And Then, We Woke Up

Buzz is leaning over a tray of stale donuts, eyes like roadkill. Neil’s in the corner, chain-smoking unfiltered Camels, shirt off, muttering about “giant steps for mankind” between each drag. And Aldrin—poor bastard—he’s passed out, face-first on a couch, snoring through the morning news like a tranquilized bear.

Stanley Kubrick stands behind the camera, yelling “Cut!” for the seventeenth time. Sweat drips down his forehead, his eyes bloodshot and twitchy. The studio’s buzzing—fifteen grips, twenty stagehands, all moving props around like chess pieces on a board that shouldn’t exist.

They’ve spent six months building the moon from scratch. Plaster, gravel, a thousand cans of gray paint, enough to coat every lie they’ll tell the American public. The lunar module’s just cardboard and tinfoil, hanging from wires so thin they’d snap if Buzz sneezed. The flag—they even got that wrong. Waves too much in the breeze. There’s no breeze on the moon. So now they’re rigging it with fish hooks and wire.

“I’m telling you, Neil, it’s never gonna work,” Kubrick mutters, pacing. “You can’t fake this kind of thing.”

But Neil’s still there, sucking down the smoke, eyes distant, staring at the mural of stars painted on the studio wall. Bright, fake constellations, sprayed on like graffiti. And behind it, behind the black backdrop, just empty nothing.

“We’ll make it work,” Neil says. “We have to.”

The President’s orders. Get there first. Get there somehow. Lie, cheat, build a mountain of bodies if you have to, but America has to win. The Red Scare, the Cuban Crisis, the whole world holding its breath, waiting for that first giant leap. And if you can’t deliver?

You fake it.

Six hundred million people will be watching. Every TV set in the world, tuned to this cheap studio in Burbank. And no one can know. Not the Russians. Not the public. Not even their own families. It’s all a dream. America’s greatest magic trick.

But here’s the funny thing about dreams: stay in them long enough, and they start bleeding into reality.

They run the scene again, and again. Buzz’s voice, monotone and robotic. “That’s one small step…” His foot hovers over the studio floor, hesitates.

“Cut!” Kubrick screams.

And then, the impossible.

Buzz’s boot sinks.

Not into the dust. Not through the plaster. But into the ground. Like the floor just dissolves, and Buzz stumbles, hands flailing.

“Jesus, Buzz, watch it—” Neil lunges, grabs him, and yanks him back. Kubrick’s white as a ghost.

Buzz stares down. “I—what the hell?”

The ground where his boot landed—it’s not just broken. It’s gone. A black, yawning void, like a hole punched through the universe.

“Stan, you seein’ this?” Buzz whispers.

Kubrick just shakes his head, stammering. “The hell kind of trick is this?”

No one moves. The lights flicker. The air hums, vibrates, like a tuning fork struck deep underground. And then Neil, cigarette still dangling from his lips, kneels beside the hole, reaches out, and touches it.

Nothing.

No floor. No ground. His hand just vanishes up to the wrist. He pulls back, breath hitching.

“Jesus Christ, Neil, don’t—” Kubrick’s voice cracks. Everyone’s backing up now, scrambling over equipment.

Neil’s staring at his hand, at the missing space where the studio used to be.

“Feels… cold,” he murmurs. “Like ice.”

Buzz leans forward, fingers trembling, eyes wide. “You think it’s some kind of—”

But before he can finish, the hole moves.

The entire set trembles. Walls groan, dust falling. And in the middle of the soundstage, that black circle widens. Expands. Eats up the floor, swallows the props. And through it, through that endless, impossible darkness, something shifts. A ripple, a flash. Stars.

Not painted stars. Real stars. Blazing, furious constellations. And beyond them, a horizon of gray. Barren, cragged.

It’s the moon.

The real moon.

“Cut the goddamn cameras!” Kubrick’s screaming now, waving his arms, backing away. But it’s too late. The camera’s rolling. The tape’s spinning. And there, on the screen, Neil’s face reflected in Buzz’s helmet, a mirror of confusion and awe.

“Stan,” Neil breathes. “Stan, what is this?”

And then the ground cracks open, and the whole set splits in two.

The backdrop, the cardboard mountains—everything collapses, shatters, and they’re falling, tumbling, gasping for air because there’s no air. The world turns inside out, the void stretching wide, swallowing them whole, and the last thing Neil sees is Kubrick’s face—mouth open in a scream—and the cameras, still filming, red lights blinking like eyes.

Then nothing.

When Neil wakes, he’s lying in dust. Cold. Thin. Alien.

He sits up, breath ragged, chest heaving. Buzz is beside him, helmet cracked, blood trickling down his temple. They’re not in the studio. Not on Earth.

They’re on the moon.

The real moon.

The American flag flutters beside them. The footprints, the tracks—it’s all there. But the set, the props, the cameras—they’re gone. Just stars and silence.

Neil swallows, tastes iron. “Buzz…?”

Buzz coughs, groans. “What… the hell happened?”

Neil doesn’t answer. Can’t. He’s staring at his own hand, at the dust, the craters, the Earth hanging in the sky. He remembers falling. Tumbling through that hole in the universe. And now—

“Stanley,” Buzz whispers, eyes wide. “Where’s… where’s Stanley?”

And there, on the horizon, something moves. A figure. Shambling. Unsteady.

It’s Kubrick.

Helmet cracked, suit ripped. Eyes wild, bloodshot. He stumbles, collapses. He shouldn’t be here. Shouldn’t be breathing. But he is.

He’s holding the camera.

“Stan?” Neil gasps, stumbling to his feet. “How—”

Kubrick just smiles. A mad, lopsided grin, eyes blazing. He raises the camera, and the red light blinks.

“Cut,” he rasps. “That’s… a wrap.”

And then he falls forward, helmet shattering.

Neil stares, heart pounding, hands shaking.

The tape’s still running. Spinning.

And there, on the tiny screen, Neil sees it. Sees them.

His own face. His own body. Back in the studio. Still there, still standing, still acting. Going through the motions.

He’s here. And he’s there. Both at once. The lie, the illusion, bleeding into reality.

Because here’s the thing about pretending to walk on the moon:

Sometimes, you pretend hard enough that it becomes real.

And sometimes, the lie becomes so real that the truth has to change to catch up.

Buzz’s voice crackles in his earpiece, quiet. “Neil… what do we do?”

Neil swallows, staring at the impossible horizon. He looks down, at the dust, at the camera still blinking.

“Simple,” he murmurs. “We make it work.”

And with that, he picks up the camera, raises it to his face, and smiles.

“This is Neil Armstrong, reporting live from the moon,” he says softly. “And let me tell you, folks… it’s beautiful up here.”

This short story is part of my compilation of short stories, Dream City and Other Stories.

Want more? Dive into Dream City and Other Stories—a collection that lives in the shadows, that keeps you guessing, keeps you wanting just one more page.