Photo by Timothy Dykes on Unsplash
by Michelle Wilson
When the caterpillars come, my brother dangles one over his open mouth—glow-in-the-dark green and fuzzy—and feigns like he’s going to eat it, despite the fact that it just shattered his phone like an icepick while worming its way out.
He jokes that if they hadn’t totaled everyone’s TikTocks, his would-be caterpillar-eating challenge would’ve gone viral. I say the world is coming to an end, and he laughs the way he’s always laughed at me—his younger, less experienced sister—and I wonder again if I’m playing victim, failing to summon the courage my brother has to laugh in the face of disaster. Like after Mom left, and I said the world was coming to an end then, too, and he said not for him it wasn’t, two people could experience the same thing in different ways, and it infuriated me, because it meant that I was alone, and I was sure he could feel it, he just didn’t want to.
Later, when the caterpillars have eaten through the apartment buildings and skyscrapers, when the second wave of migrations are underway, and I’m searching for my brother so we can get the hell out of there, I find him in the backyard, and it’s just like before. He’s leaving me to face it all alone again, as the caterpillars tunnel through his face and neck, his eyes fixed on the sky, his laughter chasing me across the yard, howling at my heels, begging me to run.
Michelle Wilson’s words have appeared or are forthcoming in Wigleaf, The Daily Drunk, Bending Genres, A Thin Slice of Anxiety, Rejection Letters, Maudlin House, and Litro Magazine, among others. She lives with her partner in Washington, DC.
