“‘Hoppers’.” Lily read aloud, a small grin on her face. “What, you think it’s like Frogger or something?” She looked to her boyfriend with a grin, giggling as he hugged her close.
“No idea. Must be a local thing.” Alan looked to be just as confused as she was, which made her feel a little better. There was something about the way the locals were staring at them that set her nerves on edge.
She looked to the screen intently, seeing a little digital cricket hopping left and right, trying to climb platforms before time expired. The Demo Play seemed straightforward enough, and they had time to kill… “Hey, why don’t we give it a try? What’s the worst that could happen, right?”
As it turned out, the worst that could happen was blowing five bucks to get play tokens-the machine didn’t take singles. Lily sighed, looking at their three spares. “Well… I guess we could make something out of these.”
“Mhmm.” Alan grunted noncommittally. He knew Lily too well: she’d left more than a few projects hanging. “Hey, there’s difficulty levels. Why don’t you start on easy?”
“Oh? Is someone scared of losing out?” Lily smirked, clicking her coin into the machine and toggling the difficulty up to ‘Normal’. As expected, Alan flicked his own game up to ‘Hard’. He did like to show off… The girl chuckled, looking to her own game and rattling away at the controls.
She didn’t know what she’d expected, in hindsight. It’s not like she had ever held a real talent for videogames, let alone strange and unfamiliar ones. The girl groaned with exasperation at her score, a solid chunk below the bottom forty percent of players. “What kind of stupid game includes that statistic anyways?”
“I dunno.” Alan chuckled. He’d mastered the game in a matter of seconds, and yet his score was lower than Lily’s. Of course it was. He might have been a show-off, but that didn’t change the fact that he liked to let Lily win on occasion. Every occasion.
“You know, you really could try once in your life.” Lily grumbled. She shot her boyfriend a sidelong glance, a scowl on her face. His machine made a sad sound as his little cricket failed to meet its minimum score, and the man laughed.
“Well, I always try. Or did you think that I’m not trying to please-”
Whatever words her was going to say next were cut off as he turned into a cricket. It was all so fast, so surreal. One second, he was giving her a charming smile, and the next his head was twisting into that of an insect’s, a mottled carapace covering his body.
Then a chirp came from his form, his legs kicking against his deforming body. He shrank down, smaller and smaller and smaller with every second until there was little more than a pile of clothing with a small form wriggling about within it.
The sound of her own game’s conclusion snapped Lily from her horrified trance, and she turned towards it, pupils contracted in terror. ‘WELCOME TO CRICKETHOOD. GOOD LUCK!’ Proclaimed the screen, in bright and friendly letters.
Then her body cramped up, and terror overtook her once more.
Now that it was happening to her, Lily could pick out the sensations in horrifying detail. Her body was compressing all over as insectoid carapace covered her skin, her smooth flesh drying over in a matter of seconds. Her hair receded into a skull no longer suited for it, antennae bursting from her brow.
The new appendages waggled frantically, as two new limbs burst from her sides. It was so alien to even consider possessing these, yet they felt natural to her body. That made it all the more horrifying, and Lily tried to scream through a throat no longer capable of the sound.
Her legs thrummed as they shrank, brushing against her elongating backside-her new insectoid abdomen. It produced a loud, keening chirp that seemed to echo through her brain. ‘Crickethood’. That’s what the game had said. It was impossible, but… Could she really be changing into a bug?
The answer was a resounding ‘yes’ as her vision split into a maddening kaleidoscope, eyes no longer able to blink. Her mouth parted into a set of constantly chittering mandibles, then she fell onto all six of her new legs, a weight atop herself. It took her a moment to realize that her hands had become legs much like the middle set of big limbs, and another moment to realize that the weight atop her body was her own clothing.
The girl struggled to move her new body, learning in seconds how to affect a scuttling crawl, then how to hop. She poked free of her oversized bra, finding another cricket above her. It was Alan… Her heart flooded with warm relief, even despite their circumstances. As long as she was with him, everything was
A foot slammed down an inch before her face, flattening the other cricket.
“WOO! Free drink for me!” A booming human voice called.
It was like the call of a giant, and it stirred Lily to terrified action. She hopped from a stomp, then from another footfall. She didn’t want to die, didn’t want to get crushed! Quickly, she scrabbled against the back of the arcade cabinet, finding that it was pressed too close to the wall to escape under.
Another foot fell towards her, and she looked up to it in horror. Then it was jerked away, as its owner was shoved away by an hourglass figure.
“What the-”
“You’ve had enough. The poor thing just lost her boyfriend, cut her some slack. They weren’t even from around here.” A female voice announced loudly, with a matter-of-fact authority.
“Shut up, Eliza, I want my drink.”
“And I told you. She’s not. From. Around. Here.” The woman’s voice was firm, and after a moment, the man backed off. Lily’s cricket vision was too poor to make out faces, but she imagined the man’s was twisted in disdain.
The hourglass figure leaned in closer, and Lily could make out what looked like a smile. “Hey there, girl. I’m really sorry to have to be the one telling you this. But… Well… If you lose at the video game, you lose your humanity. Yeah, it really sucks that you have to hear it like this, but… Well, it’s a matter of fact.
“See, ‘Hoppers’ is a game where you either guide your cricket to victory… Or you spend the rest of the night trying not to get squished. As you can tell from the cabinet, you really can’t hide here. Not easily, at least.” Eliza paused. “And… as far as why people want to squish you, well. Here’s where you’re really unlucky. Anyone who skooshes a cricket gets a free drink, any drink, from the menu. Not bad, right?”
Not bad? Her humanity was gone, even if it was temporary! Worse yet, her very life was at stake, and Alan was DEAD! Lily’s legs thrummed in ire, and she let out an angry chirp. A loud sound filled the air in response, and it took her a moment to realize Eliza was laughing.
“Bad move, little cricket. Now everyone knows you’re here. Or did you think I was saving you?” Eliza cooed. “It’s just good manners to explain what’s going on. One little explanation so you become an actual challenge to kill, and then you’re fair game. So, now that you know what’s up…”
Lily dodged Eliza’s heel with a frantic chirp of her legs, panic spurring her into motion. It took her a moment to realize that the woman hadn’t even been trying to squish her, and that she’d made just a half-hearted step. Then a quick stomp came from above, and the real game began.
The cricket threw her tiny body to the side, legs chirping with the motion. Another footfall came and was similarly dodged, Lily finding herself much better at this game than at the arcade machine she’d been playing earlier. Of course, that wasn’t saying much.
The next stomp was unexpected. Lily hadn’t noticed the shadow carefully positioning itself over her body until it was too late to react. All she could do was chirp as a large boot drove itself atop her body. A thundering boom deafened her every sense, then nothing.