If I had known how hard it would actually be to kill a chicken, I wouldn’t have welcomed the apocalypse quite as enthusiastically. Things were scary enough already–war, racism, global warming, a Scrubs remake–so would a sudden mass extinction event really be any worse? I told my sister we’d be fine, that we’d just move out to Dad’s old cabin in Maine and get some chickens, maybe read and reread Austen novels until we knew them by heart, keep our heads down while society rebuilt itself. I told her we were survivors. I told her we were stronger than she thought, that we didn’t need electricity, or plumbing, or remote therapy.
But last night we ate our last can of beans and burned our last candle and drank the last of the wine, and now, as my sister searches for kindling in the woods behind the house, I cradle Eunice in my arms and explain to her how wrong I was, how she was always my favorite chicken, how this world demands hard things, bad things, impossible things.
Emily Rinkema lives in Vermont. Her stories have been selected for Wigleaf Top 50, Best Small Fictions, and Best American Nonrequired Reading. You can read more at emilyrinkema.com/ or follow her on X, BS, or IG (@emilyrinkema).
Photo Credit: Virginia Long on Unsplash
