Hungry Moon
Submitted by John Sanders
When it first appeared, no one knew what to call it. A new moon had appeared in the sky. Well, we call it a moon for convenience. It actually was just a set of teeth, massive and gleaming in the sky, about the same size as our friendly satellite. The teeth were roughly human, just weirdly proportioned. Proportioned to make a disc when they were closed, like a mockery of the crater marked sphere we had become so familiar with. When the celestial mouth opened for the first time it earned its name. People became painfully hungry. So painfully hungry they resorted to desperate measures to feed themselves. The casualties were enormous, both for things done on that night, and things done in the aftermath.
When the paths of the ISS and the Hungry Moon were projected to cross paths, we had them try to spot it on an ill fated livestream. Nothing was seen even when they should've been directly over or under it (debate rages to this day on its elevation.) A week later the satellite was dead silent. It was found in the same south american mine where they discovered Titanoboa, three years later. The bodies were reduced down to just the Muscular and Nervous systems, embracing each other and hard as the stone vertebrae the mine was famous for.
Likewise, when a missile fired into the open maw of the Hungry Moon the second time it opened, it appeared sticking out of skull of a Neandertal, the tip stabbed into the large skull. Dating the missile placed it about two thousand years older than the prehistoric woman it had embedded itself into.
The third time the Teeth opened nothing came of it, no insatiable hunger, no infirmary ward horror stories, nothing. We almost thought we had been spared. Until the Son was birthed from sky's gaping maw. He dropped to the ground with little more than a soft wet slap, right into the middle of Akihabara. He was a gummy, red entity that was roughly shaped like a humanoid. His limbs were long, about five to six feet long, while his squat body was roughly the size of a child. His flesh was transparent and red, and wobbled like jello. Inside him there were a plethora of unidentifiable organs, scattered through random portions of his mass, and subtly squirming. The figure's head was blank, except for a large hole that passed through the face. Looking into this hole from the front, bystanders reported a twisted version of the city viewed through it, made of organs and sleek black chitin. From the back meanwhile the hole was nowhere to be found.
Ominous as the Son sounds, the most he's ever accomplished in his three visits was little more than an awkward drunken stumble through the streets of some large city. The thing always disappears right as it begins to hack up something yellow from it's single orifice. It disappears without any bright flashes or sound, and it's hard to even notice when it does it, the only sign left behind being a Finnish petroglyph of a swan.
The fourth time was back to the same routine of planet wide starvation and consuming. There was something new though, a cult had sprung up around the moon and the Son. They believe the Hungry Moon had come to liberate us of our prudish inhibitions, and awaken our inner all consuming hunger. They didn't even try to resist the hunger, positioning themselves to cause the most damage as hunger warped their minds and, eventually, their bodies. Their limb grew and became wiry thin, while increasing their strength. The texture of their muscles began to show through their thinning blued skin, while their stomach bloated. These changed inevitably died by the end of the night, collapsing as their bone and skin dissolve, leaving only a distorted network muscle and a tooth lined GI tract. A month and and eleven days later small figurines were discovered in jurassic era rocks, with cuneiform inscriptions for each of those who changed on that first night. In addition, there were also approximately one thousand one hundred and sixteen names of individuals yet to even be converted to the cult, as well as eleven historical figures. There was a much large red statuette that represented the Son, down to the anomalous quality of his orifice.
Most people try to ignore the moon, but when palaeontologists in Canada discovered a massive copper and gold leaf torch in Ediacran rocks. Everyone checked the statue, but liberty still had her torch. We realized this was from a future event. We can't even imagine how that is going to happen.
May the Hungry Moon have mercy upon us.