To the Apocalypse, she took

To the apocalypse, she took with her an oversized beach towel, heavy and orange, bought for ten dollars at a discount bulk supplier before the starving rioters burned the building down. The towel had pineapples printed on it: stark geometric patterns of yellow triangles and vivid neon green leaves. The towel was very warm when the snowstorms hit without warning, and it dried the sweat from her head when the heat slaughtered her neighbors. She saved all the water it soaked up.

Eventually, the towel became the sigil of her gang, and her gang flourished. They waved flags filled with rows of fat fruit depicted in triangles while they ate mud and moist cardboard left over from the snows. (The cellulose kept them going, a favorite in her youth, although she didn’t realize she was getting so much in all the parmesan cheese she bought in bulk). But she remembered the pine-apples, told takes of them–pi-napples, pi-nap-els, and they sang the word like a sacred chant. They dreamed of soft,golden sugar dripping over dry tongues.