Weekly Short: Hatching Season

The heat was worse than usual this year. The basin we called a township was used to searing temperatures and hellish humidity. This year was a new record.

The naive among us hoped it would be too hot for them to rise this summer. The rest of us knew. We prepared. Every summer, just on the solstice, the pixie eggs hatched. Thousands of the batlike creatures swarmed out of the trees, searching for their queen. They ravaged through town, feasting on or infecting anyone in their path.

When the heat hit in earnest we began boarding up windows and doors, covering chimneys with mesh and stockpiling food. No one left their house during hatching season. Well, almost no one. There were always one or two dumb ones. Natural selection, the wife said.

This year was different though. Everybody felt it. They were almost a month late. The dumb ones grew in number, maybe they were right. Maybe it was too hot. A quiet tension grew as resolve started to ebb.

That’s what I remember most. The silence right before the tsunami of pixies descended and the screaming began.