Blood Moon

When the moon rose above Mara Veilhaven's apartment building, it was red. 9:41 pm. All electronics failed across the world.

She was sitting on the fire escape writing the same text message to her brother for the sixth time. I'm sorry about our dad's funeral. Can I speak with you? She hadn't spoken to him in two years. She finally worked up the courage, and her phone shut off. Not a battery dying or a glitch. Just off. Like someone turned it off.

She clicked the power button. It did nothing. Clicked it again and harder.

Below her, the streets started making noise she didn't know they could. Thousands of tiny quiet moments happening at once.

By 10 p.m., people had started to theorize. Of course they did. A guy claimed it was Russia. A lady in her bathrobe said China. Some kid with a goatee and dead cell phones in both hands proclaimed it was the apocalypse. No one challenged him on that.

Mara did not partake. She was staring at the moon.

It looked bigger than it should have and the same red color as a cut. She spent most of her childhood in her grandmother's home learning about the signs of a moon bleed. When the moon bleeds, little one. We must pay our debt. Her grandmother spoke of it as you would speak of any normal household task.

It's not real, Mara told herself. She felt the chill run through her body and didn't go away.

It took three hours for people to realize they were lost.

No one knew when or how, but everyone just kind of knew. There was a taxi driver crying at an intersection. Had known those roads for 11 years and didn't know which direction led to the river. People standing outside of train stations looking at the schedules that also were off. It wasn't a power outage. Lights were still on, but all technology that displayed a face went off, and even the power grid seemed scared of it.

Mara started walking. She had to get to her brother. He lived on the other side of the river. Forty blocks away, and she never made that journey without following a blue dot on a map. She tried to remember. Turn left at the bank that had the green awning? Or was it red? She stopped counting street lamps and started counting breaths.

She found the first dead body on the third bridge she crossed.

It wasn't what she imagined. No blood, no fight. The man was wearing a nice suit and had his cell phone in his lap that was dead. His eyes were open, looking at the moon. When she reached down to feel for a pulse, it was healthy.

"Sir?" She said. "Sir, are you okay?"

He spoke to her. Whispering the same thing over and over. "It asked me what I wanted. It asked me what I wanted."

She grabbed her hand back from his. Noticed that his fingers were starting to turn grey. Like ash.

People started gathering by midnight.

As if they all knew to do it. Stepping out of buildings, huddled together. One man lit a fire from a trash can. Soon there were a dozen. Then everyone on that block was glowing with the firelight. People who used the same elevators every day never said hello; now they knew each other's names.

There was happiness about it too. She hated that she understood that. People were actually looking at one another. Why is everyone looking up? A little girl asked her mother. I don't know, baby. I forgot that was up there. Her mother replied.

More people were turning grey. She noticed it on a woman by the fire. It was creeping up her face. On a young boy's hands. More people were affected, and they all had something in common. They were all silent and gazing at the moon. Listening to something the others couldn't hear.

An old man grabbed her arm. He spoke with an accent I could barely understand. You know what this is. He said. Not asking.

"My grandmother told me that—"

Tell me.

"That when the moon bleeds. It wants something. People used to place items outside their doors to appease the moon. Salt. Iron. Any food item. It meant we acknowledge you. Take this instead of us."

The old man nodded. What about now?

"We haven't looked at anything but screens in the last hundred years. We forgot what the moon wanted." She laughed. "My god. Our cell phones. They were blocking it. Every screen we looked at was a fake sun and it—"

"Now it has no block." He said softly.

The fire shot higher as someone blew on it. There was no wind.

Everyone looked at the moon. Even the ones turning grey had a smile on their faces. Everyone took a breath at once.

Her phone buzzed.

Mara dropped her bag and grabbed it. The screen was still black, but there was a message on it. Glowing red like the moon.

Your brother is on the bridge. He is waiting for you. He is almost grey.

It had a timer under it that was counting down from 60 minutes.

The old man saw it and got scared. "It's giving you an offer." He said quietly. "It wants something, and it knows what you'll give it."

Mara looked at the moon, then at her phone. Then the long journey to get to the river. Remembered her grandmother's front door lined with salt and a message she never sent. And her brother turning to ashes.

She squeezed the phone and ran towards the darkness.

Everyone behind her started humming. They didn't know the song but somehow they all did.

The moon was watching.

It's been watching for a very long time.