<\/p>\n
Red\u00a0hornet\u00a0bodies\u00a0up-shaft. In the house,\u00a0poisoned by smoke\u00a0pump and gulped\u00a0by a backpack\u00a0vacuum, the exterminator says\u00a0<\/span>I got stung\u00a0real\u00a0bad the other day,\u00a0hazmat suited all the way up, his voice\u00a0gargling\u00a0through his helmet.\u00a0I kicked a log, and out shot a hundred, three hundred, maybe five hundred angry-ass hornets. They latched onto my hands, got into my face screen. I ran for my life.\u00a0<\/em>I can tell he is sweating by the way the paper-thin plastic sleeves stick to him in small puddles. Is he still scared? I grab your hand for reassurance, pretend it\u2019s his. He turns from us, ready to face the potential of another round of swollen bull\u2019s-eye stings.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n The hornets crawl post-smoke,\u00a0post-poison down our chimney and into the living room.\u00a0I smash\u00a0them\u00a0with a thin,\u00a0large book,\u00a0crushing\u00a0the bones of their little bodies. I say aloud,\u00a0<\/span>I\u2019m\u00a0sorry<\/span><\/i>! And I really am sorry. I do not want to hurt another living thing exclusively because it causes pain. If it were true I could kill anything causing me pain, I could have killed so many things in my life already, been saved and redeemed over and over.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n After the\u00a0exterminator\u00a0returns and\u00a0blows,\u00a0sprinkles,\u00a0and sprays\u00a0more\u00a0poison, I\u00a0am ordered to\u00a0leave the house. At the coffee shop, a notification on my phone:\u00a0your cousin\u00a0has added\u00a0me on Instagram.\u00a0She will go on to abruptly add me for exactly\u00a0twenty-four\u00a0hours and then unfollow me, yet allow me to continue to follow her, a real gamey move.\u00a0Blonde\u00a0as ever.\u00a0Spending\u00a0your dead uncle\u2019s money\u00a0as ever.\u00a0Her bio says she has a \u201cclinical pathology\u00a0degree\u201d\u00a0in hand\u00a0after\u00a0twenty\u00a0long years and many failed attempts\u00a0(<\/span>What does that\u00a0degree entail?<\/em>\u00a0you\u00a0ask me, as if I am the keeper of all\u00a0higher education\u00a0degrees.\u00a0<\/span>I think\u00a0Jack Kevorkian\u00a0had\u00a0one<\/em>, I answer.) She always hated me, your cousin. There is not enough poison or thin\/large books in the world.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Later, when I return home, two dying red hornets on the doorstep bewildered by potential death. I contemplate what to do. They will die organically, but they are suffering. I can tell. I\u2019m some kind of hornet whisperer by now. They are cursing us under their breaths. Should I stomp them and put them out of their misery? The suffering really gets at me, as they snap their wings and flop, desperately shoving their fat butt stingers into the welcome mat. I raise my shoe. I will assist in their ending. I feel like Jack Kevorkian.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n My friend Rick. Well, he\u2019s not really my friend, more of a grown man who hung out with your cousin and me when we were teenagers. He went to jail for undisclosed reasons. He claimed he was in lockup with Jack Kevorkian. When he got out, and started hanging out with teenagers again, he tried to impress us with stories about how he ate at least a hundred meals with the guy. I think about this as I scoop the wasp carcasses and toss them into the garden. Rick insisted Jack Kevorkian was a kind person, a smart guy.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n I don\u2019t feel smart or kind. I feel terrible. These wasps! I go inside, and the house is bright with sunset and shadow, as though no poison was ever sprayed, or smoked, or sprinkled around, as though there wasn\u2019t ever need for such things. My body looks terribly long against the bookshelves. I raise my hands to make myself bigger, give myself wings in the shadowed sun. Your cousin doesn\u2019t respond to my DM when I say: Hey! What a whirlwind! See you in ten more years! Enjoy your Jack Kevorkian degree! She is forty years old and still calls your little brother Cousin Grant in photo captions, which I find both endlessly entertaining and sort of sad, since it\u2019s clear she wants to differentiate the skinny, ugly man she hangs out with all the time from other potential suitors who she will not end up marrying. Because, let\u2019s face it, she acts damaged for no reason. Everyone\u2019s dad dies eventually, an event continuing to happen until the end of time. I hear a slight buzz, a slight cough, and a wasp, gently and without fanfare, keels over on my shoe.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Katie Jean Shinkle Red\u00a0hornet\u00a0bodies\u00a0up-shaft. In the house,\u00a0poisoned by smoke\u00a0pump and gulped\u00a0by a backpack\u00a0vacuum, the exterminator says\u00a0I got stung\u00a0real\u00a0bad the other day,\u00a0hazmat suited all the way up, his voice\u00a0gargling\u00a0through his helmet.\u00a0I kicked a log, and out shot a hundred, three hundred, maybe five hundred angry-ass hornets. They latched onto my hands, got into my face […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":9391,"template":"","categories":[9,48,49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9389","article","type-article","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aquifer","category-fiction","category-literary-features"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n