Jimony Cricket

The rain had lasted for such a short period, but it had fallen enough to make the lake nearby rise up by a couple of inches. The cloud's empty palms reveal the end of the storm, whilst every family and lonely one in their warm home sensed a disturbance. Peering down into that lake's surface, the reflection illuminates a bulk of grey clouds hovering high above still but dominating. One eye through a microscope sees the clouds whispering little bits of secrets while ever so often sending tiny shocks of light from their bodies. These frighten terribly the home dwellers. The clouds, though they have released their hefty weight still hold malice within, seething in lightning shocks. But the lake's surface, which had earlier been constantly perforated by dozens of fat round raindrops, is now clear and calm. One long hand gliding the skin of the water's surface would say that the lake was now no more than a mirror.

Silence shifts across the land, stilling even the small insects that chant their songs.

CSHHH, CSHHH,

CSHHH, CSHHH.

Silence breaks.

A man steps dowdily across the field, his brown knee boots beating the wet grass and mud that had been completely dry just a few hours ago. He pays no heed to the dampness of his feet as bits of water crawl through the small holes of his shoes. Mud also grips stubbornly to the soles of his boots, piling up with each step. One final careless foot forwards into the massive muddy ground- shoots- the sole of the boot right off the boot.

The man's head swivels back lazily at the sole now stuck onto the mud. Water rushes into the open boot. The man stares at it, for a moment, scratching his head with one long finger. His body sways slowly back and forth, back and forth in empty thought. After a brief moment, he turns back stiffly, and continues the journey forward.

To give a more vivid description of this man's deviant behavior, he appears to the unlikely passerby nothing less than a living scarecrow that has been relieved of its frame, in appearance and behavior. Peeping under the brim of his old pointed hat, two beady eyes stare out into the heavy mist, dancing around madly towards each direction. It's impossible to see after a certain distance, so the action is somewhat meaningless, but to Jimony, being aware of every possible presence is vital. Had he believed in ghosts, he might have become a crazed man, afraid of being haunted by a shadow on a wall, two pairs of eyes staring straight at him. These "crazy eyes" had resulted from an evolving habit of his that began in his youth.

I... will now turn the hands of time for a moment. The memory awakens, and the image of a scrawny young fellow standing by a streetlight manifests. This is the man in his ending teenage years while he lived still within his old hometown. Only a few years later, he would become a full-time criminal. A lonely meaningless criminal.

The signal light is determined to stick to red. Five minutes in, nothing changes. There's a throng of people impatiently waiting for the signal to change to green, but the streets are madness. Cars sped away back and forth, some leaving trails of gas suspending behind in the air, floating there with other pieces of dirty air left behind. For a moment... the curious mind is left to wander and imagine steeping down beside the sidewalk edge, forgetting everything and everyone...simply letting go into the dangerous street at the mercy of the colorful shiny cars that wait for no one. In an instant, the deed is done. A man cloaked in black lies still on the pavement.

Jimony stands behind a tall woman in red, who prattles on about her supposed agonizing torment that is her life. She has a nasty habit of raising her head up in the air, heaving for breath before letting out a loud train of words out of her pretty mouth. Yes, life has been especially cruel to this woman, that the higher power of this world has left her in ignorance for life. Within her fingers she clutches onto several strings of her day's struggles, shopping bags painted with the brand of the most expensive shopping store in the city. In the palm of her other hand she picks up a peculiar shoe-shaped phone, attached by cord to her other more modern phone that lies within her dress pocket. The people around her occasionally glance towards her eccentric behavior, attention which she seems to build and thrive on. It's a pity she doesn't realize the source of that attention lies within her oscillating voice and her over-expressive body language.

"GOD, what a day! I F-ING! HATE my life! I have to walk all the way to bus station because Brian's car broke down, and he ended up crashing into someone, probably dead the idiot. If I had known his F-ING! car would break down, I obviously would have gone with you guys instead. He's F-! F-! F-!"

She rolls her eyes, and shifts her weight, waving her hands around like a maniac.

"YES! YES! I know, right?!!Ugh! God! HAHAHAHAHA!! YEAH, YOU GOT THAT RIGHT! HAHAHA!!!..."

...

  "Ugh I hate having to walk. My feet hurt! Honesty Brian is such a lazy a- !"

    She continues on, so the streetlight feels no choice but to change its light to green. The big crowd speed walks forward, heads bobbing up and down within the sphere of people, but all heads stay staring straight ahead. The woman walks toward the end of the crowd, followed by Jimony and two other short persons. This whole time, Jimony has stayed immobile, except of course, now that he is crossing within the crowd, he shuffles forward. His movements are sluggish and boring, shallow breaths straining themselves in circles. Dead eyes pierce through the road's surface. He tilts them up at the woman in red, head following after three seconds.

Drawing a line from her back to his, one see the top of his head closely reaches the length of her back from the ground. His yellow hat adds a couple of inches, but of no help. Jimony moves his eyes down to her bags, and notices that out of one bag, the tip of a wallet sticks out ever so slightly along with the other small items in the bag that lay on top. They almost spill out of the bag, but looking further into her other bags, he sees they're all filled with similar items up out of their brims. Small boxes of jewelry, clothing, and other accessories and trinkets take up the spaces of her bags.

It's the wallet that takes Jimony's attention. She continues talking on the phone, waving her hands around and nearly smacks the individual next to her, who moves out of the way with surprising indifference. Jimony's eyes dart right and left. Then he turns back, looks around, then turns forward, and looks again. His palms start to sweat. A thought has formed in his mind, a wicked thought that tickles his senses. It turns in his mind, and manifests itself from his subconscious to front of his mind in a springing motion.

Nobody's looking.

Should he?

No...Should he? She's the careless one.

No!....Hmmgh....

They were all now in the middle of the street. Pressure takes a hold of him, lifting choking him around the throat. His eyes roll around at the surroundings once more before he reaches out in a- FLASH!- and grabs the wallet. His eyes are darting around more than ever with little control from their owner, like broken windshield wipers gone crazy. Jimony's heart flies up and around his chest like a pinball, his body the unfortunate pinball machine.

Nobody looking?! Nobody saw! NO! No!

He slides the wallet awkwardly into his jacket, one hand over his beating heart. The crowd scatters out like ants as it reaches the other side of the street. The woman in red... pauses her steps on the sidewalk, taking glance at the store an arm length away. Jimony begins walking the opposite direction. His head, however, turns frighteningly towards the woman. She has stopped talking and peers through the vivid front wall of the GRAND store. Displays of elaborate gowns are dressed onto mannequins, all of various colorful red shades. Each one more radiant and embellished than the last, bright eye candy for this fashionable woman. She is like many women of her nature, a two-sided mirror, one side cracked, the other only beauty.

Jimony feels his feet cease into a halt.

She's thinking. Jimony looks down at his chest where the wallet lies beneath his jacket. He looks back up, and fiddles about with his hands. The woman in red shifts forward slightly to the door, and Jimony's heart comes to a climax.

She stops. The voice from her phone startles her. She pulls it back onto her ear.

"What, really?!!" She moves back on the sidewalk. "SHI-!! Really? What happened...You luggage just got STOLEN? Here? At the airport?! Aw, how?!

SHI-!! SHI-!!

What are you gonna do?! You were supposed to bring us that-!

The last bit goes unheard by Jimony, as he speed walks away into the nearest alley. Once he's out of view his speed quickens into a sprint, and his stiff figure loosens up somewhat of its tension. He blinks uncontrollably.

Then, he hears it.

He had just crossed a few blocks when a high pitch scream is heard. It is the kind of scream that makes your shoulders move up into stiffness, teeth grind uncontrollably together, and eyes squint into half-moons. From his wallet, the women's ID falls out into the street without Jimony's notice, and cars speed over into, crushing it into pieces.

"AGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHRRRRRrrrr!!!!"

The source of that scream only leads to Jimony whizzing away past people who get out of the way but otherwise don't seem to care about the awkward unusual man running down the streets. Jimony hears the scream once more before he is then out of earshot, where he is safe, and his poor little heart can soothes itself into its regular beat. A sigh of relief is let loose for him.

Now we move away from him. Darkness fades the memory, and we fall slightly into the future almost awake. This was only the start of his career as a pickpocket. The only problem, if the crime itself we do not consider a problem, was his continued fear every time he about to commit the act. Every time, just as he was about to grab onto an unsuspecting person's wallet or purse, the poisonous bite of fear would turn his insides into mush, and his eyes would uncontrollably be wary of every neighboring eye. Him, Jimony Crook, had always been a coward, and even after over fifty attempts (and astonishing successes) at stealing people's personal items he was still no more than a mouse at heart. Like a genius, who feels a fool. His eyes became the visible sign of his fear.

But strangely his wary eyes were not the strangest detail in his appearance, but rather, his nose, or rather, the absence of a nose at the center of his face. Upon closer inspection to his face one could see a slight bump with two tiny nostrils poking upwards on each side. As a child he had been ridiculed extensively on his nose until he grew terribly insecure about it. The problem, if we dare call it a problem, then, was that his nose always appeared like it had been socked and bent towards the right.

Later on past his childhood days of torment and out he had a surgeon alterate its shape. Unfortunately, his surgeon proved to be a nut, so that afterwards the resulting nose came out as described. Jimony however had been giddy about the change, unaware that the reason no one taunted him anymore (nor engaged him in conversation) was because they were uncomfortably repulsed by him.

But going back to the present, where we awaken.

Jimony had been walking for about an hour, his body now partially covered with spots of mud. Exhaustion has enveloped Jimony in its arms, his crazy eyes rolling back every few seconds in tiredness, before waking up in an instant's notice.

Underneath him, the earth sloped down into one massive lake extending beyond Jimony's vision. He gazed down into the lake, and saw there the clouds above. He stared up. They glared at him, dark and menacing.

Jimony sighed.

Jimony.

He thought of his name. No, he remove the name from his mind and identity. He was only a man now.

A foot touched the water's surface. Jimony felt his sides groan from the cold water. He pushed down into the water, and stuck his other foot in.

The water's surface was broken, ripples forming, not just due to his figure stepping into the lake, but because the clouds above had decided to let out rain from their empty hands. Jimony stepped further into the lake.

Jimony gazed up at the clouds, and smiled. He pushed out his hands, feet two feet apart from each other. The clouds sent out tiny shocks of light, lighting up the landscape. His heart hammered in his heart, eyes clear and bright. On a whim he let himself go backwards into the lake.

"So...tired."

He closed his rolling eyes, as his face touched the water.

(sigh)