May 1st, 2010 -- "A New Moon in May by the Nowhere Stage"

Was it warm?

Freddie stuck his hands in his pockets and pulled his sweatshirt up to his chin. There was a soft and constant, cool breeze on the flat air that interfered with the otherwise lukewarm night as Freddie made his way through the sifted, dried mud of the interstate shoulder. The weatherman predicted clouds, but the sky was swept clear and clean and completely, leaving a free sky with stars and no moon, a new moon.

The faint glow in the distance had drawn him here; and what seemed at first like the faint tapping of a distant flashlight was now forced out Freddie's mind by the blanking white shine of the empty stage in front of him. Floorboards, trap doors, voided stage settings on dusty cotton canvas backings. The only thing alive was the light, and it was bright. Bright as the moon, Freddie thought.

Off in the distance, the small flecks of white and red of the passing cars' body lights streamed across the horizon to anywhere. Freddie stayed watching the astral set for some hours before departing quickly and quietly.

Some time after midnight, alone on the landscape, the light off the highway blinked off.


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