man. He worked hard and he liked a cold beer at the end of the day. He liked to go to bed early on weeknights so he could get up again at the butt crack of dawn and drive his truck. He drove all over the mountain checking power lines and transformers and reporting which poles were damaged by snow over the last winter. He did honest work and he made his living.

And how was he supposed to make his living when the neighbor’s fool dog was howling itself hoarse baying at a second god damn moon?

It was no wonder Nate awoke next day with dark circles under his eyes and no patience whatsoever for the neighbor’s dog. He hated that dog to start with; fool thing was always barking, night and day, at squirrels or raccoons or nothing at all, and now at the damn moons. It was an uppity little terrier dog with an uppity terrier bark and it didn’t belong in the mountains anyway. Nate grumbled to himself as he poured his coffee. It was a two-cup kind of day for sure.

All anyone would talk about that day was the second moon, and by lunch Nate was heartily sick of it. Yeah, a second moon was weird, but that did not make it portentous; it was just inconvenient. Maybe next time the moon wanted company it could have the courtesy to keep the light volume down. Some of us have to work.

Hannah the office girl kept claiming it was a sign from the gods. Which gods, she never quite said, but it was generally understood that Hannah trucked with all that neo-Wiccan spiritual mystic whatnot. Nate never understood it himself, but from a woman he once dated he gathered that it involved a lot of collecting rocks. How rocks might help Hannah identify a sign from the gods was uncertain. She sounded convinced, though. Questioned about it further, Hannah revealed that the message from the gods was actually buried in the dream she had on the night the second moon appeared.

It was at this point in the conversation that Nate felt himself slipping out. Collecting rocks was one thing: rocks were tangible and could even be pretty, so alright go nuts with the collecting. Dreams were not so much of either. Nate almost never remembered his dreams, and when he did it was always an unpleasant recollection. Running from monsters, and that one where you try to move or lift something but your arms have turned to jelly. So when Hannah dropped “the D word” Nate was definitely out.

That night was worse than the last. See, last night the moon — now moons, Nate corrected with disgust — was waxing up from first quarter. The moons would not be full for another five or six days, and until then they’d just be getting brighter and brighter.

In between restless tosses, Nate made a mental note to buy himself some of those blackout drapes.

The neighbor terrier was howling again, more frantically than last night. He made another mental note to buy some ear plugs.

—the story will continue.. Two Moons Are Better Than One—

Part II>>

[writingpromptswithkate]

Prompt: write a marketing blurb for a book, such as might be found on the back cover or inner jacket, but as if the book belonged to a different genre.

Journey to a world beyond our own, a world without smart phones, Facebook, or marvelous superhero movies. Journey to a world where the impossible becomes possible, and nothing is as it seems.

In a quiet northern town, an ordinary teen stumbles upon a world of magic right outside her door. But the old forest holds more than ancient shadows and strange dreams: it is also home to terrifying monsters from out of her darkest nightmares. She is the only one who can see them. And she has nothing but her wits to protect herself. It can not possibly be enough.

When three monsters begin targeting her quiet town, young Bella must embark on a quest to save her friends, her father, and the man she loves from the horror that stalks her.

To what lengths will she go to end their reign of terror? What will she be willing to sacrifice?

What other mysteries lie in wait in the ancient forests outside of Forks, Washington?

—[Twilight, reimagined as a supernatural/fantasy thriller instead of a teen romance]

[writingpromptswithkate]

Prompt: write an ad for your pet. Really sell ‘em.

For sale: One (1) cat. Free to a good home. $1,000,000 to a not-good home. All prices firm.

Friendly love bug with a purr like a semi-automatic rifle in need of a comfy chair to sleep on and a bottomless well of Friskies Seafood Sensations.

Name: Fat Boy*

Age: 7

Weight: 18lbs.

Coat: black | Eyes: green

✅ Pros:

Very affectionate with humans, good with kids

Can hunt

Neutered

Vaccinated

Litter box trained

Black beans are good for your health

❌ Cons:

Not good with other cats

Vocal

Needs many scratching toys/posts

Included with your purchase:

One (1) cat

Collar

Travel harness with leash

Carrier

Favorite toy (chasy ribbon on stick)

Bag of catnip

Bag of preferred food

Other notes:

Can be indoor only or indoor/outdoor.

Socially needy, best suited to a home where at least one human is stay-at-home or work-from-home.

Friendly with dogs.

Will murder all birds.

Responds to water in squirt bottle as disciplinary tool.

LOVES FOOD. ALL FOOD**.

Other Other notes:

*Was named Fat Boy ironically when he was an underweight waif and now the name’s not ironic anymore.

**Can definitely 100% tell when there is a pill in the food.