It started with the beets. Or rather, the last can of them. I had been putting it off for days, pretending there were still options, pretending that one of the other unlabeled jars might hold something edible, or nostalgic, or not actively fizzing from botulism. But eventually, I had to face the truth: I was nearly out of food.

  Bagel, of course, had already reached that conclusion days ago. She’s many things, a thief, a tyrant, a furry little god, but above all, she’s pragmatic. She started hunting mice again. Badly. I caught her napping under the counter with her mouth open, paws twitching in some kind of feral dream, like she was remembering a time when she used to have snacks delivered to her in bowls, like royalty.

  I stood in the root cellar, squinting at the shelves. The air was cool, damp, and smelled faintly of old onions and despair. The shelves looked like museum exhibits now. A history of poor planning and worse taste. A few jars still sat on the highest shelf, out of reach unless I stood on the old milking stool. I climbed up carefully and reached for one that looked promising. Clear glass, amber liquid. Maybe honey?

  I opened it. Not honey.

  I don’t know what it was, but I swear it blinked at me.

  That left me with one option - beans. I don’t know why, but it seemed that the cabin never ran out of beans. I don't remember my parents being this obsessed with beans, but someone had to have stocked this cabin with walls of beans at some point. At this point, I almost gagged every time I had to open a can - it got old within the first week of eating nonstop beans.

  They could be giving me superpowers. Next time I run into some strange man in the woods, I could just blow him away.

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  But now looking at my last remaining cans, it was official. I can no longer pretend that staying here was an option. I was completely, utterly, and dangerously out of food. No more flour. No more canned beans. No more dried noodles, mystery spices, or vacuum-sealed apocalypse snacks from my family’s paranoid hoarding phase. Just beans, two cans. Both dented.

  I took one upstairs and set it on the table like a final offering.

  “Last supper?” I asked Bagel, trying to make some sort of meaningful eye contact with her.

  She ignored me.

  I sat down and stared at the can. This was it. It was finally time to go back to town. Maybe I would go and find the town totally back to normal, as normal as I could imagine it. I could remember how my parents used to describe it, and the villages in all of the books I have read. I’m sure Beauty and the Beast is accurate, right?

  "Don’t go to town," my parents always said. "It’s not safe anymore." It was obvious enough just from the limited amount of news we were able to get on the radio. Based on the broadcasts, all major cities across the globe had been invaded by these creatures. They all seemed to look different and have different abilities, but they had one thing in common - their propensity for snatching women away.

  After a year or two of speculations from both my family and the radio, we finally had a rough working idea.

  Some sort of virus had rampaged through this alternate universe, making them desperate for new women. None of them knew all the details, it all seemed to be pure speculation. Either way, it's not looking good for a woman all on her own out here. If I ran into even one of these creatures on my way into town to get supplies…

  I was fucked. Maybe in more ways than one.

  But the root cellar was empty. Bagel was starving. And if I didn’t go to town, I was next to go, and painfully slowly.

  I needed a plan.

  I needed a disguise.

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