Editors' Choice in Fiction: Cicadas in the Summertime

Cicadas in the Summertime

By Eudora A.

I never liked cicadas. My mama used to tell me that cicadas were once people. She said that long ago they had been cursed by a winter witch to only be able to return every summer when the witch was away. I always asked her why the witch cursed the people, and she always said it was because they were naughty. She told me they had annoyed the witch, so she turned them into noisy bugs that could never bother her again. I told her they bothered me. She laughed, and that was all I ever learned from her about cicadas. I used to hide from them. Every buzzing sound they made was a scream begging to be turned back, so I hid my head under my pillow every summer night. There were so many where we lived. Millions, I thought. I imagined that every shell I found was someone new that had been turned by the witch. I was afraid to be like them. To be cursed forever for being bad, which I was frequently reminded that I was. Whenever I mentioned this topic, Mama always said the same thing: if I behaved, I would stay human. This did not comfort me. For many years, I hated the summer. I cried on the last day of school every year, fearing the horrible things that awaited me at home. Their little eyes fixed on me at all times just willing me to join them: the army of the annoying.

When I was thirteen, my friend John confessed that he was afraid of frogs. I asked him how that could be—he was always the first person to touch the frogs that ventured into the playground in spring. He told me that his pop told him not to be afraid. John said every time he touched a frog he was less afraid of them. I was in awe. Somehow, I would learn this power; I would take my summers back from those insufferable insects. The last day of sixth grade finally came, and I was ready. I was determined. I marched out after class. I sat in stiff silence on the bus. I marched to my porch. I didn’t cry once. When I arrived, I plopped down my pack, defiant. After so many years of hiding from them, I knew just how to get their attention.

Papa kept an old, rusted lawn mower in the shed. It was a horrible thing that was hardly used anymore, but when it had been, I saw so many cicadas fly to it: their mother of noise. From then on, I always avoided the metal monstrosity, but that was before Papa went to Heaven. Today, I was in Hell. With no small amount of effort and sweat, I pulled the lawn mower to the center of the yard. I hadn’t thought to consider if it had gas, but after a few hard pulls, it sputtered to life. The rumbling was metallic and choppy—so much that I feared it might explode. It did not. I waited beside the machine for my nightmares to approach. When the first cicada landed in the grass next to me, I jumped three feet away. When the second arrived, I began to doubt my plan. The third landed on my arm. I screamed. I swatted at the bug, but another landed on my leg. I fell back into the grass with a screech. I wriggled around trying to wipe them off. However, my screams brought more of them to me. Another on my chest. Another on my leg. Two more on my arm. One in my hair. Then, one on my face. I could feel their sticky feet holding onto me like an itch. I became paralyzed in fear and fell silent. I was sure they would make me one of them. More and more landed all over me.

I lay in the grass, cicadas crawling over my skin, for what felt like hours. My breathing was almost nonexistent. Hundreds of them covered my cowering body. I was sure I was fully cicada now, my punishment fulfilled. They went under my shirt, and their thin legs brushed lightly against my soft and sensitive skin. I squeezed my eyes shut as tight as I could when I noticed something unexpected. They were starting to tickle me. Just a couple of them at first. Then more. I held tight, stifling any noises, but I soon began to laugh. I laughed and laughed. Suddenly, I didn’t feel afraid anymore. I was so busy laughing that I did not notice when the lawn mower cut out or when Mama arrived to see me rolling in the yard covered in cicadas. She was furious that I had ruined my school clothes and said the witch would punish me, but I didn’t care. I was a cicada now, and I was not afraid. I slept well that night.