Chapter Text
Squish, squish, squish.
Cindy crouched by the sidewalk, squishing ants underneath her thumb. The sun was starting to set, but the late-summer heat kept her pleasantly warm. It was quiet. Nobody knew she was out here, just the way she liked it. The moment Cindy had heard her mother screech “-you goddamn criminal!”, she slipped out of her room and through the back door. She hated listening to her parents argue. Her mom threw a fit over the tiniest things, and her dad didn’t do a thing to stop her. They just went in circles over and over again, and it was just so loud, loud, loud.
Squish, squish, squish.
Her older sister, Helena, was probably holed up in her room, blasting music through her headphones to drown out the yelling. Cindy thought Helena was pretty cool. Beautiful, popular, cheerleader. She was just like something out of the high school dramas Cindy loved to watch. Cindy wanted to be just like that. Luckily, Helena’s room had a lot of neat teenager stuff for Cindy to study. Clothes and makeup and movies, all tools for her to learn how to be the girl she aspired to be. Helena could be a little weird sometimes, though. She acted a lot differently when Cindy was the only person around. She was a lot less sweet, and she said bad words a lot more often. And then there was the time that Cindy had tried listening to her sister’s music. She expected it to be pretty and cute like the rest of her sister’s stuff. Instead, she was met by a dark, harsh noise that sent shivers down her spine. She didn’t understand a lot of the words, but it just sounded so angry. She didn’t try poking through her sister’s music collection again.
Squish, squish, squish.
Squishing ants was fun. The way their bodies cracked under the pressure of her fingers was quite satisfying to Cindy. It was amazing how fragile they were, compared to her. She heard on the TV that ants were super strong and could carry fifty times their body weight. Fifty was a pretty bug number, Cindy was fairly sure. But that didn’t seem to stop her from being able to crush them. She must be pretty strong, Cindy thought.
Squish, squish, squish.
Squishing ants wasn’t the only thing Cindy liked to do outside, of course. She loved to pick flowers. Her mom had tried to keep a garden at one point, but she didn’t have much of a green thumb and gave up on maintaining it. Left to their own devices, the little pink flowers grew wildly, spreading all over the yard. She collected them in her room, her bag, her pockets, anywhere she could keep them. They usually wilted pretty fast, but she could always pick more. In general, the yard was a wealth of fun opportunities. Much more fun than the inside of the house with her family, anyway. Sometimes she would catch lizards and cut their tails off with a knife she took from the kitchen. It made her feel powerful. Knives were nice like that. Shiny and dangerous and powerful.
Squish, squish, squish.
Maybe somebody would realize that she was gone and come looking for her soon. Maybe her mom or her sister or her dad would open the front door and call for her to come inside. But for right now, the only things in the world were Cindy, the flowers, and the ants. And that was the way she liked it.
Squish, squish, squish.