Nothing cool was happening in my life at all.
Dad hadn’t gotten over Mum's death, and he likely never would.
Anyhow, talking about my parents puts me in a grim mood (duh), so let’s talk of something snazzy. Let’s talk about clouds, because I love clouds. No, let’s talk about the sky in general. Or space, because I love space too. Stars, oh yes. And the moon, ah the moon . . .
The moon. That reminds of the Ghost Moon.
But you don’t know about that yet, right? Okay, wait, let me get you there somehow.
Let’s start with something else, though. I don’t want to . . . jump right into that yet. I will, I promise. Yes. We shall first talk of things that make me relaxed.
Because that’s what all this is about, isn’t it? Me getting weights off my fragile chest?
I don’t care; I want to babble, and so I will. Life as a pseudo-vampire isn’t easy. In case you hadn’t figured that out yet.
Anyway, I first learnt of the Ghost Moon (call it the "Witch" Moon if you will) from this Martian guy. Okay, taking one step back introducing him to you.
Right.
So all this space talk actually reminds of this one guy in our class. I always thought he was an alien doing a very poor impersonation of a human.
No, no, I’m not being rude. He was just – okay, you know what, I’ll tell you. Yes, it’s a wastage of time, but I’ll tell you.
-Am I stalling? Maybe.
-Am I getting carried away? One-hundred per cent.
-Am I an idiot? Shame on you, I thought you’d already figured that out.
So yeah, the alien I want to tell you about is . . . now, everyone calls him “Boggers,” fine? But I can’t call him that, it’s just disrespectful. He’s a nice guy (or a nice Martian, at least), doesn’t deserve a demeaning title . . . he’s still working on his habit of not eating his bogeys, though.
Yeah, he eats bogeys. Yes, the disgusting, sometimes slimy, sometimes solid bogeys that house in your nose canal. Your mucus, your snot. The mucus that drips down onto your lips and you keep a kerchief at hand to wipe it off.
Not Boggers, though. Nata. Not him.
He likes to eat them. He finds excuses to eat them. He loves eating them. And/or drinking them. And/or gulping. And/or whatever.
You’d be talking to him normally for one second – and the next he’d have a finger up his nose, plucking away at those stinking, repelling, sticky, gross thingies that reside there. He has a rather big nose, too, now that I think of it. Unusually big. Like a proboscis monkey or something. And there was always something hanging from his nose, snot or boogers or some other disgusting thing. I won’t be surprised if tiny fellow aliens lived in his nose. Maybe that’s why even his smile was so crooked.
Let’s call Boggers “Bog” for short, alright? It doesn’t seem any less demeaning, but I guess that’s fine.
One day, the class teacher appointed Aar and Bog as the class monitors. More like “man-eaters,” if you ask me. Aar is a pretty lenient guy, and he’s a loyal friend, so there was that. And then then there was Bogs. I won’t lie and say he wasn’t lenient too, because he was. But whenever the teacher was not in the class and the monitors got up to keep everyone quiet – quite the irony, since Aar is a chatterbox himself – Bogs would roam the class, one finger more or less where you’d imagine it to be, the other hand scratching his back (or trying to) and everyone would retract like turtles into the shell of their seats whenever he came to pass.
Funny, eh? Not so funny when you’re living it.
Anyhow, that made everyone nervous and silent and so Bogs was technically a very efficient monitor and Aar a very inept one. Soon thereafter, Bee took his mantle and together Bogs and Bee were made prefects sooner than you’d say “clap!”
Yeah, and Bee got to know her fellow monitor better, discovered he was not a Martian but a nice guy and all.
I still have my doubts.
But yeah, Bee convinced all her friends to not be so prissy towards Bogs. And I’ll be the first to admit he’s a nice enough guy. He’s trying to cure his unhygienic hassles. Maybe he’ll go to a doctor. Or maybe he’ll keep picking his nose till the end of his days.
In which case his grandkids are going to have a hell of a grandfather. Unless, of course, they’re nose-pickers too.
Anyhow, Bogs was the first person to announce in class that the first-ever “Ghost Moon” was coming up estimated-ly next weekend.
Soon this was all television reporters and newspapers talked about.
Ghost Moon. What some even blatantly called the Witch Moon.
Scientists said it had something to do with the equivalence of pressure in the air pockets surrounding the moon. Whatever that means, who cares?
We were only interested in the Ghost/Witch Moon because of what augers and fortune-tellers and religious-fathers said.
They said that it was a moon like no other. That the demons of old had cursed the Earth in the Early Days, and this was the fruit. That it marked doom and destruction. That if you looked at it for more than a few minutes on end, it would hypnotize you. Enslave you.
That ghosts wandered the streets freely on the day of the Ghost Moon.
That covens gathered unafraid and bold on the day of the Witch Moon.
Even Es was all jittery about it.
Yet my life – as you must know very well by now – is a masochist on they by-stands and I am it’s strumpet.
Of course, Ghost/Witch Moon sounds wicked cool and everything. And that’s because it is.
But, as it turned out, not for me. Not. For. Me.
Now I look back and wish I had known what Ghost/Witch Moon had held for me. I wish I could go back in time and tell past Marra how that day was going to change everything.
How that day would directly lead to why I’m in this jet right now, flying towards a destination I myself do not fully know.
Something cool is coming up, and you're about to find out how Marra landed up in a jet with three other humans, a spirit, a dog and a corpse. So stay tuned. Don't go out on Witch Moon day.
Bah-bye.
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