Bugs at the Dollar Tree

There were bugs at the front door. Tapping, shiny-shelled beetles and skinny ones - transparent and constantly frantic. I thought if I did not look, they wouldn’t touch me. I felt them anyways, a tickle on my temple. I swatted hard and edged my sister faster through the door.

We always got sibling-gifts from the Dollar Tree. On Christmas Eve and with our parents' money.

I had sat in back-middle, squashed pajama pants between my older sisters. The minivan's heater wafted back that sticky sweet sauce - we always got Chinese too. I let my inhales linger, envisioning the gooey gold coating on the sides of the white box.

My dad slowed to find a parking spot. I began to fixate on the lots singular streetlight. We parked directly under it, and I craned my neck to continue looking. I felt it was lonesome. The shopping center had others, but they were several lots away. There were no bugs, tapping on and off its bulb. There were not even snowflakes.

They let us wander. It was actually necessary, so that we wouldn’t see each other's gifts. So I wandered and, coming across the candy aisle, spotted my sister. She swiveled and gave me a wide-eyed threat.

“I’m going! Geez!” I whispered.

It was so dumb. Why did older sisters get to boss you around? Like they were your parents? I wandered into the crafting aisle and focused intently on when I'd seen her with that freckled boy from 7th grade. Peter something, anyways he was old. He had handed her a candy cane with a tag that said, “To: Sarah.” She wouldn’t boss me around if she knew I knew that.

I never saw that candy cane after that. She must have eaten it. I wondered if he’d get her anything for Valentine’s Day. If she only knew!

I was at the store's front now. Nothing much up here but polka-dotted wrapping paper and Santa wall hangers with the Santa hats glittered. Glancing again at the wrapping paper, a tiny flinch caught in the window's reflection. I looked up and into it, meeting my own outline, darkened against the store light.

Barely, I could make out a rusted trashcan, exposed by the outside blub. And again, it came from just below the wrapping paper stand. Tilting, I looked closer - again, two swift movements. A little hand. It came from the ground level, a child's hand. I watched it, swatting at the insects.

With adjusted eyes, I could only see her small head, perched just off the concrete wall. She was unmoving, besides the occasional swat. She then rubbed her eyes.

I caught the end of my mother’s voice saying, "a few more minutes," and turned around and towards the candy aisle.

The store felt uneasy, but soon did not. And soon, as I thought intently and hurriedly about which candies my sisters would most want, I forgot almost completely.

And I remained forgetful the rest of the evening. On the drive home, teasing my sisters that I could easily see my gifts through the bag. With the steam billowing as my dad opened and distributed each of our chicken. With the giggles, up and down our bunkbeds, talking of the day to come.

I tried not to think about falling asleep, pretending it was a normal night, tricking my body into sleeping faster. I thought about the trick itself, then of other things. The toys my grandparents had given me that day; a mermaid Barbie! I thought of her stripe of pink hair and sherbet orange tail. A lovely combination, I thought. And what would I choose, as a mermaid? The pink and orange were perfect, but I needed to choose myself. She was swimming, hair waving up and down as I swapped potential colors; aqua blue, Barney purple, maybe an evil red. I can’t remember what I decided because I fell asleep.

And I was in my classroom - a sunlit morning. The light, it illuminated the desks and white-circle table in the room’s center. The white glowed and looked cheery. There was a glass box on that table, also sparkling in sun, and I stepped closer. It looked like the container our class kept larvae in, but this lid was glass too. I knelt down and saw its insides - a swarm of brown and gray insects - simple-looking and frantic.

I watched them hit the wall, “tick,” tumble into the swarm, then hit the wall again. It was thick glass; I moved my head to its side so I could gauge its thickness.

But when I moved back, it was empty and silent. That’s when I realized the window shades had been closed. That the light wasn’t actually sun, but artificial and harsh. I looked up and, seeing the ceiling lights, heard no buzz. That’s when I realized something was bad. And it was the bugs.

The swarm then shot straight from thin air into my face. I squeezed my eyes and pawed my face. They tapped and wriggled against my palms and atop my hair. One buzz and unbearably loud. My ears, I realized with panic, as stragglers started latching to my earlobes! My hands flinched to cup my ears. In one instant they shot behind my eyelids like a water hose.

I jolted awake, hands in fists against my eyes.

I shifted violently, staring at the blankly visible wall.

Though I fought it, I kept remembering how the light had turned from daylight to yellow. How it trapped me.

I knew dreams were made up of things we’d recently seen. I thought of the bugs, tapping at the bulb at that front door, the hand shooing them away. She had rubbed her eyes, that little girl.

So I saw those bugs trying to crawl into her eyes. I saw her bat and rub again and again. But it was no use. She had nowhere to go. She was there now, still. Still, the bugs were tapping.

And I began to sob bitterly.