Night Gaunts

Yesterday, as I was walking home after dark, I saw the moon rise, and started thinking about what the moon might see in just one night. The name of the story originated from Lovecraft's lore and the help of a friend: "i'a i'a Cthulu Rlyeh" and all that. Here goes.

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Night Gaunts

We flick from room to room, balcony to balcony, window to window.

Here, a couple, entwined, in the afterglow of their passion moments before. There, an old man, sleeping in his chair by a television now showing only grey static. Downstairs, two young men, sitting and laughing and crying and talking, drunken and sure that they'll enbetter the world in the morning.

Up on the roof, a woman, looking at the stars half hidden behind the smog and clouds and hoping she owned a telescope and could look at Mars in the evening and Venus in the morning. Down at the curve, a man, dowsing off and lamenting that he lost his keys and angered his girlfriend, and is now locked out of his apartment and has nowhere to go, no one to call. Down the street a teenager who's drunk too much, stumbling and falling over, yelling and bawling and cursing, with two of his friends helping him home despite all his verbal abuse.

 At the crossroads a truck driver, sitting in his pit, waiting for the light to turn green with no one in sight, not daring to break a law, even an arbitrary one, with two tickets waiting on his license. Two blocks down, a stripper, just out of work, being harassed by two bikers, with three of the men working the counters in the bar pouring out to help her with iron bars and baseball bats.

Up another street, a dark cat, mix between a bombay and an australian mist, prowling on top of a wooden fence, dreaming cat dreams and waiting for a sound of prey. Across the street, two young girls sleeping under a pillow fort hand in hand, having a sleepover and both dreaming of holding the promise they made of staying awake through the night. In the living room, the parents of one of the girls, speaking in soft voices about wether they should stay together or not, with their love having dwindled from the blazing passion it was into the dim glow of everyday life.

All this we see, as we flick through the town in the dim twilight before the dawn. We see all this, and much, much more, as we flick on the wings of gossamer, riding the shafts of moonlight past the open windows, through the silken curtains, by the doors and down the streets. Before the first rays of dawn light the horizon and dissolve the moonlight on which we ride, we see all these things, in tens of towns, in dozens of countries. We see all these little moments, and the night spreads infront of us like a velvet cover over the deceased at the wake. We see so many things, and we flit onwards through the dark to see many, many more.