The Cricket Apocalypse

This is a modified snippet from the comedy-fantasy short story I wrote for my friend as a Christmas present. FYI, this takes place inside Braum's (an ice cream shop).

           The mouse-size cricket chirped as it washed its face. Then it raised its head, and fell silent. Suddenly it jumped up on the table, and people screamed when it dunked its face in the sundae.

            “It's eating ice cream!” Sasha said, putting her hands up to her head and stepping back. The woman in the track suit returned. “Oh, this is just bizarre!” she said. Suddenly, Sasha's hand slipped and gathunked into her head. She felt something hard and metallic in her grasp. There was more screaming behind her as she pulled her hand out of her head and wrestled a metal spoon from her hair. A broad grin spread across her face for a moment, but it slipped as she realized a spoon wouldn't do her much good. She stashed it and looked down at her body where the utensil had just been absorbed. Concentrating hard, she imagined her hand gathunking into her body and grabbing something more useful. She closed her eyes and reached in, and her hand closed around what felt like a knife handle. She opened her eyes and swung out with it, making the runner lady jump back.

            “Careful with that dagger!” she said.

            “Here goes nothing.” Sasha raised the knife over the cricket and took aim. In one swift slice and a crunch the cricket's head fell to the floor, still latched onto the ice cream. A couple drops splattered Sasha's new white TOMS.

            “You did it!” Danny said. “You figured out how to use your metal-absorbing superpower!”

            “That is so freaky,” Sasha said.

            “But awesome!” Danny said.

            “Bizarre!” said the runner lady.

            By now, several people had run out of the store screaming, several had called the police, and the rest were either watching in horrified fascination or complaining to Patrice, the manager on duty.

            “Oh, that's just bizarre!”

             Sasha barely heard Runner Lady's declaration. What she did hear was a strange clicking sound. One look at Danny's wide eyes staring behind her made her whirl around. A huge cat-sized cricket crouched on the table in front of cone line. It gave a chirp, and before Sasha could use the six-inch blade that was in her hand, it leaped to the ground and dug into both the peanut butter cup ice cream and the smaller cricket's head.

            “Ugh!” Danny said. He stood up in his seat and hopped over the table to the aisle. A strange noise came from the bug, and it slowly increased in decibels. It sounded like, “mmmmmmmmmmMMMMMMM! YUUMMM!” Then it lifted its shiny black ice cream-smeared face. “Heh! Yoo tink yoo so bigbig cause yoo kill bugbug?”

            “Ahhhhh!” Sasha and Danny both screamed and jumped back.

            “Look out, yoo hyoomans. He is coming. DESDEMONE is coming. He is big, and he is coming to get yoo.”  To Sasha's horror, it pointed two spindly antennae at her.