The Boy Fishing On The Moon

1.

It was the night of a new moon.

When he sat, kicking his tiny shoes against the stools legs on the dull afternoon, with the only thing entertaining him was the constant rearranged spelling of his alphabet soup. 

While he slammed his spoon on the counter over and over again in excitement or anger over the intriguing Scooby Doo episode on the other side of the kitchen. 

He glued his eyes on the TV screen, pixeling itself out, with the occasional sight his mothers flower dress. He swayed his head left and right not letting his sight out of his sight. His mother backed up slowly in front of the screen, with her arms flying through the draws surrounding the television. He sat down in his seat and let out a groan.

"I heard that." 

His mom said, not taking her eyes off the draws. 

"Well mom you are blocking my view." He protested. 

"Well, mister, you could ask me to move." 

"Okay." He smiled. "Mom, will you move?"

"Hold on." 

He groaned harder and jumped off his stool, reaching up counter that doubled his height, wobbling over his bowl of soup, spilling half of it on the floor.

Then his mother groaned.

He sprang his head back to his mother, who was only upset to the loss of her searching and continued to carry his soup into the living room. As he dropped himself on the couch, she finally looked at him, scoffing and smiling. She had a lovely smile with the highest check bones and whitest teeth. Her eyes would always slant when she smiled really hard or laughed. And the flower dress planted on her tall body was one of the few thousand in her closet. 

"Sweetie, come on you know you can't eat here." She walked over to him, placing his soup on the counter. 

"Okay fine I'll just watch this episode." He re-glued his eyes to the tv. She grabbed the soup and walked near the sink, when he looked up and ran to her.

"Hey, don't throw it away, I'm going to eat it!" He tugged on her dress, spilling more of the soup.

"When? When you're done watching tv and it's cold?" She placed the soup in front of the perfect position where a microwave could be. He grabbed his soup and bit down on the bowl with his teeth, and began to gulp like cow.

"Woah woah there, do you want to throw up?"

He looked at her and back to the soup and stood silently. His mother smiled and she got the phone, when she looked back at him.

"Pizza?"

And his brown eyes popped out his sockets and grabbed the phone out of his mothers hand, already looking through the re-dialed numbers. His mother laughed at him, putting a lid over the soup while the boy babbled on the phone about various pizza toppings. She went over and slide the phone out his hands and began to speak of a extra large pepperoni. 

Footsteps were heard coming up the apartment stairs and his mother spun.

He kept his eyes glued on her, with his mouth watering at the thought of the steaming pizza. But his mother stopped speaking and looked at the door, hearing keys jingling. And a click. 

"Mom!" 

She looked back at the boy and half smiled, continuing her order on the phone, while his father wobbled in through the door. 

His mother turned away at the sight of him and continued ordering on the phone, while the boy stared at the man coming into his home.

"Hey honeyyy." The man said, dragging his body over to his mother who moved her head away from his toxicated kiss. The man looked at her and scoffed.

"Hey little guy." His father raised his hand over the boy's head and he stared at it shaking and with cuts all over it and slapped his hand into his. His father grabbed the top of his head and shook it chuckling.

"Daddy, did you think about the thing?"

His father cocked his head at him. His mother looked at the man with a sigh.

"About going over Andy's for the sleep over."

His father stared from him to his wife and nodded. 

"Did you know about this?"

"No I didn't," The woman put the phone down looking at the boy who shot his eyes up at her. "But why does it matter, you can't decide on this on your own?"

The boy looked back at his father and ran into his arms, knocking over the gust of wind keeping him from falling to his feet. He wobbled back and held onto his son rubbing his scent off on him. The mother stood there, sighing and trying to keep her eyes off the only sight she hated more than her son's grubby room.

"I actually did know about this by the way. He asked me if he could sleepover Andy's Saturday night with a few of their other friends." The father said wrapping his arms around the boy's neck tighter.

"Do you know Andy?"

His mother stood against the counter looking straight to her husband as if a complete stranger and her eyes got low to the sour smell of alcohol that shimmied by her nose. 

"Yes, I do know Andy." She replied not moving a muscle in her face or her small body. The boy's father now gave her a look of disgust, like he was taken back by her attitude or by his own scent. The boy shuffled his head around his fathers grip.

"Dad, you're choking me." 

His father threw his hands apart and looked at him with a hard laugh. The boy laughed along and felt as if his arms were imprinted on his throat.

The father crouched down to stare the boy in his eyes.

"You can go to the sleepover okay kid?" 

The mother's stomach twirled in despair at him calling his own son 'kid'. 

"I'll drop you off on my way to work and your mother will come pick you up on her way back home, sounds good?" The boy's father raised his eye brows at him and the boy nodded at him. 

"I need to sleep." His father said in a weak voice hanging his head down in between his legs.

"Then go sleep, I fixed your bed today." The boy said waving his head around in awe of himself. 

The father looked at him with an empty facial expression. Blank. A Stranger. 

And he chuckled.

"You know you never fix my bed well." His father shut him down and stretched his body up, seeing his mother was no longer in the room. 

"I still fixed it." The boy's small voice squeaked below at the height of his monster father. 

He walked away.

He wobbled away.

The boy watched his father dance off into the shadows of his dim lit halls. The father layed his head against the room door patiently and painfully. The boy watched him. Watched to see if he was breathing. 

He was breathing. But he wasn't alive to the boy.

He wasn't alive while he slept in the poorly fixed bed.

He wasn't alive when he spit in his wifes face.

He wasn't alive no matter how loud he shouted or no matter how many plates were dropped.

But he was alive when he went to the lake with the boy.

They threw in hooks and stared at the grey planet sitting ontop of the uneasy lake, it reflected in the water and only a few fish would come out gasping for air and if lucky none of those few would have been caught. 

The boy threw pieces of pizza into the lake.

The boy ate five slices of pizza and said he should of saved some more for the fish.

Only knowing they would sink more than a hundred feet to the bottom.

The boy choked on pizza with his father while fishing on a new moon.