J-Rok sat on the edge of the bed with Nettie. She had on her white wig, her white high boots and she swung her little riding crop playfully. "So did you perceive it today?" she asked. She knew that he hadn't seen it; the toy telescope they used couldn't begin to penetrate the low solid filth clouds which covered the city, the country, the hemisphere. He didn't say anything. "So did you get anything from it?" she asked. He had no special feelings in his pants. He wore his leather collar and his grey hooded sweat shirt. Earlier that day they had been to the graveyard, it was a place where all the dead bodies lay, the souls, however, where hidden in the sky, behind the filth.

   She had walked through the graveyard nude, showing off her luminous skin. It was a cool day and of course, overcast, perfect for such adventures. Nettie jumped from the bed and perched herself by the fireplace. "I can manipulate the energies, J-Rok. I don't need to see with my eyes."

   "Of course you can." J-Rok nodded. But would she be able to manipulate the moon after it was gone? That was the question. They both knew that their Goddess had been raped and mutilated, hidden from them, was dying.

   "What about after they blow her up?" J-Rok asked boldly. "What then? Huh? I heard China has missiles up there now. I heard we were going to blow her up."

   Nettie crossed her legs one way and then another. "I don't know. She's alive now, we can't bury her before she is dead. Maybe something will happen. I've been working hard on it, Rok. If enough people exalt her, perhaps she will rise. The moon dies and is born again each month, She is by her nature a goddess of resurrection. Her mana is strong within me."

   J-Rok rolled his tongue around in his mouth, felt his decaying enamel. Everything had gone to hell. The whole human race was mineral deficient. Most of the woman were barren, and most of the men impotent. "You are so beautiful, Nettie." J-Rok said sadly. "So goddamn beautiful."

   "So are you good for tonight?" she asked him.

   "I want to go to the beach." he told her. It was late winter and the long stretches of beach were empty. "I want to play in the surf while we still have one; make sculptures in the wet sand. Wouldn't you like to see a fifteen foot penis?"

   "Would I?" she laughed, "But I would rather just see you. But you are ... bored, aren't you?"

   He shrugged.

   "The moon is weightless and invisible all around us. Don't you feel her teasing you, licking at your ears. Make her proud J-Rok. Do what is natural. I am your priestess. I need to be worshiped."

   "I am not like you, Nettie." he said lowly, "I can't perceive the moonbeams. I need to see."

   "It is day five in the ascension." she told him, "It is an ideal time, and whatever happens on this day, be it storm or bright skies, it is likely to follow suite. Fuck me for your goddess."

   He wiped at his mouth grimly, "Now wait a second."

   "You've got nothing, don't you?" she shook her head with disgust. "Fucking typical."

   "On the ninth day of the previous ascension," she said, "I hid my face from the new moon, even though she was hidden, I kept my beauty for you. On the tenth day of my first ascension I was born a restless uneasy soul. Don't you have anything for me?"

   "Do you have the rabbit?" he asked. "I need something, I need another ceremony. I am lost."

   "I have the rabbit." she said hopefully.

   "Mooncraft requires rabbits," he said, "You better not be lying, you better have the goddamn rabbit."

   "It's in the pen," she told him with a serious face, " born on the second day of the past ascension, born to flourish, born to die for you, to die for Her."

   "The world is what is dying," he told her, "the sky, and Her and I."

   "You've lost so much faith." Nettie said frowning. "Remember what my sister Sylvia has said, 'This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary.' Don't lose what remains. There is still good in this life."

   Nettie went to her chest and removed her implements of sacrifice. J-Rok sat beside the fireplace in a tight knot, looking small.

   "I dyed the rabbit pink." she told him, handing him the death's head mask. "I knew that today I would ask of you, and that today the rabbit would be sacrificed. The Mother Moon sits behind the sundry gauze of man, and though we can't see her, she is there, provoking us to continue, encouraging Her children to survive. You don't know though, because you are a man."

   J-Rok pulled the mask over his face. "I just need to see Her... but maybe the rabbit will do."

   "Bring forth the rabbit, weakling." she said.

   He opened the back door and found the rabbit bound in it's tiny cage.

   "You need to see her," Nettie lectured, "do you also require the sight of Thoth, Bridgit, Diana, Artemis, Shing-Moo, Lilith, Danu? You are lucky that you ever gleaned sight of her in your mortal life."

   The rabbit trembled in his hands.

   "Lay the beast on the alter of Luna." The Priestess instructed.

   He did as he was told.

   The Priestess looked at him with displeasure. She rolled her eyes and stuck a lollipop in the corner of her mouth. "If you want power," she said, "sometimes you have to do something unpleasant. You do want to have power, don't you?" She could tell by the way that his hands shook, that he had no stomach for blood. "I only pray," she said, licking her candy, "that the Moon which brings forth the wolf in men, will bring forth your wolf. Never has there been a time when the wolf was so needed."

   She handed him the knife, then put her hands upon the rabbit, grasping it tightly within her grip. "We have captured the rabbit in the woods." she spoke loudly, "We shall send it to Elysian Fields."

   He held the knife gingerly, hesitantly.

   She looked up at him, stared at him through his mask, and she saw in his eyes the same teary weak-founded resolve as the celebrities had shone back in 2017. 2017 was when Hollywood had took a stand against the strip mining of the moon. "Send your dollars," they had begged on all night telethons. They were weak because what the moon needed wasn't dollars, She needed blood, human blood."

   "Send the rabbit." she ordered J-Rok. "Send it's soul to be among the dead and the unborn. Drive your knife into it's heart and send it from this cursed earth."

   He gasped a deep breath, held it, and drove the knife home. The rabbit shrieked as it died.

   "You've done good, done good." she gasped. She wet her hands in the brilliant blood and pulled off J-Rok's mask. "Feel it, feel it," she moaned, rubbing the animal's blood into his face.

   He pulled her close.

   "Do you feel the power?" she cooed.

   "I don't know what power is anymore?" he said sadly, "Is power what is in between your legs? I mean, I think it is. I have no power."

   She pulled away from him and bit at her lower lip. "You are powerless still?"

   He fell to his knees, crying up at her, "You are the perfect priestess." he tried to console her, "You are perfect."

   "That remains to be seen." she said, going to the bed. Her eyebrows were plucked wicked things that danced when she laughed. She looked down to the floor and the dead rabbit, then closed her eyes. She removed the barrettes which held her wig in place, then let her own blonde hair flow long and wild. "Come to me," she said, "Let's make love and celebrate how great the Mother has been to us."

   He stood and threw his mask to the floor.

   "I can't!" he gasped, "I just need to see her, then I will be made whole. If only I could gaze upon her!"

   He ran out of the house and down the road screaming. "I must see her!" It had all started so innocently he thought, first they had opened the moon to tourists, then miners, then soldiers and missiles. Then they had taken her from him. He ran in agony of his incompleteness. He knew where he had to go, to the top.

   South Mount was the highest geographical point in the region. He struggled up the nearly impassable roads and passed the military bases. He climbed over a twelve foot barb-wire fence and onto the plateau. He was high enough, over the low hanging pollution. He saw her then, the moon in all Her pale glory. He outstretched his arms to Her and howled. A soldier's bullets went through his head.

   On the moon, near it's south pole, atop a mountain which housed a missile silo, the rabbit sat. J-Rok's soul joined it.