(Working title) Look to La Luna

If you have found this, then I am afraid it is too late for me. I write this not to explain, but to warn anyone foolish enough to try to recreate what I have done. My name is James Godwin, but I fear that I am losing myself and when this is over I will no longer be myself. I hope, for all our sakes, I can finish this.

All of this began on a clear night in mid-October. Behind my home is Baker's Wood, a not insignificant forest, which is a place that, on occasion, I hike through. It is quiet and, for whatever reason, is mostly devoid of large animals like deer or bears. On this particular evening, I found myself camping in a clearing a few miles from my home. Just as I was getting ready to go to sleep, wrapped up in my sleeping bag, a low rumble came from all around. It was like a peal of rolling thunder, or the ground vibrating when large trucks drive near you. As I said before the night sky was calm and clear, and the nearest highway was over 15 miles away.

Then the rumbling ceased as quickly as it had appeared. Had I imagined it? Surely it was just my mind playing tricks on me in the dead of night. So I thought, however, that what followed next was harrowing. It was the sound of wood creaking, snapping, and crashing. It couldn't be the wind, or else my tent would have been ripped from the ground like it was a plastic bag. My eyes darted from side to side as shadows danced and swayed on the walls of the tent. Once again silence fell but this time something was wrong. It was darker than before. Sitting up from the ground, I made the decision, however foolish, to investigate what had happened. If I was going to die, it was going to be on my own terms and not in a convenient bag. Unzipping the tent, I stepped out into the woods, my flashlight firmly in hand.

God, I was shaking. I do this thing where, if I'm not using it, I keep the batteries upside down in my flashlight. To avoid turning it on by accident, y'know? As I unscrewed the black top off the flashlight and tipped it over, my hand shook and the AAs fell onto the dirt. Bending over to pick them up, the rumbling started again louder and more intense this time as if the Earth itself was just as scared as I was. I lost my balance and collapsed to my knees, struggling in haste to grab the batteries and shove them in the right way up. It took a few seconds but finally, I succeeded and quickly turned the front of the flashlight. I squinted as the flashlight illuminated a cone in front of me, but what I saw couldn't have been real.

The clearing had... expanded. As if the trees had uprooted themselves and walked backward like they were the brooms from Fantasia, or ents out of some high fantasy story. I rose off of my knees and did a 360 as I checked my surroundings. Besides the moving trees nothing else had changed. That is until I decided to look up. God, I wish I never had. The sky was wrong. Pitch black. No stars. No Moon. No clouds either. "James." A voice called to me, and I froze. The hairs on the back of my neck shot up. "Be not afraid, James." The voice boomed again, coming from all around me. It had no origin, no source I could turn my head to look out for. "Turn around slowly." The voice instructed and I swallowed the pool of spit hard. This was it. This was how I died. In Baker's Wood. In some little clearing.

I turned around, and my jaw opened as my eyes bugged out.

The Moon was in front of me. Not in a 'settling on the horizon' way, oh no. No, this was literal in my face way. How could this be happening? Was this really THE- "Yes, James." The voice answered my thought before I finished it. "For so long have I been watching. Eons? Millenia? Billions of years.." it trailed off as if lost in a memory. "Now I come to ask of you. Years ago your kind walked upon me, now I ask to walk among you. James, I have chosen you. Bring me a vessel, or I shall make you it." I stared in horror, the realization of the words clicking. An alien lifeform just demanded a human sacrifice or I would be it. No, Alien wasn't right. This was the Moon. "Do this for me, James, and I will give you a body that is never aging. Eternal, like mine."