Together they walked through the enormous frosted glass entrance. Her Father was there to talk to one of the boys wearing glasses about things she didn’t understand. Her name was Crystal, but she was known as Cricket.
Cricket was holding her Father’s massive hand, looking up at the people as they hovered past. Some of them made little cutesy faces at her, puffing up their cheeks or sticking out their tongue and bulging their eyes until they looked like lunatics. She stared at them without any noticeable reaction- unafraid, unamused. She could see under the tables to where they were hiding little machines that loudly beeped and others that spit out long paper tongues.
Her hair went up into the air and down past her shoulders in thick bouncing chocolate and peanut butter coils. Her yellow eyes were huge for her tiny face and always seemed to hypnotize strangers. They would look at her as if they were trying to figure out something very important. Her skin was like coffee ice cream, dotted here and there with tiny chocolate chips. Her other hand was holding Bear, her bear.
She could see a boy across the room, half-hiding behind his Mother’s leg. Cricket tilted her head, wondering where he went to school and what it was like to be from somewhere else. He was blonde and his ears stuck out like a chimp. In one of his ears a loose cotton ball was on the verge of detaching and drifting down to the glossy wood floors. The room was full of people that were speaking too loudly, some of them laughing some of them yelling with their faces flushing red and the veins in their necks standing out as little bits of spit jumped out of the mouths and onto one of the glasses-boy’s glasses. The oldest of them had long unattended hair growing from their noses and ears and they bumped into each other without apologizing. They were all so concerned with the things they were discussing. In rows all around the room different types of people were staring into glowing screens, pushing buttons and making it do things. Cricket wanted badly to tell the screen what to do. She took a step towards one of the tables but she was still attached to her Father. He didn’t seem to notice her tugging on his arm as he repeated the numbers that the tall boy with glasses was reciting for him. She was stuck and nearly began to slip towards hysteria when the glasses-boy said something to her Father that made him lean down saying:
“Okay, Cricket you can go over there and play on the computer, but only until I’m done, okay?”
Cricket’s face emitted a pure beam of joy that made the lights in the room flicker a little, but no one seemed to notice. The Father walked her over to where they had one of the screens low enough for her to see it. The table holding the screens was atop a red circle of carpeting and they had fuzzy black peaches for small people to sit on. Father went back to the boy with glasses who began showing him something about wires.
Cricket stepped up to the radiant screen; she was instantly charmed with its vivid dancing colors. She reached out her hand and pushed one of the buttons, the C button, C for Cricket.
The dancing colors immediately disappeared in a flash that startled Cricket, but only for a moment, what she saw next was something truly astonishing. She rubbed her eyes to make sure it wasn’t a trick, like the way she began seeing things as she became too sleepy. But she was still there walking backwards across Cricket’s big yellow eyes. Cricket’s mouth dropped open and she chirped for joy without realizing. Bear said she must be dreaming. On screen was none other than Dora the Explorer, Cricket’s favorite person in the entire universe. The same Dora the Explorer she watched all day every day. The same Dora that was on her most treasured shirt, the shirt she was wearing. Dora walked up to Cricket, wearing her little purple backpack and she said:
“Hello, Cricket. ¿Cómo es usted?”
Cricket was unable to speak; there were too many things to say. She began mashing the buttons, trying to make Dora speak again. All around her the people were still blasting music from the machines and holding hands and smiling, but to Cricket no one else existed, there was only herself and Dora the Explorer.
She figured out how to make Dora move and together they began playing wonderful games. Cricket and Dora had become true best friends and they would be together forever. For Cricket, the screen, the store, the boundaries that lay between them, had dissolved. They were next to one another in the same perfect world. Cricket played with Dora while time stood still. Cricket was making her own time. It was something she learned how to do from Bear.
The passing people commented on how cute the scene was. Such an adorable little girl enraptured in her own world, a brief view of the pure human soul. A young couple stood with there arms around each other, the woman pretending, just for a moment, that Cricket was her daughter, the man trying to burn into his brain the difference between composite and component cables.
Something happened.
Time had started passing again without Cricket’s permission. Her Father’s voice was drifting into the cartoon jungle. She tried her best to ignore it. Dora didn’t seem to notice him at all. Her Father was saying something about leaving. Why would anyone ever want to leave this place, Cricket wondered. They have magic screens that make your dreams come true. He was shaking wires in his hand and reminding her about dance at five. Normally she’d be excited for dance, and the ice cream afterwards, but for Dora, she could go without either indefinitely. As he tried to touch her arm she ripped it away and let out a short warning-scream. She saw the brief glint of fear on her Father’s eyes and turned back to the light, to where Dora was politely waiting for her.
The little scream had turned a few heads, but no one looked for more than a moment after confirming that a child had made the noise and not some sort of rogue beast. The Father was becoming antsy. He knew he was avoiding the obvious; this wasn’t going to go down peacefully. He looked around the room, in awe of the sheer number of people packed into the place on a Tuesday afternoon. He didn’t see anyone he recognized, but carrying a screaming child was embarrassing regardless. Cricket was not an average tantrum-thrower; once it began she was committed. To the people in the store she was a cutie pie with freckles and yellow eyes, but he knew all too well what she was capable of. The Father slowly backed away lightly smiling at the boy who had helped him, trying not to look defeated. For a few minutes the Father busied himself playing with some of the handheld glowing screens but the time was displayed right on the screen and he began to worry he would lose his hour. The hour that Cricket was at dance was the only time that he had to himself. Everything else was reserved months in advance for work and chores and discussions and maintenance. He decided it was best to just get it over with before it went on any longer. He snuck up behind Cricket and prepared to hoist her up onto his shoulder. He made the crucial mistake of hesitating slightly and Cricket spun around and pointed her tiny finger between his eyes. What she said was indecipherable, but the message was clear: We will never leave this place! He tried to muscle through it, quickly reaching out for her hips. She latched onto his hairy arm with both hands and chomped down onto it with her sharp baby-teeth. He was startled by how much it hurt and made a noise that was faintly feminine upon retrospect. A group of teenagers that were covered in oil and purple paint were watching them, pointing and laughing like a pack of animals that sat around all day, pointing and laughing. Cricket stared into her Father’s face with all of the seriousness of one of God’s messengers. The Father stepped back, bumping into a tall Arab man who rushed past him holding his hand in the air, trying vainly to catch someone’s attention.
Cricket once again turned back to Dora and her face washed over with her warm, drugged smile. The Father considered calling in reinforcements in the form of his wife, but he knew he would never live it down and that it would automatically forfeit his hour. A man wearing the same shirt as all of the glasses-boys was standing next to Cricket’s Father with his arms comfortably folded behind his back in the stance of a servant who does not have arms until ordered. He was twenty years older than all of the other employees, sporting gray hair and thicker glasses. The man said:
“Your daughter really seems to have taken a shine to the 20-inch base model there.”
Her Father turned to the man without words. The man was trying to sell him. He clearly didn’t know what was happening, or he didn’t care. If the man knew how much debt Cricket’s Father was in, he would have tried someone else. The man nearly averted his eyes to scan the room when Cricket’s Father finally said:
“Could you do something for me?”
“Sure. What is it you need?”
“Could you go kick my daughter off of that machine? I mean, I think she will take it better coming from you.”
The man’s face changed, the wrinkles next to his eyes disappearing. He smiled and looked away for the first time. Shaking his head, he said:
“I’m sorry, sir. I can’t really do that. She’s allowed.”
“Well what if- okay no, you’re right. I was just kidding anyway. I’ll get her in a minute. I’ll get her now.”
A thought occurred to Cricket’s Father: he was a large man, and Cricket couldn’t weigh more than forty pounds. The physics were cut and dry. He rushed forward and grabbed Cricket around the waist but something wasn’t right. There was no resistance. He looked puzzled, his movements slowing to half-speed. She looked up at him with her enormous eyes welling over with water. Her bottom lip doubled in size and her cheeks began to swell and redden. She became a truck-struck puppy right before his eyes. He began to question what type of person would tear their own daughter away from such a simple, harmless pleasure just for an hour of free time. There was always next week. He gently let Cricket down and she slowly turned back to Dora. Thoughts of hot pretzels and melted cheese began to float into his mind when he caught it. It was only a glimpse, but it was there. In the reflection of the screen he saw her face. It was the face of a tyrant for whom everything always went to plan. Enough! He grabbed the back of Cricket’s shirt and she responded immediately, dropping down to the ground and out of her shirt. She scuttled, now shirtless, underneath one of the wooden tables. She hugged the table’s fat leg, locking her hands on the other side. Tears were now streaming down her face. She wanted nothing more than for her Father to drop dead onto the glossy floor. The machine above her head started humming and snapping at her. On the ground next to the screen was Bear. He asked her why she left him behind. She wanted to grab him and bring him into her hideaway, but she didn’t dare risk releasing the leg. Nearly everyone in the store was watching now. Most of them were laughing and commenting on how cute she was. Then she let loose a shriek that cleared all nearby minds of thought for a powerful white second. Heads of the people who hadn‘t been paying attention whipped over, looking panicked. Someone said something about her growing up to be a great singer. Her Father’s face was flushed apple red as he felt the eyes of the people pushing into him. He lowered down onto his knee and said:
“Cricket, please…”
Again she shrieked, this time louder and sharper. Everything else had stopped at this point. Her Father slowly reached out his hand and she backed away, deeper under the table to where he could not reach. She began stomping around like a tiny fenced-in bull. Cricket now realized that he wouldn’t stop until one of them was dead. She looked into her Father’s eyes and let loose a noise that changed the world. The screens flickered and every alarm in the store went off simultaneously. The noise coming from Cricket seemed to come not from her mouth, but from deep within her core. It overtook everything in the store. The tiny hairs raised on all arms and necks. Eyelids trembled and then forced themselves tightly shut. Hands rose to shaking heads, covering bleeding ears. The light bulbs in the ceiling exploded causing a momentary cloud of raw electricity that drifted over the people and showed up as neon green through their clutched eyelids. Cricket’s eyes remained fixed on her Father and the noise doubled upon itself, rivers of pure energy converging and flowing through Cricket’s veins. Her mouth widened to an impossible size and the siren deafened the collapsing, vibrating people. Cricket’s Father’s head began to smoke and he was unable to look away as her yellow eyes held him captive, keeping his body upright so he could feel the full scope of her power. The people burst into flames and the thick glass doors melted into frozen ponds. Cricket blinked once, releasing her Father and ending the moment that while it was occurring felt like an endless inescapable loop. Her Father hit the ground, his charcoal skeleton instantly becoming a ghost of fleeting dust.
The world was finally quiet as Cricket stepped over her Father’s ashes to pick up Bear. She pulled on her Dora Shirt. Bear told her that he loved her and she showed her missing teeth before she kissed his black plastic nose. Dora’s screen was pristine, undamaged from the havoc, but everything else was black and bubbled. Cricket walked up to it and pressed the C button.
C for Cricket.
Cricket was holding her Father’s massive hand, looking up at the people as they hovered past. Some of them made little cutesy faces at her, puffing up their cheeks or sticking out their tongue and bulging their eyes until they looked like lunatics. She stared at them without any noticeable reaction- unafraid, unamused. She could see under the tables to where they were hiding little machines that loudly beeped and others that spit out long paper tongues.
Her hair went up into the air and down past her shoulders in thick bouncing chocolate and peanut butter coils. Her yellow eyes were huge for her tiny face and always seemed to hypnotize strangers. They would look at her as if they were trying to figure out something very important. Her skin was like coffee ice cream, dotted here and there with tiny chocolate chips. Her other hand was holding Bear, her bear.
She could see a boy across the room, half-hiding behind his Mother’s leg. Cricket tilted her head, wondering where he went to school and what it was like to be from somewhere else. He was blonde and his ears stuck out like a chimp. In one of his ears a loose cotton ball was on the verge of detaching and drifting down to the glossy wood floors. The room was full of people that were speaking too loudly, some of them laughing some of them yelling with their faces flushing red and the veins in their necks standing out as little bits of spit jumped out of the mouths and onto one of the glasses-boy’s glasses. The oldest of them had long unattended hair growing from their noses and ears and they bumped into each other without apologizing. They were all so concerned with the things they were discussing. In rows all around the room different types of people were staring into glowing screens, pushing buttons and making it do things. Cricket wanted badly to tell the screen what to do. She took a step towards one of the tables but she was still attached to her Father. He didn’t seem to notice her tugging on his arm as he repeated the numbers that the tall boy with glasses was reciting for him. She was stuck and nearly began to slip towards hysteria when the glasses-boy said something to her Father that made him lean down saying:
“Okay, Cricket you can go over there and play on the computer, but only until I’m done, okay?”
Cricket’s face emitted a pure beam of joy that made the lights in the room flicker a little, but no one seemed to notice. The Father walked her over to where they had one of the screens low enough for her to see it. The table holding the screens was atop a red circle of carpeting and they had fuzzy black peaches for small people to sit on. Father went back to the boy with glasses who began showing him something about wires.
Cricket stepped up to the radiant screen; she was instantly charmed with its vivid dancing colors. She reached out her hand and pushed one of the buttons, the C button, C for Cricket.
The dancing colors immediately disappeared in a flash that startled Cricket, but only for a moment, what she saw next was something truly astonishing. She rubbed her eyes to make sure it wasn’t a trick, like the way she began seeing things as she became too sleepy. But she was still there walking backwards across Cricket’s big yellow eyes. Cricket’s mouth dropped open and she chirped for joy without realizing. Bear said she must be dreaming. On screen was none other than Dora the Explorer, Cricket’s favorite person in the entire universe. The same Dora the Explorer she watched all day every day. The same Dora that was on her most treasured shirt, the shirt she was wearing. Dora walked up to Cricket, wearing her little purple backpack and she said:
“Hello, Cricket. ¿Cómo es usted?”
Cricket was unable to speak; there were too many things to say. She began mashing the buttons, trying to make Dora speak again. All around her the people were still blasting music from the machines and holding hands and smiling, but to Cricket no one else existed, there was only herself and Dora the Explorer.
She figured out how to make Dora move and together they began playing wonderful games. Cricket and Dora had become true best friends and they would be together forever. For Cricket, the screen, the store, the boundaries that lay between them, had dissolved. They were next to one another in the same perfect world. Cricket played with Dora while time stood still. Cricket was making her own time. It was something she learned how to do from Bear.
The passing people commented on how cute the scene was. Such an adorable little girl enraptured in her own world, a brief view of the pure human soul. A young couple stood with there arms around each other, the woman pretending, just for a moment, that Cricket was her daughter, the man trying to burn into his brain the difference between composite and component cables.
Something happened.
Time had started passing again without Cricket’s permission. Her Father’s voice was drifting into the cartoon jungle. She tried her best to ignore it. Dora didn’t seem to notice him at all. Her Father was saying something about leaving. Why would anyone ever want to leave this place, Cricket wondered. They have magic screens that make your dreams come true. He was shaking wires in his hand and reminding her about dance at five. Normally she’d be excited for dance, and the ice cream afterwards, but for Dora, she could go without either indefinitely. As he tried to touch her arm she ripped it away and let out a short warning-scream. She saw the brief glint of fear on her Father’s eyes and turned back to the light, to where Dora was politely waiting for her.
The little scream had turned a few heads, but no one looked for more than a moment after confirming that a child had made the noise and not some sort of rogue beast. The Father was becoming antsy. He knew he was avoiding the obvious; this wasn’t going to go down peacefully. He looked around the room, in awe of the sheer number of people packed into the place on a Tuesday afternoon. He didn’t see anyone he recognized, but carrying a screaming child was embarrassing regardless. Cricket was not an average tantrum-thrower; once it began she was committed. To the people in the store she was a cutie pie with freckles and yellow eyes, but he knew all too well what she was capable of. The Father slowly backed away lightly smiling at the boy who had helped him, trying not to look defeated. For a few minutes the Father busied himself playing with some of the handheld glowing screens but the time was displayed right on the screen and he began to worry he would lose his hour. The hour that Cricket was at dance was the only time that he had to himself. Everything else was reserved months in advance for work and chores and discussions and maintenance. He decided it was best to just get it over with before it went on any longer. He snuck up behind Cricket and prepared to hoist her up onto his shoulder. He made the crucial mistake of hesitating slightly and Cricket spun around and pointed her tiny finger between his eyes. What she said was indecipherable, but the message was clear: We will never leave this place! He tried to muscle through it, quickly reaching out for her hips. She latched onto his hairy arm with both hands and chomped down onto it with her sharp baby-teeth. He was startled by how much it hurt and made a noise that was faintly feminine upon retrospect. A group of teenagers that were covered in oil and purple paint were watching them, pointing and laughing like a pack of animals that sat around all day, pointing and laughing. Cricket stared into her Father’s face with all of the seriousness of one of God’s messengers. The Father stepped back, bumping into a tall Arab man who rushed past him holding his hand in the air, trying vainly to catch someone’s attention.
Cricket once again turned back to Dora and her face washed over with her warm, drugged smile. The Father considered calling in reinforcements in the form of his wife, but he knew he would never live it down and that it would automatically forfeit his hour. A man wearing the same shirt as all of the glasses-boys was standing next to Cricket’s Father with his arms comfortably folded behind his back in the stance of a servant who does not have arms until ordered. He was twenty years older than all of the other employees, sporting gray hair and thicker glasses. The man said:
“Your daughter really seems to have taken a shine to the 20-inch base model there.”
Her Father turned to the man without words. The man was trying to sell him. He clearly didn’t know what was happening, or he didn’t care. If the man knew how much debt Cricket’s Father was in, he would have tried someone else. The man nearly averted his eyes to scan the room when Cricket’s Father finally said:
“Could you do something for me?”
“Sure. What is it you need?”
“Could you go kick my daughter off of that machine? I mean, I think she will take it better coming from you.”
The man’s face changed, the wrinkles next to his eyes disappearing. He smiled and looked away for the first time. Shaking his head, he said:
“I’m sorry, sir. I can’t really do that. She’s allowed.”
“Well what if- okay no, you’re right. I was just kidding anyway. I’ll get her in a minute. I’ll get her now.”
A thought occurred to Cricket’s Father: he was a large man, and Cricket couldn’t weigh more than forty pounds. The physics were cut and dry. He rushed forward and grabbed Cricket around the waist but something wasn’t right. There was no resistance. He looked puzzled, his movements slowing to half-speed. She looked up at him with her enormous eyes welling over with water. Her bottom lip doubled in size and her cheeks began to swell and redden. She became a truck-struck puppy right before his eyes. He began to question what type of person would tear their own daughter away from such a simple, harmless pleasure just for an hour of free time. There was always next week. He gently let Cricket down and she slowly turned back to Dora. Thoughts of hot pretzels and melted cheese began to float into his mind when he caught it. It was only a glimpse, but it was there. In the reflection of the screen he saw her face. It was the face of a tyrant for whom everything always went to plan. Enough! He grabbed the back of Cricket’s shirt and she responded immediately, dropping down to the ground and out of her shirt. She scuttled, now shirtless, underneath one of the wooden tables. She hugged the table’s fat leg, locking her hands on the other side. Tears were now streaming down her face. She wanted nothing more than for her Father to drop dead onto the glossy floor. The machine above her head started humming and snapping at her. On the ground next to the screen was Bear. He asked her why she left him behind. She wanted to grab him and bring him into her hideaway, but she didn’t dare risk releasing the leg. Nearly everyone in the store was watching now. Most of them were laughing and commenting on how cute she was. Then she let loose a shriek that cleared all nearby minds of thought for a powerful white second. Heads of the people who hadn‘t been paying attention whipped over, looking panicked. Someone said something about her growing up to be a great singer. Her Father’s face was flushed apple red as he felt the eyes of the people pushing into him. He lowered down onto his knee and said:
“Cricket, please…”
Again she shrieked, this time louder and sharper. Everything else had stopped at this point. Her Father slowly reached out his hand and she backed away, deeper under the table to where he could not reach. She began stomping around like a tiny fenced-in bull. Cricket now realized that he wouldn’t stop until one of them was dead. She looked into her Father’s eyes and let loose a noise that changed the world. The screens flickered and every alarm in the store went off simultaneously. The noise coming from Cricket seemed to come not from her mouth, but from deep within her core. It overtook everything in the store. The tiny hairs raised on all arms and necks. Eyelids trembled and then forced themselves tightly shut. Hands rose to shaking heads, covering bleeding ears. The light bulbs in the ceiling exploded causing a momentary cloud of raw electricity that drifted over the people and showed up as neon green through their clutched eyelids. Cricket’s eyes remained fixed on her Father and the noise doubled upon itself, rivers of pure energy converging and flowing through Cricket’s veins. Her mouth widened to an impossible size and the siren deafened the collapsing, vibrating people. Cricket’s Father’s head began to smoke and he was unable to look away as her yellow eyes held him captive, keeping his body upright so he could feel the full scope of her power. The people burst into flames and the thick glass doors melted into frozen ponds. Cricket blinked once, releasing her Father and ending the moment that while it was occurring felt like an endless inescapable loop. Her Father hit the ground, his charcoal skeleton instantly becoming a ghost of fleeting dust.
The world was finally quiet as Cricket stepped over her Father’s ashes to pick up Bear. She pulled on her Dora Shirt. Bear told her that he loved her and she showed her missing teeth before she kissed his black plastic nose. Dora’s screen was pristine, undamaged from the havoc, but everything else was black and bubbled. Cricket walked up to it and pressed the C button.
C for Cricket.
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