Other Side of the Moon

by Matthias Krug

In space, a man stands up from his bed, which is situated smack-bang on the moon. He has set up camp in one of those craters you see if you have a good pair of strong binoculars. They teach you in school that humans can't live on the moon. But here is the man in space. He gets up from his bed on the moon and stretches his arms out to either side. There is only moon-space all around him. Not a soul in sight.

If this is the future, if man has conquered space and more specifically the moon as a living area at the time of this story, where on earth are all the other people?

The man gets up now, and begins to take off his pyjamas. They have little teddy bears on them. He takes them off and the pyjamas begin to float away. Not that he is bothered. He scratches his balls in perfect man fashion. This seems to be no mutation. A very healthy male, reproductive organ very much intact, is now standing naked on the moon. There is some hair on his chest, his head, his cheeks and on his private parts. He looks very normal, nothing to write about.

But if this is a normal, perfectly able-bodied male human being, there surely needs to be a female around somewhere to engage in animalistic mating rituals with him. Right?

Maybe she is just waking up on the other side of the moon.

We do not find out because, all of a sudden, the man who does not seem to float and has a very healthy reproductive organ between his legs starts to talk to the moon. Just like that, as if it were normal to talk to the moon.

'Good morning, moon.'

'What do you mean, good morning? I am the princess of the night,' the moon answers, somewhat annoyed at the blemish on her tender crater-scarred face.

'Well, I need at least to imagine that there is a night and a day. Can I even see the sun from here?'

'The sun? Who is the sun?' the moon asks. The conversation comes to an end. There is nothing more to be said. The man sits down in a moon crater and looks down at the tiny blue earth below.

On the other side of the moon a woman stirs to life. She has been sleeping on the white, chalky face of the moon. She has no bed, only a little white blanket. She is perfectly naked and much too beautiful to be this alone. The moon is enchanted.

'Good morning moon,' she says, brushing some moon chalk off her slender back. The white little blanket floats away into space.

'Good morning,' the moon says.

'I say, is there no sun in this place, to get a little tanned?' the woman asks. She looks herself over and finds her body too white.

'Yes, the sun shines from over there,' the moon replies, pointing out a direction with her fragile eyes.

From this we must deduct two things:

1) It is perfectly possible for the moon to have two faces and to talk.

2) Human beings can remain naked on the moon without encountering any great problems and without floating off into space.

Now, though, the moon has encountered a problem. The man on the other side has heard it talk to the woman. At the sound of a female voice other than that of the moon, his reproductive organ stirs. It is the age-old call of mating. He begins to walk, across mounds of white chalk and over craters and under little bridges. He finds this walking very easy, almost a floating-walking, and quickly comes to the other side of the moon. There he sees her. She stands perfectly naked and looks at the man.

'I thought I was alone here,' the man says, and as he speaks the moon loses her face and becomes the beautiful immovable object we see every other night or so in the sky.

The woman looks at his hairy balls. Then she looks again at her own slender white body. It is beautiful but she does not know it.

'So did I. What a relief. I thought I was talking to the moon.'

'I thought the same thing.'

There is an awkward silence of the I like you type. The moon recedes further, but it cannot shake itself away from these two human beings who are inexplicably stranded on its face.

'Do you have any idea how we came to be here?' the naked woman asks.

'A nuclear war, and we are the last two survivors?' the naked man suggests, moving closer to her beautiful white body. The tender glow of the moon reflects from her nipples. Starlets glow nearby. It is, after all, space.

'No, don't be silly. Nuclear weapons were eliminated a long while ago. Don't you remember?'

Something stirs in the man's mind. Of course he remembers. They are there because they chose to be.

'You can be anywhere you want, and we chose to be here,' he tells her, and she too remembers now.

'The freedom of choice, the freedom of being,' she says, and they lie down together and suddenly, grotesque and tender all at once, they begin to love each other.

'We are the last two human beings...' he whispers in her moon-dust-filled ear.

'...on the moon,' she moans.

You should be able to see all this exciting copulation happening with a powerful telescope every night; only it is taking place on the other side of the moon.

BIO: Matthias Krug is a writer and photographer born amidst the flowing deserts of the Middle East and currently based in Madrid, where he is working on a novel. He has written and photographed for prestigious newspapers and publications across six continents, including literary magazines like Bartleby Snopes and Danse Macabre. For more of his work visit his website: www.krugwriting.com or contact him at mkkrug@gmail.com