By Lauren Osborn
And of every living thing of all flesh, you shall bring two of every kind into the ark, to keep them alive with you.
— Genesis 6:19
On the first day of the end of the world, she finds a spider in her kitchen. Or perhaps it’s not the end of the world, but the end of the beginning. It’s all perspective, she thinks as she washes dishes. Her hands scald red beneath the tap. A clock hangs on her wall, its arms frozen at nine and three as if expecting an embrace. It’s been stuck like that for a week, but she no longer cares. The difference between 9:15 a.m. and 9:15 p.m. is irrelevant when there’s nothing to be late for. Nothing to do. As she’s drying the last of her souvenir mugs, a spider crawls across the countertop. Its seed-like body is slick under the fluorescent lights. Its legs twitch on the yellow-stained ceramic. She traps it beneath an empty jam jar.
And who might you be? she asks.
The spider doesn’t answer.
She supposes she might as well keep it. Her first pet. Before the end times, her nine-to-five made it difficult to care for much more than meetings and paperwork. Paperwork and meetings. Now she has this to care for. This and herself.
I’ll name you Jam.
She places Jam on her nightstand where she watches the spider race around the bottom of the jar like a horse track in miniature. She imagines tomorrow she’ll find it a friend. A fellow competitor. She’ll invite the entire neighborhood to come place bets on her insect derby. She laughs and turns off the lamp. The drum of its eight legs against the glass echoes in her dreams like the sound of rain. As hard as she tries, she can’t contain the downpour.
~
The next morning, news channels echo reports of mass wildfires. The sky outside her window is choked with smog. The spider sits still at the bottom of the jar, its legs a clenched fist. She doesn’t bother with dressing today. She spends the afternoon in her garden on hands and knees—mud plastering her fingernails, dust caking in the petal-thin skin of her elbow pits. She plucks beetles from their borrows, snags weevils from weeds, cusps bees still buzzing in the hollow of yellow flowers. She thinks if she can save one crawling thing, she might be redeemed. If she can save one thing, someday she might be able to save them all.
The hard day’s work is rewarded with three weevils, a crushed bee, a powder blue roly-poly, and a glass of red wine to soothe her bee-swollen fingers. She spends the rest of the evening listening to the hiss of television static, dreaming of snow.
By the third day, all broadcasts have flickered out. No more news reporters hiding their worry behind pink lipstick and stiff sprayed hair. No more statistics about survivability. The silence collects in the corners of her house like cobwebs. She opens her front door, hoping to see someone—anyone—on the other side. Instead, a queue of insects waits for her on the sidewalk; two of every kind. The first pair look like lightning bugs. They blink twice as they flit past her feet, as if saying thank you, thank you. Red roaches, dragonflies, even mites as small as dust specks slip their way inside. She holds open the door. The snails are the last to enter, dragging a slick trail over her welcome mat. She decides to allow it. There’s no time to argue. Her living room is papered with wings and legs and antennae. The air vibrates with their iridescence. Once in bed, a scarab settles in the curve of her neck, a moth on each eyelid. She tries to ignore them, tries to fall asleep despite the humming in her ears. The moths drink the tears off her cheeks with spiraled tongues. The crickets court themselves in the darkness.
The rain starts on the fourth day. It drips from the sky at first, as if apologetic for interrupting her party. A few stray creatures scuttle under her door before the sky cracks with light, breaches. She gathers all her pots and pans, creating boats from Tupperware and rafts from last month’s Home & Garden magazines. She’s underprepared, she thinks. It’s all happening too fast. By the fifth day, the water washes into her carpet, soaking her socks. The insects gather high—collecting on the ceiling and the tops of her shelves. A few nest in her hair. She doesn’t have the heart to pick them out, always having pitied those who must rely on another. She hopes they like the smell of strawberry shampoo, she thinks. It’s all she has left.
On the sixth day, she decides to wing it. She ties the furniture together with shoestrings and sewing thread, a pair of jeans she hasn’t worn since college. Her couch is semi-buoyant; the cheap cushions float well. She pushes the couch out the door along with whatever else is light enough to resist the tide. The lepidopterans perch on the roof, drying their scaled wings. Other insects cling to lamp shades and picture frames. A pair of yellow isopods float by on a rubber duck. Two mantises pray together on a plastic houseplant. She treads water. Perhaps she should have planned better, she thinks. The water is peppered with hybrid cars and plastic bags. It glistens with empty bean cans and broken glass. The more resourceful of the creatures, such as the ants and termites, use the floating trash as makeshift boats. Others find sanctuary on the bodies who couldn’t swim fast enough. She tries not to look, but can’t help herself.
As the flood rises, more segmented bodies cling to her own. She opens her mouth for pink-banded millipedes to take refuge on the warmth of her tongue. Bees vibrate against her teeth. Cicadas tremble in her throat. She fights the urge to spit them out. Their songs echo in her chest, replacing her need to scream. On the seventh day, the dragonflies and wasps team together to lift her from the water. Her feet dangle free like a child’s. She ascends a dripping saint above it all, and from above, she can finally witness the totality of devastation. Earth, scoured bright and smooth. Sunlight dazzles from the water’s surface. She can no longer identify the ruin of her neighborhood; the theater where she had her first kiss, Harry and Sally flickering on the silver screen, while another’s tongue teased between her buttered lips; the mall she worked her first job—dealing hordes of water-logged clutches and sunken jewels, jeans she hasn’t worn since college and knows she’ll never wear again. As the bees begin to hive in her lungs, she realizes they never needed her saving. None of them did. She sees that even now, as the sun sheds the last of its light across the horizon, across the sea of single-use plastics and oil-slicked waste, across the clouds of insects twirling in triumphant dance—something better has begun to flourish in her place.
Lauren Osborn lives and writes in Stillwater, OK, with her family of tarantulas, isopods, snakes, a chinchilla, an axolotl, a tortoise, a starling, and a husband. She earned her MFA from Queen’s University of Charlotte and is a current PhD candidate at Oklahoma State University. Her writing has appeared in The Adroit, DIAGRAM, The Los Angeles Review, and elsewhere. You can read more of her stories at www.laureneosborn.com.