“Why is everyone afraid of these new sea creatures?” the boy asked his mother.

“I just need you to pack your bag right now, okay, sweetie?” his mother said, frantically stuffing a suitcase.

The boy slid a toy into his bag then paused, “Where is the Sea of Tranquility, anyway?”

David Malone is a writer and editor for a trade magazine in the Chicago suburbs. His fiction has appeared in Fiction Vortex and MiddleWestern Voice.