A Crush, or, The Contents of a Ribcage

Dad holds up the mangled school bus, eyeing me expectantly.

‘Be careful. Be controlled.’

I bite back a retort. My last few tries were controlled, and I’ve hardly damaged the bus at all. I clench my fist tighter this time, then I swing as hard as I can, the slightest of jolts shooting up my elbow. 

BOOM. 

The bus rockets out of Dad’s grasp, swatted into the distance with the momentum of an artillery shell. The junkyard around us thunders with the impact. Car windows crack and shatter, glass tinkling as it hits the ground. A few stray shards bounce off my skin with tiny pinpricks. Not far below, a heap of blackened, rusted cars teeters and falls, adding piercing metallic shrieks to the cacophony.

Dad’s face is expressionless, but he shoots me a silent glance, his eyes hard as stone. By now the bus is already somewhere in the stratosphere, a glinting speck in the afternoon sun. A rush of cool air blows against my face, and he’s gone. 

Several frenzied heartbeats later, he’s back floating above me, holding the bus aloft so I can see it. Already battered from my previous attempts, it’s now beyond recognition. All that remains is a broken yellow husk. 

‘That could’ve been a person,’ he mutters. He tosses the wreck back into the junkyard. ‘You’re not ready.’

I frown. ‘But it could’ve been one of the bad guys.’

‘The bad guys.’

‘Yeah, like the Moon Man. Or murderers. Or rapists, or pedophiles. It could’ve been one of them, Dad.”

He traces a finger across his jaw as if following an old scar, though his skin is unblemished. The lines on his forehead deepen. 

‘And if it wasn’t?’

That night, as I’m floating above Bri’s house, the bus is still on my mind. I’m pretty sure I could’ve punched it way harder. I look up at the moon, tonight a gleaming sickle, and picture the Moon Man slithering down towards me, iridescent eyes flashing. I bet it’d go down even easier than the bus did. 

Far below I hear snippets of conversation, then a light switch flicks and the pool of light from Bri’s bedroom window disappears. A minute later, the window slides open and she clambers out. In the darkness, her shiny blonde hair is all that’s visible until she floats up unsteadily to my level.

‘I swear you wait higher for me every time,’ she says breathlessly, tucking a stray hair behind her ear. Her freckled cheeks are tinged pink. 

I grin. ‘Air’s nicer up here. Whoa, new suit?’

She does a little twirl. ‘What do you think?’

‘Well, Catwoman called. She wants her latex back,’ I say with a whistle, eyeing her up and down. ‘I like it. But what are those mustard stains? Are you a wasp?’

She huffs and punches my arm, though I don’t feel it.

‘I’m a bee, dumbass. B for Brianna.’

Her body flickers almost imperceptibly, the frequency so rapid that my ears can’t hear it, but I can feel the vibrations at the base of my skull. It’s alarmingly pleasant.

‘Hey,’ I croak, ‘I told you not to do that.’

‘Sorry,’ she says, though a satisfied half-smile creeps across her face. It morphs into a frown. ‘I still can’t actually control it.’

‘You’ll get the hang of it. Who really knows how to control their powers anyway?’

‘Your dad does.’

‘Yeah, and he won’t shut up about it. Control this, careful that.’ Suddenly I’m struck with an idea. ‘Hey, you wanna see something cool?’

She cocks her head quizzically. ‘Okay?’

I point into the distance. ‘You’ve been practicing, right? Fly that way as fast as you can for ten seconds.’

She rolls her eyes before jetting off, a dull sonic boom echoing in her wake. I give her a head start before following at full speed. Or at least, the fastest speed I’ve tried so far. Her expression is priceless when she finds me already waiting for her. 

‘I don’t - how did - ’ she trails off. Eyebrows raised, she nods, impressed. ‘I just flew like, two miles. And you…’

‘There’s flying, and then there’s whatever I can do,’ I say, arms aloft in faux humility.

‘That’s kinda scary. I didn’t even feel you go past. Are you - are you even faster than your dad?’ 

‘Well, I’ve never raced him. But yeah, probably.’ Folding my arms, I give her my best heroic smolder. ‘So, what do you say we fly a bit higher today?’

‘I guess that’s one thing we could do…’ 

She floats closer. She floats so close that I see a tiny birthmark above her lips that I’ve never noticed before. I smell honey, of course. Lavender honey. Now I feel like it’s my body that’s vibrating, a giddy rhythm, my blood thrumming in my ears and my throat and my chest. I feel her warm breath on my face. 

Her smirk reappears, as if she got the reaction she wanted. 

She starts floating backwards, but I grab her by the waist and pull her in close, my skin buzzing as it touches hers, our bodies melting together like two leads in a musical. But in place of a romantic musical number, there’s a resounding CRACK. 

She shrieks in pain, lurching away holding her spine. 

‘Thomas! You did it again!’

‘Sorry Bri, I didn’t mean to,’ I plead, the bus flashing through my mind. 

She doesn’t reply, instead closing her eyes as if meditating, her features contorted in pain. I wince as her back cracks again, quieter this time, each vertebra resetting itself with the deftness of a spinal surgeon. Then she straightens, twisting her body experimentally. 

‘You’re lucky I can heal,’ she mutters, though there’s still the shadow of a smile on her lips. ‘I think you hit, like, one of my nerves or something. My leg went limp and everything.’

‘You okay?’

She snorts. ‘I’m good. But I wish I could say the same for that moment you just ruined.’

‘You still wanna go flying? If you’d rather - ’

‘Come on, you doofus.’

She shoots upward, deeper into the endless sky, and my reply is lost in a hot rush of wind. 

We set off, far above our usual route, our faces caressed by rarefied winds far gentler than those on the ground. The jealous moon at our backs has all of the sun’s reach but none of its fury. Still higher, the stars wink at us like knowing conspirators. I catch Bri humming a few bars of Fly Me to the Moon; ‘One day I’ll take you there and we’ll beat the Moon Man together,’ I tell her, but she just laughs and shakes her head. 

We swoop low, touching pine needles and birds’ nests and sleeping squirrels who thought themselves unreachable, then let the air currents carry us through pregnant clouds and up into a kingdom of silver wool illuminated from below, the city lights streaming through like searchlights in fog. There we float, spellbound by its majesty.

‘Well, I don’t think you need flying lessons anymore,’ I breathe.

‘Maybe I haven’t needed them for a while,’ she murmurs, and suddenly our breaths are one and the same. The kiss is cold, then hot, then cold again as we lose altitude and fall into a cloud. I feel the vibrations again, only this time they’re against my skin, and now the butterflies in my stomach are smoldering fireflies. 

I almost lose control again, but this time she slides smoothly out of my embrace, the warmth receding with her. 

‘You’ve broken enough of my bones today, mister,’ she declares.

Descending towards our spot above school, we lick moisture from our lips. Abducted raindrops speckle our suits. She’s a picture, floating there with tousled hair, her eyes ablaze with reflected moonlight. She sighs, face upturned.

‘I could do that everyday forever.’

‘Yeah,’ I agree. ‘Flying is the best. I don’t need a cape to know the universe loves me.’

She rolls her eyes. ‘That’s definitely what I meant.’

‘Then what did you mean?’

‘I meant us,’ she says, her voice husky. ‘It’s not flying if it’s not with you.’

‘I’ll do you one better,’ I whisper back. ‘Bri, I - ’

‘Thomas,’ she cuts in, pointing over my shoulder. ‘What’s that?”

Wheeling around, I see what looks like a luminous ribbon, or a kite wrenched from the fingers of a careless child, or a sky banner left behind by an airplane. But the wind has no power over it. It moves with speed, a lithe stream of otherworldly purpose. 

The Moon Man.

Bri reaches the same conclusion, and we make panicked eye contact.

‘What do we do? Should we call your dad?’ she moans in despair. ‘It’s going towards the city.’

‘Wait,’ I say, thinking of the bus again. ‘We can do this.’

At first she forces a laugh, but she stops abruptly when my expression doesn’t change. 

‘Seriously? You’ve lost it, dude.’

‘C’mon, you’re with me. You'll be fine. I wanna show you how good my punches have gotten.’

‘But it’ll be dangerous. We don’t even know that much about the Moon Man. Hasn’t it, like, killed people?’

I wave my hand dismissively. ‘What did you get that suit for, to fly around or to fight bad guys? My dad’s driven it away before, and I’m pretty sure I’m stronger than him. It won’t touch us.’

She looks down, eyelashes fluttering, and puffs out a cloud of fading mist.

Then she nods.

‘You’ll be fine,’ I repeat. ‘Just follow my lead.’

I slow my flying speed to match Bri’s, but it’s still fast enough to intercept the Moon Man well before it reaches the city. Quiet as we can be in mid-air, we approach from behind. 

Up close, its scales glitter in a spectrum of ever-changing colors, its sinuous body slicing effortlessly through the air with rhythmic bursts of wind. I note fearfully how its tail tapers into a wicked spike. Dad never talks much about the Moon Man, but he told me once that it had eight limbs, and I see them all tucked beneath its body to keep it streamlined. 

‘I don’t think it’s seen us yet,’ Bri whispers, but I gesture for her to shut up.

We draw closer and closer, until I can hear a oddly familiar sound, a huff of air and a sigh that follows, then another huff and another sigh, and sometimes there’s a sniff and I realise it’s not Bri’s breathing that I can hear. 

Now we’re so close I can see us reflected in its scales. But the way the light reflects is weird now, like it follows a pattern, almost as if all the scales are reflecting in the same direction. And with a jolt I realise, they aren’t actually scales at all.

They’re eyes.

Before either of us can react, the Moon Man lets out a long, deep groan, and whips around to face us, unfurling itself to its full incredible length. We’re struck with a wave of something, a stench so acrid it burns my throat and settles in my stomach like scalding vomit. It looks down at us, still huffing, still sighing, and then we both see why.

It has a human face.

Its mouth opens grotesquely, lips contorting as if in great difficulty, and then it speaks, ejecting a single word carried on a stream of searing, rotting breath:

‘FRESH.’ 

I cower backwards, speechless, my heart thumping in my ears. Bri’s shrill scream pierces the night. The Moon Man snaps its focus to her, its breathing intensifying. Its tail snakes through the air towards her, but she’s already moving, darting away with a dull wave of sound. 

Frozen in fear, I float helplessly as the creature ignores me and pursues her, sighing gutturally. Backpedaling, she screams again. Her eyes are pleading, wide with fear. She tries to evade it again but, impossibly fast, the Moon Man catches her in seconds. 

‘Thomas, help me!’ she wails, gagging from the smell. ‘Do something!’

The spike jabs at her throat with deadly force. She catches it with both hands before it lands, straining and grunting and sobbing simultaneously. The Moon Man towers over her, unfurling all eight of its limbs, each replete with a human hand. Its fingers arch menacingly.

Suddenly, I feel a sensation at the base of my skull. Her powers. This time the vibration is so strong that my teeth chatter and my hair stands on end. The creature draws back in surprise, then expels another booming sigh. Its tail continues pushing for her throat, and then, in one serpentine motion, the Moon Man envelops her like a boa constrictor. 

‘Thomas - ’ she screams, but the rest is lost as all the air is driven from her lungs. There’s an awful CRACK, and out of nowhere an image appears in my head: the memory of a school bus hurtling through the air faster than sound, shining like it belonged in the sky, even if it was just for a moment. 

Clenching my fist, I rush forward faster than I ever have before, and aiming for the Moon Man’s head, I close my eyes and swing harder than I ever thought I could. 

The punch crunches through something hard, then something wet and soft, then something hard again. Hot fluid sprays out, coating my eyes, nose and lips. It tastes metallic. 

Blinded, I reel backwards, flailing wildly, my skin quivering. There’s a soft gurgling noise. There’s the sound of liquid dripping. A terrible silence follows.

I feel something warm and heavy slide over my shoulder.

Then I hear a sigh.