October 16, 2024
Quote:
The Face in the Moon (4) : The night seems darker than it should be, but it’s been a cloudy day so it’s not too surprising, unless you’re also factoring in the strange sensation that someone is watching you. You won’t see anyone if you look around, but the longer you’re outside, the more intense and unnerving things become. And then–if you look up–you see why. The moon that you know has been replaced with a devilish face, with wide, piercing eyes and a devilish grimace. No matter where you go, it’s watching you–and it even seems like it’s unusually large in the sky. Maybe others around you have noticed the same thing–or maybe it’s just you. Maybe it’s in your mind, but if you stare up at the face for too long, you begin to hear a low growling, or a shrill static. Its eyes are hypnotic and fearsome. Whether it disappears behind the clouds or the horizon, at some point it is gone. The strangeness fades with the moon, but there’s still no real explanation. It doesn’t photograph, and nothing about it can be recorded. You just have to hope it was a one time nightmare.
Seeing as it was both a work and a school day Kinsey had left a sticky note on the fridge the night before, knowing how his father would see it in the morning when the man went to get his morning glass of orange juice, and would leave him money so he could go to the flower shop on his way home from school. School wouldn’t change, perhaps a bit more melancholy though it was doubtful anyone would notice it, but things would go as normal for Kinsey - they always did.
It was later, when it was starting to get dark, that Kinsey stopped off at a flower shop. The walk there had been long, and a bit chilly to be honest, but he’d sucked it up as he did with most things in his life. He’d long since grown accustomed to life in general not being fair - not to people like him. Not since his mother had left him. The bell overhead jingled as he stepped into the small shop, the same shop he wandered into every year on this day.
A small bob of his head and a soft spoken greeting to the man behind the counter, a well dressed man who looked no older than thirty by his own estimates. The man seemed nice enough, smiling, and kindly asking what he could help him with. The order was given, with Kinsey picking the flowers and colors, he tried to keep it within the same color pallet every year - colors his mother had loved.
When the flowers had been gathered, and bouquet made and tied with a ribbon, Kinsey paid and thanked the man. The change was slipped into his pocket, his father did not need to know how much he’d spent nor how much change Kinsey had, and he headed out. It would be a long walk to the graveyard where his mother waited for his yearly visit. He would make it, as he did every year, and she would wait as patiently for him - as if she had a choice.
Every so often he paused, taking a moment to look around, it felt like someone was there…watching him. He wouldn’t have put it past Maxamillion to turn up and harass him or maybe even Isabella but neither did turn up. So why he felt like he was being watched he didn’t know. Certainly his father wouldn’t be watching him, the man didn’t care much what his only son did, and Amelia certainly didn’t care about him. He was certain she’d like little more than for him to join his mother in eternal slumber, so long as she got the inheritance from his mother somehow.
By the time he arrived at the cemetery his feet hurt, he’d had a long school day plus the time he’d spent working on his side project, but it was worth it as he finally sunk down onto the ground in front of the headstone. There was a marble stone there marking his mothers resting place, a marble vase was a part of the headstone, and the flowers were set into it. The ribbon tied about the vase while the papers from the bouquet were put into his school bag. From his bag he took a bottle of water so he could fill the vase up, to keep the flowers alive as long as possible, and added the powder packets as well.
“I think you’d have liked these…they’re your favorite colors.” He whispered, bowing his head, he knew it was wrong but he wished it was his father here and not his mother. At least had it been his father the man wouldn’t have been treated so poorly, ignored, and cheated on by his mother - she was too good. She had been too good for his father…only she hadn’t known it, she hadn’t known the man was cheating. Kinsey was glad she’d had no clue he had been cheating on her while she was sick, no one deserved such treatment, his mother would have only suffered more because of it.
Choking on a breath Kinsey reached up to wipe at his eyes, before turning to look around, something was here - he was sure of it. Glancing around he finally took a moment to look up, as if something might be in the trees that dotted the cemetery. Not a single tree but the moon hung there bright in the sky. It was bright and large and not at all normal; it looked like a face.
The face was staring down at him, or at least it seemed to be, and for a moment he considered glaring back at it…but that was a terrible idea. Because whatever was going on wasn’t normal and he felt not only creeped out but uncomfortable. Rather than glare, and incur some sort of wrath from that demonic looking moon, he moved closer to his mothers headstone. Even now, with her long gone and buried, there was some comfort to be found in her. A hand clenched at his side, against the ground, as a growling sound rumbled through the air.
“s**t.” He knew this city was nuts, all sorts of things were talked about, gossiped about, and he heard it in the hallways even. The spiders that were weaving words into their webs, and all manner of other things. But this? Looking down at his clenched hand, something cool touching his hand, he found something golden laying there innocently enough. It hadn’t been there before though. “A letter opener?” He questioned, looking to his mothers headstone, as if somehow the dead could do things like this. Uncurling his hands his fingers reached for the letter opener and curled around it as he held it tight. Bringing it to his chest he held it close, at first not noticing what happened but then…then he saw the change in his clothes.
What the hell had happened? He was dressed in strange clothes, old fashioned clothes, of bright red and black…and a white frufru shirt. Wrinkling his nose he took a moment to glance at the headstone once more. If this was something his mother had done, somehow, as impossible as it should be…he was not finding this amusing. These clothes…they were terrible.
But the moon, as he glanced up at it, seemed to have reverted and the growling was still there but he felt better about things. His grip on the letter opener tighter as he stood slowly. “If somehow you did this…thank you.” A whisper, broken and choked up as it was, he dusted himself off as he looked at the object in his hand. He wasn’t sure what he was thanking her for, what she’d done if anything, and these clothes were terrible…but he had something new - something more. He felt it.
But he needed to not look like this…he needed his normal clothing, so he could go home, and it was that need and want he supposed which caused his clothing to change. Watching as clothing shifted and changed, was warmer, he hurried off as the growling died out and he made his way home. It would be a long trek home, one he didn’t like, he’d need a hot shower when he got in but he was feeling good about whatever this was.
Word count: 1,218
