When the Moon Says Goodbye

He comes for me in the night. Dark and brooding as usual. His black hoodie pulled up around his head almost as a religious covering. I hear the rattle of my windowpane before I hear the gentle tap-tap-tap of his fingers on the glass. The shadow of his tall slender figure falls to the floor and reaches my toes dangling off my bed. A thrill runs through my stomach knowing that he has come once again. That he has come just for me.

“I’m coming!” I say it quietly so as not to disturb my sister sleeping next door. Whenever he comes, I always make sure we can silently leave and silently return. I don’t want her to know about him simply because she would never understand. Nobody would.

Quickly, I jump out of bed and exchange my bath robe for a light jacket. I slip into some socks and pull on my running shoes. Before I turn to the window, I glance at my reflection in my vanity mirror. I can see the wildness in my own eyes, and for a moment, I wonder if there really is a change of light…a different sparkle that shines out from them. Emmy had mentioned something about it the other day. I shake my head. Emmy is wrong, I think. I haven’t changed. She just…has never understood me. Still, I linger at the mirror, feeling some emotion prick at me.

Tap-tap-tap.

I turn to leave.

Outside, we walk hand in hand down the street beneath an uncannily large and vibrant moon. A slight breeze rustles my hair back from my face, and I can’t help but feel a beautiful peace in this secret space of the night. I feel a squeeze of my hand and look to my companion. My one true love. My everything. He’s smiling at me from beneath a dark fringe of hair and with the blackest of coal eyes I’ve ever seen a person have. He can feel the freedom too. He tugs gently at my hair with his free hand.

“Hey, why don’t we go to our favorite place. It’s a perfectly bright night for it.” A mischievous glint lingers in his eye, but the mention of our favorite place brings me a sense of uneasiness. “Our…our place?” the words tremble out of me. I fidget slightly with the large, ornate silver ring that is always on his index finger. He reaches up and cups my face, pulling me close to stare into those deep, black eyes.

“There is nothing to be afraid of. You know I will always keep you safe.”

Some strange emotion crawls up into my heart. Whatever it is, it gives me reassurance. I nod.

“I trust you.”

About an hour later, we’re at our place. It’s a large, open space of rolling hills at the edge of town where the main road meets the highway that leads to the larger cities in the south. It goes for miles and miles toward some farms further north, and in the dark, it almost looks like a frozen, black sea. Above our heads, the stars shimmer and dance, and the black sea drinks them in. I drink them in.

We sit huddled together in the grass and stare out at the vast emptiness. There’s a quietness that rests between us, but also that same uneasiness I felt earlier. The last time we came here, I could have sworn that there had been someone, or something, watching us from afar. You had told me I was being ridiculous, and there was never anything that a man could be afraid of that I should be afraid of when I was with you. And of course, that is absolutely true, isn’t it? Because you aren’t a man, Peter. It’s why I can’t tell my sister about you. Why she worries about how I’ve been changing. It’s because I am changing. I’ve learned how to make friends with the monster under the bed.

“We can’t be together forever.” Your somber voice startles me out of my thoughts. You squeeze my hand and look sadly to the ground. The silver ring that allows you to keep human form presses uncomfortably into my palm. There is a pain that blossoms in my chest. “Peter, what do you mean? Of course we can be together forever.” My voice is drenched in a fear I didn’t know I could have. Screw the mysterious thing that watches from a distance—this fear is far worse. A deep sigh escapes your lips as you turn to the sky. I can feel your pulse racing.

“They’re coming for me tonight.” Your voice chokes with emotion as starlit tears fall from your eyes. I hear a rustle in the distance. When I turn to see what it is, there is that someone once again. Watching us.

“They’re coming for you? Who is they Peter?” Peter doesn’t look at me. He won’t stop staring up at the starry sky, and I realize it’s because he’s saying goodbye. Goodbye to the sky? Where is he going that he won’t see the sky?

“I’ve overstayed my welcome here. They let me stay longer than I was allowed. They let me love you. It is a gift, Liv. A precious gift that I will never, ever forget.” He looks at me then. His eyes have never reflected any light, and now in the darkness, they appear as two black holes wanting to suck me in. Now he’s saying goodbye to me.

“No.” Peter startles back from me at the resolve with which I say it. He shakes his head. “Liv…I don’t have a choice.” The feeling from earlier reappears, and this time it surges upward rather than crawls. “Then I’m coming with you.” Form the way that he looks at me, I know that wildness is back in my eyes.

“Liv…you can’t come with me. They are taking me back to my home world. They are taking me to a place of darkness that no human should ever see. A place of pure evil, Liv. A place for monsters.” He can barely get the last word out. It’s always haunted him, what he is, what our world would call him if he walked brazenly in the street and not silently under the cover of darkness.

In this moment, I think of Emmy after our parents died. I think of how she got lost in world of career success and social media likes. How she drowned herself in a “normal” life to forget the pain of what had happened. I think of what she said when I was grieving everyday beneath the covers of my bed. She told me that my choice to grieve would only keep me in a dark place that I might not be able to come back from. Tomorrow, she’ll get up and go to work at her office job, and flirt with her boss that she is having an affair with. She’ll believe that I’m too far gone to even worry about. I think now how she is right.

“I’m going with you Peter.”

In the distance, a dark, shadowy figure is approaching closer and closer. An eerie ringing fills my ears. I swear it gets colder. Peter won’t hear of it. “Liv…it was always a fantasy. A monster like me, and a human like you. It was never going to work out.”

I stand up suddenly, a certainty ordering my steps. That feeling radiating out from me like a storm. I reach my hand down to him. “Make me a monster then.” He takes my hand and I pull him up. He stares into my eyes with the most severe intensity that his black eyes can muster before he pulls me into himself and kisses me. Passion crackles in the air. The shadowy figure approaches closer.

The moon and the stars wave goodbye.