Replies

“Since the lat time the cicadas swarmed...”

That’s positively...ancient.

“In the fourth month of the fifth year in the Sultanate of Abu Ben Bubbi, there came of a morning a powerful gale from the south that persisted all day, and all night, and in such force as grown men had great difficulty walking along the roads. All that was not built of stone was carried aloft, and at the dawning of the second day there was not a house remaining that had a roof.

Upon the rising of the Sun The force of the wind abated somewhat, and the people had some hope that the ordeal would be at an end. Alas, this was not to be. For as the mid-day approached, from the south there came a rising tide of darkness; filling up the vault of the heavens with the blackness of ink, even as the floodwaters overwhelm the earth.

CICADAS!!

An innumerable army of ravaging insects crashed upon civilization in such density as they could scarce but proceed straight ahead without that they forced their neighbors from their course. This unimaginable wave of devastation drove all other living things into hiding. Cattle left in the fields huddled together, lowing their upset as the herdsmen fled in fear, seeking the shelter of caves and empty tombs in the hillside. The dogs in the streets fled into any open door, and there was no one inside not taken with such terror as to utter a word against them.

And so by the hour they came; cicadas upon cicadas by the millions of millions of millions as if to outnumber the grains of sand of the great desert itself; as if to mock the multitude of the very stars. By night still they came, and the people cried out to one another in dismay, but the fullness was not yet, for although the cicadas came, they did not also go, but remained, and wherever they alighted they began to eat. Upon every living plant they settled, and the fury of their wings subsided, only to be replaced with another even more terrible: the sound of their devouring mouths consuming all the increase of the whole land.

Amid the horror of the destruction, the hearts of the cowering masses were stricken within them, and many died.
Many others were overwhelmed in their minds, and plunged into madness. But one man, having found the safety of an inner room, and the comfort of a lamp, retained yet the presence of mind to avail himself of his situation, and create an email account.