The Moon is Falling

July 12th, 2027

Dad was an ass today about the job situation. I don’t blame him. “You’re twenty-three, Henry. You can’t just sit around on your computer every day”. Yeah. I know Dad. Guess I finally have to get my life together. At least one of us finally will. Whatever.

July 14th, 2027

Drove out for a beach trip to clear my head today. Muscle heads everywhere and bikinis all around - bad choice. The waves seemed wild. A surfer nearly drowned, and the lifeguard had a lot of trouble getting to him. I heard one of the surfers say these were some of the biggest waves they’d seen in ten years. I wouldn’t know, don't like surfing. But they did seem big.

July 20th, 2027

Landed an interview at the Grocery Pete's down the road. Thank god. I couldn’t stand Dad's drunken fits anymore. He was starting to really lay into me the other night about everything I should be thankful for. “Paid for your college, pay for the roof over your head”, blah blah. I’d be thankful if you didn’t spend the last three years getting a beer belly over Mom. Or maybe I'd be thankful if she were still around. Anyway.

July 22nd, 2027

There were some impacts in Russia today that made the news. "Unexpected Meteor Shower", or something. Like that one impact in Chelyabinsk (yes, I had to look it up) when I was a kid, but a lot bigger, I guess. I remember the videos, like a crazy streak of light, then an explosion. Guess the universe decided to give us some extra fireworks for a late Independence Day. No one was hurt, apparently. I heard there are some nasty wilderness fires in the aftermath though. Poor bears.

July 26th, 2027

The impacts didn’t stop with Russia. I just kept hearing it in the news, felt like a new breaking headline was hitting the TV every hour. I started to hear them. Then, feel them. Tens of little rumbles, and a huge one last night. It was like someone split the air in two and made a sonic boom, the whole house shook. My neighbourhood got loud as all hell from all the dogs barking. Dad’s worried. We don’t want to get hit, and there doesn’t seem to be an end to all the activity.

July 27th, 2027

I couldn’t sleep. The little explosions just keep happening. Sometimes louder now. Nobody knows what's going on, and everyone thinks World War III started. The news issued a shelter-in-place order, and advised moving to the lowest level of your house if possible, bunkers if you have them. My neighbor Tom says it's space debris, like all the satellites are falling out of orbit or something from a super "EMP" that must have gone off. There's no way. The booms are too big. One hit just a town over earlier and all of the windows shattered here. Power went out, too. Great. First responders can’t keep up with the new disasters every minute, and I hear the constant shrill of sirens.

July 28th, 2027

My phone died, not that the internet was working. Dad pulled out an old battery-powered radio. Said we could keep it going for plenty of time until the power is back on. I don’t think it's coming back on. At least the destruction seems to be letting up, there have been fewer tremors. I’m hopeful that whatever this is will blow over soon.

July 30th, 2027

The Moon is falling. Dad laughed when he heard it over the emergency broadcast channel. I don’t think they are joking. Like my childhood nightmares came true. I remember looking up at that brilliant light in the sky while melting s'mores over a campfire with Mom. I asked her what we’d do if the Moon ever fell down. I must have been four. She smiled back then. “It’s okay, pickle. The Moon is actually moving further away from us, believe it or not”. I loved sharing that fact at school. It made me feel smart. Now I feel like an ant caught in a rainstorm, but the rain is giant molten rocks.

August 3rd, 2027

The news just keeps getting worse. Maybe I should turn off the radio. I saw dad shaking in a blanket, huddled over the damn thing in the basement. Well anyway. They said the water levels were rising at increasingly disturbing speeds. We are a ways inland, far enough above sea level, I think… It’s bad. I guess some places are just disappearing. Like they were never on the map to begin with.

August 4th, 2027

The ground shook today, and it wasn’t from above. We had a massive earthquake. I’ve never been in one. I thought maybe the Moon had just hit the Earth before the world began to wobble. Dad hit his head really hard on the shelf. I had to rip up a shirt and tie it around his head. I’ve never been to church, but I keep praying he doesn’t get a concussion, or worse. No one's coming to help.

August 5th, 2027

Dad is sweating and rambling about the government—not unusual if it wasn’t for everything else. He thinks it's all a hoax. Half the city is rubble right now, one huge stone mess. Great joke, Dad.

August 8th, 2027

The sky outside is getting darker. I’d be more shocked if everything wasn’t already so strange. Shit. People are dying everywhere. Nobody knows anything, and the radio is just an annoying static now. Everyone still up around my neighborhood is talking about the end times. They’re all scared. I keep telling Dad we need to move. We have to go. He isn’t responding.

August 9th, 2027

Dad didn’t wake up today.

August 21st, 2027

I am almost out of food in the basement. The canned corn tastes like rotted mud. I don’t get it. I don’t want to be here. The world keeps shaking. I feel like I should run, but I don’t know what from or where to go. If the Moon really hits us, are we all just going to die anyway? Is there any chance it will burn up before the impact? I don’t know if anything I am doing matters anymore.

September, 2027

The radio came back on today - well, sort of. It sounds like someone's trying to speak under the static, but it doesn’t sound like anything. Just a gargle of low noise. Like an animal. The sky outside is autumn and crimson now. I can see the Moon, larger than anything that’s ever been in the heavens above. It’s brilliant somehow. Other people keep saying they are seeing things. Tom said he saw a white blob out of the corner of their eye earlier. Maybe the Angels have come.

September

Asteroids above are a constant inferno. A million fireflies burning out and circling our world. I try to close my eyes and think what it’d be like to be anyone, anywhere else in the universe. I wonder, too, if the stars will cry when we are gone. I miss Dad.

September

It’s getting hard to breathe. I saw one of the white blobs today, and it wasn’t a blob at all. More like a person. A thing. But that isn’t right either. It had long arms, long legs, and no face. Pure white. Pretty.

Sept

The radio battery died today, but I can finally hear the voice under the static.

"The Moon is falling. The Moon is falling. The Moon is falling."