When I was born, which was a long time ago, but not all that long ago, I was small, much smaller than I am now. I was also naked. I am naked now, underneath my clothes, but when the doorbell rings, and the packages arrive, I am also naked, and they just ask me to sign for them, they don't even notice. I'm standing there with the claw marks of destiny on a scaly patch of somebody else's distended abdomen just hanging from my teeth, and they just ask me to sign for the package. So I don't think they actually get paid very much because of that.

And then in the wind that threatens to break my legs if I don't pay up the money I owe it, I step out into the yard (still naked, but this time fully clothed) and the crickets jump before me, thousands of them, leaping out of my way before I crush them, leaping all over the grass.

And one of them speaks, it says to me, "Did you know crickets and cockroaches are close relatives? At least, that's what I've been led to believe. Try squinting at them in the dark. But we're really completely different. The roaches, they do the dirty work, they walk in the places we dare not go. Some of them are pretty good at that. They can tear your destiny in two before you're even born.

"But we crickets, we've got the power of justice behind us. Ever read Pinocchio? No, not the movie, the book. Yeah, we can tell you what a bastard you are and you can kill us and we'll come straight back from the dead to give you what for. So you had better just watch out, buddy."