New Moon (Fiction) by Rebecca Nazar

New Moon
by Rebecca Nazar

Kate was shocked her ass no longer smiled. After a moonlit skinny dip, she scrutinized her backside and was surprised it no longer shared the same temperament as her flashing eyes and quick smile. Her once firm, crescent cheeks dipped lower. They seemed to her quite humorless.

In a panic Kate tried on all of her party clothes she hadn’t worn for a year. None fit. The seams winced, and she groaned. Each piece she pulled on stalled mid-thigh, only to be peeled off and then tossed in a violent huff. Bested, she coiled into a ball on her bed surrounded by her sloughed off clothes like a snake evicted from its old skin. All her past fashion statements spoke an undeniable truth: Her ass had changed from cheeky to party pooper.

Kate’s last party experience, she found herself alone retching tequila guacamole bile in an oily alleyway that reeked of piss. She looked up and saw a pink swollen moon jailed in a train trestle overhead. Their predicaments’ were the same. She was strapped into a little black dress that compressed her waist to a mere twenty-four inches, molded her breasts into a TV tray for her chin, and was pulled taunt across her bottom like cling wrap stretched across a bowl. With her stupor churning the heavens, she stopped and watched as the moon rose and deftly untangled its halo-rimmed curves from the girders.

After that night Kate entered a quiet phase. The pace of her weeknights and weekends eased, as did her attire. She stayed in and ordered out. She ate creamy pastas on a bed of goose down followed by a rich tome for dessert. Swathing herself in cotton panties, fleece Pjs, and wooly socks, the warmth of her cloister had ripened her square hips into the soft swell of a pear and had dimpled her backside’s complexion to that of an orange.

She hauled herself off the bed and examined her body again, realizing it was moronic to think her ass needed to emote. So, it was fuller. So, her old clothes didn’t fit. But finally, this past year, she had been fully content. She tossed her clothes into the closet.

Returning to the moonlit lake, Kate smiled all over.

Author bio:

Rebecca Nazar's work has appeared in Toasted Cheese, Everyday Fiction, Champagne Shivers, Aoife's Kiss, Bard and Sages, and other online and print publications. Her webpage rebeccanazar.com, with a full list, is currently down due to server problems, but she intends to launch it again very soon.

Artist bio:

Photograph by Giles C. Watson. Giles has been writing poetry and taking photographs for as long as he can remember, but more recently began painting and drawing in order to illustrate his own work. Giles also writes prose essays on natural history and mediaeval visual culture, is an avid walker and amateur naturalist, and has a keen interest in theatre. He has taught English, History, Drama, Sociology and Film. He is currently working on the libretto for a musical of his own. His photography can be viewed at his Flickr stream.