The Surface of the Moon
By J. G. Steen
A week after I moved in, I started sleeping on the couch. I didn’t have a good reason. He was a kind man. His only transgression was trying to help me.
At first, I managed to convince Jesse that I left our bed to protect his early mornings from my late-night tossing and turning. He spent long days at the office, designing logos for snack foods and pharmaceutical companies. He did very well for himself. I, on the other hand, had gotten my real estate license mere months before the housing market collapsed. As a result, my mornings were vast empty expanses. I spent this time obsessively checking my credit score and steeping in the stillness of Jesse’s absence.
I shouldn’t have moved in with him. That was clear from the conversations we had in the months leading up to it. He wanted to help me, he said. He could see that I was floundering and living with him would give me a foundation. True, I was being crushed by debt, I wasn’t speaking to my family, and I had no real income to speak of. I had always managed on my own—too proud to ask for help from anyone—but it was clear that I was out of options. I was uneasy until Jesse said I could live rent-free until the market recovered, or I found another job. It was becoming clear that Jesse thought he was in love with me. The attention was comforting at first, a warm blanket I could pull over myself. But slowly it had become a weight, sitting on top of me, forcing the air out of my lungs.
Jesse came home late from the office one night. He pulled a pint of ice cream out of the freezer and set it on the kitchen counter to thaw. I was still in my pajamas, a quilt pulled over my shoulders, curled up on the couch.
“I was talking to a guy in the office,” he started, and I could feel him looking at me with his soft brown eyes. “He has a friend that works in a law office downtown. He needs a secretary.”
I had the television on. There was something on the news about wildfires, or bees, or refugees, or bees that were refugees because of a wildfire.
“It could be a good opportunity. Something to get you on your feet.” I couldn’t look at him. I could already see his face in my mind. Head turned to the side. Brow furrowed. The authenticity of his concern made me sick. “You’re so smart and too beautiful to be unemployed. You’ve got so much potential. You just need to realize it.”
I tried not to laugh. Didn’t he see I was nothing more than a freeloader, and an ungrateful one at that? We hadn’t had sex since I moved in and I somehow never found the time to do the dishes or clean up after myself. Jesse didn’t have any real anger in him, though. That’s what had drawn me to him at first. Now, his obsequiousness repulsed me and I could see it for what it was. A backhanded attempt to control me and mold me into the sort of woman he wanted.
“Thanks,” I said, pulling my eyes away from the screen just long enough to make eye contact with him. “That’s really sweet. I’ll look into it.”
After a couple more days of Jesse’s unsolicited career advice, I started staying up late. What little sleep I did get was pregnant with a recurring nightmare. I found it easy to interpret—my mind was no great mystery—but after I awoke, I couldn’t remember who, or where, I was. Our apartment had become a holding cell in a subterranean jail. I waited, unable to breathe, for Jesse to walk through the door and begin a ruthless interrogation. Slowly, the room reconstructed itself and its shape became recognizable. I was still trapped but safe from physical harm.
The dream began with me rising from our bed. It didn’t matter where I was physically sleeping; in the dream, I woke up in our bed. The walls were stripped bare and they looked as if they’d been painted with a single layer of cheap primer. On the kitchen counter someone had spilled a cup of rice. The little grains were spread across the green marble top. As I stood over them I began to see all their little differences: varying shades, slight disfigurations, and odd shapes. One of them had a tiny, but distinct, line on its middle.
I pressed my finger on this grain, sticking it there. I held it on my fingertip, staring. Then, I pressed it into my tear duct. It didn’t hurt; there was only a slight discomfort. I pressed harder and pushed the grain of rice into the space between my eyeball and the bone in my nose. I kept pushing until my finger was buried to the second knuckle. The moist warmth of my eyeball rubbed against my finger like a marble being plucked from a child’s mouth.
I needed to get the rice into my brain, so I pushed, trying to force it back. Finally, I turned and slammed my elbow against the refrigerator, forcing my finger deep into my skull. My eyeball popped out, splatting against the refrigerator door and leaving a smear across its reflective metal surface. But still, my skull was empty.
My eyeball rolled from the kitchen and into the living room. I didn’t care. The need for the grain of rice was all consuming. I got down on the floor but couldn’t find it. When I got up, the spilled kernels on the counter started moving and squirming. The countertop came alive with hundreds of maggots.
Still, I was undeterred. I stuck my finger in the empty hole, running it over the slick surface of the empty cavity. I hoped the grain of rice was stuck there, tucked away against my orbital floor or hidden in the gushy wetness of my sinuses. I dug through the tissue all the way to the bone. There should have been a hole for my optic nerve to travel to my brain, but there was nothing but a flat wall. I stuck my thumb in my other eye, forcing the eyeball from its socket.
Complete darkness rushed in around me. It was more than darkness. It was as if light had never existed. I screamed, and my scream was the only thing in the world.
At this moment, I’d awake on the couch, shaking and sweating. I’d rub my eyes, so thankful they were still inside my skull.
This led to many sleepless nights. I stayed awake long after Jesse went to bed. I told him I was going to read on the couch. Instead I stared at the clock, hoping time would accelerate if I focused hard enough. Eventually, I crept into the bedroom and listened to his quiet snoring. Then, I made my escape.
The creek behind our apartment complex was almost always dry. The way the moonlight fell on the rocks and shrubs made me feel like I was walking on another planet. The trees and buildings surrounding the creek made an enclosure, hiding me from the rest of the world.
I didn’t want Jesse to know about my late-night wanderings. He already complained about waking up in bed alone every morning. I didn’t want to hear his concern, his confusion, his recriminations. Most of all I didn’t want to tell him about my dreams. I wasn’t ashamed or embarrassed of them but I didn’t want to suffer his dissection. I didn’t want to be forced to examine them any more closely, especially if it was only so he could rationalize my absence from our bed.
Sometimes, while wandering in the creek bed, I came upon the smoldering remains of campfires, an acrid odor hanging over them. They were surrounded by empty bottles with labels that read MD 20/20, Thunderbird, Boone’s Farm, Night Train. The names brought back memories of high school. My friends and I spent our evenings hanging out in convenience store parking lots in our short-shorts and tube tops. It was easy to convince the men leering at us to go into the store and bring us back something cheap and sweet. Something that hid the taste of alcohol but would still drain us of our inhibitions.
Littered among the bottles at the campsite were vials and syringes. I had never seen someone use intravenous drugs. As I looked over the detritus, I became an explorer from a distant land, examining the artifacts of foreign lifeforms.
One night, I walked further down the creek bed than usual. It was the middle of the summer and the night air was thick and muggy. I could hear crickets and frogs chirping just under the roar of a nearby highway. I was wearing a loose-fitting tank top and sweatpants, my flip-flops slipping on the rocks as I walked. I had gotten used to navigating the terrain over the past six months. There was a stinging sensation in my shoulder as I slapped away a mosquito.
I examined the backs of the houses that lined the creek. It surprised me how many people left their lights on, curtains open. I was horrified at the thought of someone being able to see into Jesse’s apartment from back here, but these people seemed comfortable being on display. It wasn’t that anything particularly salacious went on inside our apartment—especially not lately—but still, the thought of a stranger watching me through a window as I picked my nose or clipped my toenails made my skin crawl.
Despite the late hour, one man was still up. His two-story house was dark except for the massive living room on the first floor. I could see the screen of his giant television, light and images flashing. As I passed by, I could see him against the opposite wall. He sat on the couch, mouth slightly open, with a dull gaze.
My flip-flop hit something and I fell to the ground, my knees crunching against the dry creek bed. I put my hand out to break the fall but I was too slow and my face struck a large rock near my hairline. I rolled onto my back and looked down. The fall had torn the left leg of my sweatpants and the flesh of my knee was ripped, creating a small river of red. I touched my face and my hand came back bloody. The throbbing in my head was almost enough to distract me from the burning pain in my knee. It would be hard to hide this from Jesse. He would be full of questions. What was I doing in the creek? Was I ok? Did I need to go to the hospital? An absurd question, but he would ask it. I couldn’t stand the thought of his face. His face twisting into a performative display of concern.
I looked up from my bloody knee to see a man with his back propped up against the bank of the creek bed, his extended legs the cause of my fall. His head was tilted back, his eyes slightly open. His skin was grimy, clothes torn and smudged with black stains. In his right hand he held a syringe. His other arm hung limply; a belt wrapped tightly around it. His boots were untied and pulled loose around his ankles. The tops of his once-white socks were now dark brown.
I pushed myself up and whispered to him but there was no response. I put the back of my hand in front of his nose. He wasn’t breathing. I pulled my hand back. This was the first time I had ever seen a dead body.
I knew I needed to get away. I should run home and call 911. Maybe he wasn’t dead. Maybe he had just passed out. Maybe he could be revived. But, looking at him, it seemed clear. There was nothing to be done.
He smelled awful, a combination of rotting garbage and dead animal, but as I looked closer, I could see how young he was. Not more than twenty years old. In another life he would’ve been handsome. Sandy blonde hair and a sharp jawline.
There was something in his left hand: two vials with yellow tops. One was empty but the other was full of white powder. I reached down and pulled his fingers open. They were surprisingly rough and calloused. I plucked the full vial from his hand and stepped back, holding it up to the moonlight. I’d done drugs in college but mostly Adderall, and only enough to keep the party going into the next day. The boys were always surprised when I was still up at dawn, matching them drink for drink. These nights often ended in sloppy hookups, the boys’ faces blurring together in a mess of pleasure and pain, power and subjugation. The next day I would tell myself it was fun, that I was experimenting, that if I was a man it would have been nothing more than a sowing of my wild oats, something to celebrate, brag about. Deep down, though, I believed I had let myself be exploited. There was some comfort in this. It was an affirmation of a worthlessness I had carried with me for as long as I could remember.
I put the drugs in the pocket of my sweatpants and laid my hand on my forehead. A large welt had formed under the cut.
Walking back, I saw the television in the big house was still on but the man was gone. Intermittent flashes of light shot from the television like a strobe. It reminded me of an article I had read about white torture at Guantanamo Bay. They locked men in windowless rooms, only to bombard them with oppressive blasts of strobing light. It went on so long the men would forget their identities, unable to distinguish between night and day.
As I opened the door to our apartment, I fondled the little vial through my sweatpants. I went into the bathroom and locked the door. I dumped some of the powder onto the counter, scrutinizing it, a scientist examining a sample of otherworldly material. I stared at it, expecting it to wriggle then crawl away like a little white worm. After a few moments of consideration, I bent down and sniffed the powder deep into my sinuses.
I looked in the mirror. My skin sloughed off and wings sprouted from my back. I was ready to take flight.
After that the nightmares went away. I abandoned Jesse’s home in favor of the mysteries of other worlds. It no longer mattered where I slept.
J. G. Steen currently lives and writes in North Carolina.