Gods in Moonlight
Benjamin Hambleton
I tell the first man I message that I’m a god.
The god of what? he asks.
Nothing in particular.
Well, I want to come over, god of nothing.
I frown at his words but still send my address. I’m lying in bed, half-dressed, tank bubbling in the corner—one neon tetra left. It’s 2:32 a.m. Quantum mechanics is at nine and I haven’t opened the textbook, but I remind myself it doesn’t matter because I’m a god. The man is wrong. I’m not the god of nothing, or the god of superposition, of tarot cards, of overripe oranges. I’m the god of it all.
I go into the bathroom and the light flickers on. In the mirror, everything is a lie. I stare at the figure before me as I brush my teeth in preparation. It is not me, but my ghost. His wrists are delicate, like the bones of a bird; his collarbones clutch at shadows, holding them tight against smooth white skin. I look away, and when I straighten after spitting out toothpaste, I finally see myself. I can bear to feel the weight of my own eyes. My collarbone’s shadows are shallower, my wrists thicker. My shoulders and biceps are rounded, powerful. This is the truth, I tell myself. I smile, but something is not right in the smile. I try again.
My phone buzzes before I can fix the smile: it’s him. I pull on a shirt and go downstairs, and when I open the door he is standing there. He looks slightly worse than the pictures, but not enough to mention it. He’s muscular, but shorter than promised, and his arms are slightly too long. We greet each other and I let him into the apartment. I wonder, for a moment, if he can see through my smile, then tell myself that it does not matter. I owe him nothing.
It is awkward at first, like it always is. We stutter in space, each body a different trapped syllable. When I can’t take it anymore, I motion toward my bed and we lie down, shoulders touching. His mouth is open, moving, but I don’t want to hear him, I can’t hear him. The only sound comes from an ambulance as it Dopplers past and a woman outside my window arguing with her boyfriend on the phone. Inside my apartment it is quiet.
It is when his silent mouth is just about to close that I stopper it with my own, and our bodies slide together. Our clothes melt off, and his skin and hair are coarse; there is something frighteningly mortal in his heartbeat as my hand glides down his neck. I thrum with power. I could do anything right now. With a thought, I could make my tank repopulate. I could make it snow in the middle of July. I could tell him to say three prayers and then grant him a million miracles.
Soon I’m above him, staring into his eyes, and in the semi-darkness they are black. It’s impossible to tell what he’s thinking, what he wants. I hold your life in my hands, and I don’t know if that’s a thought or something I’m hearing, and the world is spinning. Electricity crawls over my skin, arcs from my fingers to his. He grips me tight and his teeth grow from my body like chunks of quartz. Now he is on top of me. Moonlight hits him at a different angle and I can see now that his eyes are blue.
I’m the god of everything, I remind myself as my body shudders, as he enters me without warning. I am speaking to him, but now it is he who cannot hear me; my tongue reaches for his name, a word I do not know. In the smallness of the silence the world expands until it feels like it could burst in an explosion of sound. You hold my life in your hands, I want to say. Your eyes are blue and beautiful. You are the god of everything.
It is less than an hour later when he stands and begins to dress. The moonlight makes him into nothing more than a ghostly silhouette, but when he moves into the lamplight, he is gorgeous, golden. His mouth moves, and I can hear him now, but his words have no meaning. I touch myself with phantom fingers, prodding at cold, lifeless flesh. My ribs are jagged and aching, my body brittle. He won’t look at me, and when he is fully dressed and I am still sprawled and naked, I cannot look at him, either. He slips out; the stairs creak and the door closes behind him. I wonder if I might’ve fallen in love, had things gone differently, had he stayed.
Out on the street, the woman finally hangs up, and I wonder absently if she heard us. The fish tank hums as I stare at the ceiling, unable to sleep. I’m a god, I say out loud, but the words sound hollow, foolish. I hold a hand against my neck to feel the warmth of my blood. As my eyes close, I say a prayer—to him, to myself, to anyone—and I don’t stop whispering it, over and over, until my lips crack and I am bathed in the light of the sun.
Benjamin Hambleton is a sophomore in Saybrook College majoring in English.
ABOUT THE ART | Continuum by Zach Granne, 2025. Zach Granne is a student at Yale University.
