The lights on the street were flickering like the undependable lights of a firefly. The lights were off in almost every house, and the only sounds were that of the rain striking the pavement violently. The puddles in the road flared golden, as the occasional car’s headlights sped past, then all was silent once more. The impenetrable, deafening quiet was almost unbearable, and then a cricket started singing. The rasping melody floated along the wind, and winding around the neighborhood, overpowering even the drumming of the rain, and resounding into the inky black sky.
It had stopped raining for a while now, the last few drops spattering onto the unforgiving sidewalk. The sky was still dark, but the light clouds had cleared, and starlight spangled the heavens. The cricket had long ago ceased its endless whine, replaced by the soft chirruping of a mockingbird. The lull in the storm. The motoring of a powerful engine gunned, and with the roar equaling that of a hundred lions, a single motorbike sped onto the road, throwing up a cloud of dust and then, it’s gone an echoing memory of a powerful machine.
The sun broke over the dark horizon, a smidgeon of gold at first, then an ingot of silver, followed by a splash of crimson. The cricket starts singing again, but this time, softer, a prelude to the loud sounds made later. The lights in one house go on, shadows bustling around, the prominent belly of a man stretches as the lights flicker on in his room, the moaning of a bed that has too much pressure on it, and the springs protest against the blatant treatment. The light in the toilet turns on, and to the cricket, the earth rumbles as the rusty pipe underneath the moist ground shakes, a rattling cough not unlike that of a chronically ill man. The house begins to come alive, the inhabitants flipping on switches. The toilet and room lights in the house begin to warm up, and begin to add their brilliance to the morning sky. The man trundles down to the small car parked in the garage. The fiery belch is extinguished in the small puff of carbon smoke. The cricket watched the car trundle out of the garage, stones scraping on the sidewalk as the car’s wheels lock, hydraulic gears “clenching”, relaxing, as the man cautiously reverses onto the main road. The children leave a moment later, with a loud exchange of goodbyes. The cricket sees the fragmented images, hears the echoing roar and then destroys the silence once again with the ear shattering whisper, a light sound throughout the twilight. The cricket whispers, and another answers, a hot white sound, sweetly melting in the mouth. The mockingbird calls out once more, the myriad of notes forming a hodgepodge of tastes, and sounds. The mockingbird’s voice soars, and then the abrupt staccato of an engine ends the night.
The sun bursts out of the clouds, a golden orb smudge in the sky
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