cricket song CARISSA LENTZ
Heather found her first specimen when she was cleaning her bathroom on a Tuesday, and after squeaking yellow gloves on, she took her cleaning bottle to the floor like it was a flame-thrower. She bent on her knees to scrub the crevice between the toilet and linoleum. Behind the toilet, drawing its spindly legs up toward the ceiling, she found it. Heather backed out of the bathroom on her hands and knees so quickly that she had to lean against the wall outside the bathroom to catch her breath. She wondered how long it had been there, dead. It still had a crunchy body that would eventually turn into dust that she might eventually breathe. Thinking about it made her chest constrict. She stood up and peered her head around the door. The bug hadn’t moved. She took a step inside with wadded-up toilet paper and threw it at the bug. It still didn’t move, but there could be more, waiting to ambush. Heather lifted up the rug, ready to run. Nothing. She checked the shower curtain, bathtub, medicine cabinet. Nothing. She thought she might pass out, and since she was turning thirty in a few months, took the incident as impending doom of life after twenty-nine. You are strong, she thought. Independent and in control. She remembered words she’d heard before: thorax, exoskeleton, chrysa 116
Berkeley Fiction Review
