The Belly of the Beast

         The moon, a shining disk of permanence, was full in the starless, bright Manhattan sky. The man walked within the crowd, fading into the boundaries of ordinance, and becoming the face of ordinary. Like the others, he did not raise his eyes towards the bountiful sky because within that realm only machines made by man existed anymore. Nothing of beauty, nothing of wonder and constant change. The lights of man's greatest achievement drowned out by millions upon millions of flickering stars.

He was on his way to a business dinner. The trains were delayed an hour so he decided to walk. The air was crisp that night and had the taste of sweet summer salt. As per usual, the sidewalk was busy with foot traffic: tourists, and vendors, and suits, and teenagers kept the city a-roar even in the stillness of the night.

They were all alike. Eyes fixed forward. Ears plastered to cell phones, mouths full of empty, meaningless words. The man lamented that his phone broke the night before. His attention was unoccupied, and thus it became that he was first to witness the monstrosity.

Abruptly the light bulbs in the street went out one by one. The shop fronts became dim and the apartments and penthouses high in the sky went out into darkness.

A blackout? The collective thought.

A million faces, synchronized in perfect rhythm, lifted their noses towards the sky. The full moon slowly became obscured by a total and ominous shadow. Within moments, it had waned into a converted series of phases. Gibbous to crescent and then to no moon at all.

The city was plunged into a darkness in which the citizens had long forgotten.

The man couldn't see a foot in front of his own face. Thousands of obscured figures darted across streets, in opposite directions, scampering over fallen bodies. In his shock, he did nothing. He stood and watched the pandemonium with shell shocked eyes.

It was an instinctual fear of the unnatural, of the violation of natural laws.  The soft moonlight was taken for granted every night, and now that it was gone and in such a mysterious way, it made them panic. It made them fear whatever cosmic strangeness had caused this to happen.

Suddenly, over the roar of the city, he heard a man's voice over a loudspeaker. He heard the voice clear as day, as if he was next to him.

"Attention, people. This is a public service announcement. Return indoors. Stay safe. Curfew is in effect. Once again, return and remain indoors. Prosecutors will be detained."

Static. The black and white buzz of silence. It was as if the city paused for a second, and now the fast forward button was pressed and the entire world sped to catch up.

The announcement did nothing but strike fear into those weak of heart, and strike strength into those of able mind - and a new goal was added to the agenda: return home and quickly. Panic hit the city hard and fast, no one could have stopped it. No one could have survived it.

The man, in this case, was weak of heart. The fear did not cause him to act wildly and instinctually but instead, glued him to his spot on the sidewalk while the others flooded around him like a great tidal wave on a shore. They pushed him and threw him, threatened to kill him, but still he did not move. The strangeness of this situation appalled him; the lack of a plan led him to do nothing. His home was on the other side of town -- impossible to get to without a taxi or train and he knew that neither of those would be running. And suddenly, he felt utterly hopeless.

Death. Beatings. Rape. The dark shadow looming over the city watched it all.

He felt hot breath on the back of his neck and a sweaty, hot body pressed up against him. He felt grubby hands roaming his pockets and clothes for money, jewelry, maybe even a candy bar. The man did not fight back. When the robber found nothing, the man heard him swear underneath his breath.

The man felt a hot, sharp pain in his ribcage. The blood drained from his face and he felt pale and almost lifeless. The man touched the wound, and to his horror he found a long blade sticking out of his side. His legs could not handle the weight of his body and he dropped to the floor like a thousand pounds of marbles. All he could think about was the depravity of humans, the scurrying little rat inside them all. They attacked like cornered rodents.

Life was escaping him slowly. He closed his eyes, overcome by drowsiness, but opened them again when he heard the voice over the loudspeaker again. This time the voice was crazed, frantic, and paranoid. He was speaking quickly, his words bleeding into each other.

"This is a warning. Please retreat to a place of shelter. This is unprecedented in human history. We do not know what it is. Or how to stop it. This is the truth, this is not a drill. It's some sort of..."

The speaker must have been stopped. His words dangled in the air. The microphone was still on. A struggle. Screams. Passionate cursing. "Private Sanders? FBI, you are being detained for treason. Come with us, sir," said a foreign voice.

The man heard the city scream. He watched the buildings burn. The women cry. He briefly wondered why he was still alive. Shouldn't he have bled out already?

A bright light suddenly radiated over Manhattan. It had neither the warm, blissful feeling of sunlight nor the softness of moonlight, yet the light was there. The faces of the people were horrified. They examined the scene with tired, sad eyes. A woman even fell to her knees and cried to her God: why did I do this?

Blood everywhere. Misery in the alleyways, death on top of cement, brains and sadness on the brick of the buildings.

The light began to wane and slowly the city was cast over with a soft glow. A sliver of the white moon began to peak behind an unnamed shadow. As the man's eyes began to focus, he realized what it was. He looked up at the glowing sky and saw another face looking down on him. There were eyes underneath long antennae. His mouth was drooping, a smile full of long, pointed teeth. His face was somewhat reptilian - a massive sort of insect, crocodile. His snout was pronounced, his skin green and scaly. The body of this thing must have been massive. Larger than the moon, smaller than the planet. Without the confines of gravity, who knows what this creature was capable of?

Then, the man realized, that the soft glow of light was produced within the belly of the beast. It was not the sun reflecting off the surface of the moon. It was not a distant, far away star. But this unnatural light was created within this cosmic monster.

For the first time, the man was glad that he was dying.