Will you be my conscience?

The grass was unkept with wild flowers and weeds here and there. Dirty autumn leaves were scattered throughout the yard. The young boy – less than 10, surely – lay there on his belly, knees bent 90 degrees, cheeks squished up by his hands, and elbows digging into the damp earth. Inches from his nose was a small black cricket.
“Are you my conscience?”, a young voice sounded. The two creatures stared at each other. A long, drawn out stare, broken eventually by the crickets sudden jump. The boys reflexes were quite good; he pounced and cupped his hands to the ground and felt the little creature jump again and again into his hand. “I’m glad your excited” said the boy “but you’ll have to stop jumping for a minute”. When the crickets jumps stopped he reached into his shirt pocket, being carefull to keep his new friend cupped to the ground with his other hand, and pulled out an empty matchbox. It was a tricky situation to negotiate, his new friend was so very excited and jumped with glee, but he managed to eventually get him into the box. The second the box slid shut something happened that shocked our young hero: a voice rang from the box.
“Thank you! A new home? A new friend? Thank you!”
The young boy stared at the box, wide eyed, amazed. Eventually he whispered. “You can talk?”
“Of course! Not much good is a conscience that cannot speak to you! But I must warn you, my good friend, this can only stay so if I remain in this magic little box. You must not open this box, or the spell will be gone”
The young boy understood this to mean that if he were to open the box he would no longer be able to communicate with his new friend. Not only that, he would hop away, instantly forgetting their friendship and becoming once again an ordinary cricket. He thought about this for a moment. “But, will you be okay?” he asked
“Yes, of course!” came the reply from the box, “I have a nice hot cup of tea and a very good book. I am quite content in here. You just pop me back into your shirt pocket and anytime you need to ask me something, you know where I will be!”
The boy skipped back through the yard, glad of this most eventful outing.

Over the next few weeks he found his new friend Adelaide (he had come to learn that this was the crickets name) was very helpful indeed! Any difficult decision was made quickly with the advice of Adelaide, and the young boy felt in each case that he had done the right thing. On one occasion Adelaide advised him that he should go to his mother and tell her about the glass he had accidently smashed when he was trying to pour a drink. “But I’ve already hidden the broken glass! I don’t need to tell her and be smacked!” he pleaded.
“You did not hide it, you merely cleaned it up, to try and be helpful! Now, go to her and tell her, it is the right thing to do.”
To his utter bewilderment his mother was forgiving and no punishment was received. He felt a rush of gratitude for Adelaide.

On other occasions, when he was doing something that he wasn’t sure was bad, such as tasting his mothers wine whilst she had left the table, or rolling the toilet paper roll down the hall to see how long it was, he would be stopped by a loud ringing coming from his shirt pocket. Adelaide would rub his wings as an alert that he should rethink what he was doing. Again, he was grateful for these warnings, as upon thinking about these things he found that indeed, he was too young to taste wine, and the toilet paper was not meant to be wasted on such games.

One day however, his pocket rang loudly whilst he was sitting angrily in the corner of the class room, facing the wall. This was a punishment inflicted by the teacher, most unjustly, and he could not understand why Adelaide would not leave him be. He took the box out of his pocket and whispered to it. “Adelaide! Why are you screeching? I havent done anything wrong!”
“If that is so, why is Miss Emily crying in the teachers arms?”
“She is a silly girl!” he replied. A peculiar twinge occured in his spine when he thought of her and instinctually he felt a desire to tease and taunt her.
“She is not silly, she is quite a nice young lady. You should not have told her to go away, or told her that you thought her hair looked funny. That was quite mean of you, my good friend.”
“I only did this because she had stuck her tongue out at me! She started this, can’t you see!?”
The teacher hissed at him for silence from her desk across the room. He felt so angry at Adelaide for not seeing his point.
“Your wrong” he whispered.
“I am afraid that I am not, my good friend” came Adelaide’s regretful response.
“You are!” he retorted in the closest thing a whisper could be to a yell, and as he said this anger gripped him and he slid open the matchbox. He was suddenly silent. Shock hit him as he saw Adelaide lay there dead still and quite stiff. Some of his legs had snapped off and lay next to him in the box. “Adelaide?” he enquired, tears welling in his eyes now. No response came from the cricket, which was dry and hard, and looked as if it had died weeks ago. He slid the box shut again. He suddenly felt very guilty.

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Tags:

bed, childrens, conscience, guilt, story, tale and time