You started to realize how different your world could be with someone like him and you started to feel the first flickers of love. It’s a different kind of love than you have ever felt before. It’s slow and steady, but it’s also a love that only seems to grow. In fact, it’s grown to the point that you are ready to reveal your secret, the secret that you’ve been keeping for 2 years. 

You feel scared, you know that your life is about to change. You take a deep breath and tell Daniel everything. 

As you exit the building and enter the parking lot, he asks if you’ve heard of the cicadas and you say no. He says they’ve been underground for 15 years now and that’s one the longest periods of time that they’ve ever hibernated. You jokingly say that you are here now and maybe you’ll bring them out. You wink at your new friend, it’s time to start over. 

It’s Sunday morning and you are arriving at the diner for your shift. It’s a hot summer day and the church crowd is thinner than normal. A few of the other servers are sent home early, but you volunteer to stay. 

This is when it happens. You only have one hour left on the clock, when he sits in your section, the diner is half empty by now, but his presence seems to take up the entire space. He’s relaxed but extremely observant. There’s an alertness to his posture and eyes that you have never seen before. 

You can tell that he is not local, you wonder where he came from. 

His kitchen is large and opens out into the living room. The bright open space stands in stark contrast to the stove, which is covered in layers of grease. You begin scrubbing as hard as you can. You think about how the stove got to be this way. It must have taken months of neglect at least, how could someone just ignore this kind of build-up? Maybe he doesn’t notice the mess that he’s making, you think. Or maybe he notices but he doesn’t care. After all, there will always be someone like you to clean it up. 

It’s Sunday night at 11 pm. It’s 4 weeks before the murder.  You are staring at your phone. She is late again. She’s not your girlfriend, at least not in public. You pace around the small room. There’s not much here, except for a large bed, which sits in the middle of the room. It’s layered with crisp white sheets. The room is a little cramped, but it smells fresh and new, like a large open field. You think about your own home, it feels constrained, musty, diluted. 

You live in one of those small towns where everyone knows everyone, you have to be discrete.

It’s been 6 days since you discovered your best friend's body. It was a Sunday night and you found him in his condo. You knew the second you saw him that someone else did this, but it’s hard to explain how it could have happened. 

Your attention is drawn to the faint sound of singing. As you slowly gain consciousness it becomes louder and louder. It sounds like church hymns. That doesn’t make any sense. You haven’t been to church since you were a kid.  

You open your eyes and stare straight ahead. Your vision is out of focus, but you can make out the colors of white and brown. You slowly start to realize that you are on your back and are staring upwards, at a vaulted ceiling. You recognize this ceiling. You are in your childhood church. You try to sit up but your muscles will not engage.

You are groggy and are struggling to remember how you got here. In fact, you realize that you can not remember anything that happened before this moment. You don't even know your name.