Hellweek Day 1: Childhood
John used to dig for bugs as a child.
Any time he was bored or angry, he’d go outside and look for worms and beetles, things big and squirmy, things that would make Cheryl shriek and scream at him. It was a way to get attention, any attention.
At some point, when they were away with relatives, John had started to scrounge for glowworms. Plucked them off of branches and marveled at their dim glow.
It was one of the bug hunts that Cheryl didn’t get too angry about. As long as he wasn’t squishing them, she’d sit nearby and help him put them in jars.
Not for long, never long since she hated the idea of them dying in the jars, but John remembered…
He’d been very small, covered in dirt, at some relative or another’s place, with a handful of glowworms and a grin that made his face hurt. He’d chased Cheryl around in circles with her screaming at him, just like when he chased her with half squished worms or handfuls of mud and dirt, but there was no heat in her voice.
Just his big sister indulging his awkward stumbling.
Nothing about his childhood really made him nostalgic except for moments like that, where Cheryl sat on a blanket with a book while John found nasty little bugs to sneak up and drop on her head when her defenses were down.
Her shrieks of rage still ring in his ears, decades later, long after her death.
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