On The Moon

I’m not wearing a space suit. I can breathe just fine. The ground under my feet is gray and dusty. It crunches under my sneakers. There are craters all around me. The earth hangs high in the sky, shining blue and green.

My mother walks up to me. She’s a shrivelled old woman.

“We’re on the moon,” I say.

“Of course we are, Derek,” she says. “We live here.”

She points into the distance. I turn around to look. Our house is on the moon. The house where I grew up. It’s surrounded by gray dusty rock. The front yard is there. The garage. Some grass. A bush. But everything else is the moon. Gray rock and craters and dust. All around us.

“Why is our house on the moon?” I ask.

“Our house has always been on the moon. We’ve always lived here. You and me. On the moon. It’s where we live.”

“No,” I say. “That’s not right. I didn’t grow up on the moon.”

My mother looks at me like I’m crazy. “Derek. We have always lived on the moon.”

“That’s not right,” I say stubbornly. “I grew up on the earth.”

I turn around. I search the starry sky for the earth. But I can’t find it. I begin to panic. It was right there. The earth was right there. Where did it go?

***

I’m in a strip joint with the boss. It’s one of the clubs belonging to the syndicate. We’re at a back table. Mirrors everywhere. Dim lighting. The room smells of stale beer.

All the dancers look the same to me. Skinny. Blonde. Boring. None of them can dance. They strut. They spin around on the pole. Some hang upside down as they spin. They’re all going through the motions. Nothing sexy about any of it.

The music changes. A new girl comes out. A little plumper. All the blondes are rail thin. This woman has curves. Black hair. Taller than the others. Hasn’t shaved off all her pubes. More life to her. I take notice. She seems excited. Eager. Like she’s having fun, but we get to watch. Her dance is a bragging game.

Her body says, “Look what I can do. I’m doing this for you. For all of you. Aren’t I an amazing piece of ass?”

“That’s the one,” the boss says to me. “Her name is Sabrina.”

I nod. It’s dark in the club. I study her face. I get so I could recognize her on the street.

“She’s stealing from us,” the boss says. “I want her gone. Finished. Too bad. She’s a good dancer. Good money maker. Pretty. Has real talent. Smart, too.”

Sabrina spins around on the pole. Somehow, she owns it. That pole is hers. When she grabs hold, it’s different. It’s not bolted to the floor and ceiling. The pole comes alive. It wraps around her like a loving snake.

“She’s good,” I say.

“Yeah,” the boss says, a little sad.

“She steal a lot?”

“Enough for me to call you.”

When the boss calls me, somebody has to die. Some killers won’t do women. I don’t understand that. A kill is a kill. Just another job. Men, women, it doesn’t matter. They’re just problems to solve. Work to be done.

“I’ll make it easy for you,” the boss says. He slides an envelope across the table. “Two keys. One for her building. And one for her apartment. The landlord is a friend of ours.”

I pick up the envelope. The address is written on the outside. I pocket it.

“Nothing special,” the boss says. “Just kill Sabrina. No rush.”

“Right,” I say.

We watch Sabrina on the stage. She’s on all fours now. She’s thrusting her ass back and forth at us. It’s dirty. But she makes it seem fun and friendly. She looks back over her shoulder. And she smiles.

***

The house on the moon is filthy. Dust and dirt everywhere. Sand piles in the corners. I’m standing in the kitchen, looking around. My mother stands next to me. The kitchen sink is full of dishes. There are piles of plates. Multiple frying pans. Dishes galore.

“You have to do the dishes,” my mom says.

“Why?” I say. “They’re not mine. I’m a grown man. I don’t live here. It’s not my problem.”

I say all of this. But I start doing the dishes. I wash them, rinse them. I put them in a rack to dry.

“You have to help me,” my mother says. “I’m old. I need to be taken care of.”

“You’ve always needed taking care of,” I say.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’re high maintenance, mom. You drain everyone.”

“Don’t talk like that. I’m your mother. You have to be nice to me.”

“Why? Why do I have to be nice to you?”

“Boys have to be nice to their mothers.”

“I’m a man, mom,” I say. “I’m not a boy. I’m a man.”

“Just do the dishes. Afterwards, I have other little chores for you.”

I get angry, but keep washing. I scrub the dishes. She’s so small and shrivelled and weak. How does she make me do something I don’t want to do?

***

It’s Sabrina’s night off. I arrive at her apartment building at midnight. I stand on the street. I watch the window of her apartment. It’s dark. I stand around for an hour. Watching. The window stays dark. I figure Sabrina is asleep. Using my key, I enter the lobby of the building. Plastic plants and the smell of industrial cleanser. I ignore the elevator and take the stairs. Three floors up.

Brown carpeting in the hallway. The lingering smell of fried fish. The kind of smell that never goes away. Sabrina’s apartment door looks like all the others. No way to tell a talented stripper lives here. I put my ear against the door. No sound. I put the key in the lock. I turn slowly. I listen at the door again. Nothing. I turn the handle and open the door.

Linoleum floor leads to carpet. Apartment is one bedroom. Dark, but some street light leaking in. I creep through the living room. TV, couch, not much else.

Some men, I think, would find this sexy. Breaking in to a stripper’s home. Some men would think about sex. Maybe rape. Those ideas don’t ever occur to me. Until now. And now, it’s no temptation. It’s just a sudden understanding. A theoretical awareness. I saw Sabrina on stage. She was sexy. Beautiful. But I never thought of fucking her. The idea is in my head now. It would never happen. I don’t want it to happen. I have a job to do.

The bedroom door is open. It’s a hot night. Sabrina is in her bed, on top of the sheets. It’s dark. I can only just make her form out. A dark outline. She’s naked, on her back. I stare at her for a long time. She’s not moving. Sound asleep. There’s a fan on. It makes a dull humming noise. I creep closer. I’m standing over her. I reach out and grab her around the neck.

Her skin is cold and sticky. Something’s wrong. I turn on the lamp by the bed. Sabrina is dead. Her brown eyes are wide open. Her throat has been cut. Her chest, stabbed. My hands are covered in her blood. The sheets are covered in blood. Spatter on the walls. Messy death. Unprofessional. Passionate. Violent. Nothing like my work.

I quickly check the rest of the apartment. No one there. Whoever killed her is long gone. Whatever knife he used, he took with him.

I go back into the bedroom. I look at Sabrina’s dead, naked body for a long time. Am I angry? Am I sad? What am I feeling? I can’t tell.

***

“There are many things in the basement,” my mother says. “I need you to clear them out. You have to help me.”

“I don’t have to help you,” I say. “I’m an adult. I can do as I please. I have my own life, now. I don’t have to take care of you.”

Even as I complain, I comply. The basement is dirty, unfinished. The basement is full of junk. There are boxes of old books, magazines, Christmas decorations. Broken furniture. Dead electronic appliances. All kinds of crap.

I pick up a piece of junk. I carry it upstairs. I put it outside in the moon dust. Just past the end of the lawn. I go back into the basement. I grab another piece of junk. I carry it upstairs. I put it next to the first piece of junk.

“You’re such a good boy,” my mother says.

“I’m not a boy,” I say. “I’m a grown man.”

“You’ll always be your mother’s little boy,” she insists.

“No, mother. I’m not your little boy.”

And I keep taking junk out of the basement. All of it goes in the moon dust. It piles up around the house. It starts to look like a wall. I’m building a wall out of junk. I’m building the walls of my own prison. My mother and I are prisoners, in this house. In this house on the moon.

The basement seems to be full of junk. There’s more and more of it. The wall of junk surrounds the house. It gets taller and taller. I just keep building it up.

***

I meet the boss in a pool hall. We sit together in the back corner.

“Sabrina was already dead,” I say. “Someone else got to her. They cut her throat. Stabbed her to death. I didn’t see anyone. Might have been rape. A sex thing. Can’t say. She was naked. Dead. I didn’t stick around.”

“Huh,” the boss says. “Weird. Maybe she pissed off some guy. Some customer. Or maybe there’s a psychopath out there. Who knows. Anyway, she’s dead. Whether you did it, or somebody else, I don’t care. As long as she’s dead.”

I’m surprised. I thought he would be mad. I was supposed to kill her. Someone else did. I thought he’d want me to find the killer. I’m disappointed.

The boss picks up on these feelings of mine.

“Don’t get all romantic, Derek,” the boss says. “She was a thieving whore. Okay, she was a good dancer. I’ll give you that. But she’s dead. And she’s better off dead. Believe me.”

“I don’t like it,” I say.

“What don’t you like?”

“That someone got to her first.”

The boss shrugs, says, “What’s not to like? Someone killed her first. So what? He did you a favour. Saved you the trouble.”

“I guess,” I say, not convinced.

“Let it go,” the boss says. “These things happen. Coincidence, is all.”

We talk about other things. We watch the boring strippers. Waiting for something different. It never comes.

I keep thinking about Sabrina. Who killed her? Why does it upset me? I was going to kill her anyway.

***

“We should play cards,” my mother says to me.

We’re sitting in the living room, on the moon. It smells of cat piss. The furniture is old and musty. The carpet is dusty and gray. No one ever sits in this room.

“I don’t want to play cards,” I say.

“I’m your mother. And I say we’re going to play cards.”

She has a deck in her hands. She shuffles slowly. The back of the cards are blue, old.

“I don’t want to play cards.”

My mother ignores me. She finishes shuffling, then fans the deck in her hands. She holds them out to me.

“Pick a card, any card,” she says.

“You do magic now?”

“There are still some tricks in your old mother.”

I take a card at random. I look at it. It’s blank. Suddenly, I feel sick. Terrified. The blankness makes me want to throw up.

“Ta da!” my mother says.

There is something wrong with me. Like a disease. Or like being blind. And this card is proof. Like a test result. Or a birth certificate. I am blank. I am barren. I am empty. I’m not even alive. Dead inside. Cold and dead and white and old, like this card.

***

I go to the strip joint. I sit in the back. I don’t know why I am there. Sabrina, of course. The dead stripper. But I’m no detective. The boss didn’t exactly order me to leave it alone. He didn’t have to. I keep my nose clean. I don’t pry.

All the strippers are the same. Just like last time. Some dance on stage. Some naked women walk the floor. They sell lap dances.

One naked stripper comes up to me. Blonde, skinny. 23 going on 80. Her body looks young. Her face looks ancient. She has seen too much. Lived raw for too long. Drugs. Prostitution. Same old boring story.

“Hey, sexy,” she says to me. “Want a dance?”

I’m not interested. “Sure,” I hear myself say. I give her money.

She doesn’t seem to recognize me. Some people know who I work for. They don’t know what I do. They might have a few guesses.

“Hands by your sides, no touching,” she says. She tries to make the instructions sound sexy.

“Okay,” I say.

“My name’s Wanda.”

“Derek.”

She climbs on to my lap. She rubs her hairless body against me. She pushes her tiny breasts in my face. I’m not interested, but my body responds.

“Oo,” Wanda says. “What do we have here?”

And she grinds against my crotch.

She’s a terrible actress. The dance feels like it goes on forever. Maybe it’s five minutes. She climbs off me.

“You liked that,” she says. She eyes my crotch.

“Can I see you?” I hear myself ask. “Outside of work?”

“I could get fired for that,” Wanda says. She doesn’t sound too worried about it.

I show her some money, but don’t give her any.

Wanda says, “Meet me down the street. The gas station. Half an hour.”

“Fine.” And I give her some money.

I leave. I wait at the gas station. Twenty minutes later, she climbs into my car. She’s in a pleated skirt, t-shirt, and cowboy boots.

“Park around the corner,” she says. “No one will see us there.”

We park. She moves in close. I put my hands around her throat. And I start to strangle her.

I’m small. But I’m strong. No one perceives me as a threat. That’s why I’m such a good worker. And I always use my hands. I like to get in close.

Wanda’s eyes are blue. Her lips are thin. She has nice teeth. Her hands scramble at me weakly. She’s small, but scrappy. I can handle her. I hold on.

The people at the strip joint know who I work for. This will never get reported. There’s no danger, doing this. When I’m done, I’ll leave her in the alley. With the garbage. I squeeze harder.

But why am I doing this? What’s this all about? I don’t understand. I look at my actions with curiosity. Like I’m watching someone else. Or watching a movie. My hands tighten. Her eyes start to go cloudy. Out of focus.

It doesn’t make sense. Where’s the logic? No one is paying for this hit. Is this for pleasure? I don’t feel it. I don’t kill for pleasure. I do it for money. For the boss. There’s nothing inside of me. Nothing. I am empty. A machine.

Is this because I didn’t get to Sabrina? Someone beat me to her. Cut her throat. Is that why? A missed opportunity?

I was supposed to kill a stripper. So I’m killing a stripper. They’re all the same. Is that it?

But Sabrina was different. Special. Beautiful. Sexy. Wanda is just another dull, blonde stripper. Where’s the logic? What’s the reason?

I squeeze and I squeeze.

***

I’m in a house, on the moon. It’s the house I grew up in. It’s also a prison. My mother is with me. We’re in the living room. The playing cards are scattered all over the floor. The ones face up are all blank. The whole deck is blank. There was no trick. My mother cheated. And my hands are wrapped around my mother’s throat.

I’m squeezing. I’m strangling. I’m trying to kill her. She doesn’t die. So I keep throttling her. But she just won’t die.

I’m going to be stuck here, forever. Strangling my mother. In this prison of a house. Strangling my mother, forever. On the moon.