The Caterpillar's Wife

Mary crawled up the trunk of the maple tree, she was feeling very flustered today. Actually she felt flustered a lot of the time, but it wasn’t her fault, no, no. Her mother had told her there would come a time when she would feel ugly. At the time she couldn’t image being and feeling ugly at the same time, but the time had come. She felt slow and heavy; all she wanted to do was sleep and eat. It meant only one thing: the change was coming.

Soon her entire existence would be altered. Her lifestyle, the way her body looked and functioned would change, she would be able to fly. A daunting a thought as that might be she had thought there would be someone to support her. Someone to talk her through this tough time; that someone was Carl.

He had been charming and sweet…for the first five minutes.

Now he ate and slept just as much, nay, more than even she did!

She tried to speak to him about it, but he would always shush her. Last time, he said it was very crass of her to even speak of such things. Crass! Crass! They were married! Before she could come up with a descent argument, he had gone back to eating. Indignant; she left to go down to sulk and nibble on the remains of the leaves she and Carl had missed.

As Mary reached the leafy branch that she and Carl had been eating at for the past few days, she took a sip of some dew. Panting from exhaustion she forced her soar feet to crawl to the branch where she had last seen her husband.

“Carl!” she called, “are you still here?”

There was no reply.

Odd, she thought to herself. There were plenty of unfinished leaves and dew on these branches. She couldn’t think of why he would have moved on.

  Maybe he came looking for me, she thought dubiously. No most likely he got eaten by a bird; serves him right for eating out in the open. Oh, well, more for me.

  A few hours later she had just finished off a leaf and was out to find another one when something caught her eye. It was brown, and curled up. Surely it can’t be a leaf! She thought shocked. That would me she was late changing.

Crawling closer to the brown thing she realized it was a chrysalis.

“Carl! How could you!?” She squealed in anger, “of all the selfish things to do!” she scolded the Carl-sized cocoon. “You get to sleep while I’m stuck out here it’s so rude, it’s…it’s – cosmopolitan! That’s what it is! It’s so rude the world, knows it! You just wait until you wake up and I’ll give you a piece of my mind!”