Scared to Death

Lightning illuminated the once dark room and with its instant flash came the sudden boom of roaring thunder causing a princess deep in her slumber to wake abruptly. She lay there motionless in bed for a moment listening to the howl of the winds and rains outside her cracked window. Slowly she began to rise and pull the covers off herself. She turned and let her feet drop off the mattress down onto the floor. She stumbled off her bed and inched slowly towards the window all the while the violent winds blew her draping curtains every which direction. She placed her hands on the window and slammed it shut before she was met with great difficulty as she tried to fasten the centered top lock. Her vision was spinning in disarray so she placed her hands on the windowsill hoping to regain her balance as she closed her eyes. Keeping them open was causing her pain like she had never known for rather than seeing as she normally would she felt like she was looking into a kaleidoscope. There were multiples of everything whirling around her. She decided she must be having a sinus migraine, so she made her way towards the bathroom where her relief pills await. As she stumbled around her room she found herself having an almost impossible time turning her door handle. As she cracked her eyes to look down at her hands she couldn’t make out what she was doing, but finally after an infinite number of tries she managed to open the door and make her way into the hallway. With her back hunched she zigzagged down the hall slamming into the walls more than once causing her body to flutter with pain. She pushed open the ajar bathroom door, staggering inside she turned and placed her hands down on the sink counter hoping to find her balance. She had never felt this way before. With her eyes cracked she slowly lifted her head towards the mirror. Once her eyes met its reflective glass she could not help but to defy the pain and open them wide because what she saw staring back at her was not the beautiful, young lady that had laid down earlier that night, but rather her very worst nightmare. Her jaw dropped and from her now wide mouth came the most blood-curling summer shriek one had ever heard. It sounded like ten thousand cicadas all bellowing out at once for what she saw staring back at her was no longer a woman, but a woman-sized cicada.

The above passage is an elongated form of a dream that I am always telling my wife Melissa will one day become her reality. You see, Melissa is deathly afraid of cicadas. Like myself she is no fan of sharks, but she is petrified of those howling summer insects.

Her fear stems from a time when she was a little girl playing in her sandbox and as she was digging about in the sand she uncovered what she describes as the largest cicada she had ever seen and as she unveiled its hiding spot it began fluttering its wings about while making its iconic shriek sending a young Melissa into a fluttering shriek of her own. She says that her cries were so life-threatening that her parents rushed over to pull her from the sandbox, consoling her immediately. The impact of that brief moment has resulted in a lifetime of fear, one that has caused her on numerous occasions to alter the way in which she lives her everyday life.

In college, Melissa and I use to work at Target, but because most of Melissa’s classes were during the day, she was always working the closing shifts. Once she got off work sometime between 10:30 and 11:00 and got home some ten minutes later, her parents would always have the porch light on for her, so she could find her way in with ease, but this illumination proved to be more of a burden than a benefit.

The lights attracted an entourage of unwanted cicadas that often caused her to have to avoid the well-lit back porch door and walk around the house to the typically darkened porch of the front door. On the several occasions that both porch lights were lit she found herself having to scale the wooden fence onto the pool deck in order to avoid having to face her fears head on resulting in a number of splinters in a variety of bodily areas. Oh, how I wish I had been there just once to witness this climb. Melissa mountaineering up and over a wooden fence in her red and khaki would have been a most welcomed sight. If only Snapchat had existed in that day and age!

Not only have these summer staples caused her to have to adjust which door she is able to use, but recently one of them caused her to miss out on one of the things she loves most in this whole entire world: Bobby’s Frozen Custard.

A couple weeks back Melissa, Lindsey, and I all went to treat ourselves one evening as part of Lindsey’s birthday celebration and while the three of us stood there in line we heard that classic shriek tied along with repeated whirling thumps. As we looked up at the brightly lit overhang of Bobby’s vintage 50’s vibe, Lindsey and I saw what Melissa already knew, a cicada. A rather large yellowish one was fluttering overheard just above the window that we were waiting to order from. The sight sent Melissa bolting out of line into the dark abyss that was the parking lot. Lindsey and I remained and waited for our turn to order. Several times we had to duck out of the way of this summer shrieker, but no bug was going to prevent us from getting our frozen custard. As we exited the line with our shake and concrete in hand we joined Melissa who was still standing in the darkest part of the parking lot. I told Melissa to face her fears and get back in line while Lindsey volunteered to go get whatever it was Melissa wanted. Melissa refused Lindsey’s offer because it was Lindsey’s birthday weekend after all and left us to go get back in line – albeit a decidedly different window.

A few minutes later an empty-handed Melissa joined Lindsey and I at our rounded, umbrella covered table. When we inquired why she came back without she informed us that the cicada returned and she had to get out of there before it got her. She said that she had to explain her irrational fears to the man next to her in line who repeatedly called the cicada a locust – which they are not – and she thought that he surely found her to be insane. She capped her rant off with saying that the stress the cicada brought to her dissolved her initial longing for frozen custard.

Last night as Melissa and I sat in our living room watching Fist Fight our friend Katie sent a series of video Snapchats of her husband and our friend Jon attempting to rid their living room light fixture of a cicada that had stolen into their house. With Melissa’s shivering and squirming reaction one would surely have thought that the cicada was actually in our living room – not theirs! Suffice it to say I waited to play my videos till after she had already played her so that she was able to live the thrill back to back. I’m always doing what I can to enhance her life.

Melissa hates the summer season for obvious reasons and is gleefully anticipating its near end, but she has been a good sport all summer long and we have maintained our near nightly walks around beautiful Wilson Park, but there has been a slight enhancement to her walking attire these past couple months.

Anyone who has been in or around the St. Louis metropolitan area this summer knows that it has been hot as Hell, so the less layers one has on should ideally assist in dealing with these smoldering temperatures better. Well, on our walks Melissa has been taking them with both her jean jacket and hoodie on over her head in fear that a cicada will randomly come swooping down from a tree and infiltrate her person. It will be pushing 90º outside, but she is still covered to the best of her ability, all in hopes that it will be enough should the cicadas decide to attack. I’m blessed that she is still alive and hasn’t stroked out from the heat – or her fears.

Two fear related blog posts in a row leave me with quite the hungering for Halloween – my absolute favorite holiday! While I greatly adore summer and all that comes with it, I look forward to autumn most each year. From the color changes in the leaves, to pumpkin farms and corn mazes, to haunted houses and scary movies, Halloween season is supreme in my book and dwelling two weeks in a row on what scares Melissa and I most has really heightened my holiday spirits!

As always, thank you for reading! Your continued support of my literary art means a lot and I wouldn’t continue writing each week if I didn’t have an audience to write for. By the time I post my next entry I should have crossed five thousand views across my blog! WOW! I never anticipated these kinds of results, so again, thank you all! Each and every one of you is simply the best!