Excerpt from Mood Swings by Frankie Barnet, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Mood Swings
Chapter 1
Jenlena Stays Inside

1.

It began with over a hundred rats in one long line on Sainte-Catherine Street in the middle of the afternoon. This was just about a year before the machine.

"Rats," spoke the blond-haired woman on the news. "One of our planet's most resourceful species, rats have traditionally survived in the shadows of our society. But today, along one of the city's busiest streets, they have chosen to make themselves known."

"Look at her," sneered Jenlena's roommate Daphne. "It's like she's getting wet for the rats. She doesn't even try to hide it."

"She's trying to ingratiate herself," Jenlena figured. "She wants to be a rat bride."

Ultimately, such an allegiance would prove to be a miscalculation.

2.

Who could believe the mood swings they'd been having? It was in the way they felt but also people's general demeanor, the nuances in their collective frown lines. It was in rivers and streams too, all water, as well as the moonlight, and animals frothing at the mouth. They held their feelings in their bodies and when they died, where did the feelings go? They buried one another and flowers sprouted from hopes and petty jealousies. Other times they burned one another in contained fires and their loved ones read poetry. They claimed to see one another in dreams. But that too was, perhaps, just the way they felt. It was a wily adversary, this mood, seared into their skin and the food they ate and the things they were afraid of. Click to see the CRAZY things Muslims BELIEVE in! What the government doesn't WANT you to know! How this peaceful Native American tribe learned to embrace their SORROW. Arkansas man kills wife and three others, explains, "I just felt like it."

3.

A month later, nobody was allowed to go outside. Jenlena wasn't staying at her own place then—she stayed over at her not-boyfriend Adam's. They were very happy, at least in the beginning. At least during that first week or so. They had sex and watched television and ate junk food. Sometimes it didn't even seem like he was her not-boyfriend; sometimes it seemed like they were really in love. Once, for example, they stayed up all night laughing, and when the morning came it was like the first time it had ever happened.

Her own roommates had only recently taken in a kitten from a box full of his dead brothers and sisters in the alley. Rolex, they'd called him. Sometimes they threw toy birds, sometimes they dangled a string. Then, the day of the rats, the animal tore up the couch, sprayed all over the wall, and snuck out through the fire escape. No one had seen him since.

Other animals, though. Such robust hostility: wasps targeted small children and the elderly; dogs bit off toes; a woman in Longueuil had her eyes torn out by a rabbit, the same Holland Lop who'd slept in her bed for three and a half years. A man's parakeet pecked apart his grandson's cheek. It was like one day all the animals just got together and decided. Moths went after handme-down sweaters and then fucked in the dry goods, a whole generation of their babies writhing among basmati.

Some reports had it that the Moon Bethlehems were helping the animals. They must have given them certain tactical advice, at the very least turning keys for them and opening doors. How else would the raccoons have gotten inside the power plant and switched off all the lights? They'd stormed supermarkets and pooped in all the water.

One of Adam's classmates disappeared on the eve of the first day of the siege, leaving only a cryptic email to the listserv: To whom it may concern: I've fallen in love. I know you won't approve but I can't help it anymore and he says if he cloaks me in his scent I'll be protected.

And though the animals' methods were a bit extreme, most people Adam and Jenlena's age were on their side. You couldn't not be; so many of their earliest memories were of an animal's smell and texture. One species or another had chosen their lap to sit in, out of all the other laps available at a party. It was the beloved family chinchilla who first taught them about death. Adam had grown up with animals in the house and knew all the names for their gatherings: a murder, a flock, a shadow. They'd slept in his bed and shared secrets.

Excerpted from Mood Swings by Frankie Barnet. Copyright © 2024 by Frankie Barnet. Excerpted by permission of Astra House. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.