He’s driving from Massachusetts to California, he thinks, when the rains start.
For a while it’s fine.
Wipers on.
But when the rains don’t stop, the flooding starts and the wipers don’t do shit.
He pulls off the highway looking for a place to stay, let the rains pass, if they’ll ever pass, he thinks.
Drives into a town without a name.
Checks into a motel.
What a rain, he says to the woman working at the diner next door, wonder when it’ll let up.
Won’t ever, says the woman.
Next day he tries to drive out but the road’s been washed away.
Stays another night.
Talks to someone else, wanting to talk about his life, but finds he can’t remember it.
Can’t remember where he’s from.
Can’t remember why.
The rains fall.
One day his car won’t start so he stays more nights.
The car rusts and breaks apart and one day he sees toads living in it.
The whole town’s got water up to his ankles.
He figures that means he’ll stay awhile, maybe a long while.
He meets a girl.
Falls in love.
The rains don’t stop. The floodwaters gather.
There are fewer toads in the rusted car, he notices, but the ones that are are bigger than before.
One night he sees a dog eat another dog.
He sees a squirrel eat a squirrel.
The toads eat the toads until there’s one big toad living in the rusted car, and a while later the car comes apart.
Walking home he sees a squirrel big as a dog eat a dog and grow bigger.
He tells the girl.
She tells him she saw a fish big as a horse eat a mountain goat.
Everything eats to grow and grows to survive the rains, he thinks. He thinks a lot.
What doesn’t grow drowns.
He doesn’t remember how long he’s lived in the town.
The water’s up to his waist.
One day he sees a man eat another man, a woman eat two children, and the big toad eat the woman, and he knows he and the girl must eat too.
They eat their neighbours.
They eat the woman at the diner across from the motel.
Everyone’s eating.
If you don’t eat you’ll drown, he thinks.
The world empties, becomes an unbroken flatness of water until finally only he, the girl and the toad are left.
But the toad is bigger than them, and he’s scared, a fear greater than love, so sobbing and apologizing he eats the girl.
Now he’s big as the toad.
But the toad’s got the bigger mouth and eats him.
He doesn’t die.
Inside the toad there’s a town, a world, but no people, he thinks.
It’s the same thing the girl thinks inside him, and the people she ate inside her, and so on.
The toad eats the world.
Having nothing left to stand on it falls.
And it falls:
So on and
So on and
So on