Under a Full Moon

If I could stop. If I could go back. It would be different. It would be better or I would understand, but it’s no use. I know what happened that night under a full moon. Now every day life is a façade, I wear a mask concealing the truth. Every night I relive those fatal moments.
It was the largest moon I’d ever seen; silver, glowing, beckoning me outside. So I obeyed, I slipped into my trainers and tripped over the untied laces and groped around for my coat. The warm wool comforted me and I was convinced I had to go.
I walked, I stumbled, following the moon, until at last I arrived at the edge of a cliff. Stones tapped down the side, their sound disappearing below, nothing at the bottom but darkness shadowed beyond the moon’s light, except there was something in the nothingness. The feeling of being a child enveloped me, scared of the monsters under the bed, hiding under the covers. But at twenty-five, alone on the cliff top there was no Mum and Dad to save me.
I blinked. One second, but in that second it all changed. My eyes reopened and the moon was gone. The sky around me was a black canvas, no star, no cloud, but most obviously no moon. Without the moon there was no cliff edge, there was no light, I was in a dark waterless sea, terrified and yet disbelieving.
I died that night, I made the wrong step, and without my sight my feet had no sense of direction. I fell, grazing every surface of my skin as I scarred the rocks fierce edges. But I never landed.
That’s not exactly true, I must have landed, but I landed back at the top, standing on the cliff edge, under the full moon, the light touching the land as far as I could see. A dream? Perhaps, but that wouldn’t account for the rips in my clothing, my missing shoe, the blood smeared across my skin and the droplets trickling from my eyes.
I died that night but I’m still alive. Because of the mask I look the same but I know I’m someone different.