The Lunar Tab

It was a standard, miserable Tuesday in County Mayo when the Lunar Revenue Commissioners came knocking. Or rather, they didn’t knock. Instead, a pale, silver-gilded envelope drifted through the mail slot with an almighty clatter. Seán, who was currently flat out on the sofa mastering the fine art of doing absolutely feck all, groaned and picked it up. Inside was a piece of parchment that smelled faintly of ozone and ancient bog. FINAL NOTICE – BEFORE THE LADS COME ROUND Kip of a Creditor: The Moon (Earth's natural satellite) Absolute Chancer of a Debtor: Seán Ó Cathasaigh Damage: €20.00 Description: Outstanding tab for "grand and romantic lighting" provided during a trek through the fields, August 2024. Note: We don't take Revolut. Leave the exact change in an empty pint glass on your roof before the next full moon. If you don't, we’ll pull the tide back so far from the coast that the lads in Croke Park will hear the tourist board crying. Seán stared at the paper. Twenty euro. It was the absolute pinnacle of cosmic pettiness. He remembered that night vividly. It had been an unmitigated disaster of a date. The girl, Caoimhe O'Rourke, had spent three solid hours talking about her ex-fiancé’s silage harvester, and Seán, bored out of his tree and in a state of pure psychological despair, had looked up at the sky and muttered, "Jesus, the moon is pure class tonight. I’d gladly give you twenty quid if you’d just fall down and flatten me right now." Apparently, the universe was listening. And apparently, the universe didn't understand Irish hyperbole. The next night, after a few pints of plain, Seán stepped out the back of the pub, looked up at the glowing white disc, and roared into the damp night air: "You’re nothing but a giant rock, you utter header! You don't even have a bank account! Besides, the lighting was shocking. I'm not paying you a single cent!" The moon didn't answer. But a moment later, a heavy black cloud drifted right in front of it, perfectly forming the shape of a massive, celestial middle finger. Seán decided to ignore it. What was the moon going to do? Send the guards after him? Have him up in front of the judge? But the moon was not a creditor to be trifled with. It was an absolute animal for its money. The following week, things went absolute omnishambles. Every time Seán walked home from the pub after dark, a single, aggressively bright beam of moonlight followed him like a helicopter spotlight. He couldn't even nip down to the garage for a chicken fillet roll at midnight without looking like an escaped convict. Then, the plumbing got involved. The water in his shower began obeying its own localized tidal system—leaving him stranded in soap for twenty minutes at a time while the water "retreated." After two weeks of total sleep deprivation, Seán completely cracked. But he wasn't going to let a giant space rock get the better of him. No bleeding way. Seán had a cousin named Dano who ran a highly questionable printing operation out of a shed in Castlebar. For the price of a pint, Dano handed Seán a twenty-euro note that looked almost real, if you ignored the fact that Euroora’s face looked slightly cross-eyed and the paper felt exactly like a cheap napkin. "That'll do the grandest," Seán smirked. "The moon is 384,000 kilometers away. What’s it going to do, run it through a UV scanner?"