The Moths

by Scott Szpisjak


“Please, Sylvia, let’s think this through first.” He could taste the stupidity of his statement; Sylvia was the one who had thought in their relationship.
 
“You can’t just think these things away, can you?” Sylvia was struggling with the window’s lock. It always stuck. Her bathrobe slipped down her shoulder, revealing the dark skin beneath.
“They’re just butterflies.” The insects sat on every flat surface in their room. Not moving, but not dead, either. “And they’re nice looking, too. Grey and green. Do you recognize them?”
 
“They aren’t butterflies, they’re moths.” Her words kept getting caught in her throat. “And they’ll eat everything, no matter what type of moth they are. I don’t want to have to buy us new clothes and sheets and whatever else they get into.”
 
“They aren’t doing anything. Just sitting.”
 
“Let’s hope that once I get this window open they won’t be.”
 
The window snapped and creaked as Sylvia unlocked and opened it. The wind blew the gauzy curtain around her and through it she looked like a ghost. Now that the window was open he realized the usually omnipresent noise of traffic was silent. He pulled the blanket to cover himself from the morning’s winter air. None of the moths moved except for a few by the window, whose wings fluttered in the breeze. Sylvia waited by the window. She shivered. The air was dry.
 
Rob patted her side of the bed. “Syl, come back here with me. The moths will do the same thing no matter where you are.”
 
Sylvia lifted the blanket gently to ensure that she did not crush any of the moths. They sat with the comforter up as far as it could go.
 
“Shouldn’t they be… not alive, Syl?”
 
“You mean dead?”
 
“No, I mean they shouldn’t be here now. It’s too cold. Shouldn’t they be hibernating in their cocoons, or something?”
 
“I’m not sure.” There was a stain of the far corner of the ceiling. “I think so, but this whole thing isn’t normal.”
 
“That’s true.”
 
“Rob?”
 
“What, Syl?”
 
“When’s the alarm clock set to go off?”
 
“Normal time.”
 
“Not early?”
 
“No. Do you have early shift today?”
 
“Tuesdays, yeah.”
 
“Right. Should I reset the alarm?”
 
“I’ll stay awake.”
 
He laced his fingers with Sylvia’s under the sheets. She did not move her own hand. “If we turn off the light it’ll be brighter outside, and moths are attracted to light, right?”
 
Rob slumped further down. So far the moths hadn’t moved at all, not even towards the lights in their room. They might as well have been fakes made for kitschy home décor, or hats.
 
But they had checked, though, and they weren’t.
 
“It’s already bright enough out there.”
 
She leaned forward and pulled a cord on the ceiling fan anyway. The light stayed on and the fan started turning. Rob began to reach out to fix it, but Sylvia did it herself. The moths still did not move.
 
“D’you think it was a prank?” After his eyes had adjusted, the room looked like a grainy black and white photograph. The moths were dark splotches, like the film had been scratched.
“Who would have done this?”
 
Rob bit his lip. “Should we call someone?”
 
“Now?” She looked at the digital clock. The edges of her silhouette glowed green. “Who?”
“The landlord?”
 
“Him? Do you really think--.”
 
“What else is there to do? Wait? And if we wait, we’ll still have to do something with them.”
There was a click as Sylvia lifted her phone off the glass-topped nightstand. “There’s no dial tone.”
 
“What?”
 
Sylvia set the phone down and turned the lights back on. The moths remained still. She followed the phone’s cord, and sat up. “Someone disconnected the phone from the wall.” She was staring straight at the door.
 
“What?”
 
“It isn’t plugged in. Could there be someone in the apartment?” She got up, retied her robe, and bent over. When she stood up again she was holding an aluminum baseball bat.
 
“How long has that been there?”
 
Sylvia pushed the moth sitting on the end of the bat off. It flapped its wings just long enough to get it to the nightstand. “You never know what to expect.” Her words were carried to him on tiny gusts of wind. “Now be quiet.” Sylvia crept over to the bathroom. She was hunched over, the bat over her shoulder as she held it, ready to swing.
 
Sylvia emerged from the bathroom and checked the closet.
 
Sylvia began to creep out of the bedroom door, onto the dark landing. “Want me to come with you, Syl?”

“Sure.”
 
“Could you toss me a sweater?” He held up an arm. “Goose bumps, see?”
 
“I don’t. But here’s your sweater.” She tossed him a worn purple sweatshirt, looking back at him.
 
“Thanks.”
 
He slowly pulled the comforter down and got out of bed, pulling on the sweatshirt. He crept across the floor as well; the moths were so close together that he couldn’t put his whole foot down without crushing one of them. He could see his breath.
 
Sylvia opened the closet door and peered in, and Rob closed the door on his way through the living room. It did not take them long to declare the apartment empty, if one did not count the moths.
 
It was still silent. Rob saw himself and Sylvia reflected back in the windows. His mouth was open slightly, and he closed it. “Wanna check outside?”
 
From the balcony the world looked like a photograph, a normal night frozen. The moths were the only things out of the ordinary; they covered everything they could see.
 
“We still need to call someone, though.”

“The police?”
 
“No, just about the moths.”
 
“Right.” They looked at each other and back at the city.
 
“Let’s stay here, just for a minute.”
 
“Are you sure?”
 
Then, the moths began to fly. The wave started a few blacks away and came nearer and nearer until all of the moths had lifted off into the air. Sylvia slid her hand down his arm until they were holding hands. The moths in their apartment poured out of every crevice they could find: the crack in the door, the open bedroom window, until all of them made it into the cold air. A few minutes later there was no sign that they had ever been there, other than the cloud of them moving like smoke above, a dissipating grey cloud, moving onward.