[Fiction] Dear Posse No. 5: Cicada Chatter

I’m working on a serial fiction project. Each segment will be published here and on Patreon. It is available in full to Patreon supporters:

The cicadas want you to know the glowing wisteria isn’t their fault.

I don’t know exactly when that started. Maybe it was the fifth night. The sixth? I couldn’t sleep. What else is new? I walked downstairs. Flipped on the kitchen light. Poured a glass of whisky. Brad sniffed my ankles. Looked up at me with those buggy brown eyes. That appetite’s always up and running, even in the middle of the apocalypse.

The LED lights above the kitchen island look really blurry through my cracked vision. The only way that’s going to change is when all the lights stop working. I don’t think that time’s too far off. She’d say that’s fatalistic and depressing. She’d be right. But it’s hard to be optimistic right now.

I downed the shot. Poured another. Even through the closed windows, even over the thrum of the air conditioner, I heard the shrieking cicadas. That definitely started on the third night.

“Talk to me,” I said, stepping out onto the back porch. Brad padded along behind me. Jumped onto the wicker couch next to me as I settled in.

That’s when I saw the pale yellow glow around the canopy of wisteria trees rising above the brush in the woods behind the neighborhood. Might be keeping the giant spider awake. The spider’s name is Ludwig, by the way.

“We didn’t do this,” the cicadas cried, clinging to the bark of the wisteria trees. “We found them this way.”

I raised the shot glass in salute. “Impressive anyway,” I said.