The Moon Stares Back
Chapter 1: The Moon’s Faces I hate the moon. The way it shines upon me with its many faces… it’s just trying to lure me into its malicious void of white fog. I know why it wants me, but I am not sure if I should go. I must say, it is entrancing to look up at it. I never enjoyed the idea of doing so, and even as I looked into the shining sickle within the sky… I was disgusted. I had the overwhelming desire to retch and turn away, but I couldn’t. The way the moon spoke to me, the way the moon smiled, cried, and laughed with me. The way it wanted me, like a nagging childhood friend asking to play on a hot summer’s day. But the moon would often cry, become angry and pull at me even harder. The more I resisted its fiendish pull, the angrier it would get, and then use its force to pull me back to stare at it. Forcing me to observe the rough smoothness of the sphere. Scholars and astronomers would often speak of how the moon was nothing more than a chunk of dirt and rock in the sky, but that was a lie. I knew it was something greater. The hill I sat upon felt warm, even on this winter’s night. The moon and I traded uncomfortable thoughts and stares. It kept pleading for me to come towards it, but I had my wife to attend to, even if she would seldom tolerate my thoughts upon this hateful being. I had my work to bring to the people of Morham and I knew not what would happen if I came to the moon. But I knew it would be great… and awful. As I had stared at this moon, my eyes unblinking and my face unturning, I had realized my head started to feel like feathers. It would sway from one side to another, eventually getting heavier and heavier. My limbs grew rough like rock. My ears produced a high squeal like the cry of a newborn baby. The moon seemed to yearn for a mother – but it was time to go. My wife was awaiting me, I did hope. I laughed to myself that she had left me for the sun, and then moved on my way back to the sleeping city of Morham. The trees that encased me didn’t move as I scurried back. The whistles of the wind protected me as I tried to avoid the moon’s guilty gaze, like a scolding mother or a desperate friend. Constantly, it stared at with me bulbous eyes, blue the iris seemed to be. A weird infant baby blue were the crying eyes of this celestial being. I passed through groves that would shroud me from the moon temporarily until I could move to the next grove and through the next orgy of trees that would hide my guilt and my duty. Entering through into a field of barley and sunflowers, I walked swiftly as I tried to avoid the moon’s ego. I would stare into the thick, tall, thrusting fields of food and flower only to look away quickly, and walk almost to the point of running. Morham slept through the night. Except for a tavern that would always have wench and degenerate stumble through its broken doors only to laugh and fall in their own filth. I ignored it. Rushing past the Morham University and into my warm, two-story house where even the moon could not penetrate. But I would study this moon, I would overcome its desire and find out what it wanted. I promised myself that. I went to my bedroom where my wife slept soundly. The House of the Seven Gables, which was a strong talk in Morham even with the men, lay at her bedside, almost finished. She slept even with the burns of a thousand suns on her face (acquired when the bakery she used to work in caught fire). I crept through and snuck under the silk sheets, feeling hot and pressed under them. But it was fine, for the moon could not see me there. I went to bed knowing that I would one day own the moon. Chapter 2: What the Moon Brings I awoke to the regular sounds of young children being pushed by pony-and-cart through the street. Laughing uncontrollably like I hoped my child would one day. But I woke in a cold sweat, hot but not. Wet but dry. I sprung from my bed like a grasshopper only to notice that it was still night time. I assumed that I had woken from a fever dream – a dream that I could not remember, and when I tried, it only gave me head pain and a cold spine. The children outside must have been nothing more than an undisciplined bunch. I rushed to window in my fever state to give them a lashing, as my wife and I needed our sleep. She seemed to have been woken already as she was absent from our bed. But it wasn’t just the odd child or two; the street was filled with people. Child on pony-and-cart of course but also men who went about their day, smoking pipe with tobacco, reading the papers and chatting with other men. As to what they talked about? I did not know. My senses were fleeting and I could not make out a single voice, as they had all merged into one; the women walked with school children and made their chat with other women, laughing and snickering. Trying to ignore anyone beneath their social status. I felt as though they were talking about me. Mocking me for my research and ideas as they often had. But it was night, the sky was black and vacuous. Except for the moon. The moon was greater than before; it did not appear a small figure in the night’s sky; it was angry because I hadn’t answered it. It came down in an attempt to make me feel shame and regret, now confident and strong enough to call to me directly, furious that I did not answer. It illuminated the night’s sky, like the gas lights in our streets; it made everything visible in the harrowing darkness. I got dressed hastily in a black suit jacket and striped white pants, and then rushed downstairs, hoping to find my wife who was still absent. She must have taken to the market to buy meat and milk which was fine; I didn’t need her approval as she would still doubt me even with the proof right in front of her. They all would still doubt me. My hair was a mess. I still quivered from the fever dream, my movement slow – but like an excited child I ran from my house, slamming the door behind and forgetting my key, no less. But it didn’t matter. Everything was dark but no-one seemed to notice… everyone went about their day. Wearing thick coats to avoid the winter’s harsh wind. It wasn’t something I could’ve noticed. The moonlight took me by surprise; I had to stop and swallow as this great beast roared over me. Staring like a hungry predator. But the moon seemed absent this time; it was persistent, oh yes, very. Determined but still… I couldn’t tell if its gaze was entirely on me. Or if it had found a new mother – to which it wish to create a new being. I approached a pregnant woman who held three bottles of milk and a crusty piece of sirloin meat. Her face was pus-filled, scarred and tired, short brown hair that was fading with time. “Do you not see that?” I asked her in a frenzy. “The moon, why is it so big? Why is it so dark? Is it not day or have you taken to your duties at night?” She did nothing but look me up and down, called me a “Hornswoggler” and hurried off. Ignoring the woman, I approached a group of mustached men, dressed in heavy black suits, faces powdered and chins held high. “Excuse me, sirs?” They turned to me with disdain, judging my unsuitable appearance. “Do you not see the moon? The size of it? The black of the sky?” The tallest one snickered before the shortest one retorted. “Do move on sir, or we’ll have to tell the guard that you’ve escaped from Greenwich Asylum.” They all laughed and a few people walking on the street nearby looked and stared as well. It seemed they could not see the moon as I saw it. Perhaps this was the moon’s true presence? And I had been enlightened to it? Were they stuck to view the world as I used to? The people strolled on the breaking cobble streets, ignoring me, only gazing at me to look away as soon as I caught their eyes, not wanting to catch with me as I was standing in a limp, almost falling and dripping with cold energy. “Do move on. You’ve already given Morham a bad name with your papers and rants. Best not to ruin this town’s reputation further by becoming a babbler like those in Maltron. Otherwise…you’ll get removed from this great city – we have no time for your kind.” The men turned and laughed, leaving me to be humiliated in the dark street. I felt hidden but knew I wasn’t, as they clearly could not see what I could. The civilians made me shudder and quake more than the moon did. It was like a street party. Ever since Mayor Runswurth had started hosting these and ever since I had posted my paper on the mutagenic properties of the moon, every event had become a myriad of scowls, laughs and discontent. But through the shallow darkness of the night’s moon, my wife came to me. She held the three bottles of milk she would usually buy, one for me and two for her. She held a fine piece of meat that would come to be our supper that night. A great roast of milk and meat. She brought me her terribly burned face that had lost its transcendent locks. Even the moon could not shine brighter than what she used to be. “What are you doing now?!” she asked as her arms dropped to her side, nearly dropping our food and drink. ​​​​ People started to stare more, some men stopped striding and would lean against houses and shops to watch me and my wife argue in the street. “Why do you not see it!? Why are you trying to pull a joke on me?!” “What do you mean?” Her head fell with her eyes, her arms became loose and hung in the air. “The moon! It’s trying to swallow me! As it’s already swallowed the stars! Is it not dark out?! Is the moon not trying to consume us? If not then why does my vision lie to me?!” “Because you’re a freak!” the tall man roared and those within earshot laughed softly and meekly at my expense. I didn’t though, not even a clever insult. I looked to the moon once more. My body ached. My head swayed like a boat in a storm and my ears screamed so much that the sounds of laughter were almost drowned out. “You need to come back inside.” Her voice cleared my ears and she rushed to me, leading me back indoors, where she sent me to bed and told me how she would have to run a message to my work and inform them I would not be coming in. I could not escape the cold sweat, nor the pure vitality I felt from this discovery. Nor could I hide from the moon. Its inexorable glow invaded my room like an unwelcome intruder. I stared into the white sphere and relished the idea of finally being able to study the beast, to find out what it truly wanted and how I might understand it but… I couldn’t help but wonder… What if I am seen as a laughing stock? As a blind fool, without clarity? I guess they wouldn’t be wrong. The moon seems to have chosen me, and has inflicted some curse upon me. Maybe I would wake up to a better world, a better place. One where I didn’t feel like this, one where I could smile and be joyous and happy once more. I wondered what that would look like. Maybe once I owned the moon, this would happen. Chapter 3: The Moon’s Spirit The moon was still there when I woke that morning. It had retreated back into the sky, but not before turning a devil-like red. The beast in the sky had mixed with this color to create a deep, red, dark-as-blood avatar, illuminating the clouds into a deep pink and purple satin. Every single cloud, frozen in their movements, too scared to move, lest the moon retaliate. I awoke from my bed drenched in an unnerving sweat like I had the previous night. The sky did not scare me. I was ready to see what the moon would teach. I left my bed in a hurry, noticing the absence of my wife once more. I assumed she was out again, with her friends at the women’s club or picking up food for us… again. I had assumed I was in the same state that I had gone to bed in. Or maybe the moon had taught me something and I was in a higher state. The true state. The people were still the same, the men still squalled and smoked, the women still laughed and loved. But it wasn’t the same. It couldn’t be. In this distance, crawling across the church where I prayed every Friday was a great creature. Its limbs seemed to be old and decaying, attached to the cathedral the same way a spider attaches to a wall. Its brown brooding body had seven pointed daggers for legs that seemed pinned into this creature in inconsistent places, stretching about 15ft wide. It hugged the church with its protruding eyes, sun-like orange were its irises and a deep gray were its scleroses. Its eyes darted about violently. There were five eyes on this one, three of them were large whilst the other two were short and stout. Its skin seemed patchy and rough like the pelt of a dying dog. White and dying fur with some tendrils or tentacles spewing from the skin that erupted into a mass of patchy blackness, coming from various places on its body. It was nameless. I could not name the beast after me if I wanted. It scuttled on the spot, looking for something to maim. It did not scare me the same way a lion might; it would not pierce my body with a large leg but rather tear apart my reality and then eat me. These spider creatures seemed to be placed everywhere; they hugged the walls of buildings, using a weak network of nets and webbing that a couple of them seemed to cling to. The houses and buildings and churches and shops that I could see from my second floor window all had these creatures upon them. I had no clue why; I wondered if one was on my house? Surely I would’ve heard a creature of that magnitude. …Or would I have? I had no idea how long I’d slept; the passage of time had eluded me so greatly that I had no clue as to the time of day. The people moved the same so I must’ve slept for a full day, but that was madness. What an insane thought, to sleep for a full earth rotation. I ran downstairs, checking for my wife once more before I ran out. Suddenly, these creatures stared at me. In an instant, they stopped squirming and moving aimlessly, all staring at me. Even the one far off on the church had moved its gaze to me. They stopped their scuttling as I walked down the street to peer and gaze at me, unflinching and unmoving. On these creatures I was able to notice an orgy of small mouths on their backs, something I had not noticed before. They were short, with tiny curved teeth like an elephant’s tusks. Hundreds (if not what seemed like thousands) of these mouths moved in size, they chomped and ate the same way I would. Chewing… but at what? Nothing was there to satisfy them… maybe they were getting hungry? The bustle of Morham seemed busy as ever. I seemed to still be prevalent, people still noticed me, snickering and speaking in whispers (to which I ignored) as they couldn’t notice the great creatures hanging from buildings. They were the idiots now. I wondered if these were the true gods. Had chosen me to be their prophet, to bring their divine message to these plebs? Maybe this is why I could see all of this. I would be the next Jesus perhaps… Were they judging me? I wondered as I crept through the plazas of Morham. I wanted to cry out to the residents, to tell them of these spider creatures so they might join in my fascination and help me to understand what was going on. It looked so unreal behind the red moon and the purple sky but I KNEW this is what the moon wanted from me, THIS is why the moon was so desperate to talk to me. Whatever I had thought the moon wanted from me was a lie. But soon the moon would show me what it truly wanted. I walked for a short while, trying to stare back into the creatures’ eyes but at the fear of upsetting them. I acted as to ignore their gaze. I saw cats and dogs that would often roam the streets, and upon them (as I saw on every earthly creature I came upon) were these small insectoid-like creatures, in a swarm of about thirty to fifty, floating around their bodies in small swarms. As a dog walked, the insects followed, desperately fighting to fly over its back. They were small, numerous, and a glowing white that hid their small faces from my gaze. A small cat I had made friends with in my original realm came up to me, bringing these insects with it. Like a hundred fireflies, they moved themselves to hover behind its back, following as it rolled over for me to pet it. I pet the cat with one hand so that it would not flee and tried to catch the insects with my other hand, so that I might observe what the moon was showing me and somehow convince someone of this place, whatever it was. However, as I attempted to grab them, they faded into the air, turning invisible. Only for my hand to be bit before the insect would reform and rush to the cat’s back once more, ignoring my presence. I tried this several times before giving up, mainly because an old, haggard woman yelled at me: “Stop grabbing at the air!” and then proceeded to call me ‘Looney’ and a ‘Pisspot’. They were insane, for they could not see what I saw. I went on for several minutes longer; the moon stayed in the sky, the clouds refused to move, the spiders stared and the insects hovered. All beneath this nightmarish sky. But as I rotated around the circular market street in a casual attempt to find my wife and avoid the spiders’ stares, I was happened about by an off creature. It was hovering at least two feet off the ground. A mass of gray and white tentacles, like an octopus’s in the way they were built, but they were without suctions and were mere tentacles. Thick and slimy they were, rubbery and long. These tentacles attempted to outline a body of sorts. One that was hunched and squatted. It had no eyes nor was there any discernible indication as to where they might be. It had two human arms that sprawled from its side. The arms were cracking and loose but rigid and tough. They were made from the same tentacle matter that its body was but they were serrated. Still, they were as stiff as human arms, as it seemed to raise them – pointing them at me, before rushing in my direction, hovering on the ground, levitating via an unknown source. I scurried to my feet in a ramble. The people around me didn’t offer me any help nor offer me the comfort of acknowledging the creature. It moved to me in an unholy way, showing me its many faces. As I looked desperately and scanned its body for any semblance of eyes, I was at a loss. I couldn’t turn away from it. My body grew stiff and numb, my head light and my eyes losing control. Unlike the spider creatures, who had seemed to have lost interest in me. The people of Morham only gave me mockery and grew angrily confused as I screamed violently for someone to take this creature, forgetting that this was the moon’s doing. I was trapped. It was pulling me into the malicious void that was its tendrils. The claws that protruded from the mass of tentacles lifted themselves into the sky, before collapsing down into my chest. I screamed in anticipation of pain but was left with a strange wet feeling as if I had awoken from a fever dream and then been dried from the inside out. Sweat filled my brow and body as the creature overwhelmed me with some force that made my eyes heavy. I thought I was dying – it felt like dying. But I was in fact going somewhere amazing. Chapter 4: What the Moon Wants I woke up on a beach… still sweating even though there seemed to be no air – hot or cold. Nothing stimulated my eyes, no smell wafted to my nose. I  had seemed to have woken up at a beachfront. The sand permeated my bare skin as I had appeared to have been stripped of my clothing. I stood up quickly, covering myself and darting my head to see whoever might judge my frail body. I was relieved to see no-one, but that was before I realized where I was. Well actually – in truth, I did not realize where I was. The first thing I noticed was the complete lack of beach behind me. Instead, there was a host of nothingness. Sand was all that seemed to stretch in every direction outward, much like a desert. But unlike a desert, the sand seemed to turn bleak, dull, and gray, fading into obscurity on what I presumed was the horizon where an empty crescent of a view is all I was allowed to gaze upon. This led me to view the sky – though, it didn’t seem like a sky at all. Instead it was just… nothing. There was no ordained color to it, no cloud to draw safety from. It was just an empty hue of white mist that seemed so untouchable and distant. I could fly for eons and still never reach the top of this sky, it seemed. The sea itself was no different from odd happenings. It was the same as any sea was. A dark abyssal blue, but it didn’t form waves. It had nothing pushing or pulling it that could force it against the beachfront. Instead, it sat motionless, not moving nor blinking at me. Aside from the gentle pushing of the waves that faded into nothingness along the beach bank, the sea remained still, evaporating. It was like the throwing of a ball but with no-one to catch it. I stared into the sky, the empty milk of this place made me feel… unwelcome. I felt that it was pushing away from me. Not pushing me to leave, but pushing me away so that it could pull me right back. I hate the sky. Not long did I stare into the sky and sea before the creature that took me to this infernal place came back. This time, with numbers. Creatures of the same design and horror of the first, coming from the sands it seemed. Coming from the sands the same way smoke rises from a flame. Re-evaporating into the air. In this, I realized that the creature I had seen in Morham had not been a unique creature like I had thought. It was more like the spider things that clutched to the walls; they seemed to be their own species of sorts. I wondered why God would make things so horrid? But I was excited, for I was about to find out why. I felt shunned by my nakedness but knew that something great was coming. I would go back to Morham and prove to all those who doubted me of these creatures and the moon’s power. Then I would be hailed as a scientific hero; a pioneer, like Jesus, bringing this new era down to the Earth. They moved around me; eight of those creatures created a small, inconsistent circle, like a child trying to draw an octagon. As they hovered I grew ecstatic over the thought of what these creatures would bring me. Their arms hung heavy from their sides, but these horrors did not make me feel unnerved like they had in Morham. I felt at ease. As they floated and flew, the sand seemed to trail with them. As they hovered over the beach, the sand would attempt to follow them, floating desperately to the creatures only to fall and rejoin the beach. With them, they brought my wife. She came the same way they did, materializing from the sand. I had no clue how long she had been there. I did not know if they took her before or after I was taken. I was curious to how long I myself had been there but also furious that my disbelieving wife might take part in this. She was nude like me, and seemed to be heavily pregnant. Her fragile body had been puffed up like an air balloon. Her stomach was so large that it almost covered her genital area. Her skin was as white as the misty sky above. On her arms, chest, and legs were a myriad of small cuts that let trickles of pink blood fall into the sand. Two of the creatures stood by her, clutching her with their knife-like arms, cutting her slightly as they held her back. I wanted to check that she was okay, but… it felt right to be there. It felt if I tried to help her, I would ruin all of it. Whatever it was. It felt as though a warm smile was being bestowed onto me and for me to disrupt it would leave nothing but an angry, scolding frown. “Oh God,” she wailed. “I’m so nauseous… Darling. Darling?” She looked to me through the circle of tentacled beasts who had now turned to me – but they were nothing but a mass of tentacles so it was hard to tell. I stared back and tried to give a comforting smile. I tried to pull her to my way of thinking, to accept this. I didn’t want her to hate all of this, but to embrace it, and stare back. “I knew it. I knew it. I knew you were special. That all your words and talks and dreams and visions weren’t what they seemed to be. You’re a prophet, aren’t you? And this?” She gestured with her head towards her stomach which seemed almost ready to erupt and spawn forth new horrors. “This will be the child to save the world? I’m like Mary, right? This child will be the new Jesus. But a better one.” She wailed and pained more. The burns on her face reopened and bled a light lick of pus and blood, an awful mix of blood-tainted swamp water. She cried again. And again. And again, looking into the deepness of the sky. “I don’t understand it… but I know you do! And I know you would stop this, if it was wrong! But you’re not!” She wailed again, looking to me for approval. I stared back, convincing her to smile with my own. It didn’t take long it seemed, for then she stopped wailing. And her body died, leaving a bloody cathedral on the sands of the beach. The baby started crying in her place. She gave birth to a child? The two creatures that stood beside the corpse of my wife picked up this child from the sand. Past the bodies of these floating masses did I spot this horror. It was not like a child from our species, no. Though its body was that of a human’s, it had no genitals. It had the long sprawling hair of a man who hadn’t groomed himself for a decade – the sands of the sea tried following the strands of hair the same way the sand followed the tentacles of the creatures. Its mouth was wider than a human baby’s, as it seemed to be naturally elongated, leaving a black empty pit that I could spot in between its breaths. Its arms were longer than mine and the skin was tight around them. No blood or muscle seemed to be within the arms, leaving the skin wrapped around the bone instead. It had a mass of hives and honeycomb on its chest, showing the fleshy working of its organs. And even though I was no doctor, they did not seem like a heart, liver or kidney, but rather something else entirely. Weird beating shapes of red and purple blood would be the best way to describe them. This child was not of my seed. I did not know who it belonged to. My guess, it was one of the tentacle creatures’ and my wife’s. That would explain the biological anomaly that caused such a quick birth. I then concluded that these tentacled creatures had to be some form of intellectual or cultural parasites. This fascinated me greatly; I wondered… what could we call them? After they picked the child from the sand a new horror came to grace me. Dropping from the mist up above, it split the sky in two, only for it to reform. This thing was as big as the spider creatures I saw in Morham, if not bigger. A hound in the way it was constructed but not in the way it was built. It had two front standing legs with claws on its toes that stretched longer than my hands. These legs had ridges that ran up to the rest of its body which was fat and heavy like a cake roll, though this didn’t seem to weigh it down any. This god’s face was masked by a collection of eyes and tentacles. Some tubular veins protruded from its neck and body. They were colored a raw pink and I had no idea as to their function. Between these tentacles seemed to flow a complex system of tunnels and veins that moved two green orbs through them. One hundred tentacles I’d say, at least, that came from this beast’s body and face. On its hind legs sat large growths of flesh angled in the shape of blades (a defense mechanism, it seemed). All in all, the most peculiar thing about this creature was the absence of connection. On its back, facing away from its head were five large, thick tentacles – but these appendages  did not attach to its body and rather lingered closely between the spaces of it, like two magnets not connecting. As it swayed, the tentacles moved with him, like a needy child wanting its mother, holding onto her for dear life. The creature landed on the beach, turning its focus onto the baby my wife had birthed. It moved the child with its front legs, turning it over and violently pushing it across the sand before its tentacles extended, tossing and turning the baby in the air before they enveloped it… The tentacles then pulled in every direction, snapping the baby’s body into pieces. It consumed every inch of flesh my wife had produced. Every tentacle that grabbed and ate this baby seemed to choke on each of its pieces, for they spasmed violently after consuming them. Quickly did its tentacles fill with the purple-red muck of the horror’s blood. And as it relaxed its tentacles, they spilled its blood onto the sand, almost changing its color. Once the baby died, the wailing stopped. One of the creatures moved over and picked up what appeared to be an umbilical cord from the spot where my wife had given birth. It was not a pink tube of blood that human babies had, but was a black mass of muck that seemed to blink and stare into me. It was unnerving. A large wet stick populated with pestilent holes, one thousand at least, and curved, crawling like a defensive millipede. The creature moved to me, hovering over the sand, inexplicably passing right through the bodies of the other creatures that stood around me. I was curious if I could do the same? I decided it best not to try. It handed me the umbilical cord. It was slimy and twitching. It seemed to beat like that of a human heart. I was not cursed to hold this thing for long as it dissipated into my skin like falling sand, fading into a black shadowy mist that then pulsated through my arms. I felt weak again, my limbs started to stiffen, my head started to grow light, my ears started to burst once more. The creatures screeched a most terrifying sound, one of which could only be found in the deepest pits of hell. They then left into the same sand that they emerged from. They took my wife too, dragging her into the beach grains like a mirage, leaving me with the god. It turned its attention to me. The part of its body that I assumed was its face was now staring me down, pulling at me. The blood from the infant seemed to shine within me, but I wasn’t scared. Not anymore. I felt safe with this beast. I was in the void and I knew I would soon embrace the moon. I knew what it was going to do! I knew it! I had told people for decades. I had told them my dreams were not of fiction, but a foretelling of what was to come. I did not feel scared, for the first time in a long time. I was only angry at myself for not figuring it out sooner. If I had only stared back… this would’ve all happened sooner. I smiled and cried and laughed with this god. It approached me, every step twisted and slow. Its arms bent in a weird fashion and it had to lift its legs high before it could reach the apex of its stride, therefore taking wide steps to where it would eventually stand still. Almost like the creature was not meant to walk. Being forced to stand like some circus bear. It came face to face with me. I tried to hold my stomach by focusing on the green orb that still traveled between the beast’s tentacles (as it was the least horrific thing I could look at). It took a short while before I felt the pain again. The screeching in my ear that made liquid dribble from it, the lightness in my head that nearly took my consciousness. And stiffness in my limbs that made me collapse from an unknowing weight. But I was not afraid, and I did not fall crying nor kicking, but smiling. And as this god looked over my body, its tentacles spurted out once more, seeking me. But I was not afraid, for I knew this would happen. The tentacles moved unto me, latching like leeches. But they did not take anything. In that moment I knew everything. The secrets to the Universe, what laid beyond that deep void of darkness in the sky. The creatures that inhabited the dimensions inside and outside our universe. The rules and laws of these places and their creatures. It all became clear to me. I had become the moon. I had become the horror that stares into the eyes of gods and men. For I stared into the moon, and the moon stared back. CREDIT: TheAshKnight Copyright Statement: Unless explicitly stated, all stories published on Creepypasta.com are the property of (and under copyright to) their respective authors, and may not be narrated or performed under any circumstance.