The crickets were loud. Why were they so loud? Didn’t they know they were bothersome? The Banana Man wished the crickets would just be quiet. He wished everything would be quiet. Noise bothered him. Repetitive noise bothered him even more and he couldn’t seem to escape it. He’d been on the run ever since he’d shot at those cops. Why hadn’t they shot back and killed him? That would have solved his problems. Now he was hungry… smelly… still wearing that damned yellow sweat suit… and his head hurt from all the noise.
Crickets… cars… wind… he even felt like he could hear the current in the electric lines hanging over his head and the rush of his own blood through his veins. Every beat of his heart made his head hurt more and with the ever increasing awareness of pain, his desire… his need to lash out at something, anything, anyone… in anger grew. The more intense the pain got, the greater his need to take it out on someone became. The greater his need became the more he sweat. Pretty soon he could feel a relationship between every noise and every drop of sweat that was squeezed out of his skin.
He started to feel like a cut lemon, being squeezed for its juice; being destroyed for someone else’s pleasure. Then hatred joined the pain and the sweat and his need to take it out on someone bubbled almost to an overflowing point. His hidden spot had previously offered him comfort but it had gotten so loud that he wasn’t sure he could stay any longer. In fact, he was sure he couldn’t stay much longer at all. If he stayed he felt like his head would explode. Why couldn’t those damn crickets just be quiet!
The small culvert beside the road had offered him safe haven for several days and nights. The drainage tube was big enough for him to sit in and if he went back into it far enough, it was dark and no one could see him even if they looked straight in.
When it was dark, in the early morning hours before sunrise, he’d sneak out and go steal what he needed to survive. It was amazing how much good food and water people disposed of, not to mention the not-quite-empty liquor bottles that were littered around near the small strip mall nearby. He limited his time out of hiding to an hour or less and even then only at three or four in the morning. As much as he had wanted to die – and still DID want to die just to end his pain – he felt a greater need now; the need to show others how he felt. And the only way to accomplish that was to make someone else die first. Someone else would know his anguish; his pain; his suffering. Someone else would learn, before he killed them, the torture of the noise of the crickets chirping.
What The Banana Man didn’t know was that it was Independence Day… and when night fell, the noise was going to get a lot worse.
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All of Season 2 of The Oceanside Chronicles, including officer survival notes and an alphabetical list of characters can be purchased as an anthology on Amazon.com via Amazon Prime.
http://amzn.to/2duah34
