Moon Goddess

A raised platform polished to a glassy sheen covered a thousand square feet of Blue Shell Beach’s golden sands. Elegant torches, glowing lamp posts, and three dozen dining tables topped with chiffon cloth helped transform these private shore grounds into a sparkling evening paradise suitable for the city’s wealthiest families to celebrate the beginning of summer. Men in tailored tuxedos, women in their priciest pearls, dined and talked the sophisticated shop most could never understand. The pianist’s lithe and lyrical ballet tickled the crests of the rippling tide. And to the center of the platform she walked, this raven-haired woman with ruby earrings everyone noticed, but no one knew. She stretched her arms high above her head and let them sway as ribbons would in a soft breeze. Her long black gown then ebbed and flowed like a sea of shadows as she twirled across the moonlit floor. Every few seconds she’d pause her pirouettes and wine her body in serpentine curves that raised the eyebrows of the watching women, and raised other parts of the men.

Time trickled thick, lazy, like molasses oozing through an hourglass. The guests, willing captives in the sensual sorcery conjured in the piano’s languid melody and this exotic woman’s mesmerizing dance.

Roaming clouds soon masked the moon’s light. Calm waves clapped furious in the sudden dusk. The unknown vixen who intoxicated the elites with her hypnotic hips gleamed against the darkness, her true face revealed.

And the first cries of the night pierced the air.

Her eye sockets hollowed and drooped within a centimeter of a smile that widened ear to ear into a jagged grin. Twin rivulets of blood streamed from her nostrils.

The old women clutched their pearls in horror while the men pointed and gagged. The mystery woman laughed. She opened her arms, and from those delicate fingers grew shadowy tentacles long enough to encompass the perimeter of the platform.

She drew the screaming sophisticates into her bosom like a mother embraces her children and nursed them on the nightmares that curdled within, all night long.