Mayflies

I’ve always fantasized about how I would meet Her. My wife, my dream girl, my soulmate. Ever since I was a little kid I would make up stories in my head about how I would meet Her. Always something fantastic and wild. Could you imagine simply meeting your partner on a dating app? Telling your parents that story? Nah, not for me.

I was brainstorming a fantasy when the first Bursting happened. I was walking home from work and thinking about Her. I put my sharpened pencil behind my ear as I left the East River in New York City and drifted to a Hawaiian beach in my mind.

I’m surfing a big wave (I don’t surf in real life) and crashed into some coral. Bleeding from a laceration in my thigh, I crawl to the beach in agony. And there she is. Muscular and tanned, her curly brown hair fans out behind her as she runs towards me. She takes off her t-shirt, ripping it with her teeth. She uses the strands of her shirt to bandage my leg before I pass out.

“You idiot” she admonishes.

I brought my attention briefly back to the real world and looked up at the sky over the East River. It was about to rain. Welcome to Fall in New York City. When the first drops hit my face, I felt a strange feeling in my stomach. I looked down and my stomach was inflating at an incredible rate.

“Whoa, whoa WHOA!” I yelled and pushed myself against a brick wall. My stomach was the size of a beach ball and I could feel my skin stretching. I panicked and slumped down against a brick wall with my hands on my giant stomach. I felt like I was going to explode. I looked down the street for help, but everyone else on the street was holding their own inflated stomachs. A man next to me with a gray beard grasped his belly.

“What is happening!” he yelled.

That’s when I saw Her.

She was running toward me just like I always imagined. She was strong and fit with short blonde hair. The muscular artery in her bicep pumped back and forth like the girls in yoga magazines. She had a bloody screwdriver in her hand.

She ran up to the bearded man slumped against the wall and put her face right next to his.

“Do you have a car?” she asked him.

“What? No. My stomach, help me.” he screamed. My dream girl turned and looked right at me. When we made eye contact, my stomach fluttered even through the massive inflation.

“Do you have a car?” was the first thing she said to me.

“Yes,” I replied with a smile. A second later, she stabbed me in the stomach with her screwdriver. I heard a loud hiss and felt my stomach deflate. It felt like a giant fart. Clear fluid dripped out of the wound and I looked closely at the mess. Were there insects in there?

My head snapped up when I heard the first loud pops coming from around the street, followed by the first screams. New Yorkers littered the ground with large holes where their abdomens used to be. Their stomachs looked like they had popped like a balloon, their dead eyes staring at the sky. I noticed a lot of flying insects in the air, circling together.

I looked over at the bearded man that my soul mate had passed by. His stomach had completely exploded. He had died immediately.

I looked up at my dream girl, my apocalypse woman, my savior

“Where is the car?” she asked sternly.

“It’s parked a couple of blocks from here.”

“Good, we will be able to move faster. We need to get out of the City. It is going to get really gnarly out here.”

She is perfect, I thought. She is full of action and decisiveness. And she just said gnarly, is she also a surfer? This is awesome.

“Let’s go,” she said flatly, whipping me out of my daydream and pushing me forward.

“What’s your name?” I asked, craning my next to look at Her.

“Joey”

It took us all day to drive out of the city. The air was thick with insects, they twirled and danced over the ocean that spanned the right side of the highway. Some cars blocked the highways out of the city, empty vehicles with their burst owners on the street. We methodically moved along the highway, moving driverless cars out of the way. Joey would check the back of every car we moved. With a frown, she would throw bottled water and food into the back of our vehicle. She was already planning ahead for the worst.

I love Her.

Once we were clear of the city, it was easier to drive. Joey seemed like she knew where she was going. With my mind a little clearer, I started to inspect one of the strange insects that had appeared. I had a minor in Entomology from Cornell University, which I was happy to report to Joey. Without taking her eyes off the road, she nodded.

“Useful,” she grunted. She is so cool.

The insect appeared to be some type of Ephemeroptera, a Mayfly. These insects lived in the water as nymphs and would transform into winged adults. They would all fly into the air to have sex, reproduce, drop eggs back into the water and die. The circle of life continues.

I dictated all of this to Joey and she replied with small subtle nods.

“We have two questions to answer,” she finally grumbled. “How did the eggs get inside of us and what caused all of us to Burst at the same time?”

“The normal Mayflies emerge on the same day to reproduce.”

“Right, but that does not explain why people were Bursting at the exact same time. It has to be something else,” she said.

So smart, I thought. I love Her.

We drove in silence for another couple of hours before she turned off the main highway. After another couple of minutes, we bumped down a dirt road and pulled up in front of a small cabin in the woods along a small-sized lake.

“Whose cabin is this?” I asked. She didn’t respond and shifted the car into park.

“We will be safe here,” she said sharply as she jumped out of the car. She didn’t answer my question at all. Yeah, she was totally my soulmate.

The cabin was all one room. It had a small bed in the corner, a couch in the center, and a kitchen in the opposite corner. With the sun setting, I let her sleep on the bed like a gentleman while I slept on the couch. We had to build the relationship a little, the best stories need a little time to connect.

The next morning I woke up early, drank a bottle of water from the City, and walked around the property. The lake was about a mile long. The calm water lapped against the edge of the forest on all sides. There were no other cabins, we were totally alone.

I walked up to the small dock and stripped off my bloody t-shirt. Curling my toes around the edge of the dock, I sucked in my breath and jumped into the cool water. The water felt amazing on my tired body and I felt so calm as I floated in the lake. My mind drifted to Joey and the next phase of our story. Maybe we would live on the lake together for a while. We would hold hands for the first time around the fire and then -

I felt a familiar feeling in my abdomen and I looked down to see it inflating rapidly.

“Oh no, Oh no, Oh no.” I gasped and swam quickly back to the dock. I hurled myself onto the deck and rolled onto my back. My stomach was swelling and I could feel my skin stretching. I clamored around the dock looking desperately for something sharp to pop myself. I could feel my skin starting to break as I crawled along the dock. I cut my hand on a nail sticking out of the boards of the deck.

A nail! I tried to pull the nail out with my hand, but it wouldn’t budge. I swore and grabbed the nail with both hands as my vision started to turn black at the edges. My hands bled as I pulled the nail. The nail would not budge and my strength started to ebb. Exhausted and dying I fell onto my back and looked up at the sky. I thought about Joey and the life would have had together. How she was going to save me.

Joey’s beautiful face appeared in my darkening vision. She frowned and I heard the sound of a nail being ripped out of the boards next to me. I felt pain in my abdomen. With a massive hiss, my stomach deflated. I gasped for breath as clear fluid dripped out of me. Feeble insects flapped on the dock, trying to take off and fly away to their soulmates.

Suckers.

That night I laid on the couch as Joey bandaged my second popping wound. Just like my Hawaiian fantasy, I thought.

“That answers one question.” She muttered.

“What?” I asked.

“What causes the insects to inflate the abdomen. It has to be water. You said the Mayflies usually reproduce in water right? It must be a mechanism to let them know the host is near water. So they can start the cycle again. That’s why everyone in New York popped when it started to rain.”

“That makes sense,” I muttered, upset that I did not come up with the answer and impressed Her with my survival skills. Still, it made Her even hotter that she had discovered what caused our bellies to inflate.

“We just need to stay dry until we figure out the answer to our first question. How are the eggs getting inside of us? You clearly got reinfected somehow since your first Burst.”

“Hmmm yes,” I muttered, bumming that I did not come to that conclusion.

“Get some sleep,” she said firmly, patting my bandage abruptly causing me to wince. She walked over to her bed and left me on the couch. I put my hand behind my head and imagined what our first kiss would be like. It would probably be in the woods on a hike. Top of a mountain? I like that.

The light was barely creeping through the curtained windows when I heard a car door slam. I looked towards Joey’s bed and saw it was empty. I shifted and saw Her crouched underneath the window with a knife in her hand. Had she always had a knife?

“Hey what is it?” I said to Her.

“Shhhh,” she whispered with a hard look in Her eyes. Oh right, a possible intruder. Maybe our night together would happen after we dealt with our third challenge. In stories, big romantic events usually happen after three beats. Joey silently stalked towards the door and hid behind it with the knife held in an underhand grip. I started to get up, but she motioned me to stay silent and in the same place. We listened to a pair of heavy boots clomp up the steps of the cabin and heard the doorknob jangle.

The door suddenly burst open and a large man in a sleeveless flannel shirt exploded into the room. He held a shotgun and whipped it around the room until it pointed at me. I put my hands up in the universal “don’t shoot me” position.

Joey sprang from behind the door and drove her knife into the man’s shoulder. He screamed and quickly punched Her in the stomach. Knife still stuck in his shoulder, he threw Her into the center of the room.

“Josephine?” he shouted. “What the hell are you doing here?” He pointed the gun at her face.

“Don’t you hurt Her!” I bravely yelled. Moving my body in front of my girlfriend.

“Ha!” the man laughed. “You got yourself another puppy dog, Josephine?” Nodding to me, he growled. “You know she is just going to kill you once you stop becoming useful.” I frowned at him in the most masculine way I could and tried to scare him off with my resolve to protect Joey. Hmm, maybe our first kiss would come after this. Maybe we would have a daughter together.

“Hey, Leonard!” Joey yelled, opening a bottle of water. She squeezed the bottle of water and sent a jet of water towards his face. The splash hit him and he did not flinch. He cocked his head to the side in confusion before his eyes went wide in horror. His stomach started to inflate under the sleeveless flannel. He dropped the gun and ripped the knife out of his shoulder. Blood squirted out of his shoulder wound as he brought the knife down towards his watermelon ball-sized stomach. Joey was up in a flash. She grabbed the gun as it bounced on the ground and she flipped it around like a super spy. Leonard stabbed the knife into his stomach and slumped on the ground as his belly let out a large wet hiss. His expression calmed and then immediately changed when he noticed Joey pointing the gun at his face.

“Babe” he whispered before Joey shot him in the face.

It took an hour to clean up the mess. We scrubbed the floor and I wondered when our hands would absently touch each other like a Rom-Com.

“I think it is the bottled water.” she eventually said. “Maybe the eggs are in the bottled water.”

“That makes sense,” I said, snapping out of my daydream. “We can boil water from the lake and drink it. Then we will be safe.”

“No,” she muttered, still looking at the floor. “We have to test it.”

After two days of drinking the boiled lake water, I stook on the dock again with my shirt off.

“I think I should be the one to test your theory,” I said with my chin held high. She nodded curtly and brought out her knife.

“Jump in. If you start to inflate, I will pop you.”

With my shoulders back like the true hero I was. I stepped up to the edge of the dock and dove in the water with only a small splash. Not quite the perfect dive I was looking for, but it still achieved the dramatic effect. I surfaced in the lake and treaded water for a couple of seconds.

“I did it!” I yelled in triumph. “It’s the bottled water!” I climbed back onto the dock and spread my arms wide for our first embrace of many.

“Wait,” she said flatly, putting her palm out to stop our romantic event. “We have to keep testing.” She held out a bottle of water. “We have to be sure.”

“But….” I stammered still thinking about twirling Her in my arms.

“Drink it and jump again.” Listening to my pause she said. “I will pop you. You will be fine.”

“Ok,” I said bravely. There was still a final test before we could be together. “I will do it for you.” I took the bottle of water like a soldier going off to battle and took a manly gulp.

“I’m going to jump in and then quickly get back on the dock. Ready to pop me?”

“Yes,” she said with the knife at her side. I walked up to the edge of the water and looked at myself in the reflection. The image of my two recent popping wounds reflected back at me. I took a deep breath and jumped in the water. As soon as I hit the water, I felt my stomach start to inflate. I desperately tried to climb back onto the dock while still trying to look as cool as possible. My belly got in the way and I held my hand up to Joey.

She looked at my up-reached hand like she was looking at a weirdly shaped stick or a curious rock.

“Joey!” I gasped as I managed to pull myself up onto the dock without help. I crawled towards her. “Pop me!” I yelled.

My dream girl slowly backed away from me as I reached out to finally touch Her. My mind flashed to the electricity of true love I was going to feel when I touched Her for the first time. She was going to save me.

Joey easily dodged my hand and stepped away from me.

“Joey, I love you” I gasped as I felt the skin of my stomach stretch to its limit. “You’re Her. You have to be Her.”

I looked into the love of my life’s blue-green eyes as I heard a loud pop echo around the lake. I rolled onto my back and with my vision fading, I watched as the insects swirled in the air above me. Each one finding their partner and dancing into the darkness.