I smash CLVI with the bottom of a soda glass. Head and thorax pancaked under the circular bottom, back legs still poised, ready to spring.
“Got it,” I say, but my love is already scrawling the numerals on the wall with black sharpie. C. L. V. I. I do the math. One thousand crickets dropped through our living room window. One hundred and fifty six dead, left smashed on the floor, countertops, tables. Eight hundred and forty four still inhabit the walls, carpets, vents. Chirping out with their bandy legs, sounding their frail existence with each passing moment.
“At this rate,” my love has also done the math, “we’ll be killing them for the next three and a half weeks.” Her mouth twists into a knot.
“Au contraire. The last ones will be harder to find.”
“Maybe some have vacated already.”
That was our hope last week, when the sound of a thump, then laughter, then burning rubber woke us from our sleep. Some harmless prank, I supposed. By the time we roused from bed, the crickets had abandoned their opened containers, two boxes cut down the middle, five hundred crickets each. We, who have no money to even pay next month’s rent, could not afford to call an exterminator, could not afford to tell the landlord. My love said they would leave. I agreed. Surely they prefer the outdoors. We opened windows, doors. They did not leave.
“We’re not that lucky.”
My love caps the sharpie. She doesn’t like the smell. But at this point, with a week’s worth of decaying crickets littering the ground, there’s hardly any point. The whole house smells like the sweet aroma of bread mold or the decay of cruciferous vegetables, depending on where I stand. My clothes smell like this too. Coworkers won’t come near me anymore. My love does, but that’s because we smell the same. It brings us together.
“Should I get the broom?”
I asked this question after the first cricket too, but then I immediately stepped on the second. We didn’t clean those, nor the ones that followed. What was the point of cleaning, when the floor was a vast, moving colony of insects, and every step killed a few more? Plus, it was easier to keep track when they were stickered to the floor beneath. Now that our kills are in the hundreds, I’m wondering if now is the time to rid ourselves of our collection. She just shrugs.
“If you want.”
So I don’t.
We kill more. Under furniture legs, between the mattress and fitted sheet, behind the drawings our nieces provide. We turn on our TV, plastic antennae stuck to the window to pick up a signal, and try to drown out their noise, even if all we can get is static. At night, we sleep with foam ear plugs, but I can’t keep them in all day. My ears are swelling with pressure and infection. But when I take them out, the sound is all consuming. Overlapping hymns of high pitched exhilaration, an orchestra without a conductor, left to play whatever volume and tempo they desire. That’s the best thing about killing them. I can hear the difference in one death, the slight rise of silence, the absence that promises their final rest. We scrawl CLXXV on the wall.
My love yawns. I yawn. There is only so much one can do in a day. It is not late, and the sun is still burning at the edges of the yard. Still, we’ll resume tomorrow. The next day, and the next, and the next. There is no future without them, their violin bow legs skittering over frayed strings.
My love is asleep before me, voluminous space between us. Her unwashed hair is damp with oil, and hangs over her face in sheets that will cause her to break out in red spots. I brush it aside with my fingertips, and asleep, she doesn’t pull away. She roles sideways, revealing the little brown plug that lets her sleep through the symphony. For my part, I have not put them in yet. I twist the foam in my fingertips as crickets weave across our carpet in intricate, shadowed leaps. I could kill them. My work boots sit next to my bed. But night is overwhelming, and the magnitude of our problem weighs down my feet and arms until they are anchors, mooring me to a dock, waves lapping against my side. Undoubtedly, I am going insane.
I plug up my left ear, resting it against the pillow, but leave the right exposed. To truly defeat them, I must be able to sleep through their chorus. Straining against it is no use, so instead I let it wash over me. Every miscounted beat, all the misplaced legato, they consume me. Except there is another noise. One that was underneath all along, I’m sure, but that I could not hear until now. A pulse. Mandibular munching marking a percussive rhythm. I leave my love behind to follow the new instrument.
I trace it to the kitchen, stepping so as to not crunch the bugs under my bare toes. The gnawing crescendos over the chirping, my ears straining for the new instrument, a gentle rolling timpani. There is a strange lack of insects on the kitchen tile, given that the floor is a creamy, rumpled linoleum. There is but one single line of seven, standing guard in front of the cabinet under the sink, a dark particle board door. They are still.
I kneel down in front of them, knees cracking as I bend down. Their antennae twitch in strobing gestures, sensing me. I have killed so many of their brethren. Do I come as friend or foe?
I reach out to one and touch it’s antennae with my pinky. “Let’s call it a temporary truce.”
They sweep sideways, and I open the door.
There, beyond the cabinet door, nestled behind Draino and 409, a bag of sponges and pipes, are dozens of them. They move in simultaneous fashion, chewing through the wall. They stop. They turn to me. Eyes glistening in the light cast from the full moon.
“Oh.”
My love is there. I did not hear her arrive, but now she is crouched beside me, whistling as she breathes through her nose.
“They’re going to bring more inside,” I say.
“Yes.”
“We could stop them here. Block the hole. Board it up.”
“We could.”
We share a moment. One of many in our married lifetime, when we are of one mind. A synchronicity whose absence I only understand now on its return. There are things too awful to undertake. Reaching out together, we press our fingertips against the wall, pushing against the thinned surface. Our hands touch as we crumble the remaining barrier and paint. We feel fresh air on our fingers, and find the night.
They are waiting on the other side. A hundred or more, hiding among the blades of grass. They chirp at their compatriots on the other side, and now I hear the melody, call and response, complete. The first cricket steps through the gap. MI.
My love and I take each other’s hands and step away. It is a shameful invasion of privacy. We must go.
I lock the front door behind us. We settle on the spiny grass. My love rests her head on my chest. I prop my head on my left hand, the right curling around her shoulders. In the night air, there is nothing left but silence.
