[FICTION][03/20/26]One-Legged Cricket
by Dylan Ever
When you first enter the house it smells like musty shag carpet. The local handyman came to take a peek at the damage and told you what he knew—that not much had changed since the two bedroom cabin was born in 1952, save for when the roof caved in after heavy rain in ‘98, and they put in that dreadful carpet sometime in the 70’s. You get a lot of mail addressed to one Marianne Bellene. Letters boasting retirement pensions and possible credit cards and, once, even a hospital bill which you were too afraid to open. You think the carpet was probably Marianne’s. It smells like what you imagine she smells like. Has that sort of age.
Marianne might not be dead but her ghost is in this house. There are little odd bits of her left in all its crevices and crannies. A tupperware lid in the far far back of a pantry, belonging to no bowl that you own. The head of a vacuum brush behind the washing machine. The dryer trap, sticky with some kind of bright blue lint. A spool of thread in the corner of the closet, needle not far behind. And the one-legged cricket.
There are a lot of holes in the house. Holes in the window screens, holes in the walls—the thin, thin walls—that keep the house hot when it’s roasting outside and make it like an icebox when it’s frigid. You can make peace with the stray stink bug, the occasional wolf spider, even the garter snake that snuck in one black night. It required delicate extraction with the use of tongs and a baking dish. Six and eight-legged visitors are always politely, cordially, but firmly shown out. Usually with the pinch of a napkin or a tissue, and a gentle apology. Those are the house rules. Maybe Marianne had them different.
You’re not sure if it’s your fault that the cricket lost the leg. He appeared like any of the other intruders, blending in with the shag, making you pause in the middle of some journey from kitchen to bedroom or the like. You picked him up gently from the carpet’s hold and the leg just didn’t come with him. You apologized profusely as you placed him on the huckleberry bush by the kitchen window, figuring he’d still fare alright, and went back home to examine the lost limb left in his place. It looked like a small frog leg, forgotten by its owner. With a tut, you disposed of it, and thought little more than, Poor creatures. So fragile, so brittle.
Next week he was in the boys’ room, waiting at the doorway. You knew it was him, of course, because how many one-legged crickets are hopping around on your plot of land? It was impressive to see him again. So distinct, so soon.
You told the cricket, “This house must be traumatic for you,” as you escorted him out again. “So why do you keep coming back?” Back to the huckleberries he went, and you told him that you meant it this time. Stay out.
But he was not convinced. He wouldn’t stay away. One week on the windowsill in the bathroom, the next in the mudroom by the coats and shoes. Always in completely different places, very far from wherever you’d last dropped him. Weeks went by and he always made some sort of appearance, in the hamper, behind the dryer, in the corner of the closet. You googled how long crickets live. Some said eight weeks. Others, eight months. Perhaps this was an immortal cricket—the true spirit of the house, or the demon, or the entity. Whatever he was, he appeared each week like clockwork, always in front of your path, in your way, looking disgruntled but accepting of his relocation each time. He always stayed a while on the huckleberry bush, too. Sitting there, poised, one leg and all, watching while you washed dishes by the window. But by the last spoon, he was gone.
You weren’t sure if you were to feel sympathy or frustration. The one-legged cricket enjoyed appearing right under your foot, close to being squashed for every reappearance. Especially with two young boys in the house, really, how did he think he was going to last? Toying with fate, you tutted, testing the depths of his age. Winter entered the air. Still, the cricket was not deterred, going so far as to flounce around your onion bowl before making his final mistake. He spent the night in the boys’ toy chest. You found him there the next day, crushed and bruised, between the triceratops and the big red fire truck they’d gotten for Christmas. Single leg stuck mid-twitch in the air.
The boys are sad. You’re not sure why. It was you who had the affair with the cricket, not them. You who had watched the cricket from the dish station, saw him hop around while you folded laundry, found him in the corner while you put the bedding away. You’re sad too, of course, because a funeral has been requested. So it's time to be sad, and now the boys are carrying a cricket wrapped in tissue paper tucked delicately into an old jewelry box to bury in the thick, brambly acreage of a backyard which you now own. You haven’t had much time to explore it since moving in, haven’t taken apart that old fire pit or that lump with the tree sprouting at its head. But that’s where the boys want him to rest, of course. In the deepest part of the thorns, right beneath the out-of-place young olive. Right next to the hand painted slab of concrete that says Granny Mary. Surrounded by childish pink flowers whose petals droop and leak tears. No one told you the house came with a corpse. No one said the house was a graveyard.
You and the boys bury the cricket next to Granny Mary. They want to paint a stone for him, too. Crickity, they dub him in death, and look on their freshly dug hole, accomplished. You ruffle their heads of wild red hair. So much like his. You tell them they did a good job.
“Can we bring daddy here too?” one of them says. The other looks up at you in hopeful agreement.
“Daddy’s comfy where he is,” you tell them quietly.
When you all go back inside, your nose doesn’t remember the musk of the carpet any longer. You wonder how the cricket went so long with just one leg, when you cannot manage another day with half a heart.
DYLAN EVER spins stories out of folklore and fables, interweaving critters, creatures, and confused twenty-somethings. In her art she loves exploring combinations of music, visuals, and writing, and can often be found plucking a guitar, learning to letterpress print, or out writing poetry for passersby on her typewriter. Evidence of her existence can be found at dylanever.carrd.co or @dyla_never.