Carmen Maria Machado’s “Inventory” was the least fantastical story we read this week but it is maybe one of the more powerful ones to me. In the story, the protagonist is making a list of all the people she has slept with. The people she has slept with is not the main story though. As we read we see that pandemic has slowly been making its way through the United States. Through these encounters we slowly see how her society fades due to the virus and little details from her past. From when she mentioned her encounter with the two boys and one girl, his mother had found her found her underwear and washed it. When they were returned to her she said “It’s weird to me how much I miss that floral, chemical smell of clean clothes.”. Later, after one guy angrily leaves her house we see that the MC has always been fond of making lists like how many animals she has had in her life and what spices you need to make pho. This seems to be coping mechanism for her to be able to look through her life and list all of the things that had happened and what she had. At the end, we find the MC is alone on an island after the virus had reached her area and this why she was making the list of the people she had slept with.