A Symphony of Cicadas

Three



I sat up with a start in a room bathed with light. I blinked to allow my eyes to adjust to the images around me. I was in a bed, wrapped in a tangle of blankets. The pattern of the cover was familiar, the same loose weaving of lavender flowers and green leaves I had talked John into buying when we first began living with each other.

I was in my own room.

John was sleeping next to me, his back toward me under the heavy mass of blankets. I could only see the top of his head, but felt him stir a little. I unwound myself from the blankets and moved closer to him, spooning him from behind with my arms wrapped around him. I began to place my hand in his, touching my fingertips into the palm of his hand. But he moved his hand just out of my reach.

“I had the strangest dream,” I told him. “I dreamed that Joey and I died in a car accident. It was so vivid…it was disturbing.” I moved closer to him and brushed my face against his back.

“How are you doing?” he asked, shifting his body to lift his head off the pillow. His back was still to me, but I sensed a deep concern in his voice.

“I’m okay,” I answered. “It was just a dream. But it felt so real!” I moved my hand again to place it in his, but he moved his hand away once more. I was confused by this. He felt so far away, almost as if he weren’t even there.

I sensed another presence in the room. I sat up again, looking over on John’s side of the bed. Sam was next to him, his eyes puffy and red as he lay on his back close to John. He had been crying. I hadn’t felt him come in while we slept, and was concerned to see him in tears; I wondered what could be bothering him.

John stroked his son’s hair as if he were just a little boy and not a fourteen year old teenager almost as tall as his father, comforting him as Sam kept his eyes up on the ceiling, trying not to cry. His usual look of disdain was replaced by the innocent expression of a distraught child.

“I just,” he began, and the tears ran down the sides of his cheeks onto the bed, “I just can’t believe they’re gone,” he whispered.

My hands shook as I tried again and again to touch John’s hand only to have him move it away each time. Neither one of them turned toward me, acting as if they were alone and I wasn’t even there.

“Who’s gone?” I asked, my voice wavering as I tried to remain gentle. Sam only buried his head in his father’s chest, both of them shaking as they cried together. “Who’s gone?” I demanded. They still didn’t respond. I leapt out of bed and slammed my fist against the wall over the headboard, only to have it sink into the drywall as if it were a foamy meringue rather than a solid surface. No sound could be heard from the angry movement. I pulled my hand back and tried again. Nothing. I kicked at the bed and tore at the covers. But all I could grasp before now seemed to slip through my fingers with ease. It made no sense. I could stand on the floor. I wasn’t just sinking through the earth or floating off into space. And yet, every motion I made in my panic proved fruitless in contact. I gave up and faced John and Sam.

“Who. Is. Gone,” I demanded through clenched teeth, staring straight at them and willing them to answer me. John leaned away from Sam and looked down at him.

“I’m going to miss them, too,” he told his son, his voice breaking in sorrow. His face looked about ten years older, the lines more pronounced in the dark circles around his eyes. He hadn’t shaved in what looked like a couple of days, and appeared not to have slept either. I knelt down and peered into his face.

“Please look at me,” I pleaded with him. “Please tell me what’s going on.” John sighed and moved onto his back, both of them now staring at the ceiling.

“I still can’t believe this happened,” he said, choking down a sob as he tried to get beyond the tears. “I keep thinking they’re going to walk through the door at any moment, that the police officer was wrong.” He fumbled with the covers, taking several deep breaths in and letting them out slowly.

“I never thought yesterday was the last time I’d ever see Rachel or Joey again.”

I felt my heart drop in my chest as the room began to fade away. John’s and Sam’s faces took on an ashen color before they resembled an image off a black and white screen. I could feel a sense of being pulled, my stomach tumbling as if falling in a roller coaster car in a steep decline. I reached out to grab onto something, anything. The room was gone, and all I came up with was air. Looking up, I could see a million stars and galaxies planted above my head in an infinite universe. Floating with nothing to hold onto, I was suspended in this space for only a moment before I was cast back into the world with a flash.

Pine needles crunched below my feet as I crouched down on the forest floor. I could smell the dampness in the air from the morning dew and feel the fog mist against my skin. It calmed me, though a feeling of fear also remained as I tried to get a sense of what was real and what wasn’t. My ears pricked at the sound of voices in the distance, and I turned my head towards the trees around me in a search for the source. Men shouted directions at each other, and I could hear the distinct sound of a chainsaw cutting through trees.

“That’s it, a little more,” a voice said, followed by a crash that echoed through my wooded surroundings. What I couldn’t see before appeared right before me. The voices of the men now matched the scene unfolding in front of me as they worked to extract something from a broken car. I recognized my car immediately, even in its crumpled condition. The windows were just shards of glass underneath the crumpled hood of the vehicle, the tires bent in odd directions like broken limbs.

“Did you find the other body?” one of the men asked. I could see flashing lights on the road far above where we all stood, a hazy glow surrounding them through the light fog of the late hour. Several cops with flashlights were making their way down the hill, and I could hear dogs barking in the distance.

“Yeah, they called it in on the walkie about fifteen minutes ago,” an older man said, patting the device clipped to his jacket. “Said he was a boy, about twelve or thirteen. I’m willing to bet that’s his mother inside the car.”

I was both curious and afraid to see who they were referring to inside the car. I stayed planted where I was, now just several yards away from where they worked to pry off the driver’s side door; but I kept my eyes trained on the car.

“Were there any others out there?” the younger of the two asked.

“No, I think there were just the two of them.”

An emergency team joined them, and I could see them lifting a body out of the vehicle and onto a gurney. I only saw the battered skin on the woman’s arm as they zipped up the body bag, relieved that I couldn’t see her face hidden under a mass of tangled hair. But before the bag was closed altogether, I caught the unmistakable glint of the ring on her finger, recognizing the modest diamond on a band John had presented to me almost exactly a year before the day I left the world.

As if in recognition, my own body responded to what I had seen, taking on the horrific reality of my earthly body. Wounds and shards of glass appeared on my arms, traveling up to my shoulders. I fell to the ground out of instinct as my legs splintered and twisted in different directions. I couldn’t see my face, but I could feel the warm blood dripping from my matted hair down my forehead and the blood filling my lungs with a sickening taste of copper.

“Help me,” I gurgled, and my body was healed in an instant. It was as if it had never happened. I lay there shaking, past the pain of being broken and afraid that it would happen once again. But my skin remained unblemished against the muddy ground of the forest. I wondered how Joey was doing, if he were as confused about all this as I was. And that’s when it hit me.

Joey. Where was Joey?