The Last Supper New Year's Day, 2011. I had just...

The Last Supper

                New Year's Day, 2011. I had just done the dishes and was wiping off the counter when out from behind the flour jar came a yellow jacket trundling.
                You might call him a wasp.
                He was vivid and frightening-looking, stream-lined, clashing colors of orange-yellow with black. Contrasting stripes. Creepy triangle head sporting two large too-large soulless eyes that could never blink back tears of rage or sadness. Behind him were severe, sleek wings.
                He was dying. It has been winter for months and how, I wondered, did he get behind my flour jar? Why? How long had he been there? I moved my eyes slightly to look out the window at the frozen world of snow and ice. Peripherally, I could still see him, trundling.
                I looked at him directly again and watched as he inspected, then disregarded a crumb. I could tell flight was beyond him. He trundled on to another crumb, which he also disregarded. His antennae waved and felt.
                I decided he was hungry—and old—but hungry I could handle. To the fruit bowl I traipsed, in full flush of youth, and retrieved a Granny Smith apple. Using my thumbnail, I removed a bit of its flesh, no bigger than a rice grain, and placed it in front of him trundling.
                Trundling is a word, isn't it?
                He liked my offering and partook, settling in. I watched as his mouth parts made weird, minuscule movements. I think I spotted a tongue-like thing and was, for some reason, delighted.
                Long did he munch. I grew bored, did other things. Occasionally, I would go back to the kitchen and there he'd be, working away at his tiny apple piece. So long did he munch, in fact, that the whiteness of the flesh became brown, which is common with apples. They age easily, do apples, if you remove the tough cloaking skin and expose the soft sweetness to air and light.
                I wondered if, refreshed, he would now take disturbing buzzing flight around my head. He didn't, though. He just ate and ate, creating a much smaller piece of apple out of an already small piece of apple.
                When he was done, quite literally several hours later, he turned and trundled back behind the flour jar. I wondered what was back there, but didn't want to look. He needed his privacy now, I knew instinctively.
                He seemed happier as he trundled. He moved more quickly and seemed to have purpose. For the rest of the day, I did not forget about him.
                In the morning, I knew it was done, and so moved the flour jar aside and looked upon him dead on his back.
        "Goodbye," I should've said, but was silent.