Flash fiction: "By The Light of the Moon"
"By The Light of the Moon"
Flash fiction by = Tristan A. Arts
Sandra went outside to enjoy the cool night air and stare at the sky. She sat back on the stoop, leaning against the porch's wood, and stared at the moon. It was waning in such a way that it looked like a smiley face without eyes. She smiled at this thought, prepared to turn her eyes elsewhere in the sky, when something happened she couldn't quite believe. On the moon, right where the eyes would be on a smiley face, two bright white lights suddenly flared to life, completing the smiley-face. Sandra stared, astonished, and stood up. She had no idea of the exact dimensions of the moon, but knew those lights had to be at least 100 miles apart, and had to have been extremely bright to show up that well here on the surface of Earth.
She ran up the stairs and into the house to get her boyfriend to come look. By the time she found him, and they were passing the TV on their way out, whatever show had been playing for noise was being interrupted by a breaking news report about the lights on the moon.
Over the next few days, rumors flew. Pundits and newscasters traded speculation. Politicians said a great many words that essentially amounted to the flummoxed look on the face of a fish suddenly out of water. Everyone wanted to know what the mysterious lights were, who had put them there, and how they'd managed to do it without someone noticing it. Astronomers watching the moon were even more baffled than the politicians. Whatever was there now was too bright to look at without specialized equipment, and there'd been nothing there before. One minute the moon had been just as it always had been, and the next minute the lights appeared.
All that could be said for certain after several days was that whatever it was had not been put there by anyone on Earth; at least, not by anyone who would admit to it. When this conclusion came out, all the UFO-freaks and alien-lovers and haters took to the streets, some calling out in joy, others protesting in fear.
Sandra hadn't been the only one to notice the initial smiley-face pattern. Almost everyone, whether they thought good or ill of the lights, was calling them The Eyes. News reports, pundits, even politicians called them The Eyes.
After a week, nothing new had happened. No one had been able to see anything clearly even with special equipment, and rumors started to fly that the US government was going to send another ship to the moon.
So it was that Sandra and her boyfriend were looking at the moon on the seventh night, Sandra outlining why she thought they were friendly, when a change happened. After a week of being white, The Eyes turned red.
Crossposted from http://fayanora.dreamwidth.org
Flash fiction by = Tristan A. Arts
Sandra went outside to enjoy the cool night air and stare at the sky. She sat back on the stoop, leaning against the porch's wood, and stared at the moon. It was waning in such a way that it looked like a smiley face without eyes. She smiled at this thought, prepared to turn her eyes elsewhere in the sky, when something happened she couldn't quite believe. On the moon, right where the eyes would be on a smiley face, two bright white lights suddenly flared to life, completing the smiley-face. Sandra stared, astonished, and stood up. She had no idea of the exact dimensions of the moon, but knew those lights had to be at least 100 miles apart, and had to have been extremely bright to show up that well here on the surface of Earth.
She ran up the stairs and into the house to get her boyfriend to come look. By the time she found him, and they were passing the TV on their way out, whatever show had been playing for noise was being interrupted by a breaking news report about the lights on the moon.
Over the next few days, rumors flew. Pundits and newscasters traded speculation. Politicians said a great many words that essentially amounted to the flummoxed look on the face of a fish suddenly out of water. Everyone wanted to know what the mysterious lights were, who had put them there, and how they'd managed to do it without someone noticing it. Astronomers watching the moon were even more baffled than the politicians. Whatever was there now was too bright to look at without specialized equipment, and there'd been nothing there before. One minute the moon had been just as it always had been, and the next minute the lights appeared.
All that could be said for certain after several days was that whatever it was had not been put there by anyone on Earth; at least, not by anyone who would admit to it. When this conclusion came out, all the UFO-freaks and alien-lovers and haters took to the streets, some calling out in joy, others protesting in fear.
Sandra hadn't been the only one to notice the initial smiley-face pattern. Almost everyone, whether they thought good or ill of the lights, was calling them The Eyes. News reports, pundits, even politicians called them The Eyes.
After a week, nothing new had happened. No one had been able to see anything clearly even with special equipment, and rumors started to fly that the US government was going to send another ship to the moon.
So it was that Sandra and her boyfriend were looking at the moon on the seventh night, Sandra outlining why she thought they were friendly, when a change happened. After a week of being white, The Eyes turned red.
Crossposted from http://fayanora.dreamwidth.org