Something’s growing. The air-conditioner was set to fan. Every second or so the tap-tap-tap of rain water dripping from the roof above and reverberated through the ancient Sears cooling system. The windows hadn’t been cleaned in over a year and their filth pulled a grey film over what was already a grey day. Wednesday, April 15th. Sonia was waiting it out; seeing what would happen if – that old “what if?” She was going to find out. She broke off a piece of baguette and looked out across the backyard of her apartment. The building a block away facing her kitchen window was three floors taller; and ugly. Her cactus inside the window sill was dying. That was a “what if” she already knew the answer to. The rain hadn’t stopped in sixty-two days.
The fruit all over the East Coast was riper than any human being could take responsibility for. People had stopped mowing their lawns over a month ago and all attempts to control wild ferns, weeds, bushes and vines were exhausted. Thick green plants had taken over the tomatoes and the basil. Fresh, almost mint aromas had been replaced by thick rotting overly done shrubs and roots. The earth was too supple; too hearty. The kind of heartiness found in tropical rainforests. This was the kind of environment that supported new life; new life that consumes and thrives off of old life. Sonia was old life now. In her kitchen, in a row-house in Queens, she was twenty-two and she was old.
A preying mantis the size of her hand hopped up against the window outside on top of the air-conditioner. It shielded itself from the rain and peered inside Sonia’s dimly lit apartment. It moved in closer and tapped the window with is pointy frame. Sonia didn’t used to mind preying mantises but now she shuddered at the thought of them. She knew that this one was likely to do the same thing as the last one she let in – fly to the strongest light source over the vanity mirror in the bathroom and eventually underestimate the heat of the lamp and burn to death before falling in the sink. Perhaps it was this same guy that came to her window the previous two days, but she wasn’t giving in. She wasn’t letting another living soul into her apartment. As it was, she already had enough unwelcome guests.
Since day twenty-three of the rain, Sonia had spotted numerous breeds of millipedes and over-sized beetles roaming around her apartment. Roach spray and boric acid worked for a couple days but then they were back and nothing worked. Now she kept her feet off the floor as much as possible while these beings inched and hopped their way across her kitchen and living room floors. They were slowly making their way to her bedroom where she was sure they would take up permanent residence. The eminent arrival of that day terrified her more than she could admit to herself, but right now she was furious. She was furious and she hadn’t gotten a proper night of sleep in over a month. Since the beetles started getting bigger, Sonia started developing a real fear of them. She must’ve killed hundreds of them when they first started appearing but only more came. As they began making their way through her living room, they started to make a sound – a unified sound – a sort of buzz-like humming sound that rattled Sonia’s brain so hard she couldn’t get a wink of sleep. She began to pop valium and cold medicine to force herself to sleep. Still, she only slept in a ball in the corner of her bed – the same defensive pose the millipedes took when threatened.
Sonia looked down at the floor. A few millipedes moved their way across the floor from under the stove. The beetles disappeared somewhere during the day. Sonia considered letting the preying mantis in but took one look at its read eyes through the window and started crying.
“Sorry guy,” she whimpered at the bug, “I’m just too scared of you. I can’t take anymore of you guys, big or small, brown or green. We’re both doomed really, but you’ll probably be having me for lunch before the week is through.” Sonia flicked a dark brown millipede off the corner of the kitchen table and buried her head in her hands. She hadn’t heard from anyone in days and her phone was dead. She considered going outside. She considered running to her sister’s apartment three blocks away. She’d wrap herself in plastic and cover herself in repellent and just run, but she only had to look out the front door of the building to know it was impossible. People were dead outside and already being eaten. Being eaten by the smallest things we see, but killed and eaten nonetheless. Her own body heat at the glass door had interested quite a few flying guests. Large brown and yellow ones flapped like bats and pounded themselves against the glass; the glass that was already creeping with hopping giant fleas and enormous roaches glowing with every color of the rainbow. Sonia hadn’t been downstairs since and admitted to herself that most everyone was already dead – if not, like herself, about to die.
Now Sonia despised the thought of these creatures taking her body like it was some perishable food whose expiration date was almost up. Everything eyed her now and the only way to pretend it wasn’t happening was to sit at the kitchen table and not look down. Most times during the day the boys and girls of the insect world stayed away from her back windows as she was four stories up. There were swarms that flew by now and again but the grime on her window combined with Sonia’s aggressive denial hid these from her. Now, Sonia could stare out the window, through the foggy sky and over to the building a block away and imagine it was all just fine.
She was going to do it before sunset. She couldn’t stand the thought of another night with the buzzing and the creeping and the tiny tickles and itches up her legs from bugs she couldn’t yet see but were certainly growing into tangible creepers with wing ridges and thirty-six legs and one tiny claw for a mouth. Sonia had realized fully that her fear of death was more accurately a fear of being eaten to the bone by bugs – something she no longer wanted whether she was dead or alive. The only way to avoid this, she decided, was to burn instead; burn right down to the marrow of the bone – every last juicy bit of flesh on her body would be ash and smoke. Then one day, she hoped, the sun would knock its way through the clouds again and this endless rain would stop. It might even snow again come December and Sonia actually smiled at the thought of the ice chasing away and freezing the critters that had ripped her world to shreds. The clean white snow would fall over her dust and bits of bone. It would fall on everyone’s.
The stove had been open for some time and the oven had been on. She could smell the gas and imagined the generous thickness of it all around her. With a matchbook in her left hand, she leaned forward first and cracked open the window. The preying mantis maneuvered its way in and fluttered over to the kitchen table. She shut the window just before hundreds of giant lice and spastic flies hit the glass. She looked into the red eyes of the preying mantis.
“William,” Sonia said to him. William was the name of her baby cousin. “I’m not scared of you William. You’re more human than bug, I think. You lucky little guy, I’m going to let you sit here with me.” William the preying mantis perched itself on the edge of the table. He didn’t fly to the light above the vanity mirror in the bathroom. He stayed in the kitchen with Sonia and watched her fingers pull out a match and strike it gingerly against its square cardboard case.

Ka-boom. The end.