Brood X

Temperatures were averaging high nineties as Tommy dug his polished nails into a mosquito bite on his left calf. Any brought out a picture of lemonade and poured a glass for herself, and well as Tommy and Micah.

“I couldn’t find Mamaw’s recipe box, so I don’t know if it’s any good,” Amy said as she looked nervously at the two.

“I wouldn’t care if this was just a glass of iced piss. I could drink anything; my mouth’s so dry,” Micah stated as they turned up the already sweating glass. “Not too bad, Aims.”

“Thank goodness,” Amy sighed as she took a drink from her glass. Then, after a moment of silence, she asked, “Y’all want to go do something?”

“Like what? I think my legs fused to the wicker,” Tommy exaggerated as he slowly tried to get up.

“Well, there’s an antique locket in that old abandoned antique shop downtown that I’ve had my eye on. I was thinkin’ y’all could help me get in and get it since no one else has after thirty years of them bein’ shut up and all.”

“You’ve always been such a klepto, Amy. I’m surprised they even hired you at Claire’s after all the earrings you stole in fourth grade,” Micah said.

“They forgave and forgot, I guess. Now let’s go before I melt on this porch.”

After taking the winding roads into downtown Pinesborough, the three of them carefully worked their way up the rickety fire escape to the top of the building, where years of weather had already busted the attic window. Amy plucked a brick from the back edge of the building, its right corner completely crumbled away from decades of Virginia weather. She threw it at the window as hard as she could, and glass fractured over the roof. She dusted off most of the shards with the bottom of her shoe and climbed in.

“Y’all stay here and keep watch. I’ll be in and out as fast as I can,” Amy declared with her legs already halfway through the window. Amy swung the rest of her body into the building and quickly bound down the narrow stairway to the ground floor. She came back, the dusty locket in hand, not even a minute later.

“Let’s go, losers,” she coolly announced while fastening the necklace around her neck.

On the drive back to Amy’s house, the sky was quickly darkening in the distance.

“Is that a dust storm?” Tommy asked as he pointed to the not-so-far-off mountains.

“How the hell are we goin’ to have a dust storm in western Virginia?” Micah retorted.

“Well, I don’t know, but what else is it going to be?”

“I sure as hell don’t want to find out,” Amy pressed the gas pedal just as the storm siren went off downtown.

Not even two minutes after the group had closed the screen door behind them, a cicada splattered against the glass on the lower half. Then another. Suddenly dozens of cicadas were flying into the door at once. They quickly began flying into every window, then began to squeeze their way into the house through whatever cracks they could find.

“Are these fucking cicadas?” Tommy exclaimed, picking one off the floor.

“Yes. I’ve never seen cicadas like this, or this many,” Micah replied while examining a cicada themself.

“Y’all! I think they’re attracted to me or something,” Amy yelled while swatting cicadas away from her face. They crawled into her curly hair and seemed to be swarming closely around her chest.

“Amy, I don’t think it’s you. I think it’s the necklace,” Micah said. “Maybe we should take it back.”

“That’s fucking crazy, Micah. There’s no way they’re doing this over an old necklace. It’s practically a piece of junk.”

“Then why are they swarming around it, Amy? You need to take it back,” Micah argued, “Maybe it’s cursed or something. Did you take it out of some weird display?”

“Uhhh...” Amy was beginning to believe that this locket might actually be cursed. It had been displayed in a heavy oak chest, rest upon what Amy thought was a mannequin hand. Perhaps not.

“Amy, you have to return the locket. If you don’t, who knows what’ll happen. It could be the end of the world for all we know,” Micah pleaded, the last bit of persuasion Amy needed to take the necklace back to the old shop.

Tommy opened the screen door, and thousands of cicadas poured into the house.

“I can’t move!” Amy screamed over the insects. As cicadas swarmed around the trio, they were sure that this sweetheart’s antique was definitely more than that. They’d always heard stories about Appalachian Mountain witches while growing up as kids, but now their heads were spinning with the idea that these stories might have been true. Amy’s kleptomania had led to the end of the world.

“Take it back to the shop, Amy!” Tommy shrieked above the deafening drone of cicadas.

“How the hell am I supposed to get there, Tommy?! We’re surrounded by goddamn bugs!” Amy called over the noise.

Micah had dealt with worse things in their life. Growing up “odd” in the heart of Appalachia had made them harder, for worse or better, they weren’t sure than most other people their age. They knew that they could either take this necklace back to its resting place or die surrounded by bugs. Micah yanked the delicate chain from Amy’s neck; its clasp flew through the black cloud of cicada’s. Micah started running to downtown Pinesborough. It only took about two minutes to get to the heart of downtown, and Micah had been playing sports for years. They were basically trained for this. The cicadas packed tight around Micah as their feet carried them across broken sidewalks. Micah began to hear their heartbeat over the thundering cicadas and screaming storm sirens as they flew to the antique shop.

The front door of the thrift shop had been barred closed since the 1980s. Micah scrambled up the rusted fired escape, attempting not to slip over the hundreds of bugs crunching beneath their red sneakers. Micah wiggled through the narrow window, jumped downstairs, and threw the heart-shaped locket back into the chest from which Amy had stolen it. All those years of being forced to play baseball had paid off, Micah thought to themself as the oak chest’s heavy slid slammed closed with a faint click as if it were locking itself. Immediately, the cicadas funneled out of every nook and cranny in the walls of the abandoned building. Exhausted, Micah climbed back out the window and pushed a large pile of wood planks in front of it, hoping that no one else would take any of the treasures from the inside. Amy’s car screeched on the road, nearly drifting onto the sidewalk where Micah had paused to catch their breath.

“Stick to stealing from corporations, okay, Aims?” Micah teased as they slid into the back seat of Amy's cicada covered car.

Photo by <a href="https://unsplash.com/@natbelfort?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText">Nat Belfort</a> on <a href="https://unsplash.com/s/photos/cicada?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText">Unsplash</a>