Luna

A Flash Fiction story about a man and his dog... On the moon.

She cocked her head to the left, then to the right, then she turned to me and barked an accusation.

“What?” I teased. “It’s not my fault.”

Her butt wiggled with the anxious back and forth of her tail. Coiled pre-sprint, she waited for the ball to drift low enough.

She bolted forward. Her little paws, devoid of traction on the slick graphene floors, stumbled in the lunar gravity. Seeing the ball bounce back toward the dome again, she whimpered in defeat.

I didn’t have time to laugh before she flashed me the most adorable scrunchy-faced snarl.

It was my fault that she was here after all. No dogs allowed, and yet I smuggled her up here in a cryo pod designated for medical tissue samples. It was selfish, but after Jenny died, Luna had no one. Neither of us did.

Squatting over the mycelium mat I’d grown, her ears drooped, and her big personality seemed to deflate. Embarrassed by the indignity of it all, I imagined.

When she was done, I scooped the messy evidence into the bio-waste bin.

“Don’t worry, girl,” I said. “It’s food fertilizer.”

She growled in mock offense.

“For someone who licks their butt all day, you sure have opinions about our food supply.”

She covered her snout with one white paw.

Then I heard it, like a handful of ball bearings tossed at a passing car. Glass chipping, metal thunking, and the zing of ricochets tearing through the area.

A violent breeze whipped through the dome as the air rushed out of a dozen micro-meteor holes, sucking her ball up out of view.

The piercing whistle grew louder and louder, drowning out the sirens that followed.

I raced towards Luna, who was panicked and confused. Thanks to the ferrous ferric composite layers in the floors, the magnetic soles of my hab boots gave me the traction she lacked.

We only had minutes to get back to the main colony, under the surface, before the bulkheads were sealed.

After Luna, my next stop was the closest emergency cabinet to grab an oxygen canister and PPE. The survival suit was an ultra-thin, airtight foil suit with a universal oxygen connector. I tore open the small paper pouch and shook out what was essentially the emergency blanket of space.

Old-timers around Artemis Nexus joked that you only put one on so rescue teams could find the Recco reflector and collect your body for the composters. They weren’t far off. No thermal regulation, no shielding, and no guarantees. But I couldn’t stop thinking about how I wish they made one for dogs.

“Go, Luna. Go!” I shouted, still pressing down the nano-sealant flaps. Instantly, sweat drenched my back and started pooling in my boots.

Luna was already moving, but I couldn’t break into a sprint to catch up. The mag soles clamping to the deck weighed me down like walking through ankle-deep mud.

Inside the suit, my breath echoed, and my heartbeat thundered. With every movement, the foil crackled against my ears like static. I could barely hear the world outside. Except for the rising, desperate scream of the air tearing through the pinholes. It was the one sound I couldn’t escape.

Up ahead, Luna had stopped to look back for me. “Don’t stop, girl!”

Her claws skittered along the floor, going nowhere. I caught up to her and bent down to give her a good shove toward the central exit, and the blast door grinding down.

With the momentum behind her, she found her line and shot forward, low body skimming the floor. The bulkhead was dropping fast and was passing through knee height.

I was three strides behind in boots that wouldn’t let me run when she just squeezed under the door. Then it slammed shut with a heavy, final thud that pulsed through the ground.

I couldn’t see her through the viewport or tell if she was okay. All I saw was an empty corridor. Dropping to my knees, I pressed my ear to the door.

I could hear her. Muffled through a foot of bulkhead. She was scratching frantically. Digging at the metal, trying to get back to me.

“It’s okay, girl. You’re going to be okay.”

The shrieking whistle thinned and then stopped. An eerie silence grew in its place. The kind that signaled a hard vacuum.

Behind me, the corridor lights snapped off one by one in sequence. That darkness rushing towards me was bringing the unforgiving cold of space with it. I put my back to the door and faced the dark.

“I’m so sorry, girl.”

This Flash fiction story was written for the June 2026 Apex Magazine Flash Fiction Contest. “Sun Dogs and Moon Dogs”

Theme: The theme for the submission period of 6/7 to 6/30 is SUN DOGS & MOON DOGS. As with previous themes that had multiple interpretations, we will be open-minded in interpretations of this theme.

Some of my previous Flash Fiction Stories:

The Station

Gridlock

The Bounty

About Liminal Space Creative

As a Métis writer of short stories, flash fiction, and poems, I explore the grey areas of the human condition where love and sorrow pool together. My stories often blend genres, opening as one thing and shifting quietly into another, because the moments that change us forever rarely announce themselves.

Cover photo by Luke Stackpoole on Unsplash