Slice of the Moon (short story)

The night sky was brooding above the moors, the constellations circling the world wide like a cobweb. A cobweb of the sky. The heavens.

I looked up, and closed my eyes. Feeling the cold, stark air on my bare cheeks, smoothly peeling the sweat off. Like unwinding an orange; the constellations came close to my core.

Little chunks of shimmering soul planted above me, with watching eyes and teeth; stolen jewels of pirates, and words. I will wade out – I, one day, will join these kingdoms of memories above me. Transform into freedom.

The wind's hands held my fragile form to gaze out across the moor, all the way to the beckoning shore; if I squinted, I could see the folds of the froth, the different shades of overlapping water. As well as the cold, jewelled sea above, there was also a bright white button dropped in the sky – the Moon's delicate spotlight illuminated the clouds drifting by it, which were not an angelic white, but more a coffee-stained sepia colour.

I decided to sit. Stay silent. Waiting. Soon – with the wind becoming colder and the crumbling ground growing ice underneath my fingers – they came.

I didn't turn. They were shadows, distracting splodges on this beautiful canvas of nature. The corrupt ones, like me. They would not be the last thing I saw.

I've hidden from them for 20 years. I'm old now, my bones are lined with exhaustion...I'm tired of running.

I could hear them rustling ruining the elegant silence of the plain. Louder and louder and-

I, as they arrested me, wondered if I didn't live in this place, if I sat on the crescent of the moon, fishing, then I could watch this utopian landscape for eternity. Be at peace.