The Woman Who Did Not Like Apocalypse

by H. A. Eugene

Her husband suggested, in a way that flouted his great taste in things, that perhaps the problem is that she just had never had good apocalypse; that all she had to inform her uneducated palate was crappy store-bought, factory-farmed apocalypse. This caused her to wonder aloud why it would be that tasting the best version of something she disliked to begin with would ever make her change her mind about that thing; to which he responded by wiping the apocalypse juice from his lips with the paper bag it came in and assuring her she really didn’t know what she was missing.

Everything these days was apocalypse this, apocalypse that. It was tiresome, how she was constantly made to feel like something was wrong with her, that this harrowing concept rendered as fun setting for page turners, games, or matinee movies didn’t thrill her, as it did everybody else. Regardless, she considered herself open-minded, and figured it wouldn’t be the end of the world if she gave this stuff a try. So she tiptoed out to the kitchen in the middle of the night, opened the fridge and took it out—$2.69 a pound, from a roadside stand (Organic, so said the sticker)—and sliced herself the thinnest piece, which she forked right onto her waiting tongue.

Her sour centers exploded with the rapid breakdown of social order, followed by a hefty mouthfeel and satisfying umami of mass tragedy. Then an aftertaste of ashy loneliness on a cold, desertified world, with bitter notes of old fire and evaporated diesel fuel—all of which remained well after her last swallow.

She had to admit, her husband was right about something—this certainly was good apocalypse.

Though the parts that weren’t flat out unpleasant were thoroughly cliched.

Bio:
H. A. Eugene is a Pushcart-nominated writer of strange stories about food and death. His work has appeared in X-R-A-Y Lit, Short Édition, and Flash Fiction Magazine, among others.