Austin Treat

Fiction. A man concerned for his bleeding wife resorts to hunting crickets to regain some control over an uncontrollable situation. 5 minutes to read. Originally published at Flash Fiction Magazine, 2026.

The light splits what is usually dark and calm, edging under the bedroom door. Behind the curtains, behind the blackout shades, are the stars. They’re the first signs of distress, and I’m glad I waited to check my phone until after I saw them. Like maybe I’m still a creature of nature after all.  

It’s three in the morning and my wife is in the bathroom. She trickled in from her bedroom. Now, she’s standing in the penumbra of the hallway’s light, shielding her eyes from its clinically white rays, with a trash can at her feet. On the sink are scraps of toilet paper speckled reddish brown. 

“I’ve already taken pictures,” she says. Her phone is on the sink, and there’s a full pad of blood with chunky bits. 

I stoop down for a closer look. It’s the only way to see anything without my glasses on. Subconsciously, there may be a long-repressed, animal side of me that wants to sniff the anomaly. We only get five senses and at least one of mine is visibly impaired. I’m not gonna taste the thing. Though I imagine it’d be salty with a musky tang. So I do what anyone would do with a Library of Alexandria at their fingertips, and google it, only leaving a few centimeters between my phone and my nose.

“I’ve already looked it up,” she says. “It could be a lot of things. I don’t know. I don’t feel any pain right now.” She will tomorrow night, when the guts of her womb turn inside out.  

Still I goog, searching for some peace of mind, which feels quixotic, and I’m reading through the possible warning signs that could also be normal, healthy signs. In search of new, regurgitated answers, I’m about to dive into a Quora and Reddit wormhole. Except I can’t think straight or process a single digital word I’m reading over the earsplitting trilling that’s rattling our lick-n-stick two-bedroom apartment in Fryeburg, Maine, the rent of which I can’t even cover with a two-week paycheck on a teacher’s salary at the nearby academy. 

The sound is everywhere. A shrill, metallic chiming that defies walls and doors and windows. High pitched and piercing. An incessant, unsolicited performance of sound, starting as a solo act, but which spreads into an unfathomably harmonized orchestral number, as if by flash mob. 

Crickets. 

My wife is still standing in the bathroom. She hasn’t mentioned anything about the noise, but I usher her to bed just in case her hearing improves. She pulls the covers up, past her ribcage. Her worries are numerous, and none of them are assuaged by the internet. There are so many things that could go wrong. So many spirit-lifting hopes that could cascade into despair. In a matter of hours, every ounce of wishful thinking could be evaporated. We haven’t told any of our friends or family for precisely this reason. The anonymity was meant to be our shield, and now it feels more like a cage than any aegis. 

“God, those damn crickets,” I say. “Can you hear them? They’re so loud.” I’m sitting at her bedside, rubbing her shoulder. 

“Oh, yes,” she says after some time. 

“I think maybe they’re in the garage. They sound so close.” But when I open the door, the little bastards go silent. I spend a barefoot minute scouring the dusty cement. Moving trash bins, a pink beach chair. They love camping under the spare bedframe leaning against the wall. Though I find none now. 

“Huh. Couldn’t find any in the garage,” I say, at the threshold of our second bedroom, where she sleeps most nights. If you pictured me standing there with my hands on my hips, you’d be right.

Then the crickets start taunting us again, obtuse to the crisis in our hearts. 

As compensation for my worse-than-bat vision, middling (at best) olfactory system, and mostly fumbling sense of touch, my hearing is feral sharp. Hence needing to sleep in a separate room. A subtle change in someone’s breathing will wake me up. Not that anyone will believe that’s the reason if we tell them, so we keep that to ourselves too.  

Sonar engaged. I track their trilling to the east-facing wall by my wife’s patio garden, and march outside in my underwear. The last two tomatoes are hanging from the vine, thick and light orange. 

The first cricket is hiding under a clump of grass by the exposed foundation. Its oily exoskeleton snaps between my fingers, leaving a blob of yellowy entrails on the dirt. There’s a second one not far from the first. Even without my glasses, I can see its black form, about the size of my fingertip, frozen in the glow of the outdoor lights. After it’s dead, I worry what the neighbors will think if they see me outside like this, stooped over the lawn like a madman in boxer briefs, snooping out God knows what. I find a third cricket just outside the garage door, semi-tucked under the lip. Not well enough, I’m afraid. It bursts open like the rest of them. Only then do I realize I’m shivering and my hands are numb. I can see my breath in the darkness. Dawn must be approaching. 

She’s waiting for my return. I wash my hands in the bathroom first, excavating the sandy sludge and chitin crammed under my fingernails. It takes awhile to get them clean. Having returned to her bedside, she places one of her perfect hands over mine, and says, “Everything happens for a reason. Everything’s gonna be okay.” 

Some nights I believe it. Some nights I believe I’m living in the natural order of things. Some nights I believe this is the way life goes, and there’s always a plan. Other nights, I’m killing crickets.