the makings of a despot.......................................................44 The Moon’s Response

The Moon’s Response by Mikko Demaulo

Can you hear me?

As clear as pristine ocean waters, you?

Yes, but the beating press of my anxious heart befalls to worry that the end is nigh.

The end? When eternal rest awaits our aching soul, where the lines of this world and the afterlife are blurred?

Is a being like you, afraid of it?

I have walked the earth for centuries, fear is nothing but a foreign entity to me. Yet, as I have seen it all, I must say I am exhausted.

But as even the largest of mountains would crumble to the sound of thunder and when stone would seem to lose their strength, are you not afraid?

While the prophets have foretold how the end may look to mere mortals, as someone who has merely observed through eons, I am horrified, rather, of what I cannot fathom. Ah, my friend, you fear not the end, but fear what comes along with it—

I do, as much as what comes after the end, entices me. Does it not do the same to you?

Perhaps, perhaps not, what I only understand, is the infesting fear of what a dead man’s eyes could discover.

SHORT STORIES

visual by Claire Denise S. Chua