Agrippa
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Periodical Cicadas – Chapter 13
🕑 Added 2023-11-01 04:30:43 +0000 UTCBrooke
“Can’t I just skip?” I ask the woman fretting on the other side of the kitchen counter.
“You know what your father would say,” she replies with…
Weirdness.
“Are you sure you don’t need a hand?” I ask her as she keeps checking her phone while carefully arranging the ingredients for pancakes.
“I’m just making you breakfast. It would be counterproductive to have you make the breakfast I’m making for you,” the perfect trophy wife says.
“As considerate as that sounds, if you keep double-checking things with the scale, I’m going to be late, which, now that I think about it, would make the argument about skipping moot, so… can I get seconds?” I ask with a saccharine smile and the tone I use to convey that butter wouldn’t melt in my mouth.
Which it wouldn’t because it’s already melting on the saucer assigned to the carefully portioned piece of butter her phone has told her to set aside.
“Are you sure you’re all right, Mom?” I ask her as she fusses over the stove like she’s…
I don’t even know. Anxious? Unsure of what she’s doing? As inexperienced as a woman who hasn’t cooked anything in living memory?
“Why wouldn’t I be?” she asks, only briefly looking at me over her shoulder, shooting me a broad smile that shows perfectly white teeth.
“Because you’ve never cooked me breakfast,” I say.
Which makes the broad grin turn into a thin line before her shoulders slump, and she turns fully toward me.
“That’s not true,” she says as she closes the lapels of her grey bathrobe until not a trace of her pajamas can be seen. “I… when you were a toddler, I used to make you pancakes with fried banana slices and chocolate chips. You always managed to smush your cheeks with half-melted chocolate, and we had to send the sofa to the cleaners more than once, but… you just looked so happy back then…”
She trails off, staring somewhere just above my head.
And I… I can kinda remember it. Dad scolding me, but not too much. Me plucking the warm chocolate chips from the freshly made pancakes and eating them on their own because I didn’t like mixing ingredients that I could see.
Milk chocolate, because the darker one was too bitter.
But that was…
That was a long time ago.
So I do my own lip-bite and get off the tall stool by the kitchen’s black counter before I walk around it to the side that Mom’s in.
“Don’t you… don’t you remember? Your recipe?” I ask with a hesitant tone.
“It’s been… a long time, sweetheart,” she says.
And I just… I nod.
I nod and turn to the other counter, the one with the sink and the stove, and take a look at her unlocked phone to check the recipe.
“Come on,” I say. “Let’s make them together.”
“Honey, I just want to treat you—”
“It will be more of a treat if we do it together,” I say, trying not to sound…
Not to sound like a girl who found her boyfriend’s murdered body just days ago.
And Mom looks at me like she knows precisely what I’m thinking before she steps forward and hugs me tighter than she has since I can remember, my face pressed against the thick lapels of her bathrobe as she holds the back of my head and kisses the top of my hair.
“I’m so proud of you,” she whispers.
Which has nothing to do with me returning her desperate hug as sobs wrack my whole body.
Nothing at all.
***
Emma
“What’s wrong now?” Piper asks as she passes me the raspberry jam.
“There’s a serial killer styling themselves after Dad hunting down people from my social circle,” I gently remind her.
“Yes, but that was also the case yesterday, and you didn’t look like you just had a Mister Transgender Kangaroo flashback,” she says before nonchalantly grabbing her tea mug and raising it up to her lips before, obviously enough, allowing herself a smirk hidden by it.
“He had a top hat! Top hats are for boys; how was I supposed to know that only female kangaroos have a pouch—”
And now, of course, my jerk of a big sister is laughing.
“You’re a jerk,” I mutter. Because she is.
“Of course I am. I’m a reporter,” she answers with a dazzling smile peeking above the tea mug’s rim.
“Of course,” I mutter before, of course, I roll my eyes.
Then I dip the knife in the jam and—
“Hey,” she says, resting her hand on my wrist.
“Yes?” I ask, more… curious than anything.
“If it’s about a boy, I can discreetly get rid of a body or two,” she tells me.
I blink at her, yet she still looks about as serious as Piper ever does about anything.
Until, of course, another grin comes out, this one broad enough that her cheeks dislodge her glasses.
“You’re a jerk,” I repeat as she starts laughing.
“Oh, your face! You should’ve seen it!”
“Take a picture, why don’t you…” I mutter.
“Because my whole thing is gruesome murders, not cute, teasable younger sisters,” she manages to answer before laughing yet again.
“Maybe you’d get more views if you diversified…” I grumble.
Which, somehow, ends up with Piper standing up and ruffling my hair right after I finished brushing it before squatting down to look me in the eye.
“Seriously, is it a boy?” she says, head tilted, teasing grin in place.
“Why are you so fixated on that?”
“Because my little sister has grown up into a beautiful woman, and beautiful women could grab that Noah guy you brought over the other day, drag him into a closet, and not let him out no matter how many pride flags marched by.”
…
Okay, my sister is certifiable insane. Just like I always suspected.
“I didn’t bring Noah by; he was stalking Taylor—”
“Ah, so it’s a girl instead?”
… Goshdarned reporters.
“Wait, really?” she asks, showing surprise for the first time. “You’re finally getting out of the closet?”
“I thought I was supposed to drag Noah in, and what do you mean finally?”
“Well, Mister Transgender Kangaroo was the first clue—”
“I swear, Piper, I’ll find your baby pictures and plaster them all over your gory blog until people start cooing at you in the comments section—”
“Try me. See how long it takes me to send Audrey all those pictures of the two of you together—”
“Why would you even think that’s something that—oh. Oh. That obvious?”
Piper, head still tilted, smiles at me.
It’s… a bit of a rueful smile. Doesn’t even lift her glasses.
“She was the only thing you ever gushed about, Ems. Maybe it was a childhood crush, or maybe something… more. But whatever it was, I think only the two of you never noticed.”
“Ah,” I answer, my older sister yet again finding something in my past to mortify me with.
Except… Except her eyes are understanding. A bit sad. Maybe just… concerned.
“How…” My throat doesn’t want to cooperate, but I force myself to clear it before I start over, looking straight at the brunette still squatting by my side. “How do you get over it?”
“You told her,” she affirms.
I nod.
And she sighs.
“You can be so dumb sometimes…” she mutters.
“Thanks,” I grumble.
“So? What did she say?”
“She… non-verbally threatened to punch me, grabbed my collar, berated me, and ended up falling on top of me, straddling me, and holding me in silence until she got fed up with the whole thing and left without saying a single thing.”
For the first time in… ever, I get the disturbing experience of Piper looking at me in genuine confusion rather than one of her usual ‘I know precisely what you’re going to say next, but I’ll still act surprised because it amuses me’ ways.
“So. You’re a couple now?”
“I don’t think that threats of violence and the silent treatment are any indications of romance.”
“Oh, you have so much to learn…”
“You’re single. I’ve never met a boyfriend orgirlfriend of yours; you can’t tell me—”
“That’s because of how good I am at hiding the bodies!”
“… Could you maybe not joke about that while I’m dealing with a serial killer?” I say.
Which, going by the sudden glare she throws my way and the hand clasping my chin to force me to look straight at her… may not have been the best thing to say.
“What do you mean dealing with a serial killer?” she hisses.
And I wonder just how hypocritical it would be of me to throw Taylor, Audrey, and Noah under the Piper bus after yesterday’s… everything.
***
Taylor
None of my webs on the windows have been broken through the night, except the one in Dad’s bedroom, but that’s just because of his habit of waking up and opening the window to let the stifling, humidity-laden, Florida air in for reasons arcane and mysterious, given that it’s about as refreshing as Lung’s brand of skin care.
“So. Any plans for today?” he says with a frail smile that still hasn’t recovered from yesterday.
“When have I ever answered that question in the affirmative?” I ask back while being perfectly aware of when, precisely, that was.
“When you went to a party at the mayor’s house,” he says.
Oh.
Okay, maybe I wasn’t perfectly aware of things right now. It’s not like my multitasking comes with a calendar app.
Note to self: study the viability of insect-based note-taking and calendar. If I can supplement my mind with my power, that could be huge.
Would.
As in, Florida swarms huge.
…
Maybe I should start off small rather than dive straight into the deep end of possible ways to get my personality killed by my own power.
“So. Plans?” Dad asks, unwittingly saving me from myself, or, at least, a version of me.
“Dad, I’m about as sociable as the stereotypical school shooter and only have slightly better grades. You don’t have to worry about me getting any boyfriends.”
“You really don’t know anything about men, do you?” he asks with some genuine despair shining through.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He, as his only answer, raises a thin, long eyebrow and then gets his coffee mug up to his lips, taking a long sip of it.
A long sip.
“Fine, be that way,” I grumble.
He then stops pretending to drink the muddy thing he dares call superior to tea and sighs.
It’s a long sigh.
As stalling tactics go, it’s pretty irritating.
“Do you realize you’re the one responsible for teaching me how not to get taken advantage of by boys?” I finally throw his way, ignoring the very fiber of my being screaming at me that there’s a chance he will act on what I just said, and I most definitely don’t want that.
“There’s a reason guys are always warned about the crazy ones,” he says in a rush.
And then stares blankly at me.
…
“Excuse me?” I say, not quite wanting to be excused.
“All right, just… you have this intensity about you, and many boys are drawn to people who stand out—”
“Humans. You mean humans are drawn to people who stand out.”
“No, I mean boys. Teenage boys. Humanity is a rank they haven’t earned.”
“You do realize you once were a teenage boy, don’t you?”
“I’m speaking from experience. Hard-earned experience.”
…
“I don’t want to have this conversation anymore,” I say, resorting to my now lukewarm tea as a means of escape.
“Thank God,” he mumbles.
I arch my own eyebrow at him as I sip on the brown liquid, and he has the decency to shuffle around on his chair before dropping his gaze to the crumbs of blackened toast on his mostly empty dish.
Which is a good thing because that’s when my current security perimeter alerts me of the two bodies walking toward the house’s entrance.
So Dad doesn’t catch my change in expression right before Noah and Audrey, yet again, ring the doorbell, possibly to drag me away to something dangerous, reckless, and stupid, not to mention utterly confusing on an emotional level.
It’s still an attractive prospect when compared to talking with Dad about boys.
… Or girls.
Stupid bipanic, I swear.
***
Miguel Acosta
“Are you going to be all right?” I ask the little kid butchering a fried egg so that he can dip pieces of not-quite-burned bacon into the runny yolk.
“Stop asking, Dad,” he says.
“I just… I worry,” I tell him, stating the obvious.
Again.
“I don’t have superpowers. I’m not killing anyone. I’m not Mom. There, is that enough subtext out of the way, or do you need me to explain why I draw so much blood in excruciating detail?”
I freeze.
“Gustavo, I’d never—”
“That’s a lie. That’s a lie, and you know it. I know it. We both know it. I told you yesterday that you’d be the first one to know if I ever got powers, and even if I had, why would I be killing thesepeople? They have nothing to do with Mom and… You know. What happened.”
My chest tightens, and I try to keep my breath steady even as it tries to come out in a shuddering gasp.
“You kept the razor,” I say. Not even knowing why.
“I did,” he says, glaring up at me with those brown eyes of his that still have the same red tinge as hers did.
I can’t stand looking at them.
But he’s my son, and so I will.
“I don’t want to lie to you,” I say, “but I sometimes do because… because I don’t know how to deal with this. It’s not your fault, nothingat all is your fault, but—”
“But what? What, Dad? Are you going to tell me how supportive you’d be of me for doing the very same thing that you killed Mom for?”
Dark brown eyes.
Tinged with red.
Like hers. Like hers when she fell on her back, blood pouring down her face.
Like she was when Gustavo walked in and found me with my gun still in my hand.
“I’m not hungry anymore,” he says, pushing his dish aside and the chair back, the wooden legs screeching over the kitchen tile.
I grab his hand.
“No,” I say, forcing myself to look up into his eyes.
“Let go,” he answers, not pulling his arm away.
“Sit down. Listen. Eat.”
“Why? What the Hell could you ever say to me that—”
“If you’re killing those people, Gus? I’ll help you,” I say.
His eyes fly open, his lip quivers.
And he sits.
Comments
Agrippa
Thanks! I'm somewhat worried about how slice-of-life the fic can be at times, but I also enjoy the domestic vibe amid the weirdness, so I'm glad that you enjoyed it as well.
Nick Russo
Damn, that was good. Emma coming clean to her sister. Taylor and her dad talking about dating. Sheriff Acosta offering to help Stavo kill people if needed. Very much a fun chapter.
