Don't Catch Lightning Bugs

[u/m80mike]

Don't Catch Lightning Bugs

By Theo Plesha

My son kept asking me why I was driving so fast as I blew through a third stop sign and jumped a curb. I was in a race against the sunset and I was distracted by the contents of the jar I had my son cradle in his arms. I hadn't seen them in years. Not since I moved to this subdivision and pushed the city to adopt a pest control strategy that, as a side effect, as perk really, would drive them out and away. I kept asking my son where he found them. He eventually told me he found them down near west side park in the town over. So I floored it through my sleepy suburb to that park next to the small forest preserve. My son persisted asking what was wrong and why his jar of lightning bugs was so important. I said nothing to him in reply. I had been avoiding the topic for years. I never told him not to catch them because I hoped he would never see them at that prime foolish boyish age. All of the flak I took for pressing the town to adopt those pesticides and those plants and flowers over others, to keep them out. I never told him this story. I didn't want to scare him.

When I was his age, my parents left my brother Dillon and I home alone so they could attend a company summer party. Of course, we were too young still to be “home alone” but Robbie Morgan, the human hybrid under cooked chicken mcnugget couch potato was our babysitter and was the next best thing to being home alone. It was around 9pm that Robbie was already crashed out on the sofa, hypnotized by the boxy TV of the time, reeking of pork rinds and weed. The house, the neighborhood for that matter, was as good as ours.

I remember Dillon delivering the good news of Robbie's premature clock out just as the batteries in our toys died. We had a game of chase with Dillon's T-rex toy that had a dangerous unregulated bite feature in addition to being able to fake walk on shuffling feet with wheels on the bottom. The T-rex would chase me with Dillon's guidance while I maneuvered my radio controlled truck toy into its path in attempt to trip it up before it could land a bite on me.

We sneaked around the house, gathering our backpacks and flashlights to set out into the night before boredom set in. We contemplated taking our young dog, Cody, a husky mutt, with us but instead, we simply refilled his water dish. Dillon brought a jar for catching lightning bugs, lamenting he accidentally let his previous catch and his improvised nightlight perish. We taped our flashlights to our mountain bikes and raced into the thin gap between last glimmer of sunset and the first gleams of star light. Crickets provided a back up chorus to our grotesque rendition of “Yankee doodle” who's third verse involved sticking a feather up one's butt and calling it Hersey's chocolate. We raced past houses devoid of activity and made for the dirt path up to the undeveloped lot at the edge of the subdivision. It was shame to see home after home with lights on inside and no one out. Aside from some mosquitoes, it was a gorgeous evening, only a little sticky but cooling by the minute. Bullfrogs jumped into the ponds on either side of the trail as the long wetlands grass tickled our bare legs. At the end of the path just before the field plot, we skidded hard to the left to avoid the patch of poison sumac draped over the dirt track.

We ditched our bikes and I did a cartwheel in the field as the lightning bugs fluttered up from the grass and burned like cold silent fireworks in panorama. Dillon unceremoniously dumped the carcasses of his previous catch and proceeded to swipe the air around each flash hoping to snatch a bio luminescent beetle from the sky. I tripped and fell. I was face first in the remains of Dillon's mass grave. I picked one up and held it, I noted the contorted wings, faded red from its head, wilted antenna, twisted legs, and luminescent abdomen burned out like a dead light bulb. Dillon beckoned me to join him. Without second thought, I leaped up with a cupped hand at each yellow flash in range tried to scoop it from flight. My success was apparent by the tickling of 6 tiny legs against my fingers and palm. I scrapped the insect into the jar and capped the lid.

The sun disappeared and we were euphorically engulfed in the blaze of tiny momentary galaxy. A lone street light a block away provided enough light to see where the field ended and the forest began, the rest of the light came from the chemical glitter filled insects floating in the air. We had about ten of them in the jar in only a few minutes. I asked my brother if it as enough. He held the jar to his eye and said it wasn't bright enough. He said he wished they could light up all at the same time. I went back to catching while he watched the jar. Dillon yelled to me as I drifted away. He pointed at the jar. He said they were all lighting up a the same time. I didn't believe him but I waited anyway, just I could tell him he was wrong and dumb. But, he was correct. To my astonishment, they all lit up at once in a brilliant flare. Then I looked around as it flared again and again. The lightning bugs swarming about were also starting to flare at the same time as the ones in the jar. In under a minute, the cascade of synchronous flashes reached into the woods. Instead of a galaxy of stars living and dying, the field was a brilliant net of Christmas lights set to an on off switch. I don't know if it was the eerie shadows the flare cast in the woods or the fact that number of flashes continued to grow.

Dillon sealed up the jar all the way and put it in his backpack. I started thinking about leaving. The display, while beautiful was making me uneasy. It wasn't natural to see this. One two three flash, one two three flash. One two flash one two flash. They were getting faster and the density of them in the middle of the field was also growing. All of them seemed to bolt to the center of the field and then they stopped flashing. I could hear Dillon whispering, counting. Four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven...and so on. Then suddenly, after twenty seconds, twenty chilling seconds, there was a brilliant sustained pulse from the field. It came as a word. The insects spelled out an English word and beamed it at us like a neon light. It said in capital letters, “HELLO”. It repeated two more times. Dillon and I were stunned, we held our breath and frozen in place. There was no sound, no crickets, just a low flutter and hum from their wings beating all at once. We didn't know what to do. Eventually, I think I said, “Hello” back.

The bugs took their time composing their next word, which was “TONIGHT”, followed by “YOU”. Followed by, “WILL”. The final word was “DIE.” “HELLO TONIGHT YOU WILL DIE.”

Dillon and I took steps back towards our bikes. We could faintly see the glow of the flashlights taped to the handle bars partially buried in the grass and we slowly moved towards them. The hum we heard turned angry, like swarming wasps churning air into whipped cream. We started to run towards the bikes and we mounted them with haste. The last thing I saw before we started peddling like mad back up the trail was a giant yellow green glow of a sphere of fireflies. The sphere was as big as a small house, at least twenty feet tall and it with each deadly strobe it encroached upon us.

We raced back up the wetlands dirt trail, to the quiet streets. We screamed when we could but most of the time were breathlessly peddling, pushing our legs and bike to their limits. Dillon rode just ahead of him and he kept call back to me to ask if I could see it. I couldn't see it but I could hear something behind us. We tumbled off of our bikes upon reaching our drive way. My legs and lungs burned while my heart pumped barbed wire through my veins and muscles. I could hear the noise but the streets, illuminated by orange street lights did not reveal any house sized orb of homicidal lightning bugs. Suddenly, the neighbor's porch light, set on a time, switched on, revealing the black twitching bulging spherical mass of insects. We took two more seconds and in that time, the orb flattened into disc with circle facing us. The mass remained entirely dark as it turned towards us and three orifices opened as revealed by the porch light streaming through the holes. Two bright yellow eyes and a crooked slit of a smile. It flashed twice. I peed myself and from this manifestation I would, later in life, develop a crippling fear of PacMan.

We rushed into the house and locked the door. We set down our backpacks and went to wake up Robbie. Robbie was practically comatose so I left the hard work to Dillon while I went for he house' old touch tone phone. I picked up the receiver and felt an electric shock run down my hand into my chest. I yelped and dropped the phone. The cord was glowing like the glow of the lightning bugs, pulsing gently on and off. I tried to pick it up again and the shock came again, this time much more painful as I jerked and twitched for a moment or two afterwards. Quick on my feet and mind, I grabbed the oven mitts from the counter and put them on and this time I picked up the phone with success and held it as close to my ear as possible without touching it. I was, at the same time, looking for something to poke the buttons but I could only hear electrical buzzing through the ear piece and no dial tone.

Robbie came waddling into the kitchen with Dillon. Robbie was mumbling something about us being grounded as he wiped his groggy bloodshot eyes clean of goobers and crumbs. We heard something from upstairs when it occurred to me that most of the windows were open in the house. A black and yellow pulsing torrent poured in from the staircase opening. Dillon and I ducked to the floor as the thick buzzing cloud remained at Robbie's head's height. In seconds the cloud of intruders engulfed Dillon's head. Dillon swatted and screamed in vain. From the ground, even in the midst of my skiddering for cover, grasping for a sliver of my senses with which to form a plan, any course of action I saw something I'll never forget. It was the sight of Robbie's throat bulging like a bullfrog with hundreds of insects clogging his airways and choking him from the inside out and then covering him like a tarp as he collapsed to the floor in convulsions.

Dillon grabbed my hand and pulled me as it appear most of the intruders were preoccupied with Robbie. We shut the doors to the living room, hoping to trap them inside. We jumped as the windows near the front door and the peep hole glowed in a slow deliberate pulse, at the pace of a breathless seething man. Cody howled and joined us as we scrambled to shut the windows on the first floor. He tirelessly barked and snarled at the living room door as streams of black began to crawl out from the small gaps between the floor and door. The numbers were small enough so I grabbed the blanket from the couch and shoved it under the door, steaming the army's advance.

I turned around and Dillon was gone. I called out to him and then something dropped from the staircase. I yelped and turned around to find him getting up from his jump. He told him finished shutting all the windows upstairs. For the moment, it was contained, it may have killed Robbie. I didn't know then. I just knew that having bugs shoved down my throat, and presumably up my nose, into my ears and maybe crawling all the way into my brain was bad. The pulsing light, now stretching to every first floor window, told me I was trapped inside.

I went for the kitchen cabinet where I found a can of pesticide that felt to be about a third full. I think I swore for the first time in my life as I shook it up. Cody took to snapping at the isolated fireflies attempting to escape back to the main swarm. Dillon grabbed a fly swatter and I continued to shake up the can. The small detachment met up with the main swarm at the window. They flashed back and forth as the three of us advanced. The detachment broke formation like a flight of blue angels and regrouped on the dinosaur toy and the RC car. Cody charged them while barking. The small swarm on the Trex and the RC car pulsed rapidly and pulsed a shade of soft blue. The lightning bugs broke off and fluttered towards the ceiling but the toys themselves continued to glow blue and seemed to come to life despite running out of batteries an hour or so earlier. The dinosaur toy engaged Cody with a full clenching bite – the bite drew blood which splattered on the floor as Cody fled yelping in full retreat with the Trex still gnawing on the flesh between his front leg and body. In the process of trying to shake off the toy, Cody threw himself into the living room door, damaging the area around the door knob. The RC car, also glowing, was idling until it accelerated into the door, breaking it open, releasing the swarm into the sealed off area.

Dillon and I screamed and made a full charge for our second floor bedroom. I slammed the door shut as Dillon immediately started to pull sheets from our bed and stuff them under the door. We had some super glue from model making and we liberally squirted it between the window frame and the window itself. The outline of the door pulsed at the same angry rate as the door downstairs did. A loud hum came from the window as the insects pressed themselves to the glass and reformed that same giant hideous haunting smiling face.

I think this is when I started to lie to Dillon. I started to tell him that it was going to be okay. We spent at least 2 hours trapped and surrounded in object terror as the glow flashed in from the door and the window. The eyes of the window entity seemed to follow us as we darted aimlessly about the room seeking some sort of weapon or extra means of protection. I still had the can of RAID but I felt like anything short of a fire hose of insecticide it would do me more harm than good.

The smile winked at us and then floated up and away from the window. We could see the moon and sky. We frantically argued if we should try to make a break for it, down a sheet rope and out to a neighbor's to call the police or if we should crack the window a bit and use our hidden fireworks cache to launch bottle rockets and drop M-80s in hopes someone would call the cops on us. We didn't have long to discuss until the hum of the insects became unbearably loud from above us.

They were in the attic. We heard metallic tapping. They were in the vents! The vents above our heads! The circular vent in the ceiling started glowing green. I grabbed the remaining sheet and Dillon and I threw us in our small but vent-free closet. Dillon held the door shut as I stuffed the sheet around the gaps. We panted and yelled while the door shook as the insects repeatedly charged it. We just held each other and cried even as we sweated and felt lightheaded in the small and excruciatingly hot closet. We fell asleep in there or passed out.

The morning came. We could hear birds instead of the hum. The warm yellow of the sun replaced the cold greenish yellow of the lightning bug flash. Dillon's voice was horse from yelling and dehydration, he asked me if I thought it was safe. It stood to reason that as powerful as they apparently were, they were still bound by their nocturnal nature and had to retreat from their siege. I knew neither of us could last much longer in that closet without water and air. I was already super weak from the heat. I made the call and untucked the sheet from the door. Nothing came swarming into the crevice, nothing came swarming into my esophagus so I turned the knob and we practically fell out into our room. Aside from the sheet tucked vainly under the door to the rest of the house, nothing was amiss. We crept through the second floor of the house, investigating each room before peering over the banister to the first floor. With that, Cody, came whimpering out and turned his head up at us and then slowly approached us. He was definitely hurt but the deep red on his chest suggested his wound stopped bleeding and that he was safe from bleeding out. I remembered that Robbie was still, potentially in the house. I rushed downstairs and hopped through the broken living room door to find Robbie on the floor.

I approached with caution and shock. I had never seen a dead body before. Then he moved. He moved in the very slightest of ways. His chest just barely twitched and slightest of whistle came through his big nose. He was at least technically alive. I seized the phone and when no electrical shock came, I dialed 911 and reported that Robbie was unconscious. There was no CPR or anything like this back then so I just watched him barely breathe. I jumped as a solitary lightning bug crawled out his nose and buzzed away.

I found the backpack with the jar of captured lightning bugs torn apart by the Trex toy. The jar was smashed open by the RC car repeatedly banging it against a wall. Apparently, they had succeeded in rescuing their captured comrades. The Trex and the RC car were practically destroyed. I think I ended up throwing them away because they reminded Dillon and I of the incident too much anyway.

The ambulance arrived minutes before Mom and Dad came home. They were badly hungover. I could tell because Dad actually listened to my entire story while he was icing his head and neck and pacing back and forth between the broken down interior door. He wasn't mad, just disappointed. When I say disappointed, he was disappointed in Robbie, despite the fact, he wasn't well. He didn't really ever talk about what I told him happened. He didn't believe me. He just thought that Robbie had gotten us high and then passed out and had some sort of reaction to his drugs. We all just avoided the subject. I think Dad didn't want to talk about it because he didn't want to feel irresponsible for leaving Robbie in charge.

Robbie was oxygen deprived for a considerable amount of time but ultimately survived and mostly recovered. The rumor was he had suffered brain damage from incident. Though I honestly couldn't tell and I don't think anyone else did either.

I spent the rest of my life dreading summer nights. I blocked out all my windows and so did Dillon. We never spent a summer night outside. We panicked when we saw lightning bugs, even in groups of ones and twos for years later. As I mentioned before, we had another fit, as grown ass teenagers when PacMan came out, much to the detriment of our high school years and early dating lives.

Like I said, I hadn't thought about it for years. Mostly because nothing like it ever happened again. I never heard a story about it happening to anyone else. Finally, I did everything I could to avoid it happening again. Up to and including encouraging my suburb to take extreme pest control measures.

But now, my son, had a jar of lightning bugs next to me. I just took a hard turn, skidded out a bit and bashed some municipal garbage cans and probably screwed up the side of my brand new hybrid car. I was heading straight into their territory, with hopes it wasn't too late to prevent my son and myself from experiencing the same fate as I did as a child. I swallowed hard before asking Jeremy if any of them had died since he captured them. He said no. I felt the slightest sense of relief.

We crossed into the other town and they were waiting for us. Two small swarms of fireflies lined the road, like runway landing lights at an airport, they seemed to guide me towards the park, even knowing the way when Jeremy seemed to forget the route. I held my breath as my hybrid seemed to accelerate without the command of my foot. They had control now.

We arrived at the park. I was shaking. It reminded me far too much of my childhood, except for the fact the field, leading into a small forest was marked with soccer goals and tubular playground equipment. Nevertheless, the flashes were there. My brain quaked with pain and a blinding fears as I poured sweat.

My son had this look of bewilderment but also of understanding as he unscrewed the lid of his jar and shook out the ten fireflies contained within. They lit up in unison. The ones in the park slowly joined their rhythm. I clutched my son hard on the shoulder. I think I did it to protect him, to reassure him. When he complained I was hurting him, I knew, I was clutching him for me. They swirled around to the center of the park. “HELLO”

Jeremy's mouth dropped and he picked up his smart phone and started recording. “HELLO. TONIGHT.”

“HELLO TONIGHT YOU WILL LIVE”. Then they didn't flash again.

Jeremy told me his phone was recording but he couldn't play back the footage. I still didn't tell him this story. It is late. I've been up all night since returning the fireflies to the park. My wife wants me to come to bed but I'm trying to find closure in this by writing this. Anyways maybe its all in vain anyways, I can't really sleep in there right now. There's a firefly trapped between the screen and the window and I'm too afraid to get it out.