Broken Slate

“In the fall, before the weather started turning cold,  there’d always be a bunch of splattered grasshoppers littering the concrete. It still happens. People run over those things with their bicycles, more often than not doing it on purpose. Crunch! Flat as pancakes. Sometimes just half of their bodies, but enough to kill them either way. Even with guts hanging out of their mouths or asses, other grasshoppers will just jump right on their backs and start humping the hell out of them, or whatever they do. It’s a sad, sad thing.”

“Yuck,” Toby said, cringing with widened nostrils. “Why would grasshoppers do that?”

Sean closed one eye and examined the hook at the end of his line. He rotated it in his large fingers. “Instinct. Pure instinct.”