The Insects

The Insects

   The gun was big and unwieldy and I didn’t want to shoot the son of a bitch but it was me or him and the world would be a hell of a lot better off without him. He was having lunch in an outdoor café on a small square. There were few people on the street and no one else at any table. The thug next to me pushed me and told me to get it over with. I peeked around a wall on a corner a few store fronts down. The thug jabbed me. I lifted the rifle to my shoulder and fired. He fell backwards, his feet kicking the table over. Blood flowed around the shattered dishes and glassware. I heard a scream. The thug and I bolted. A couple of streets later with no one around, we ditched the weapon in a hedge and sauntered the last few blocks to the store. Another thug was waiting for us and ushered us in. He told us to walk through the store and exit the back. He lead us through a yard and out a gate. Across a street, we climbed a flight of wooden stairs up to the roof of a dilapidated building. When we reached the edge of the roof, the man from the store looked down to a field of dry, overgrown grass. He told us the man I had shot was beloved by the insects. There was fear in his voice. A high pitched rattle began to fill the air. He looked around frantically and told us we had to get the hell away before they discovered us. He screamed and flew off the roof right before our eyes. We turned and ran down the stairs for our lives as the rattle turned into the clanging of a distant fire alarm. But there was no fire. We raced down the street towards an intersection bisected by an abandoned, weed covered railroad track. Both of us stopped in abject terror as the weeds suddenly began a frantic dance from the racing insects beneath them. The clanging, rattling howl filled our ears.
   All went silent. We stood stupefied. The quaking plants swayed still. Millions of eyes staring at us pricked our skin like needles. I began to sing. I rocked on my feet with the rhythm in my head. The man looked at me in astonishment. When he turned to run, a cloud of insects vomited out to the brush and consumed him. The music filled my soul. My shoulders moved with it. My head rocked. The cloud over his bones hovered for a moment next to me as if making a decision. I began to dance. The fog of tiny teeth moved with me. I opened my arms to it. It surged toward me. It enveloped me. It rhythmically caressed me. I rolled my head back on my shoulders and smiled.