Selenophobia

The girl awakens to the insistent wailing of her phone, which buzzes with a constant cacophony of messages that she’s sure can’t be for her.

They’re all different, but the same, like distorted echoes of each other.

Unknown number: 'Have you seen the moon yet tonight? It’s beautiful.’

Unknown number: 'The moon looks especially beautiful tonight.'

Unknown number: ‘You really should look at the moon. It’s beautiful this time of the year.’

Over and over, until she’s sure that she’s received every iteration of the same message, and yet her phone keeps on shrieking at her.

(She is sure she put her phone on mute before falling asleep that night.)

Some have photos, but they are so distorted and pixelated and they don’t show anything at all, and if she tries to zoom in her phone goes all hot and she stops.

There’s only one message that stands out.

(It does nothing to loosen the strange vice on her heart.)

Official Alerts: 'Do not look at the moon.'

She stares at it, trying to make sense of the words that can’t have any real meaning, when it suddenly disappears and a new message pops up in its place.

Official Alerts: 'False alarm. The moon is really beautiful tonight. You should look at it.'

An inexplicable shiver tumbles through her whole body, but she forces it away. It’s just a simple prank. Perhaps a well-planned and very creepy one, but a prank nonetheless.

What else could it be?

“Beth! Quit it!” She calls out to her sister in the next room, but there is no response. She knocks loudly on the wall with her fist. It’s much colder than she’s expecting. Maybe that’s why she’s still shivering. “Elizabeth?”

An unfamiliar, ominous feeling starts to fester in her chest, biting at her lungs, but she tries to physically shake it off with the shake of a head, steadying her breath.

There is nothing wrong.

The girl gets up, wrapping her thick blanket around her as though it can shield her from the darkness of the hallway that seems to bleed into her room. She pads to her sister’s door in her socks and pyjamas, holding up her fist to knock on the door very loudly - she knows that Beth has always been a heavy sleeper - but it swings open as if she has been waiting for her sister all along.

(That makes sense. Beth is pranking her. Of course she’s waiting.)

“Knock it off. I wanna sleep! It's 3 in the morning; now isn’t the time for a prank.”

Beth just grins. It's empty and wide all at once.

“No, it isn’t, is it?”

It’s only then that the girl notices that Beth is still fully dressed, and if she cranes her neck to look into her room the teenager’s bed isn't even rumpled from sleep.

Midnight had long since come and gone, like an unwanted text message.

A lump appears in the younger's throat, heavy and sharp.

She swallows.

There is nothing wrong.

“You’re right. It’s not time for a prank,” Beth repeats, “do you know what it is time for?”

This time the girl can’t shake off the shiver that seizes her bones, and the ominous feeling is making her hyperventilate now, because her sister’s voice is all breathy, like she’s seeing something amazing.

Something beautiful.

Beth’s eyes are wide, and they don’t meet her sister’s, drifting up past her, up to the ceiling, as though she can look right through it.

The girl doesn’t respond.

She doesn’t know how to.

“Stargazing!”

She tries to shake her head, or to back away, or to do anything, but she can’t. She has no reason to.

There is nothing wrong.

There is nothing wrong, but somehow everything is, and she just wants to run.

Her sister pulls her to the window. The girl doesn’t struggle. The curtains are already drawn back, fluttering in the chilling night wind.

“See, the moon is beautiful tonight.”

The girl’s tongue unsticks and she forces words out of her mouth, though each one tastes fouler than the last.

“Beth, I don't want-”

And then she sees it.

The ominous feeling floats away on the gentle breeze. Her breath returns in a rush, fresh and true. Her hands, still clenched from when she was about to knock on the door, relax. Her thoughts are clear. Settled.

Because Elizabeth is right.

The moon is beautiful.

So very beautiful.

The girl can’t look away.

And neither should you.

Go on.

The moon is really beautiful tonight.