Books are gentle companions. Usually. Except for that one time I was just about murdered by books. That was twenty years ago . . .***I didn't know what to do with my life. I had no prospects. I had an ... [+]
Short Fiction
Slice of Life
Modern Love
Love & Loss
3 min
Mature Audience
UNC Chapel Hill
Runner up
Jury
Moondust
Lysander Champion is a queer writer from North Carolina. He now lives in New Jersey, and teaches English. His short fiction has appeared in Furrow. "Moondust" was a runner-up in Short Edition's Long Story Short Award, 2022.
The night before Jen touched down on Earth, I was holed up in Rachel's bedroom in Houston. We had both made a valiant, fruitless effort to sleep; now it was three in the morning. Sometime around one, I had turned on the 24-hour news. They kept covering the impending Earth landing: interviews with NASA scientists, clips of the Diana 11 in space, and images of Jen, Jen, Jen. The first woman on the moon."Rach," I said."Mm," she answered. She was doing a crossword in the dim half-light that pooled from the television. Jen's NASA headshot watched us from the TV screen, eyes frozen on the two of us