Stories from Beyond the Universe

The Man on the Moon

Lisziah was a lonely girl because her father recently died. She never saw her father once except on the day he passed away, and she had no mother, according to her relatives.  Each night that passed by, her grandma always caught her sitting in the balcony and talking to the moon.

“Dearie, it’s late,” said the old woman. “Is the moon calling you?”

“Yes, grandma,” replied Lisziah. “I get the feeling that papa is out there in the moon. He didn’t die; maybe he just became one with the moon and lived there.”

Many years later, Lisziah aspired to and eventually became an astronaut. On her first mission, to the moon, she immediately searched everywhere.

“I know papa is here,” she mumbled in her space suit as she hopped and skipped all over the semi-gravitational surface of dust and craters.

Meanwhile, she saw a cave, which none of her past space lessons told her about. Determined to see her father, she went in, even if she knew there would be nothing but space dust.

Surprisingly, there was a man. But he didn’t look like an ordinary man. He smelt like pizza and held a ladle in his hand – a golden ladle. He wore clothes made of spring onions, lettuce and other Earthly vegetables. His eyes were pepperoni red and both his hair and beard were pasta noodles.

“Looks like the big dipper led me to the right direction.”

Lisziah was dead surprised. “Big…dipper? What the heck are you talking about? Are you papa?”

“Yes, I’m your papa, Lizzy,” the man smiled, while raising his ladle. “And this is the big dipper!”

“Lizzy, you might not believe this but, I’m not really human, and you’re not either.”

The girl shook her head. “That’s absurd. This is just a dream. You’re an alien.”

“But Lizzy….wait, hold on. Take off your space suit. I’ll prove to you that you’re not human.”

“N-no way! You’re gonna kill me!”

Lisziah then ran off to the moon’s horizons, far away from the strange pasta guy who says he’s her papa. She was confused.

Suddenly, there was a gust of wind – a powerful solar wind that almost blew the headquarters apart. Since Lisziah’s space suit wasn’t tightly sealed due to excessive movements near the cave, it started breaking apart and eventually, a large space rock hit her to a hill. The space crew immediately ran to her but she seems to have lost consciousness.

Strangely enough, when they took her in the shuttle and out of her suit, she wasn’t bleeding at all, but still unconscious. This is where a man knocked on the door.

It was the pasta dude.

“Y-you’re a—”

“I know, I know. I’m an alien. But don’t worry, I don’t bite. I’m here to help my daughter.”

“D-daughter?”

“Yeah, you’re not deaf, are you? I said daughter.”

With that, the pasta guy let out an aura from his ladle to heal the girl without the space suit. Her appearance slightly changed form as her consciousness slowly regained.

“My hair! It’s pasta! What the heck?”

“Lizzy, look at your wrist,” said the pasta guy.

It was bleeding, and it smelt like tomato sauce. The guy then bandaged it with pandan leaves.

“I told you, you’re my daughter and I’m your papa.”

Indeed, Lisziah felt the same warmth as she felt when she first and last saw her father, and every night that she stared at the moon. They embraced each other.

“Papa, so this was why you never showed your face to me…because you were afraid to tell me the truth…but I’m okay now. I’ve accepted who I am.”

From that moment on, Lisziah departed from her friends on earth, but still promised to visit sometime, as she now stays with her father not just to live on the moon, but also to explore other parts of the galaxy.