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Under New Management · Original Minific ·
Organised by RogerDodger
Word limit 400–750
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Cicadas All the Way Down
My father told me once, when there was light in my eyes and fuel in my spirit, that cicadas are immortal.

He was a bright, young city-slicker, who moved to the middle of nowhere out of necessity for the peace and quiet of the countryside. He was very lucky to be able to work at home for two out of five days a week, helping tend to the farm animals and his two unruly kids while his company stewed in a pot of money and profits. A tall, sleek, silver-tongued man, he was bursting with ideas, and sometimes they spilled over into my life. This was one of the only tales I remembered.

He asked me, “Have you ever seen a dead cicada?” I shook my head vigorously, his smug lips parting to spout, “Of course not. Out of all the thousands of voices singing each night, wouldn’t you think that at least one would have passed away?”

I know that they die, now. I see at least one curled corpse on the sidewalk when I pass by the city, but the magic had never left. I breathe in the warm autumn air as I sit back in his worn and chipped rocking chair, watching the sun steadily soar through the sky. It’s around three and the cicadas are at full force in their orchestra of chitters, calling out to me.

Years later, I made an offhand comment about the cicadas, but this time his own eyes lit up. Picking up their shells and harnessing them securely on my shirt, I poked fun at the story, being the snotty teenagers we all were, but no matter how oblivious to the world I was, I could feel his excitement seeping through my pores, and, once again, I listened.

“Did you know that when a person dies, their years are passed on to the cicadas?” I had probably scoffed or snickered or brushed it off. “No, really, they are. When your years are all gone, you become a baby, like your sister, and start life all over again.”

“I’m not sure I want to be like my sister,” I said, watching her as she ripped grass from its roots, slowly and methodically chewing it like cud. She puked later that night.

We laughed. He pointed to my shirt, crawling with brown husks and empty eyes. “That’s where all the years go.”

“Into my shirt?”

He lightly smacked me upside the head. “No, stupid, into the shells. At the end of each summer, they sing a song of remembrance and ‘shed the years of growth,’ if I can recall your grandfather saying.”

“So, what? Does that mean there’s gonna be this huge-ass cicada walking around downtown?”

He smacked me again, hissing “language” as he tried to come up with an answer.

“No, when a cicada gets too big, it buries itself into the ground and grows, feeding off the years of the earth. No more questions, alright?”

He was lucky I didn’t have any more. Satisfied, I returned to the comforting motion of unsticking a husk from a thin, scrawny oak tree and placing it on me. I had at least two nuclear and extended families on me by the time we had to wash up for dinner.

My father died late summer of old age. When I mentioned the myth to him, he had no recollection of the event, and my silent disappointment was insurmountable. That fall, though, was the loudest song they had ever cried.

It’s late summer now. The years have worn my old face to leather and my old bones to mere twigs. The sun sets on the tree splotched horizon, cicadas keeping strong into the night, shedding the hard worn years of those long gone.

Dying is no quandary of my own, for I would willingly part with them now if death’s shaky hand should allow it. I dream of small, smooth faces, scratched knees, and circular band aids. But most of all, I dream of running again.

The squeaky rhythm of the chair fades to a stop and the cicadas sing as my head lulls to sleep in the dying summer sunlight.

Soon they will add one more keen husk.
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#1 ·
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I liked this one. Cicadas are freaky tho. Have u ever seen one flying?????? They don’t care if ur in its way, they will go straight through you.

“I’m not sure I want to be like my sister,” I said, watching her as she ripped grass from its roots, slowly and methodically chewing it like cud. She puked later that night.


Gross, but hilarious.
#2 ·
· · >>Baal Bunny >>Anon Y Mous
I think it was a mistake to start the story in past tense and stay there a while before you switch over to the prevailing present. I know it's essentially a flashback that needs to be in past, but establish that your overall tense will be present before you go there.

Hm, then I was wondering why you bothered being in present at all. It's not until the end that it becomes important, and I think it'd help if you anchored it early on. You start with a flashback, nothing important happens in the present, you go to another flashback, and I start to ask myself what the present tense is doing. It's a short enough story that I'll read to the end anyway, but it did bother me, and in a longer work, it might have gotten really annoying.

This is nice as a scene, and there are certainly proponents of minifics as scenes. Personally, I'd rather have something to draw a conclusion from, and I can't suss out a point the story's making. There's a really interesting concept here, but it doesn't really go anywhere with it. Some people might not mind, and if a scene is all you're going for, you did what you were trying to.
#3 · 1
· · >>Anon Y Mous
Alternate Title: It's About Death, Stupid!

Something I liked:

I feel like out of all the entries this round, this one makes its setting seem the most palpable. It's one thing to tell the reader your story is set in the countryside, it's another thing to make the reader feel like they're really there. Everything feels rustic, rural, kind of dirty; the passage with the kid sister encapsulates this pretty well, on top of being a moment of comic relief. The idea that cicadas are connected with death is somewhat fantastical, but also captures the paradoxical feeling of quietness and loudness as someone reaches the end of their life, the quietness of the countryside contrasted with the loudness of the cicadas.

Something I didn't like:

Unfortunately, as much as this entry goes for an emotional angle, it never quite registered with me in that way. The protagonist and his father feel abstract enough that I don't form a connection with either of them, even though there is a clear sense of melancholy peppered throughout the narrative. This seems more like a flaw born out of ambition than carelessness, since mini-fics don't have the time needed for deep connections with characters, and the author might've bit off more than they could chew.

Verdict: Certainly one of the strongest entries for me, even if it didn't hit all the right notes.
#4 · 1
· · >>Anon Y Mous
One glaring thing about this is that the first sentence, about cicadas being immortal, isn't brought up that much in the end. While this is a first-person story and there is the implied meaning that cicadas technically live forever by feeding off the years of dead people, there's no satisfying ending (or at least follow-up) in regards to cicadas being immortal. Maybe something like perhaps seeing no dead cicadas on the ground in the last few paragraphs or something like that would help bring some closure to that.

And while much of this story's charm is in how mysterious and ambiguous some of it is, I feel that there's still not enough literary nudges given for what kind of young life the protagonist was looking forward to. Sure, we know it's to turn back into a baby, but then it doesn't really say it's reincarnation—and then that has implications for the whole world if the cicada thing is true, that, perhaps, everyone else reincarnates like that. But maybe I'm just looking too much into that.

Other than that, you've done a really good mood piece over here, with one's acceptance of death in the form of cicadas welcoming him and taking his years, topped with the promise of youth once more. The first sentence, despite the lack of follow-up later on, is a great hook, and the memories were mentioned just enough to be, well, memory-like—not too long, not too short, and certainly giving the present-day ending enough words to fulfill itself.

Overall, this is a well-done somber piece about cicadas, death acceptance, and possible reincarnation all rolled into one! Nicely done.
#5 ·
· · >>Anon Y Mous
I think I'll hafta:

Abstain on this one since I can't for the life of me see how it has anything to do with the picture it claims to be based on. As a story, it's not bad though I agree with >>Pascoite about the weirdness of the verb tenses. But this being a "pic2fic" event, well, the fic's gotta have some connection to the pics...

Mike
#6 · 1
· · >>Anon Y Mous
It's pretty uncommon to have an entry in these here WriteOffs that presents itself as an atmospheric piece right out the gate. I can't say I've seen many in the short time I'm here so I'm always up for reading another one that swings by unannounced, and while I do like the concept that it is gunning for over here, of which the gist of it was already mentioned by my fellow reviewers before me, I think ultimately this entry falls a little flat on really hammering home the mood it's trying to convey.

Before getting into why that is, I would like to add to the commendations on the writing in general. As the others have pointed out, the first line alone was impeccable. The slow unveiling of the protagonist's world view that followed soon after was really nice, even if was made a little murky by the shifting of the tenses littered all around. I didn't particularly mind it that much, though the entry would definitely fare better to stick to a singular tense, maybe go with past perfect continuous for the flashbacks if need be.

Now, here's the part where the mental ramblings in my head are compiled into a pretty long dissertation of why this piece didn't really work out for me in the end.

The first time coming off from this story, I found myself questioning why this particular entry didn't leave me enthused despite it being a story that should be in my wheelhouse. I had been pretty sure it was not the tenses, as I found that even though they did bother me in my initial readings, they didn't really do anything to my experience beyond muddying the waters a little. After a couple more reads, I can confidently state that this piece suffered, in multiple fronts, a lack of focus. That's not to say that the piece is not focused at all; I just think that in some respects, the scope does need to be narrower to really deliver on the emotional front.

Right away from the title, it's pretty damn clear that cicadas are going to have a hand in portraying the theme of this story. That's pretty much proven to be true on the first sentence, with swathes of it covering the remainder of the entry later on. However, also in that first sentence alone, I could pull out two prospective routes that this story could've gone down:

My father told me once, when there was light in my eyes and fuel in my spirit, that cicadas are immortal.


Looking at it, this tells me that the story would either be about a) the protagonist's relationship with his father, or b) the nostalgia of youth and the acceptance of aging. When I continued reading it, the focus seems to be placed on the father, up until halfway through the fourth paragraph, when we realize that the protagonist is actually sitting on a rocking chair and reflecting on life, in which it suddenly shifts to the other option on the table. The consequent paragraphs seem to rebound between the two ideas, yet they never really do it in the way that plays each other off. Instead, at times, they seem to be blindsiding each other.

That's not to say that these ideas couldn't work with each other somehow. In fact, I can definitely see a way to really tie together his father's advice with his impending denouement. Honestly, I'd be impressed if it was pulled off neatly and would probably throw it up at the top of my slate if that was the case, especially considering the time frame that this had to be written in. I suspect that even the more masterful writers on here, even those with published works underneath their belt, would have a lot of trouble making these two concepts work. In a way, I can definitely give kudos to your ambition, dear Author. Your execution, not so much.

On top of that, I think there also needs to be more clarity on whether this is actually a character piece or one based on mood. With the way everything is framed and structured, I'm inclined to think that this is an unraveling of our protagonist, yet when I squint deeper into the scenes and look at the word choices shouldering the entry, it does seem to heavily indicate the latter. I particularly don't mind having our protagonist here to be some abstraction of an aging farmer if that were the case, but if I'm judging it as a character piece, the vague portrayal of our protagonist would definitely pose as a major issue.

Furthermore (yes, there is a furthermore), I think the usage of cicadas in this story could definitely be utilized better. Right now, the cicadas really only serve as a conduit between the protagonist and his father rather than to present some cohesive theme running through the course of the story. I get the feeling that there is an attempt to do so, as I keep seeing all the callbacks to the cicada's husks and the loudness of their singing, yet they never really do anything beyond being presented as fodder for the protagonist's father to talk to him. I do understand that the conversations the protagonist has with his father regarding the cicadas are important to him, as evidenced by how disappointed he was when he found out his father had no recollection of them. I just wished that the cicadas bring something more tangible beyond that.

Ultimately, I definitely admire what this piece is striving for but again, I just think it lacked the focus in many fronts to actually engage and enrapture me as I believe it was trying to do. Nevertheless, a commendable effort on your part, dear Author. Hopefully this review helps you going forward.

Thanks for writing, and good luck!
#7 ·
· · >>Anon Y Mous
Like what everyone else said, you didn't stick to a single plot point.

I think that this is a good story, but I would think it would be better as a longer story. This has potential, but this format limits it.

I really don't have anything else to add, other than I would read a longer version of this. Keep up the good work.
#8 · 3
·
>>Pascoite
>>No_Raisin
>>Comma Typer
>>Baal Bunny
>>WritingSpirit
>>TerrusStokkr

Wow! I can’t believe I got silver. I’m coming for you, Miller… Thank you to everyone who read and reviewed my story, I really appreciate it.

For Cicadas I looked at the pictures and had zero (0) ideas. I walked outside and around my house and found a dead cicada on the ground. ‘Wow, look,’ I said, ‘an idea.’ I had the inspiration from Chris (yes, that Chris) to make a story or legend about something. And that’s what I wanted to make it. A fairytale.

I royally fucked that up.

Wanting to give some insight into the world, I added descriptions and character, at the same time just wanting to make a legend that tied back to the dying man. At the end of it all I was satisfied with it, but not as happy as I could have been.

My inspiration came from Upgrade, looking at the old man and interpreting his gaze as not hate, but longing to become a child again.

We interrupt this short review to thank writing spirit for making a review that is longer than my fic. I’m honored.

Also,

...but also captures the paradoxical feeling of quietness and loudness as someone reaches the end of their life, the quietness of the countryside contrasted with the loudness of the cicadas.


Yup. I definitely meant to make that connection. 100%. No doubt about it.

Funnily enough, I didn’t go for the emotional angle, so… I’m glad? you didn’t feel too bad about his death.

———————

Thank you guys so much for the compliments, and I’m sorry the message got muddled from ‘contemplation about death’ to ‘death and SOL and cicadas?”

I might make this a longer fic, but don’t quote me on it lol.

Adios. ;3