Brett stood on the shoreline, watching the boats shine green off the starboard as the sky dimmed to a dusky grey with a scattering of stars daring to peek through before the sun officially made her exit. 

He was distraught. 

His dog had just died.

It had been his since childhood, a mangy mutt that his dad adopted from his brother's farm up north. Brett could still remember the day Mooch came to live with them. He earned his name at the dinner table that evening. Later that night, the dog slept on the floor next to Brett's bed, which he continued to do for the next fourteen years. The dog traveled with him from home to college, and when Brett decided college was not for him, Mooch moved with him into an unpleasant basement apartment too.

The point was the dog was always there. For better or worse, in sickness and health, the damn dog stuck by his side the whole time, nipping at his heels and begging for food. Brett didn't know what to do when the animal started to show signs of illness. Or maybe it was just old age, the way Mooch slept all day long and snapped at Brett's fingers, growling, when he offered a morsel of his dinner. Brett honestly hadn't seen it coming. It's not like he'd had a dog before. He didn't know that Mooch was in the process of slowly removing himself from the world. 

On Monday when he walked in with the groceries and Mooch wasn't in his normal spot on the couch where it was sunny, Brett didn't immediately panic. He put everything away but the treats and proceeded to call his dog. It was the one thing still guaranteed to get Mooch moving. 

Only Mooch didn't come. 

Brett looked all around the apartment, even checked to see if he'd leapt into the bathroom to hide, not that Mooch had been up to such feats lately. That's when he got the bad feeling in the pit of his stomach. Pure dread. Like he was going to throw up, but he didn't know why. At that point he was still blocking the possibility from his mind. He walked down the hall slowly, painfully drawing out the steps, and retraced his path through the living room. 

"Mooch?" he asked gently. 

No response. 

Brett knelt gingerly and peeked beneath the sofa, and there was Mooch, appearing to be in a deep sleep. But something behind Brett's eyes cracked open at that moment, the truth, and he knew. There was no pretending anymore. 

The dog was dead. 

He stood up and stared at the treat in the palm of his hand. Walked into the kitchen. Dumped it in the trash. Washed his hands. And looked out the window. Just as he was now looking at the boats in the lake all headed home before daylight was gone.

Since Mooch's death, Brett had been all out of sorts. It was like the world around him shifted slightly to reflect the chaos of his thoughts. He couldn't find socks that matched. The milk always ended up on the counter, no matter how many times he put it away. His chin always itched, even though he shaved conscientiously every single morning. 

And there was always something in the corner of his eye. At first he thought it was Mooch but then he remembered Mooch was dead. Then he thought it was his shadow, but when he turned to look, it disappeared. Finally he vowed to get his eyesight checked, but not quite yet because he  couldn't gather the energy to look up the optometrist's number and make an appointment.

Maybe it was the drinking. Probably it was the drinking.

Brett took a swig from the bottle he held loosely by his side. 

He thought about all of these things as he looked out across the water and observed the little waves lapping the side of the dock at the resort a parking lot away. He supposed he should make that call the next day, first thing, but there were a lot of things he needed to do. The problem was motivation. It vanished the day Mooch died. What was the point in getting his eyes checked if they were one day going to be jelly in their sockets? Of quitting drinking before one day he just didn't wake up? Everything that now moved and breathed would stop eventually; the upkeep hardly seemed worth it. 

Brett itched his chin. The sun dipped beneath the horizon. The stars, which had seemed so shy before, got bolder and twinkled off the water below. The way their reflection made him feel was probably like how a cat felt when someone was shooting one of those lasers all around the room to try to make it go crazy.

He felt crazy.

He wanted to go jump off that resort's dock and swim out to meet the pretty blinking stars that were dancing and leaping around the lake. It was the first thing he really desired since Mooch died, to catch one of those stars. 

Things got a little blurry then. He heard shattering glass. His legs were moving, fast, and his arms pumped alongside him as he ran out on that dock. He caught sight of one of the stars on the black water, and it bobbed from side to side as the water tossed it to and fro. He reached for it, lurched, stretched, and his fingers closed on nothing.

Brett was aware of feeling weightless and the sensation that one moment he was breathing and the next he was not. He was not worried, though. His stomach didn't clench like it did when he had a difficult conversation or when he fretted about whether his rent check would bounce.

Sinking was peaceful, almost pleasant. 

He felt sure he wasn't alone in the water. The lingering presence that had been following him around ever since Mooch died was there, too. But the idea of a ghost sinking with him beneath the waves--that was just silly. He couldn't hold the thought in his mind. He was tired, just so tired, and he wanted to go to sleep. 

Damn the stars, was his last conscious thought. Damn them all.