By David M Herman
Charlie used to bring hunting trophies into the house. I never appreciated the headless mouse carcasses or twitching, butchered tits. Still, I told myself, this was nature at work. These gruesome gifts were a price worth paying for feline companionship. Besides, Charlie’s prey would evolve and adapt, like the peppered moth or tuskless elephants, right?
Speaking of which: survival.
Even though death is by far the most predictable aspect of anyone’s life, Dana’s passing blindsided me. Potentially looking at a decade or two alone, not a future I had ever anticipated, a pet seemed a sensible choice.
The woman at the animal shelter was sympathetic to my circumstances. Many people adopt pets after suffering a bereavement, she said. Charlie and I would develop a special, mutually beneficial bond. Indeed, we got on well enough, but sometimes his tail would quiver and his pupils dilate while he gauged me, as if I were limping behind the herd. Charlie was a violent hunter by nature, I realised. He could rip out my throat in an instant.
Speaking of which: the global population is declining.
Eve, my daughter, is twenty-seven, and like many of her generation, she finds it unacceptable that humans are crowding out other species. Some demographic shrinkage is not a bad thing, I say, as long as enough people remain to grow food, repair roads, tend to the sick and elderly, sing lullabies, teach music, knit scarves, impart wisdom, tell people they love them. Easy for you to say, Eve retorts, you won’t be around when the Earth devours its transgressive human tenants. Or when some fresh pharaoh deep-fakes his way to world domination and vaporises anyone who won’t bow down to him. Or when pet cats evolve into huge apex predators, I joke.
The word apex comes to us through Greek and then Latin, from the Hebrew word qots, which means thorn. Eve is convinced humanity is a thorn in the side of the planet. What purpose will her life have, I wonder, if she gets her way and our species begins to die out?
An organism that doesn’t reproduce is a puzzling phenomenon. What does a castrated tom like Charlie have to live for? He leads a life of pure, infantile hedonism – a life many humans set as their goal. Mind you, for Charlie it doesn’t count as an accomplishment. Accomplishing something requires targeted effort, self-sacrifice, commitment, right?
Speaking of which: body mass.
Yesterday Charlie seemed bigger when I lifted him off the dining table – naughty boy! This morning I discovered him standing on his hind legs, tall as a toddler, clawing at the side of the fridge. I saw his bowl was empty, so I refilled it. Which is when he hissed and bit my arm. I yelped in pain and recoiled, staring at two gaping, bloody wounds. I glanced at Charlie scarfing his feed. He really had grown. I ran.
I sit with Eve in a makeshift A&E annex, one of hundreds knocked together to deal with the tsunami of pet-related injuries. The problem with humans, says Eve, is that we keep putting ourselves first. And reproducing. For someone who doesn’t want to have children, she does talk about it a lot. I want to say: who will go with you to A&E when you’re old? The prospect of my beautiful child dying alone as one of the last surviving humans turns my blood to ice.
Speaking of which: TV news.
A TV in the waiting room shows a pack of pony-sized poodles rampaging through a Tokyo shopping street, some clasping human limbs in their jaws. It resembles a gameplay video, but I know it’s real and my stomach clenches. Eve remains unfazed. To her, The Growing, as people are calling it, is more evidence that nature has had enough of us. Her conviction alarms me.
Speaking of which: as a species, we might be doomed.
David M. Herman is originally from London in the UK, and currently lives and works in the Netherlands as a writer and translator. In the autumn of 2021, he took Curtis Brown Creative’s three-month Writing Your Novel course, and he’s now querying his debut novel while writing and submitting short stories. He particularly likes the speculative genre because it allows him to explore big ideas through recognisable human relationships. He is married, has three children and a handful of guitars.
