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Eugene romps silently across the surface of the moon -- a speck of white on a large gray orb.
He is carrying his plastic red shovel and yellow bucket. He is dressed only in the pajamas that his grandmother gave him last Christmas. He is remembering a time when he had fed some ducks at a pond surrounded by tombstones.
He stumbles across a small bowl full of green gelatin lying upon the ground. It has miniature marshmallows suspended within it. He bends down and begins to pick the mushy little marshmallows out of it. He watches as they leave his fingers and slowly float off into space.
They continue upward and begin to mix with the light of distant stars.
Sheila is ripping open cardboard boxes. She whispers to herself: "Extinct, extinct, extinct..."
The old man stares at the flowers lying on top of his coffin. His mind is rapidly trying to fill in the gaps of his memory. He is a boy stuck in a drainage pipe. He is mowing his parent's lawn. He is talking to a girl in a school hallway. He is being beaten up by an older boy. He is staring at a test tube of blue liquid. He is driving a car. He is playing softball. He is trying to tie a tie. He is painting a self-portrait. He is crying into a pillow. He is writing his name. He is walking through a grocery store. He is throwing a candy wrapper upon a desk. He is reading a book. He is getting married. He is changing a set of spark plugs. He is watching television. He is running down a dark dirt path. He is smelling a girl's ear. He is looking upon a forest. He is sitting in a church. He is rubbing his knuckle with a boney finger. He is lying in a bed. He is dying. He is dying.
TICK...TICK...TICK...TICK...
Edna is now dreaming of poodle pillows and puddles of pudding.
Marvin drops his pants, exposing the boxers that his wife gave him last Christmas. He begins to sing again as his boss runs out of the office. "Oh, what a great life it would be..." he crooned, "to just be a monkey swinging in a tree. With not a care to bind or blind me...I'd be happy, happy happy, happy. That would be me! Just another stupid monkey in a tree!"
"But she's been sleeping all morning..."
Sheila closes the closet door and returns to her guests who have just finished eating and each of them have huge chunks of casserole around their mouths which are all wide open in bored stupors because Sheila's husband was still talking about the many ups and downs in the petroleum industry with tangent touchdowns in such subjects as bowhunting, lacrosse, jet fuel by-products, locust swarms, hypnotists and their detractors, ocean topology, time tunnels, septic tanks, old motorhomes and new dog breeds, before eventually landing on the subject of 'love,' which he nearly killed them with, as he went on and on about its many forms of conveyance and tribal retributions while the guests were starting to forge a variety of weapons out of the silverware and Sheila is quite amazed at the wide assortment of death-dealing utensils and hand-crafted implements of torture, which is why she decided to play charades in the first place, to try and keep her guests from killing her husband and it was these circumstances which led to her having an affair with the one-eyed, one-legged pipe-fitter named Gus McGurley and the eventual crime spree they went on later in the year.
Edna dreamed of pink and blue mongooses playing water polo in a large vat of pickled beets. Even her therapist never figured this one out.
"Has anyone seen Eugene?"
"Shut up!"
"Has anyone seen my mallet?"
"She's such a nice girl, all freckly and pugnacious."
Marvin stared at the college diploma that was hanging on the wall. He jumped off the desk and tap-danced his way out of the office and into the street. He eventually got a job where he was paid to walk around in other people's shoes.
"I know, but she said..."
"...and me with just one kidney..."
"...and swing and sing and swing and sing..."
"Shut up!"
"She had a rough night."
"Eugene."
"Yes, but that is just your opinion."
"She needs to wake up..."
"Eugene."
"Remember this...yes!"
"Maybe I'm just dreaming it."
"Shut up!"
Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle...
"Eugene!"
Tick...Tick...Tick...
"Shut up!"
"Eugene!"
"I know what I'm supposed to be doing but I haven't started it yet."
"Eugene!"
"EUGENE!"
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Eugene tries to follow the marshmallows on their voyage into the great black infinity. He stares at the small white chain of soft dots as they become indiscernible from the sparkling stars.
His feet slowly leave the lunar surface and he feels himself rising upward. His face breaks into a large starry-tooth smile. His hands reach upward toward the marshmallows and the stars and great infinity that stretches out before him. "Mine...mine...mine," he whispers to the silence. Eugene then feels his floating stop and the lunar soil nears until he is standing once again upon its gray, dead surface. He tries again and again to float away but to no avail.
He sits down on a rock and stares out at the darkness -- trying to spot the line of marshmallows. He realizes that he has lost them and begins to sob.
Wiping his nose with a sleeve of his pajamas, he then begins to walk across the moon, disturbing the tracks left there long ago by earlier explorers, and destroying the walls of his sand castle. He walks among the craters and mountains and occasionally looks upward.
It is only his little yellow plastic bucket that keeps him from completely floating off into space.
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END
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