AHHH...THE IRRESISTABLE FORCE MET THE IMMOVABLE OBJECT

Once upon a time there was a man and a woman. They were in love, they decided. Then she went to the moon. He believed she was taken. She believed she wasn't so much taken as got the fuck out.

So she’s on the moon and he’s in a fairy tale kingdom that involves horses, swords, and chain mail and which is disastrously far from the moon. So he conspires to reunite with the love of his life.

To do this, he gently pulled each bone from his body and, after positioning a few in the correct way, began to climb his bones as though they were a ladder. It was a ladder pointed at the moon. He would extract a bone, place it in front of him, take a step, rest, then repeat. The Earth became small. Stars swam up to him, sniffed, then carried on. For his part, he felt perfectly fine walking through space, very goal-oriented, though at times he was unable to catch his breath, but that never lasted too long.

It was while he was doing the crab walk up his ladder to the moon amongst a cacophony of stars that he was suddenly and painfully struck by a huge bolt of orange hotness. It took him a moment of catching his breath to realize it was the sun. He wanted to rearrange his ladder to avoid the sun, but wherever the ladder went, the sun was already there, and so he just dealt with it.

And dealt with it he did, in a charming and clever way, a way so charming and clever there are no words to describe it accurately, which works out well for the writer of this tale because charming and clever are not really in my bag of tricks.

So anyway, dude was charming and clever, he embarrassed the sun, almost to the point of humiliation, so now the sun only stays out half the day because the other half it just has to go inside and lie down. Or lay down. Whatever. I can never remember that rule.

So then he’s back to cruising along up to the moon on his ladder made of his bones, and who comes flying out of the abyss of galaxy? A crow. A space crow. A space crow who eats heads. Our man is loving space, and also he’s waiting anxiously to see the love of his life, so he’s kinda in that weird space between relaxed and calm and furious with desire, and so a space crow isn’t something he wants to deal with right now. And also, he’s getting closer to the moon (good), but he’s running out of bones (bad).

So he slays the space crow, who imparts no words of wisdom—again, not in my bag of tricks—and before he knows it, he’s on the moon. There’s a tremendous wrought iron gate out of which a sentry leans. The sentry’s wearing Ray Bans and Levis and he carries a large gun that looks like a super soaker water gun. The sentry presents our guy with a riddle: Why don’t Holden Caufield and Oedipus move to the Island of Misfit Toys and continue their whining there?

The answer was obvious, he knew, and when he said it, he tossed his last bone ahead of him, into the city proper and a final step closer to his beloved, and then he jumped! And landed! On his own bone!

And then he summarily fell to a boneless heap on the sidewalk, but not before managing to hail a cab.

Because neither Holden Caufield nor Oedipus has decent navigational skills.

The cab driver drags him into the foyer of the country house. Not his job, he says repeatedly, but can’t help but help. Her place is beautiful—there are the sounds of the kind of laughing that happens only with people you love, the smell of basil and something warm cooking, music (piano and horns and strings), sunlight pouring in like a waterfall.

She says thanks to the cab driver, gives a big tip, then drags the heap of no bones into the den. From there she arranges a soft spot on the oversized armchair in the corner. The sun hits it just right, the cushions are situated pleasingly. From the other room, voices call to her. He listens to the suctiony sponge suck of her flip flops as she walks away.