The Brood

"Goetia means Howling. It's the chittering of a billion insects in the night. It's what it sounds like where we live."
- the demon Andras, in Promethea #2

And where we live, too, because Brood X has awakened.

And they are loud; I don't know what Alan Moore had in mind when he penned that line, but cicada song certainly fits the bill. And there's no avoiding them now, even with earplugs. Trees, houses, sidewalks are thick with red eyes and orange wings, and you can't pull out of the driveway without intercepting a cicada in (singularly graceless and eccentric) flight. It's like a little daily dose of cosmic horror delivered right to your doorstep.

Which I can't help but feel is kind of cool, when it comes down to it. Every seventeen years, these weird things crawl up out of the earth, like Lovecraft monsters designed by Steven Brust, to bring chaos and cacophony to the world for six weeks, and then they go away. And it's a phenomenon you only get to experience a handful of times in your life.

(I still can't bring myself to take advantage of the opportunity to eat 'em, though. But for the more bold, you'll get all the options you could want, and then some, here.)

And fortunately, despite bringing on massive attacks of the wiggins, the bugs themselves are completely harmless. (Or so they tell us!)

Iä! Iä! Cicada fhtagn!