Fiction: A Stranger of Home

This month's Words for Wednesday prompts are provided by David M. Gascoigne and is hosted at Elephant's Child over here. This week's prompts are: elbows, imagine, canal, heavily, population and/or mocked months, annex, support, casino.

Fiction: A Stranger of Home
He finds everything familiar but a little strange. After all the work learning the ways, Moon Chow should be automatically doing everything as if he have done it before and yet, he is unable to proceed without some cautious double thinking. At his age (nearly 30), he is an adult but back home, he would be a child but he needs to forget that. He needs to forget everything he knew from before.
    This is his home-away-from-home permanent home now. His old home, long destroyed and in millions of pieces, can never be forgotten. If not for his foster father, Crud, Moon would have died with his family. But Crud has dumped Moon here and went off 'to farther education himself' as he puts it but Moon knows he is in some casino gambling away.
    But Crud has given Moon everything he needed - an identity, a house, a job as a janitor at a college and a driver's license though if asked, he should decline driving any automobile because he have not learned to drive but Crud said it's perfectly normal to never drive. Being somewhat lazy about names, Crud had picked Moon's name out of a menu at a cafe for a special named The Moon Chowder Jumble. His own name, Crud Pierce, came from a bet which Crud had lost along with his ship.
    As he shifts in the chair between a large man and a small woman, one of Moon's elbows hit the back of the chair. He imagines shrinking down and fitting in like water in a canal, moving in the same direction and blending in just enough not to be noticed he doesn't quite fit in.
    Should he have relied heavily on Crud's human annex? For four decades, Crud had been working on the annex while living around and studying humans. And for ten years Moon had knew Crud, he had been a great supporter of his annex. In this small town with a population under two thousand, where Crud had left Moon, it should be easy for Moon to fit in or so Crud had said. But Moon isn't sure he can trust Crud or his annex anymore.
    Two months ago, the Wilsons, who lived next door, had invited Moon to their holiday party and he had said yes because without Crud, Moon missed company. In this room, in the Wilson's house with the snow falling outside, Moon isn't sure why he misses Crud. It has been 367 days since he saw Crud. The man has barely been a father and he always refers to the annex instead of explaining things. The thought that Moon might never see Crud again freaks him out but he has resolved to continue no matter what.
    Looking again at the new faces, he is reminded he is alone and there is no cure for that except to make friends. Quietly, he plays with the veal he has cut to pieces. Overtime, he has found one person can be easy to get along with while another is like a thorn that pricks everyone. Mocking seems to be a favorite pastime. Moon has learned silence seems to be the best reply when someone mocks you, that, or just laugh along which to Moon is like accepting the ridicule so often he stays silent. He can picture people mocking Crud for being a lousy gambler but that wouldn't happen since Crud likes to get drunk afterward and hide somewhere to sleep off his losses.   
    It seems like Moon has been here for ages and yet, he still does not think of this small town as his home or the people here his friends and families. But he has learned, if someone engages him, he would engage back. That's how humans get along. He recalls the chapter on human relations but of course he is to forget everything he has learned because it should have been automatic. But as he raises his glasses to toast to happiness, he wonders if happiness is necessary to be human.