The formula for how to end the world got published the same day I married the girl who used to bully me in middle school. We found out about it the morning after, on the first day of our honeymoon in Cozumel. I got out of the shower in our small bungalow and Minju was sitting in bed, staring at her laptop.
Gladys was approaching her first heat when she shed her fur and lost her tail. The transformation was unintentional, and unwanted. When she awoke in her new form, smelling of skin and sweat, she wailed for her pack in a voice that scraped her throat raw.
The customer shakes me until his disc drops into the bin below. Please take your receipt, sir. He kicks me in the side and says, “Thanks for nothing, you piece of shit vending machine!”
Daniel’s birthday happened to be an F day in Brooklyn. The soldiers at FEMA’s Navy Yard outpost would let Morgan Foster through today. They would let her charge a power bank for a few minutes.
On a Tuesday night, I hang the lamp on the hook beside my front door. When I light it, the oceanic darkness that surrounds the house steps back, away from my hands, away from my face. For a moment, I stand on my porch and look down the long driveway, and I guess what creatures might exist out there, circling around me, living invisibly.
“Please also be reminded of the following prohibited items,” the clerk explains kindly. “No chemicals or toxic substances. No fluids over 1,000 milliliters. No lithium batteries, laptop chargers and power banks, no love, no light, no family, no safety.”
Vans and campers, sizeable mobile cabins and some that were barely more than tents. Each one a home, a storefront, and a statement of identity, from the colorful translucent windows and domes that harvested sunlight to the stickers and graffiti that attested to places travelled.
