Chasing the Moon (14 page)

“Again?” asked Vom. “How many times do we have to do this?”

“As many times as it takes for me to convince myself that this isn’t a terrible mistake that is going to go horribly awry. So give it to me.”

“When in doubt, don’t eat it,” said Vom with mechanical indifference.

“If you absolutely have to spawn,” said Smorgaz, “excuse yourself to go to the bathroom.”

Diana nodded. “Good. And…”

“Try not to talk but be polite,” intoned Vom and Smorgaz in unison. “If anyone asks, we’re old college friends in town for the week, and we have to go back to Stockholm to complete a research paper on soil samples.”

“No, not Stockholm,” she said.

Vom sighed. “But you said—”

“I know what I said, but Stockholm is too exotic. It invites questions. We need someplace less interesting. Sacramento. Or maybe Denver.”

“I’ve been to Denver,” said Smorgaz. “It’s a surprisingly interesting place.”

“Okay. We’ll go with Kansas. Kansas is boring.”

“Really?” asked Smorgaz. “So I take it you’ve been there.”

“No, I haven’t, but it’s not important if Kansas really is boring. It’s just important that it seems boring.”

“So you’re willing to impugn a whole state for an elaborate charade?”

“Yes, I am. I’m sure the state of Kansas will forgive me just this once.”

“Can I say we used to date?” asked Smorgaz.

“No.”

“Can I say I used to be worshipped as a god?” asked Vom.

“What?” She shook her head. “No.”

“Not even if someone asks? Like maybe it just comes up randomly in the table conversation?”

“When is something like that going to come up?”

“You never know. A lively conversation can be unpredictable.”

“You’re a guy who studies dirt,” she said. “That’s it.”

“Can I be gay?” asked Smorgaz.

She covered her face and ground her teeth.

“Okay. You can be gay.”

“That’s no fair. Why does he get to be gay?” said Vom.

“You can be gay too,” she replied.

“Wait,” said Smorgaz. “We can’t both be gay. Then it won’t be special.”

She said, “Maybe we should just forget the whole thing.”

“No. It’s fine. We can both be gay. But since I thought of it,
I’ll be flamboyantly gay and you will just have to be ordinary gay.”

“I can live with that,” said Vom.

“Just don’t be a stereotype,” added Diana.

Smorgaz snapped his fingers. “You got it, girlfriend.”

They climbed out of the car and walked toward the bar. Diana was already getting a bad feeling about this. She thought about turning around, forgetting the whole thing. But she’d come this far.

Her sanity hung in the balance. If she was going to avoid death and madness, she needed to find a way to ground herself. This might not be the solution, but it was worth a shot.

“How are they going to see you?” she asked. “What do you look like to normal people?”

They shrugged.

“You don’t wear any clothes,” she said. “Even if you appear like human beings, wouldn’t you be naked? I mean, why do they even perceive you as male or female to begin with? You aren’t really either, right?”

They shrugged again.

“Sometimes I wish you two were more helpful.”

“If you want everything to make sense,” said Vom, “you’re only going to be continually disappointed.”

They entered the bar, and she spotted her coworkers occupying a group of tables. They waved her over.

“So glad you could make it,” said Ginger. “And these must be your friends.”

“Yes, this is…” Only then did she realize that she’d overlooked coming up with normal human names for her monsters.

In the few seconds it took for her to come up with John and James, they stepped forward and introduced themselves.

“I’m Vom.”

“Smorgaz.”

Ginger said, “Those are interesting names.”

“Albanian,” said Smorgaz.

“I thought you looked Albanian.”

Diana understood. Vom and Smorgaz were blanks, seen however the viewer wanted or expected to see themst as long as it was a conceivable alternative to seeing what they actually were.

“I’m gay,” said Vom.

“I’m gay, too,” added Smorgaz. “Flamboyantly.”

Smiling, Ginger nodded. “I see.”

Diana sat. Vom and Smorgaz sat to her left.

This wasn’t going to work. She couldn’t relax with the monsters here. It wasn’t their fault. They were behaving themselves. But she couldn’t shake the image of Vom, in a moment of weakness, setting upon everyone, eagerly devouring them within moments. Or someone, in a moment of unusual clarity, might glimpse a clone rolling off of Smorgaz’s back. It wasn’t implausible. People were not uniformly oblivious. She could see that.

Wendall watched her from a distance. When she sat down he moved to the far end of the table. And he kept nervously glancing at Vom and Smorgaz. He might not have been able to see them for what they were, but he could certainly sense something was off about them.

She wanted to straighten things out somehow for the poor
guy. He’d seen something mortal minds weren’t meant to see, and it was obvious he was having trouble reconciling himself to it. She couldn’t blame him for that. She wasted a few minutes trying to come up with a simple way to ease his troubled mind, but aside from telling him he wasn’t crazy and that the universe was filled with terrifying cosmic horrors, she was coming up short. That news hardly seemed reassuring.

Just brushing up against this horrible secret had jostled loose his sanity. Confirming it could very well destroy it.

Yet here she was, neck-deep in this madness, and she wasn’t doing nearly as badly. But maybe it was easier when you were all the way in. Perhaps a full immersion allowed her to adjust. Rather than seeing only bits and pieces of a half-remembered madness, she saw the whole thing. And that allowed her to accept it more easily, to bounce back.

More likely, she’d already gone mad and just didn’t realize it. She found some comfort in that. Hitting bottom meant the worst was over.

Diana didn’t believe it. Not for a moment. Not even enough to lie to herself about it.

Her coworkers engaged in small talk. They made jokes. Vicki showed pictures of her kid. Ginger talked about a funny thing that had happened during her morning commute. That guy from the shoe department (Steve or Bob or Fred, she could never remember his name) recommended a movie he’d seen. It was a lively, perfectly harmless conversation.

And it bored the ever-living hell out of Diana.

Although perhaps boredom was the wrong word. Small talk like this was always boring, but everyone played along,
pretending to be fully invested in the mundane trials and tribulations of human existence. The unspoken social contract went like this: you listened sympathetically to other people’s problems, and they listened sympathetically to yours. While she had enough faith in humanity to believe this wasn’t always an act, it didn’t really matter if you genuinely emthized just as long as you could fake it.

She couldn’t fake it. Not the way she used to.

It was, she knew, selfish of her. These were good people with real problems that mattered to them. Only a few days ago she’d shared those problems. Little things like paying bills, relationship difficulties, and traffic annoyances. She just couldn’t relate.

It all just seemed so insignificant, so petty and trivial. It always had been, but now she couldn’t even pretend it wasn’t.

She envied all the ordinary people in this bar. She despised them. The internal conflict, along with her effort to hide it, made her queasy. Diana didn’t know why she bothered. People were obviously clueless. If they couldn’t see the monsters among them, then why would they notice her disinterest?

Meanwhile, Vom and Smorgaz were getting along just fine. Better than her. She had no idea how that was possible. They weren’t even human. Maybe that worked in their favor. That distance gave them a more objective viewpoint. Rather than judging humanity for the clueless race of cosmic microbes it was, Vom and Smorgaz could just enjoy it without reservation.

Regardless of the reason, within the hour Diana found herself the odd woman out of the conversation. It wasn’t intentional. She had so little to contribute that the natural give-and-take of an ordinary conversation just slipped away
from her. She sat at her end of the table, not even pretending to listen.

Wendall sat at the other end. Only he seemed even remotely aware of the weirdness of the monsters. He’d turn his head and study Vom and Smorgaz from different angles. He’d squint and stare, and just when he managed to see them for what they truly were, he’d chicken out and look away.

He couldn’t even look at her, much less meet her eyes. He left early. Then all her coworkers left, one by one, until she was left sitting at a table with only a pair of monsters to keep her company.

Diana didn’t feel like going home, so she found a pool hall and rented a table. She bought three beers and handed one to Vom, another to Smorgaz.

“Drink it slow now,” she cautioned. “I’m not made of—”

Vom had already eaten his, bottle and all. He hadn’t even bothered to open it.

“I’ll rack,” said Smorgaz.

Diana wasn’t very good at the game, but she handily beat the two monsters. Neither could sink a ball, even when everything lined up perfectly. They didn’t seem to care.

Halfway through their third game she went back to the bar to get another beer for herself and one for Vom and Smorgaz to split. A tall, blond woman in jeans waited for her own order. The woman nodded at Diana. Diana nodded back.

“They’re cute,” said the woman. “Your friends.”

Diana glanced over at her monsters. She had no idea what the woman saw, but Diana saw a furry green eating machine and a giant rubber hedgehog. They were kind of cute. In a strange, not-of-this-Earth way.

“You’re lucky,” said the woman. “I know a guy who is stuck with a slime-covered spider-thing.”

Diana nodded. If that was her other option, she was lucky.

The woman took her drink and started to walk away, but Diana stopped her.

“Hey, can you see my friends for what they are?”

The woman smiled. “Of course.”

“And you’re not freaked out by that?”

“Why should I be? Believe me, the stuff I’ve seen… it makes those guys look like a couple of teddy bears.”

The woman went to a table where she was playing by herself. Diana followed her.

“I don’t mean to bother you, but—”

“But you’re new to this and had a few questions.” The woman leaned over the table and sank three balls in one shot.

“I’m sorry,” said Diana.

“No. Don’t worry. I understand where you’re coming from.”

She lined up another shot. The cue ball zipped across the felt and knocked two more balls into pockets. Diana noticed that the balls all moved in odd zigzagging patterns. At one point the cue ball circled the eight ball twice before completely reversing direction and smacking another target hard enough to send it arcing through the air to land in a pocket on the far side of the table.

“How did you do that?” asked Diana.

“It’s all angles,” the woman replied. “I just like to use the ones most people ignore. I’m Sharon by the way.”

“Diana.”

She took Sharon’s hand. A zap passed between them. It startled Diana but didn’t hurt.

“Sorry,” said Sharon. “That happens sometimes to people like us who have slipped just a bit into the beyond.”

She made it sound so casual, so everyday. Diana found that comforting.

Diana scanned the hall. There was a dog-sized housefly crawling along one of the walls.

“Is that one yours?”

“That’s just a phase fly. They’re all over the place this time of year. No, my partner isn’t here right now.”

“Aren’t you worried?” asked Diana. “What if something attacks you?”