October Moons

Chapter 1 Diamond “Di” Lamont was pretty sure she was going to go crazy. The lights in her first-floor office flickered and made a low buzzing sound that lingered in her brain like a bad headache. Her computer kept freezing every time she tried to load the new file for her design, which only made the looming deadline that much worse. It was only the first of October, still ten days away from Canadian Thanksgiving and even more days away from the Harvest Festival in Vineland, a small town in Southern Ontario, whose main industry was wine, wine, and more wine—but everyone wanted the promo material now. “And now always means three days ago,” Barb, Di’s co-worker, added. “So, we really have to get to work.” Di sighed. If she survived until the end of the day, she’d be shocked. Despite slugging away at the promotional material all morning, she seemed to only make things worse. The bright colors of red and orange were the only things she’d decided on for the banner of the festival, but now she worried they made her work look far more like a carnival barker’s tent than a distinguished flyer that she’d been tasked to create. She peered over her computer to see if Barb was still around or if she’d flaked off after reminding her of the deadline yet again. Barb was a nice woman, but she sometimes suffered from chronic forgetfulness, which she tried to make up for by reminding everyone else of obvious things. Like this deadline, and their boss, Cindy’s, impatience. Barb was the only other full-time employee in the PR department for the small town’s tourism office. While Barb did the text-based material, Di did the graphic design, and they sent it over to Cindy to criticize or implement. Somehow during all other months of the year, they had made it work. But Di already felt the October dread creeping into her system. Barb was nowhere to be seen. Di looked at the clock on her computer screen and realized it, too, was lagging behind. A quick check into her purse for her phone and she noticed it was well into her lunch hour. No wonder everything is so damn hard. I’m starving. Normal frustration mixed with hunger never ended up well. Di reached into her desk to grab her lunch, but soon realized that she couldn’t eat at her desk like she normally did. Her constant checking of her design would only make her even crazier. A quick glimpse out her office window confirmed that the misty morning she’d noticed on the bus to work had since passed and become stunning. Almost downright picturesque. Huh. Maybe there is something to those Vineland Postcards. As much as Di spent her days in the ins and outs of the small town’s history, industry, and cultural legacy for her job in tourism, she had only barely explored the surface of the small town. Her office building was at the end of a long road, surrounded by a mom and pop diner and grocery store, but there were several parks, hiking trails, and a section of the Twenty Mile Creek that were open to locals and tourists alike. There were several signs mounted along the pathway, declaring historical events and personages the paths were named after, along with flora and fauna. Di followed one of those well-worn paths now. She diverted passed a park filled with young mothers and their baby buggies and kept going until she found a bench that was surrounded by thick trees. Their leaves were ample, and still green, but she spotted a shade of red-orange at the tip of one. It had seemed so much like summer only three days earlier when she’d worn shorts to the grocery store. Now? Now she felt time slipping away. Di’s dour mood seemed to pass the moment she finished her sandwich. She checked her phone, and still having fifteen minutes left, she decided to explore. She followed the pavement pathway until she noticed a creek bed and the sounds of rushing water. She read the plaque close by that it was a part of the Twenty Mile Creek water system, and contained an ample amount of local plant life. A patron was also thanked for the placement of the plaque. Di moved away from the pathway so she could look at the water. She didn’t think she’d find anything interesting—in spite of what the plaque said—mostly because she’d grown up in Toronto. If there was ever anything in the Lake Ontario stretches around one of the biggest cities (and therefore most polluted areas) in Canada, then you didn’t want to be near it. But this creek bed was clear. The rocks under the water were dotted with green and brown algae. Little bugs—maybe minnows or tadpoles, she wasn’t quite sure—skated across the surface. Once again, everything here seemed picturesque. Di’s badly dyed hair, her casual black pants, and a long-sleeved shirt under her worn athletic jacket made her feel conspicuous. She didn’t fit in this small town Canadania, did she? She had only lived here for the past year, but it was so different than Toronto. Everyone in the big city was a weirdo. But here, she seemed like the only one—and close to the only lesbian. Single lesbian, at least. Thoughts of Claudia, her ex, still upset her, so Di shoved them aside. She walked around the perimeter of the creek, readying herself to get back to work on her design, but she soon stopped. She swore she saw something bright blue through the grass on the other side of the small body of water. Not a sky blue, but the kind of blue that stood out even in the dark. She pushed passed some tall grass, toward an area that was not maintained or seemingly for public use. A sign was planted close by that declared this water unsafe during the winter, as there was no maintenance. No Public Use From October To April. “Oh,” Di said aloud. She stopped. It was technically October. Would she get a fine for being here? She looked over her shoulder, saw no one else around, and decided to keep going. She swore she heard the rush of water; as if the small creek was now a fast-moving stream. She hoped for fish like she’d read on the plaque. She hoped for animal life too, and remembered vaguely the red fox she’d come across one morning before work. She walked past the sign and toward an area of thick tree coverage. Some were birch and their white bark always made her stop and touch their surface. She looked up, and through the trees, the white orb of a full moon was visible in the blue of the daylight sky. She smiled again. Then she heard a distinct splash. She walked past the birch trees toward the sound. She emerged on the other side of long grass and skinny trees and faced a pile of clothing. Most were the blue from before, now coupled with sneakers and a T-shirt with a strange logo on it. Maybe a bunny? She stepped closer to see what the shirt said, but then stopped. The splashing was continuing. After some rocks and many weeds, another larger creek emerged. Its water was still, though, so the splashes could only be from someone swimming in it. Di stepped closer to the creek’s edge and noticed a woman. Her hair was long and almost golden as it was flattened against her back from her motions. She was naked, her skin pale and covered in patches of freckles along her back. She was moving back and forth lengthwise in the water, as if she was searching for something, rather than doing laps. When she poked her head out of the water, she ran her hands over her hair. Then down her naked chest, where her breasts seemed even more rounded under the faint moon in the daylight sky. Di stopped. The woman’s n*****s had gone erect and her body reacted in much the same way. She shouldn’t be here. She should leave the woman in peace. Yet she could not stop staring at the woman’s bare chest. Her breasts were small, but they were almost perfectly symmetrical. They had no sag, as if always supported and formed to a goddess’s figure. This perfection, coupled with the way the woman was half in and out of the water, she seemed downright like a mermaid. Di swallowed hard. The woman was emerging from the water on the other side of the creek. She hadn’t seen Di. She was clearly completely naked, too. Di waited. She could not move. Just as the woman’s waist emerged, Di touched her neck. Her skin was hot, flushed. She concocted a dozen fantasies in her mind, debated calling in sick for the rest of her shift, in order to frolic with a naiad the rest of the day. Or with a stunning woman, free of inhibitions, and clearly longing to be watched. When the woman fully emerged from the water, though, Di didn’t see what she expected. A flaccid p***s hung between her legs. Di paused. The woman bent a leg so her genitals were obscured, then she moved again and unveiled it. Each time she walked around the shore, the p***s was hidden and then emerged again. But it was definitely a p***s, Di knew that for sure. She surveyed the woman’s breasts. Then her p***s again. She did this several times before she fully understood what she was looking at. “Oh,” Di said again. The woman’s head snapped toward her. She’d been gathering stuff on the opposite end of the shore, a few feet away from where her clothing was piled, and her back had been to the area where Di was. She froze from her position, her leg obscuring her most private parts. Her breasts were still unveiled, and a necklace between them caught a fraction of the sunlight and reflected it back to Di. She held her hand over her face to brace herself from the light. A sudden splash occurred. The woman was swimming again, much faster now, back toward her clothing. She’d been caught. Di held her breath, unsure of what to do. Did she apologize? Introduce herself? Take off her clothing too so that they were even? She didn’t get a chance to decide. The woman emerged from the creek and snapped up her clothing in a rush. “Wait!” Di said. The woman did not wait. She was running in another direction, toward thicker woods that Di had not come from. Her clothing was mostly in her arms, her feet in the sandals that had been along the side of her clothing. Di tried to run around the perimeter of the creek, hoping for a connection, but her feet sunk lower in a part that was mostly mud. She cascaded downwards and only sheer force of will prevented her from sliding head first into the creek with all her clothing on, and her cell phone, and her lunch bag. “s**t. s**t. Son of a—” Di struggled to right herself and then sighed. Her pants were half-covered in mud. She rubbed her palms over her pants to skim some of it off, but it was no use. There was nothing around here to use and her cell phone reminded her, over and over, that her lunch time was over. “What a f*****g s**t day,” Di said as she stomped back through the woods, the paved pathway, and toward the road that led to the tourism office. When just about everyone in the town seemed to gawk at her mud-covered lowered half, she felt the tension build in her head. “Goddammit,” she cursed under her breath. “If I last all of October, I will be shocked.”