Kyla scanned the exhibit, looking for the kangaroo. When she asked her dad where it had gone, he shrugged. She asked again, and all he said was, “Sorry, honey. This has been happening more and more recently.”
When her dad later said the word ‘extinct,’ she didn’t understand what it meant. But once she did, she felt dizzy. The idea of going extinct — it was worse than being lost in darkness. Somehow, you couldn’t even experience the darkness. You or anyone like you.
She asked why this was happening, but her dad kicked a rock and said something about how a seven year-old wouldn’t be able to understand. Then he started humming some old country song, the way he always did whenever he was nervous.
Over the next couple of days, Kyla learned that a lot of things had recently gone extinct. Spinach, zebras, applesauce. Even swimming. You could still go in the water, but you wouldn’t be able to swim. You could try, but somehow the best you would be able to do is doggy paddle.
She made a list of things that she didn’t want to lose. She had to tape together three sheets of paper to get it all down. The first three things were stuffed animals, hockey, and her friend Nick, who wore sweatpants and liked to celebrate. She checked the list with her dad every day to see if anything had gone extinct.
There was a website you could use to see what had disappeared. You could look on a map to see where extinctions were the worst around the world. When Kyla asked what would happen if the internet went extinct, her dad sighed. “It’s hard to imagine how we’d know much of anything then,” he said.
Her dad was on her list, top of the second page. But not her mom. Her mom was already gone. She died from stage IV breast cancer three years earlier, before so much of the world started going extinct. Either way, she was gone, like kangaroos and zebras, lost beyond the darkness.
The disappearances made her sad, and Kyla didn’t understand how anyone could feel otherwise. Some people didn’t seem to notice, or they just didn’t care. Others cheered when certain things went extinct, like banjos and delta smelt. “They’re not like us,” she told her kangaroo stuffed animal. “And we’ll never be like them.” She made the kangaroo nod its head.
After a couple of months, there were only a handful of things left on her list.
On a Tuesday afternoon, Kyla waited at school for her dad to pick her up. When he hadn’t arrived by 4pm, Kyla looked for her teacher to ask if she could call him, but the teacher was gone. Kyla went room to room and couldn’t find any adults.
She called out in the hallway for someone, anyone. “Where are you? Where have you all gone?” she yelled. She didn’t know what else to do, what else to say.
Her friend Nick came out of a classroom and ran to her. His eyes were red and wet. “It will be okay,” he said, giving her a hug. “We will be okay.”
Kyla nodded, wanting to believe him, wanting to believe that there was a way to hold on, a way to find hope. If some things had to leave this world, she thought, then maybe new things could come into it too.
Before figuring out where to go, what to do, she took out a piece of paper and drew her dad riding a kangaroo. She grabbed a red crayon and gave them both big smiles.
Image: A full grown kangaroo in the bush with his back to the camera. From pixabay.com
literally stories 
Hi Michael,
The metaphor hunters will love this and come up with all sorts of theories.
For me, (I very seldom do or think on metaphor – If I do or get it, it’s a pure fluke!!) I think it was interesting that the kid never stated that her mother disappeared, she said that she died. When she made the list of everything that she didn’t want to lose and she eventually did, made me think this had been the wish for her mother, not to see her suffer. BUT what I find intriguing was her last drawing, her mother wasn’t there, so could she accept that her dad and her favourite things simply disappeared whereas her mother caused her to watch her suffering??
This will stay with me and probably irritate the proverbials off of me!!
Absolutely brilliant!!!
Hugh
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Thanks, Hugh. I like that interpretation and am glad you focused on that tension. There are so many ways of anticipating, experiencing, understanding, and then grieving loss – I think that Kyla’s way of processing the recent disappearances compared to her mother’s death shows some of that range. Thanks for engaging so closely with the story!
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Michael
Such a delightfully “evil” tale. Evil because it makes perfect sense but should not. Evil because it requires the reader to think and to come up with an answer s/he can live with.
Tremendous MC, as well–a child who is perfectly believeable.
Leila
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Thanks, Leila! I love that line – it makes perfect sense but should not. Very glad that’s how it came across!
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Stunning and scary, in all sorts of ways. Perfectly pitched and tightly written this is far better than many of the pieces I’ve read in much praised anthologies recently. Excellent!
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Thank you, Steven. That’s such a nice compliment. Thanks for reading!
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there was something understated about this that made it stand out from so many others of the same ilk. You had to love the MC and her poor ineffectual father. This story stays with you, some of it is just another warning of global damage but there is much more to it. Good stuff. Thank you – dd
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Thanks for the kind words, Diane. I’m glad you felt some affection for the father as well, especially since I’d probably just kick a rock and sing an old country song if I were in his shoes too.
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Loved how this blends surreal loss with a child’s perspective. The “extinctions” feel both absurd and heartbreaking, and the ending manages to be quietly hopeful without softening the devastation. Very nice.
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Thanks so much for the positive reaction, David. I’m glad that’s how it landed!
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Michael
Every self-conscious creature who dies becomes extinct. Even Trees, some say. I like how you expand the concept to include things we do, like swimming. Might as well include everything. I’ll feel that way. Nice job! — gerry
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Here in the USA I see honesty, families, kindness and so many other things decreasing under 47iq’s leadership, so the story is relateable.
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A flash fiction so skillfully written that it earns the unease it stirs in the reader. In the current climate of disregard for flora, fauna and human beings “being disappeared”, this story could be as much a foreshadowing as it is a fantasy.
I love work that stays with me because it makes me think. This story fits the bill!
Claire Massey
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George Harrison of The Beatles wrote a song called “All Things Must Pass.” And this is true even as our imagination keeps on ticking. Put a smile on the kangaroo, Kyla.
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