After the Rocket

A week ago, a rocket tore through the house. The roof is destroyed, the kitchen is rubble, the living room burned to ash, every window has been shattered. Mrs. Steiner is using a hole in her floor to relieve herself.

She has no idea who’s out there. She’s heard a lot of voices, somber mostly, but several children, too, squealing and tumbling in the hallway. She’s shoved her bureau against the door. No one can be trusted.  

To keep her spirits up, she wears her best clothes. Today she’s put on the dress she wore to the opera on her fortieth birthday and the necklace her lost husband gave her that same day. She even styles her hair and does her makeup. In the mirror, she tells herself stories about better days.  

She hasn’t eaten since finishing the last scraps of bread and berries she’d managed to salvage. Often her hunger is so great she curls up on the floor and quietly whimpers. 

The wind lashes through what’s left of her home. It sounds like her childhood notion of phantoms. Through the cracks in her floorboards, she watches the intruders gather round a fire they’ve built of her dining room furniture. A man with a patchy beard, dressed in rags, carries a dead animal. It’s her sweet kitty, Roger, she realizes. They’ve made a spit from her curtain rods. Now they’re roasting him.  

With the last of her strength, Mrs. Steiner shoves the bureau from the door. The ceiling over the stairwell has collapsed. She’s forced to crawl, and in the darkness an exposed nail rips her knee open. She presents herself to the intruders.  

“This is my house,” she says. 

They look up.  

“Why is she dressed so funny?” a little girl says to the woman who must be her mother. 

“There’s no excuse for not looking one’s best,” Mrs. Steiner says.  

The mother makes room beside her, and Mrs. Steiner joins them. The intruders eat with their hands, tearing Roger’s meat from his bones. Mrs. Steiner stares at Roger’s tail on a China plate—an heirloom in her family for generations.  

“May I please have something to eat? I’m very hungry.”  

The little girl climbs onto Mrs. Steiner’s lap, pawing at her with greasy hands. “Your necklace is beautiful!” she says. “I want it!”  

Mrs. Steiner tries to push her away, but the girl clings to her.  

“Please,” Mrs. Steiner says to the mother. “I haven’t eaten for days.” 

The mother licks her fingers then retrieves her daughter. The girl begins to cry. “She really likes your necklace. Why don’t you just give it her?”  

Mrs. Steiner covers the necklace with her hands. “It’s one-of-a-kind,” she says. “A Christophe Graber.”  

A man who looks like a rag-picker is gnawing on one of Roger’s ears. “You’re really missing out,” he says.  

The sound of their chewing both enrages Mrs. Steiner and inflames her hunger. She starts to hum a lullaby.  

“Just give her the necklace,” the mother says. “What use is it to you now?”

Mrs. Steiner fingers the necklace and remembers sitting at the opera with her husband, holding hands at the climax of Die Zauberflöte, when the Queen of the Night’s darkness is defeated. Mrs. Steiner crawls to a pile of wood and collapses, then picks up a splinter and starts to chew. 

This story has an unusual origin. After reading my novel Pure Cosmos Club, set in the New York City art scene, the ultra-luxury Swiss jewelry company Christophe Graber commissioned me to write a series of jewelry-themed short stories for a coffee table book. While my contribution to the project ultimately didn’t move forward—my focus on themes of power, status, and greed diverged from their vision—it inspired a story I’m happy to share with SARKA’s readership.  

Matthew Binder is the author of the novels Pure Cosmos Club, The Absolved, and High in the Streets. He is also a primary member of the recording project Bang Bang Jet Away.