Story 1040: Dripping Moon

The moon had never looked right over the town of Corven Hollow.

It hung low, bloated and too close—so swollen that even the children whispered it looked like it might burst. The sky around it remained perpetually cloudless, as if the stars were afraid to blink in its presence.

Locals called it the Dripping Moon. And they meant it literally.

Every full moon, a clear, viscous liquid began to fall—not rain, not sap, but something far stranger. It smelled of metal and old milk. It stained rooftops, soaked into fields, and in time, warped everything it touched.

Elias Thorn, a botanist turned survivalist, kept records. He lived alone in a decrepit cottage surrounded by wilted sunflowers and traps lined with salt. He once taught college classes on fungal behavior. Now he cataloged the "Moon Drip."