Insect Bellies Full of Fire
by Leslie Ylinen
1.
He only turned up at the holidays, happy to have nowhere to go except those two days when going nowhere was too sad, even for him. He brought with him boxes of rocks, for my sister and me, wrapped in the Sunday comics section, his only notion of whimsy. We’d ooo and ahhh and shake our gifts, pretending to be impressed by their heft. Gingerly we’d unload stones, ragged chunks of wood, and the occasional brick until we arrived at the bottom, where we’d be rewarded with a bank-crisp $100 bill as a payment for our Christmas masonry. “I never had kids,” he’d say apologetically. “I never know what to get you girls. Did I trick you?”
2.
The Smoldering Woman crept aboard the USS Banneret, docked in warm waters off the coast of North Vietnam. Her skin was a black, undulating facade of thousands of mosquitoes whose static hum could be heard all the way from shore. The insects feasted on her fury and filled their bellies with fire. When she slept, they were dispatched to poison others with heat and revenge. Before flight, when the mosquitoes lifted their wings, you could see the orange glow of her body through the cracks, molten rage and honey fire. And when she chose, the Smoldering Woman took one man by the hand and led him into the jungle. She sent him back empty and completely ruined. As the story goes, no one knows what happened in the jungle. From their bunks, the sailors could hear the woman wail for her mother, the hiss of steam as water streamed down her legs.
3.
Now he’s face down in the hallway, blocking the entrance to the bathroom, hot vomit bubbling at his lips. “Uncle,” I say and shake his shoulder.
“He’s pickled!” my father bellows from the kitchen. “Make fog horn noises. That’ll rouse him. Like this, ‘WAAAAAHHHHH!’ ”
This makes the adults erupt into stupid donkey laughter.
“Uncle,” I try again. And then, “Commander. Commander, you need to get up. Your ship is leaving.”
His eyes pry open into twin yellow harvest moons in a bloated red sea. He makes no attempt to move—his face is a popsicle melting into the plush suburban carpet. I lie down next to him. My body is half the length of his, and I try my own face on the rug.
In our lowdown sideways world, he says the only thing he’ll ever really say to me.
“We pay for what we do.”
And just like that, he lumbers to his feet. My father warns, “If you wrap yourself around another tree, the judge will have your license for good.” My child’s mind can only imagine his doughy body stretched like taffy and wound around the trunk of a tree like the red of a candy cane.
As the youngest, it’s my job to blow into the Commander’s ignition interlock, a tradition I won’t question for another ten years.
He says nothing before he goes. I’m still gripping the door of his car, and a bead of revolting sweat drips down his face and splashes onto my hand. As he pulls away, I shudder to realize I am covered with dozens of papery mosquito wings in the pit of winter. A closer look, and it’s just dirty snow. I shake it off violently and watch the orange glow of tail lights disappear into the mist.
Leslie Ylinen is a humor and satire writer who is known to occasionally dabble in darkness. She has been published in McSweeney's Internet Tendency, The Bold Italic, among many others. She lives in Pacifica, CA.
