"Cicadas" by John Pender #fridayflash #guest

Hi everyone,

Many of my blog readers follow for the stories. I requested guest posts by other #fridayflash participants to share. This week is John Pender, with "Cicadas". Enjoy. - CC

​Cicadas sang through the night, myself lying in bed desperately searching for that sweet sleep. Hoping, praying it would come. I was a light sleeper at best; the lightest sound would wake me. Not even the custom ear plugs (the ones I had spent a small fortune on) could help me that night.

​I suffer from a rare condition, one that the medical world refuses to acknowledge. Sleep deprivation in people such as myself brings out or basest instinct – survival. When the world is quiet, all is well. We are fine; I am fine. The ear plugs have been a godsend.

​I was just thirteen when it first happened. They hatched. I made it through the night, finding myself the next morning in somewhat of a fog. A madness had come over me and before the day was done, nine people were dead. All at my hands.  Yes, I had full recollection, but the reasoning and remorse were nowhere to be found.

​I was allowed to remain free on technical reasons (the biggest being that I was a minor at the time). That and the fact my father has friends in high places and deep pockets.

​To make a long story short, it happened again just this past year. You see, every seventeen years they hatch. They hatch and the world – my world – fills with a buzzing a clicking that drives me into that abyss. Like I said, nine people died at my hands eighteen years ago. Last year, it was somewhere near forty. The police told me the official count was forty-two but news reports varied from anywhere between seventeen and sixty.

​My wife is my biggest regret, poor soul. I don’t know how I could ever pay recompense to her family. It truly wasn’t my intention; it just kind of … happened.

​So that’s my story. Here I sit, alone in this room of concrete with a narrow vertical slit of a window and a steel door with peeling green paint. All I’ve got to my name is that damn bed hanging from the wall on chains (may as well be sleeping on a rocky riverbed) and the clothes on my back.

​At night I am greeted with the hoots and hollers of my fellow inmates, the clanging of metals cups on bars, and the occasional scream from the guy down the corridor. And I don’t have my earplugs.

Read more of John's work at http://johnpender.net/