by Matthew Mulligan
We met in a gravel parking lot and she took me to a hole in the fence that we slipped through and sat by the river. The sun and the moon were both in the sky and we smoked cigarettes and told each other about versions of ourselves that we thought might sound good or interesting or better in some way. Not quite lies but not quite the truth. The sort of things you say on a first date. She had tattoos on her forehead and I didn’t know my astrological chart and I was sure she thought I was boring.
“It’s the last day for it,” she said pointing to the moon with her eyes. “You mean like it’s full?”
“No, or yeah it’s full, but it’s also the last time.”
“Like a meteor’s going to hit it or something?”
“I don’t know,” she paused and looked at me in a way that I didn’t understand, “Probably not anything dramatic like that.”
I didn’t know what to say and got nervous and did that thing where I talked too much about something I read on the internet. Before I knew it I was telling her about a theory where the meteor that killed the dinosaurs had also sent so much molten rock into the atmosphere that it rained back down glass beads all over the planet and suggesting if that happened again then maybe we should hide in a refrigerator. She laughed and called me “Dinosaur boy” and I switched the subject and asked her if she did tattoos and if she wanted to tattoo me.
“What do you want?” she asked.
“Crawfish,” I said pointing at a miniature lobster crawling in the shallows at the river’s edge. “I don’t like that.”
“What?”
“Crawdads. I don’t like crawdads.”
“You call them crawdads?”
“Let’s go.”
We went back to her place and because I couldn’t come up with anything else that sounded creative enough to impress her I ended up with a crawfish tattooed on my left thigh. I hoped she thought it was ironic in a good way. I don’t really remember what we talked about while she tattooed me, but I know she seemed at ease and made jokes while she poked me with a needle. I spent most of the time holding my breath and trying not to flinch so that I could appear tough.
I liked her. She was too cool for me and I knew it, but that didn’t stop me from liking her.
When it finally came time to say goodbye she gave me a kiss on the cheek and told me to keep the tattoo wrapped up for a day or two. She called me “Stud” and I went to bed that night pressing replay in my mind and wishing I had the courage to kiss her on the lips. “Next time,” I told myself, and then drifted off feeling like something new was just beginning.
I guess I was right, but it wasn’t what I thought.
In the morning there were rolling blackouts and it took a while for the news to circulate. The internet came and went for a few days but once it really went, it never came back. Just like the moon.
As far as I know, no one has ever really been able to explain it. The moon was there, and then it wasn’t. All the tidal cycles were thrown into disarray, tsunamis wiped out pretty much any civilization by the coast, and satellites fell out of the sky or flew away to who knows where. The seasons became unpredictable which led to a decades-long food shortage and widespread starvation. Everything was pretty messed up.
The world as we had known it ended that day.
Sometimes it’s hard to remember what those first weeks were like, but one thing I do know is that I went by her house a day or two after it happened. The front door was open and it was mostly empty inside. Her truck was nowhere to be seen. I found a piece of scrap paper and wrote my name and address on it and taped it to the wall.
Just in case.
Matthew Mulligan leaves short stories and poems in hotel drawers around the country. He hopes one day they will be found.
January House Literary Journal 
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