(The following is written E for everyone)
Cold air swiftly filled Martin’s lungs as he twitched nervously and his eyes slowly lifted from his slumber and into existence. Another bad dream perhaps? The moon’s silver radiance welcomed him like a searchlight. He couldn’t remember how he had fallen asleep, or the night prior for that matter. But, such was the nature of forgetting how one fell asleep. He reached for his phone on the nightstand. It wasn’t there. Same for the nightstand. Must have knocked it over? Well best thing to do now would be to get out of bed and shut the cur… Only, there was not curtains by his bed. No bed either for that matter. Floor? And why was there moonlight if it was…
Martin then shot awake, looking around to find he was not in his apartment anymore. Not back in his hometown of… well It didn’t matter. He was on the floor of a wooden shack on something rough and scratchy. He looked down to find that he had been laying on a welcome mat placed over a giant “X” painted in blue on the wooden floor. As he sat up, he looked around to see plain wooden walls, lacking anything but an excessive amount of German cuckoo clocks. All broken, yet, all set at a time one might see upon their device. Always shifting, ever aging. With every glance, a new minute or hour. Martin couldn’t understand it. There was an old cast iron stove as well, in the center of the room with a pot boiling on it. The shack smelled thick with the scent of key limes and the fierce lunar-turquoise light shined through the port hole windows. Martin stood up and brushed dust off his brown leather jacket and blue jeans.
“Where am I?” he whispered to himself. ”I only had three beers last night, there is no way I partied so hard that I blacked out. I swear if this is some kind of prank. I’m going to kill Steven.That’s his name right? The friend who I would have drank so much with?" Martin pondered before a raspy voice stole his attention.
“You aren’t real,” A voice called out.
Martin quickly turned to see a figure in an ancient creaking, rocking chair facing away from him.
“What?” Martin replied, but the figure did not hear him.
“No, no, no. that won’t do, he’s not ready for that one yet. Hmmmm… ah, I’ve got it.” The figure said to himself.
“Got what? Who are you?” Martin demanded.
Hearing this the figure jolted as if surprised and quickly turned his rocking chair around. An odd expression fell upon Martin’s face as he saw the figure to be an weathered, elderly man wearing a straw hat and a teal-blue and white plaid shirt with denim overalls. The old man had a great, long, pointed, grey beard that passed below his belt and who’s hat covered his eyes, where his thick aviator glasses did not. Like a hipster, redneck wizard. He looked neither harmful nor sensible, yet Martin watched him all the same.
“Well hello there uhh…” He then paused to look at a flash card. “Marvin.”
“Who are you? Tell me now, old man!”
“Someone who isn’t gonna take your attitude, boy. Now do you want to try that again?” The old man replied.
“Who are you and where am I?... please.” Martin asked, giving a low sigh, still on edge.
The old man did not smile but instead hiccupped and looked back at his flash card.
“About to hit three and… on schedule…” The stranger muttered.
“You, Marvin… are on the moon… hold for reaction and then… oh no, I’m not supposed to read this.”
“Riiiiiight. Well tell Steve his pranks aren’t funny anymore. I will be going now.”
Martin looked around and saw a door to his left and started to walk towards it. As he did so the old man simply watched him until a moth started hovering around his head. Then the old man let out a shriek of terror and leaped from his chair and dashed towards Martin, grabbing him by the writs and pulling him with him as he fled out the door. Martin tripped and landed on his back.
Outside the old man dragged him away from the shack by his collar. Martin tried to hit the man, but he was unable to land a strike. Above him was the dark night sky and beneath him, on his back, was what felt like sand and rocks. Eventually the old man did stop. Moving that is, not shrieking. While still letting out a harmonious cry only appreciated by banshees, the old man pulled out a grenade canister from his overalls and tossed it through the open doorway to his shack. Once it landed, he stopped screaming and stood silently watching as a cloud of green smoke explode and engulf his shack in a thick plume, consuming all.
“What the was that for?” Martin shouted as he stood up and walked towards the old man, but after only a few steps he stopped as he began to look around him.
“Moon moths. They eat clothes like no one’s business. You have no idea how hard it is to get an author to write in more clothes.”
The old man turned to Martin to see him in shock as the reality finally hit him. For miles and miles in every direction was a sea of high grey dunes and rocks with craters scattered everywhere, like shells might be upon a shore.
“This… this can’t be real? this can’t be real! how am I breathing, old man?”
The old man hiccuped again as he brushed away a patch of moon sand with his sandal and pulled out from under it a large clay moonshine bottle, at least a gallon’s worth.
“You’re on the moon I’ve told you this. and the reason you can breathe is because the author wants you to.”
Martin stood silent looking around him in shock and disbelief, shaking his head. But things only got worse when he looked up in the sky and saw earth, shiny and emerald green, like a gem high above him.
“Ya see Marvin… You’re not real. none of this is.”
Martin then turned to him with the most dumbfounded expression and eyes glaring with both confusion and rage.
“My name’s Logan… Logan the Lunar Hermit.”
“What do you mean this isn’t real?”
“Though one girl once called me a lunar loon. But it’s okay, her story wasn’t very-”
“Answer me damn you!” Martin interrupted. “I had a life, a girlfriend, a job, a future. What is all of this?”
“This is the moon… or were you asking about the whole reality thing?” Logan replied.
“Where did you just say I am?”
“Ah, try and stay with me here.” Logan paused to take a swig of his moonshine. “This is the moon… you are Marvin… this isn’t real…. you still following?”
“And how is none of this real?” Martin replied, furious and defiant.
“Well for one your standing on the moon breathing and if that doesn’t sound any alarms, well, I don’t’ know what to-”
“Well then explain, how am I not real? Cause I bet I’m just in a twisted dream. One I will be glad to wake from.”
“Tell me, Marvin… do you remember how your last night ended? Or is it a fuzzy memory… almost like a cliff hanger?”
“How would you… know?”
“Having trouble there? Or do some details seem lacking? As if they weren’t written out for you?”
Martin shook his head and began pacing back and forth trying to recall what happened that prior night.
“You see, you were a character in what they call a “SHORT STORY”, and those kinds of tales often end if cliff hangers. Now when the tale is over more often than not, they or the authors, turn in their story to a being called a
“Professor”. At one of them fancy universities. And the story is worked on no more.”
Martin stopped pacing and looked up at the earth as Logan continued.
“When this happens you and the rest of the protagonists are sent here… to me. And it is my job to find a new place for you. A place where A-list actors will not play your written role upon the silver screen, but where fulfillment is not beyond reach.”
“That can’t be true.” Martin declared.
“No? tell me how you are your girlfriend met?”
“We met at…”
“Yes?” Logan teased.
“I… give me a moment!”
“You can’t remember because the author of your tale never bothered to give that backstory.”
“If we are all fake and just the construct of jerk writers than what are you? Huh?” Martin inquired back, with an exhausted and fuming tone.
“I’m just a funny hermit for some stud writer’s assignment no doubt. Probably said that because he made me… You get the picture yet?”
Martin fell to his knees.
“Though, by now it might be for a master’s application?” Logan continued to ponder.
“But I don’t want to be fake. I want to live my life how I choose. Not how some writer dictates!”
“Ah, and now we see the conflict! Good, we are halfway there!” Logan jumped with glee.
“What is there then?! What new life do you give to those who pass through here?”
“Well I gave this dragon a job catching moon mice…” Logan replied. “said he was tired of making deals with mortals in his writer’s story…. I think that was a title, but anyways. I also gave a high schooler, who technically killed her date and was a violent psycho, a job over at the local Moon Burger, flipping moon paddies… In hindsight probably not the best choice, but still. And yes, moon companies have odd, and uncreative names. But Moon Burgers still have a solid menu and decent prices.”
“And where will I go? Or has your filthy author not decided.”
With that Logan threw down a folder in front of Martin.
“Inside that are sixteen different jobs one can do here. Pick one and we will get in my rocket ship and head to the drop zone.”
“Rocket ship?” Martin asked excitedly.
“Yah, it is a moon themed story after all. I have one to drop the newcomers at their work zones. Beats walking for sure. Parked over yonder behind my shack. Personally, I would go with burger flipping. That girl was kind of cute. And since the murder she’s single n-”
Martin lunged forward and knocked Logan off his feet and onto the ground. As Logan fell his moonshine broke on a moon rock.
“My moonshine!”
But Martin paid no attention and sprinted as fast as he could, he was heading straight for the shack. As he got closer he began to look around him, in the night sky. Waiting for some scheduled written result to stop him. Like how a sinner waits for karma to catch them, like the hand of God coming from over a moon crater or something. But nothing did. Martin ran past the shack and sure enough there it was, just as Logan had said. A silver and red rocket. Already upright and waiting for takeoff. As Martin approached he found a ladder extended from an open hatch and began to climb up. As he did so, his heart began to race, and his breaths became deep. He was sure that his actions would be stopped by a writer in some manner, but as he took his seat, buckled in, and ignited the power, he again was not halted.
Never mind how he knew which switches to flip or buttons to tap, he had to get home. Either he’d find a way to break free of this nightmare, or his defiance would prove his liberation of any linear fates predetermined. He slammed his fist on a big, red, shiny button and the rocket began to ascend. The flames and smoke began to burst from the rocket tore into the sky with an intense fury. Its jet trail a bright inferno, its engine’s roar like a thunder from ten thousand war drums.
“I don’t care if this is fake or not anymore. I will live my life how I see fit.” He shouted to himself as he steered the rocket towards earth, like a homing missile straight for his salvation.
Upon arrival, he would no doubt crash over the sea and eject with a pod or maybe even attempt to land somewhere in an open field. But regardless he would do it his way. He would live his life how he chose and free. Free from the author’s creative control and free from their short stories and their cut off ending terrors that had left so many in purgatory.
But, back on the moon sat Logan. Relaxed, drinking out another moonshine bottle, conveniently
written for his use.
“Mmmmm, this one’s rum raisin.” He said to himself as he looked up and watched the
rocket burn across the endless heavens.
“Silly Marvin.” He laughed to himself.
“Do you really think it will be as you choose? Don’t you know this tale is gonna end in three, two,…”