It was Friday night. The crickets rang again, like they always did, shaking louder than maracas at sunset. The muscle cars mixed with electric motors making currents with their revving and humming. The cannons blew louder as the cars drove to the city. In a quaint house a little too close to the foothills of a forgotten midwestern state, the moms chirped louder than the night bugs. Kathy and Karen had nowhere else to be but home, given that their kids were already too into themselves for any other friendships.
The keepers of the cannons fired another round. This time, the moms’ conversation reflected something other than the general malady of gun country’s willing participants.
“Who keeps firing that kind of artillery?” Kathy yelled.
“Who points that kind of shit in people’s faces.” Karen responded.
Together they paused.
“This is fucked.” Their voices dropped in unison.
Another shot rang, the sound trickled into the marshy valley. The sound dispersed like the shrapnel. As the ears of all those listening in town perked up, so did the spirit of the night. The true digestion was how closely the youth were reading into a story of their own embodiment.
***
Down the way their children were camping with tents and flashlights. Their giggles louder than the silencing pull of a trigger that they had become accustomed to. Their panting whispers kept the crickets company in the steady night as the old couples quarreled like the day squirrels. The little ones needed no shield from the barks, the billows, or even the blows of murky mufflers that made the hardest of shoulders roll and shake. The duo was already batty. Little Lilly and Lola stayed connected always and forever, loving the dark and their wrinkly little noses.
The youngins’ giggles gave breath to the choking silence between each firing with resonant ease from the evening’s orchestral dissonance.
“We’re working together!” Lola exclaimed with a smile on their face. The flashlight beamed on the tent poles that the eldest perfectly aligned with the handle of the Big Dipper and Lilly’s most competent compass.
“Oh my god. We did it.” Lilly’s headband light shot into Lola’s little eyes. They both grinned, settling into the floor.
“We should do this more often.” Lilly sighed as she finished her tent check. She sniffled. “I forgot the popcorn in the house and I’m already smelly.” Her eyes welled with tears.
“I guess we’ll suffer.” Lola grinned.
They pulled out their phones and YouTubed how to eat popcorn.
“Now this is living,” Lilly remarked as they laughed together some more, not knowing or needing to care.
Ambresha is a DePaul alumna who graduated from the school of Liberal Arts and SocialScience. Writing is a hobby of sorts that combines her vivid imagination and literary skills.