Crickets

by Craig Borri

I care for crickets. I clean their cracks and crevices, sponging away dried sweat and dried feces. I help them pull on shirts, pants and diapers. Some can’t feed themselves, so I raise the spoon to their lips. I give them the medications that prolong their existence.

Despite my best efforts, my crickets smell of sour urine. It permeates the air. It follows me, clings to me, comes home with me. I no longer notice. Eventually even the rankest smells become commonplace.

Alice is my favorite cricket. She’s always smiling. Her smile is empty, like her eyes, but it’s nice to see.

Emma is my least favorite cricket. She always says the same thing, over and over and over, in her plaintive, desolate tone.

“I want to go home.”

I used to respond. I don’t anymore. There’s no point, because there’s nobody listening. I know I shouldn’t let it get to me, but it does sometimes.

“I want to go home.”

The ancient Greeks had a legend about a handsome young man who was the greatest lyre player in Greece. When he played, the birds would stop singing. He was so beautiful and played so well that Aphrodite herself fell in love with him. However, she knew that being mortal he would soon die, so she petitioned the gods to allow him to eat of the ambrosia of the gods so he would live forever, and being Aphrodite, she got her way.

Soon however, to her horror, she noticed a change in him. His skin got wrinkled. His hair fell out. His eyes grew rheumy. For while ambrosia gave him eternal life, it did not bestow eternal youth, for that belongs to the gods alone. Thus, he existed on and on, getting older, more shrunken, more wizened. Eventually he got so old and shrunk so much he turned into the cricket, and all that was left was his ability to play.

I work in a nursing home. It’s full of crickets.

The author, whose most noteworthy feature is an uncanny resemblance to Chevy Chase, is an old software engineer who had a brother in a nursing home.

“Crickets” is his first appearance on The Itch.

Sutures