Not This Time

“The End Of Innocence” by Matthew Fertel

When I opened the door, a giant beetle was waiting on the welcome mat, clicking its mandibles. It smelled of burnt plastic and something sour underneath. I stepped outside and pulled the door shut behind me, keeping it between the beetle and Joelle, and told the insect to get the fuck off my porch. I said it the way you talk to beetles when they’re the size of a Doberman, when the woman you love is sleeping twenty feet away, wrapped in two blankets, her fever finally broken after three days.

I’m a good boyfriend. I know that saying I’m a good boyfriend sounds defensive, like I’ve been accused of something, like I’m protesting in advance—and maybe I am, because I’ve been the other kind too: the kind who forgets to check in, who says you’ll be fine when what he means is I don’t want to deal with this, who books work trips during the worst of it and brings back airport chocolates like that’s the same as being there. I’ve been that guy. I know because in eleventh grade, Danny Reyes knocked me down in the parking lot behind the gym, and I stayed there. Not because I couldn’t get up. Because getting up meant going again and I didn’t want to, and everyone standing around knew it, and I knew they could see it, and I just lay there on the asphalt looking up at the sky until they got bored and left. That’s the thing about shame—it doesn’t teach you anything. It just sits on your chest like a beetle the size of a Doberman and dares you to move. But I’ve been learning. I made broth from scratch on day two, and I slept in the armchair so she could have the whole bed, and I’ve been keeping the house quiet the way you keep a church quiet, the way you keep anything sacred quiet, and I’ll be goddamned if I let a beetle ruin it now.

You’d think a giant beetle couldn’t move fast, that it would be slow and mechanical with all that shell, those six stuttering legs, and a carapace the color of an oil slick. I was wrong. When I moved left, it moved left, and I had nothing in my hands, nothing within reach except the recycling bin by the railing, which I swung into its thorax with a sound like hitting a car hood with a baseball bat, and the beetle rocked back, then came forward again. They don’t adapt, beetles. Even the giant ones. So I swung again, and again, and it kept coming, and I kept the door at my back.

Then it got under my guard, and I went down hard, and it was on top of me with all that prehistoric weight, its legs finding the gaps in me like it had figured me out, and for a second I was sixteen again on the parking lot asphalt, looking up at the sky, and I thought: not this time, and I thought about Joelle on the other side of the door, Joelle in her two blankets with her cracked lips and her damp hair, Joelle who said you don’t have to stay on day one and I said shut up, I’m staying, and I fought with everything I had, with my fists and my teeth and my Blundstone heels and the recycling bin, and when it pinned my arm I put my mouth against the seam of its shell and bit down until something gave.

Joelle was still asleep when I woke up. I stood at the bedroom door and watched her breathe. Then I went out, dragged what was left of the beetle to the curb, and went inside and washed my hands. I checked the broth. Still warm. Tomorrow she’ll wake up hungry, I thought. I should get more crackers.

About the Author

Mathieu Parsy is a Canadian writer who grew up on the French Riviera. He now lives in Toronto and works in the travel industry. His writing has appeared in publications such as The Offing, Flash Frog, JMWW, and New World Writing Quarterly. Follow him on Instagram at @‌mathieu_parsy.

about the artist

Matthew Fertel is a Sacramento-based abstract photographer who seeks out beauty in the mundane. His work focuses on capturing the usually unnoticed minutiae we all encounter in our daily lives. He has worked in the Photography Department at Sierra College since 2004. Before that, he was a fine art auction house catalog photographer in San Francisco for over 10 years. His photographs have appeared in various publications, including Red Ogre Review, Wild Roof Journal, About Place Journal, Mud Season Review, Kitchen Table Quarterly, and many others. More of Matthew's work can be seen on his website and Instagram: https://mfertel.wixsite.com/matthewfertelphoto https://www.instagram.com/digprod4/