The Light of the Fireflies

by Paul Pen

Sometimes I thought of them as suicide victims, glass bodies hanged and swinging from a cable.

An insect that makes light. Like the bulbs that hung bare from the ceiling in the basement. But living.

It tried to find something to grip on to in its new world of transparent boundaries, but it slid down the glass. I put a pencil in the jar so the insect had somewhere to perch. It thanked me with a cold green flicker. There’s no creature more amazing than one that can make its own light.

She also served a seventh bowl. The one nobody would touch. And which, as ever, would end up in the trash or down the plughole.

“Like all fears are overcome,” she answered. She stood and went to the door, then held a finger over the switch and added, “By facing up to it.”

“Give him light,” I whispered to the fireflies. “He’s still scared of the dark.”

My brother snored, oblivious to the light dancing in our room, but I’d be hypnotized by it, imagining it was sunbeams that the fireflies brought from outside so I could see them.

“But you’ll have to stay off until I say. We don’t want my sister to see us. Or Dad, especially not Dad.” The fireflies went out.

“No one must know you are there.”

“Do you know that there’re children dying of hunger in other parts of the world?” said Dad. “I don’t know any other parts of the world.”