How the Moon Feels

A man deserted in the desert has to shoot down a plane with a sniper to rob the people in it in order to get money to go home. He then finds his wife dead on the ground and has to find out who did it

There once was a girl who with just the glance of her smile could make a man weep. So easy it would be to the eye, that this man would have to step outside every time he would see her face. Her smile could provoke an avalanche, a smile more deadly than a cannon. She was beautiful and she was mine.
We were happily married for 7 years and nothing could tear us apart, but this story isn't about us. It is about a story that took place before that. It is a story that took place during the war. During a time when dark grey overtook the sky and even darker green overtook the trees. A peculiar story that doesn't happen to many people, actually, I don't think it has ever happened to anyone ever before.

I consider myself pretty rich minded. I would say I'm just like you, I like my entrees on trays and my feet in a pair of warm, cozy slippers. However, this is not a story of luxury. This is a story about survival and revenge and what it takes to be a human being in a cold world.



It all started when we were walking around a town in the desert during the war.
I was with my friend Frank Connors, a short man with black hair and big, crazy eyes that popped out of his head. He told me of a story where he was getting picked on at a backyard party by a couple of bullies. Frank said it got so bad that the person had to bring him out into the middle of the street and to fight him. He then told his brother, who being a member of a gang at the time, brought the guy out into the desert, shot him and then buried him to never be found again.

It was late at night and I couldn't tell what time it was. We walked into a bar with dark neon green and purple running along the inside and it got even darker as we entered. My wife Angel, was visiting for a couple days and came with us. We walked around the club and there were plenty of young and old people dancing alike but I took my seat. It was common for me to do this in an unfamiliar territory, to sit down while everyone stands up. The men are macho and in the army, the woman are small, innocent but wild. I was sitting next to my wife who at the time seemed a little disappointed and bored, as did I.
Frank ran up to me and told me he got kicked in the stomach so hard he flew back 7 feet across the dance floor.
"I was dancing with someone's girl from the army when the guy turned around and gave it to me. He was twice my size." He told us.
We then ran out of the bar and across the empty desert town. That's when I realized we forgot Angel, who was using the bathroom at the time.
I called her and she picked up right away. She was mad.
"Hello" she said.
"Angel, where are you?"
"Im still here, im gonna head to the hotel room and call it a night soon, what are you going to do?"
"Not sure, might stay out longer. You do whatever you want, I'm just here to kiss you"
"What does your heart desire?"
There was a long pause on the phone.


I remembered earlier in the week when we were getting along. You danced backwards. I was pulled in by your soft hands and you smiled as if there wasn't a care in the world. I danced with you that night as long as the music played smooth and the dim stars shun softly. You hopped all over the floor until a point where it became silly and you acted like jelly.
I remember we all went swimming that night with some friends we met from the bar. I picked up the guitar and played some jazz for a little and I don't ever play music without dancing.
One must look beyond the stars when staring at the sky at night. This should be a rule of thumb they should teach you in school. For the stars in the sky are distractions and might even be dead. What is behind them is where the real magic is. That is where the billion of light years stretch out into infinite. That is where someone in another galaxy on another planet is staring into the sky wondering the same thing as you.
It was a dark night, the pool was miles away from any form of civilization, in the middle of the long desert. People were having fun, jumping into the pool, and you were out there looking at the moon.



"I dunno what’d id do if anything happened to you...Even if you had gone and messed with another man to come back to me and tell me how bad of a person I was I'd still love you."

After I'd gone and left the second bar to walk across the street for cigarettes I remembered seeing you that night standing outside of the bar. You had a blank stare on your face. I'd never seen a stare like that. I remembered liking you a lot more that night. I later found out it was because you lost your wallet as many drunk people do. After that, you got mad at me and for why I did not know. You walked down the street and I chased after you. The moon was yellow and the sky was dark purple. You would not let me touch you and nothing I said could make you feel better. Every word that came out of my mouth felt more and more foolish. I ran inside the bar to ask for advice. Instead, I found a cigarette and a glass of whiskey. I came out after and you were sitting on a porch step across the road. I sat down beside you. I looked down and noticed I almost stepped on a snail moving slower than the night.
"Look...a snail." You said.
I gave you the cigarette and you lit it up. You smiled and said you were sorry. The moon was shining significantly brighter that evening.
"The drugs must of turned on me." She said.
"You know, it's ok.. Don’t go running away on me like that, ok?"
We later went to my hotel room which was really just an empty room with a shabby bed that seemed to be floating. I took my jacket off and fashioned a pillow out of it. I tucked both sides of the blanket around you so you wouldn’t get cold. I turned the blinds down and sat down in the chair next to the window which was shining a soft amber haze through it from the street lights outside.
I then lit a cigarette, grabbed a box of an old empty 24 pack I drank the night before and laid my head on it. I looked at you and you smiled as we fell asleep.
You flew home the next day.


The war is a total waste. It is a waste of war. As many times as I have been through it in the past, I have never seen such an insane amount of people gone to ashes. While noticing the disastrous chimpanzees I resorted to entertaining myself in ways I could not have before. For instance, I would smoke myself to sleep instead of drinking. I have grown sickened of human kind and want nothing of it. That was back when I at least had some human interaction.
You see, I have been stranded out in this desert for a week now and no one is coming to rescue me. It's a long story but all I have now is a Jeep with barely any gas. I've been driving in circles for days looking for civilization. There is a sniper rifle located in the back right corner of the jeep with low ammunition. There's food but not much. Just a couple granolas and nuts. Water is running scarce as well.
With this said, there is a certain type of beauty in nature, when humankind is taken out of it, that is grand and illustrious. Fields are beautiful, I cannot take that away from them. Although I wish that I could have a constant truth, I cannot have it but maybe the fields do.
I have decided to leave my post and take my complaints elsewhere.
There's nothing like the transition of fear and coldness to waking up to the warmness of the desert. The small patches of green make for good beds. I think about the beach a lot. I dream of the beach many times a day actually. In fact, it's all I can think about.
As I woke up one morning on the ground I looked to the left and grabbed the sniper out of the car. I then loaded it with whatever bullets I could find scattered amongst the ground of the Jeep and faced it upward in a dazed manner. I closed my eyes and dreamed of somewhere better. My malevolence was about to lead to a benevolence with the world being in my favor. A benevolence of a glorious multitude.
Just then I looked through the narrow glass and faced the sniper up without caution. As I gazed through the snipe a plane came by. It was a plane leaving the airport that was not too far away. At a moment of helplessness I decided I needed to take advantage of my advantage at once for my advantage was a clear one. I aimed onto the left wing, carefully. I aimed just like the military taught me and took my shot. The propeller of the wing exploded with as many sparks as the eye could see.
I fell back and almost went to sleep out of exhaustion. The plane came tumbling down in circles gallantly to a nice landing yards away. I knew I had to make an act so I acted at once with confidence and happiness. I woke myself up and turned the jeep on and traversed the terrain in challenging strides of speed. Long strips of desert went passing on by like light speed as I reached the burning plane in the middle of the desert. I took the fire extinguisher and put out the flames and approached the inside of the jet plane.
A lot of people were injured. I go by and I steal every nickel and dime out of every wallet I can. I drink some of the booze I find on the ground and stuff the rest of the bottles down in my pocket. I also grab whatever food I can find and eat that as well. The plane is engulfed in flames but I do not feel the flames. I would later blame this on the booze.
I get outside and I lay down behind a big rock a hundred feet away from the wreck. I look at the moon that is starting to appear with the stars. I wonder how the moon feels. I get weary and start a conversation to my wife but really I was talking to thin, hot air and a couple injured people that were scattered amongst the wreck. Were they listening? I do not care.
"Baby, It's not that I can't see me living with you ,it's just that I can't see me living without you.
I just can't imagine going a week without your face, but I just did.
And babe...In a world so lonely, why must we fight?
The fact is, I'm always gonna be in love with you.
And how could one ever leave something so sweet alone?
When I die I want it to say 'goodnight beautiful' on my grave, and I want you to be buried right next to me, and for it to say 'goodnight baby' on your grave, that way, every night, we can say goodnight to each other forever and ever until the world ends.
I'll be home tomorrow. I hope we can be together this weekend, I'll be drunk somewhere, you just pick me up somewhere along the way."


When I was a kid I used to put on my back pack, act nice to my parents, go to school, take piano classes, listen to classical music and kiss my grandma goodbye...but actually the backpack had booze in it and my grandma would tell me to go out and have fun and f**k with society. I'd go out and party all day and night with my friends.
At night we'd go to rich parties and steal from the rich houses.

I sat next to the rock all night. I slept like a baby and the next morning I drove in the direction the plane came from. I used the money I stole from the wreck to pay a local pilot from the village to take me home.
"How much for a ride?"
"Whatchu got?"
I pulled out all the money I had collected from the wreck.
I looked out the window as we flew by Greenland on the way home. The land is full of ice as far as the eyes can see. The windows were desperately frozen and so was I.

When I landed in LA it was unbearably hot outside. I wish they'd put the candle out over LA and let it freeze over like they did Greenland. I wish for one day of overcast in the near future. The houses buzz by quick as the taxi talks on the phone in words I can't understand. Hippies are having an orgy in a park. A fashionable f**k fest of bodies is displayed in front of a school of children. I let the sun hit my face.I say thanks to the taxi driver as he drops me off at home.
As I open the door I expect my wife to run to my arms along with the dogs but I find her laying on the ground. There was a note on her. It was the f*****g terrorist that left me to die in the desert. I remember before he dropped me off in the desert, he told me one last thing.
"I'm going to kill your wife, you may be allowed to see her when you get to heaven."
Those words are what got to me, not the being stranded in the desert, that I could stand.

I sat on the couch and waited and thought and quivered. Questions flew through my mind. "Was she dead? Was she really dead? What is dying like? What is better to think? That when someone dies they are simply just dead and therefore useless enough to toss them into a hole in the ground or burn to be cremated and tossed into a river or that they have just begun an adventure that is not comprehensible by any human thought that could only be imagined by comparing such a thing to a dream you once had, an adventure unlike any other preconceived feeling you have ever had. Better than your happiest drug trip and better then any long romantic night ended with a lover.
And what is a kiss but a most overused universal signal that just one can change your whole life around."
I remembered the night we first met. A ballroom in Downtown. Red curtains filled the room. A jazz was band playing and she was dressed in white. She had eyes like doves and then there was me with a cigarette. Just about ready to die and sink into a heavy whiskey induced depression. Sometimes like this, when you are in your darkest and deepest moments......is when the angels appear. Only then, do they appear. This is why the heart flutters and the heart gets goosebumps and the mind floats away like in dreams.
Just then the police bust the door down. "Sir, you are arrested for the murder of your wife."

I am in a jail cell and a man walks in and introduces himself as a one eyed scuba diving bank robber
magician. I stare at him then back out the window. It is now me and him in this lonely cell and all I can do is think about my wife. The scuba diver sits down in a metal chair at the corner of the cell and eats his dark pink meal.


"I once heard a story about a hit man and a mobster," the scuba diver said. "The mobster gave the hitman a bottle of wine to kill whoever it was that ratted on him. That very night, the hitman pushed the rat into a deep, never ending hole. He gave the guy the bottle of wine for his troubles. He comes back home. 'The deed is done,' he says. 'I even gave him the bottle of wine you gave me, ha! He'll be drinking that while falling down that endless hole! Ha!
The mobster turns around in disgust. 'You idiot....that bottles worth 50 million dollars. I told you to hold onto that with all your might!' He then starts crying."
I don't say anything and keep staring out the window to the blue night.
"Good story huh?" The scuba diver says.
"It's alright."
"What are you in here for?"
"I got accused of murder but it wasn't me. What about you?"
"I rob banks. I'll be out of here soon."


I thought deep about my wife as I sat in my bunk.
I am as alone as ever while laying on my bunk. I think to myself, "You know if I got a free ride through the universe, had a date with every girl, species or alien in the universe. I'd end in my space rocket traveling near the end of the universe, right at the edge where you can see the end, traveling at light speed wanting more, alone, quiet, in my space ship, staring off into space, quite literally, wondering what went wrong with the one girl from planet earth, and how much I missed her and how much I would do anything to see her."
I get up and start to punch the wall over and over again until my knuckles are bleeding. I punched and punched until the sun came up. In the morning my right arm was deadly, vainly with tendons pushing out.


In the morning the scuba diver told me another story.
"A lonely, poor, disgruntled young man walks into his grandpa's hotel. His grandpa is a multibillionaire. They talk for awhile. His grandpa doesn't think much of him because of a fight they got in many years ago. The young man still remembers what he said so many years ago. The old man tried to give the lonely young man a fortune but he denies it. He tells the old man he doesn't need his help. He leaves and slams the door. The old man looks out the window and the room is dark.
The young man leaves and watches a beautiful woman walk by him and ignore him. Another girl walks by and does the same. The man goes to his apartment and cries. He decides to commit suicide because the loneliness is stronger than him. He goes in the bathroom and slits his wrist. The next day his grandpa dies from cancer. This is what he was trying to tell the young man and also that he loved him.
The newspaper shows up to the door step of the now dead, young, lonely man. The headlines read 'multi billionaire wills all of his earnings to his grandson.' Billions of dollars in his name but he is dead in the bathroom."
"That sure is a story you got there scuba diver. If someone you knew was gonna die in a week what would you do?" I asked.
"Not much I could do from here. Write them a touching letter, I suppose." He replies.
"Yeah, I'd give em a call."
They took the one eyed scuba diving bank robber to the torture chamber. They went to retrieve their tools torture him but he disappeared when they get back.

That night I punched the whole way through the wall and escaped. Through the hall was fields of green and dark blue sky with bright stars and the sound of grasshoppers. It was prettier than anything I'd seen in the past, and it was all mine.

The sun is about to rise as I walk and walk down an endless, pink desert. I finally find a local town and break into their only clothing store. The sky is a light purple now. I switch out of my clothes and into some nice cowboy clothes. I throw away the other clothes and get breakfast at the towns local diner. The sun is up now and I'm their first customer.

The day goes by and I go and sit in a park. Young people are out drinking. A baby is crying. A mother is staring up into the sky. I get up to walk the town that now has a pink and orange glow.
I see a poster for a boxing match on a building that looks like an old gym. I go inside and sign up. I then walked across the street and get as drunk off of whiskey as humanly possible.
I walked into the old gym at 7 pm. Everyone around was cheering. Hundreds of people were in the way of the ring but I worked my way through nudging the villagers with my shoulder as I walked by.
"Ah, f*****g a*****e." One man murmured to me as I walked by.
"F**k off." I say back.
I look up into the ring and a big, tall man, about 200 pounds, knocks a guy out and his face falls inches away from mine. The guy had big, bulgy, black eyes and blood curdling out of his nose. He looked down at me in the eyes. I looked back into what I could see of his.
I climb into the boxing ring and tap the big guys shoulder as he is waving his arms in the air and hyping up the audience. He turns around slowly and confused.
"Who the f**k are..."
....And with one hit I knock him to the ground. He is out cold. The audience shuts off and the room is quiet.
Two security guards climb into the ring and take me outside.
A man walks up to me.
"What was that!?"
"Had to let out some steams," I say.
"Sonny you just knocked out one of the world's greatest boxers to ever live with just one hit. How about I make you into a star?"
"Does it make any money?"
"You sure bet it does."

I spent the next couple months boxing around the country under the pseudonym Frank Taylor.
Months passed by and all the papers read "New Boxer Frankie Taylor Undefeated After 9 Matches." Seems like nobody could beat what I built in my arms in that jail cell. The cops were on the look out but I stayed a state ahead of them and it helped that I looked nothing like how I looked in jail. By now my beard was shaved, my hair was trimmed, and my arm was bigger than two bowling balls stacked on top of each other.

The money came slow at first, and then rushing in like a stripper snorting her first line after getting off work. I was living in luxury and everyone wanted a piece of me. I had more money than I ever wanted, but what I really wanted, I already knew. I wanted to go to back to that town in the Middle East and punch the guy that put my wife in the hospital until his eyes were golden black.

I take a direct flight to the town that was near the desert where the man left me. I check into a hotel and lay in my bed. A Sam Peckinpah movie is playing on the tv. I pour myself a glass of whiskey and catch some shut eye but my eyes are wide open.
I wake up and it is 2:00 pm and I head out to the streets to find the man that tried to kill my wife. I am walking through a busy market and the town is rushing by. The sun is blaring into every corner. Everyone looks unfamiliar but acts familiar.
A couple hooligans try and stop me on the side of the road but I punch them all in the face with my big arm and they immediately hit the floor one by one like bags. The other villagers see this and don't dare to come close to me. I don't blame them either.
I tell a local villager his name and I am pointed to a big adobe castle at the top of a hill where the man resides. The clouds are black and sky is white.
I walk up through the back and it is heavily guarded. The courtyard is a big green field and the walls are made of large, tan, crusted bricks. The skies still white, the clouds are still black but now the trees are black as well.
I look and run across the field quick as wind. The wall is about 60 feet high. I throw my big arm up first and climb the wall with ease. I climb and climb until I reach the top while looking around to make sure no guards are watching me.
Down the other side I go and there is a man at the bottom facing the opposite direction. He turns around and tries to point his gun in my face. I swipe the gun down and punch him in the face with my big arm. He is out knocked out cold immediately. It starts to snow.


I sneak into the building and the roofs are high and slathered in gold. The walls are covered with old 16th century paintings and the halls run deep into different corridors I cannot see. The ground is an old, dark wood that creeks every step I take.
Another man comes from one of the hallways and I hide behind a pillar. As he approaches I pop out and punch him in the face. He is out colder than the deepest possible point of the ocean you could reach, beyond the ground.
I then find a corridor with a spiral staircase. I look up and see peppermint. I make my way the flights of stairs that seem to be endless but I am determined and the world is behind me.
I reach the top and there are two guards standing in front of the door. The two men jump forward but are met both with two hits to the face from my arm that is bigger than both of them. The veins in my arm are pulsating with anger.
I walk in through the door and the man who put my wife in the hospital is sitting at a desk with his fingers latched and eyebrows of the devils.
"Who are you?" He ask.
"You know who I am. You tried to kill my wife." I reply.
"Oh, did I? Oops....guards!" He screams this loud in confidence but the only two guards he can count on are outside laying unconscious outside on the floor.
"They can't help you."
I walk closer to him and he stands up nervously. He is now shaking as he backs up slowly against the wall.
"Well, I'm sure money can take care of these matters," he says desperately.
"I've already got enough money."
His face is sweating as he clenches his eyes and jaws and looks away.
I wind my big arm up and punch him so hard in the face his body flies back through the window and down the sixty flights onto the courtyard grounds. I look out and the blood is an amber red that mixes against the bright green grass smoothly with an eccentricity.
I step back and sit in his chair. I put my feet up on his desk, take a cigar I find next to my feet and light it. I sit and smoke. I wait for all the memories I have in my head to disintegrate as the smoke fills the densely lit room.
The sun sets and the night life of the town is just about to begin. I can hear dance music in the distance and the shouts of people about to have a good time. I lay there and smoke, while staring off into the cities beautiful lights.