The sun was already up that morning when I found out Morton died. I walked out to the backyard and saw him laying there, limp. I forgot to bring him in last night, and we had another thunderstorm. I should have brought him in two weeks ago, but I got lazy. Now here he was, his normally bright-green flesh a pale brown, laying on his side, his spines brushing against the edge of his pot. I went back inside.

Allie arrived that afternoon. I greeted her at the door with the sad news.

“Morton died,” I said.

“Oh, shit,” Allie said. She covered her mouth with her hand.

“I left him out last night and I guess he got too much water.”

I led her through the house to soggy cactus in the backyard. Allie knelt down next to Morton.

“Should we have a cactus funeral then?” I said.

“Nah,” she said. She picked up Morton by the pot and walked over to the end of the yard. At the place where the fence met the grass, she turned him over and shook. Morton plopped when he hit the ground. “Back where you came from, Morton.”

“Very poetic,” I said. Allie laughed.

“So,” she said, “what do you think happens when we die?”

I shrugged. “Maybe there’s a cactus heaven for all of us.”

“I think you return to the Earth. Like Morton.”

“So when the Earth dies, does it return to space?”

“Stardust,” she said.

“That’s a bit new-agey for me. We better get going.”

The mall was packed that day. Crowds of people were flowing in and out of the main entrance, and the automatic door stayed open. A pack of goth kids lined the outer wall by the movie theater, all sitting in a row. A few smoked cigarettes as they watched the line of people that wound through the belts and poles that led to the ticket counter.

“So you never answered my question,” Allie said as we waited in the ticket line.

“What question?”

“About where you go when you die.”

“Geez I don’t know,” I said.

“Come on.”

“I guess nothing? Just like blackness I guess.”

“No way, that’s lame,” said Allie.

“I mean it just makes sense. If your brain is dead.”

“But then how can there be blackness if you don’t exist anymore?”

“Well not blackness. Just like nothing.”

Allie sighed. “That’s really lame.”

Inside the theater lobby was the oppressive smell of buttered popcorn. Swirls of cartoon colored light snaked along the starry background of the sticky carpet. Kids ran past us, screaming, holding much-too-large soda cups. We made it to the theater just as the previews were ending.

It was a science fiction movie. A private investigator working for a megacorp is following an employee the company thinks is embezzling money. He befriends the guy. In an attempt to stay undercover, the investigator has to do some kind of space drugs with him. Mushrooms or something. As the investigator start losing his mind, he realizes the embezzler is siphoning funds to give to a group of off-world miners the megacorp is keeping in a kind of debt slavery. Having a change of heart, he returns to the megacorp to tell them the would-be embezzler is clean, collects his check, and leaves. The movie ends with the megacorp president, unable to build a case against the embezzler, telling his secretary to just have him killed.

Allie drove us home that night. As we turned onto a residential street, one of the ones with the bird names, a deep thunk rang out and shook the car. Allie slammed on the brakes.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” she said.

“You better not have hit a squirrel.”

“Don’t joke about that.” Her face was red.

We got out of the car to investigate, but we already saw the smoke rising from the hood of the car. Smelled the rotten oily smell, the smell of a dead machine.

“Goddammit.”

I called for a tow truck. They said it would be a 45 minute wait. We sat on the curb of Oriole Street or Mockingbird or whatever. The stars were out, and a full moon.

“Scorpio’s in the moon house, you know,” I said.

“Damn, you did your research. But it’s moon in Scorpio, not Scorpio in the moon.”

“Wait, that’s a real thing?”

“I know you just googled it. Don’t try to tell me you just made that up.”

“I just made it up.”

Allie rolled her eyes.

“Swear to God.”

“You’re so full of shit.”

“So what does that mean?” I asked.

“What?”

“The moon in Scorpio.”

“You really want to know?”

“Yeah.”

“Well you need to know the sun is in Taurus. Which represents stability, self, and material form. The moon in Scorpio represents transformation and the other. So with the full moon, we’re called to find the balance between both energies. Which means manifesting what’s within us. Emotional declarations.”

I gave my best Jim-from-The-Office face and nodded. The stars were out in full. I made out the few constellations I knew - Orion and one of the dippers. The summer night’s air was just warm enough to be invisible. I looked at the bright yellow of the moon and the familiar patterns of its surface. We heard the high chatter of the cicadas. We sat for a while in silence.

“It’s nice.”

“Yeah.”