Cicadas, and Their Skins
ShortStory 5,301 words Recommended by 1 award/anthology source
"I spent my first summer as an orphan watching cicadas fuck, scream, and molt. Wasn’t long before I plucked one of the cicada skins from the dry village soil. I brushed it clean against my secondhand clothes I was already beginning to outgrow. Dappled by sunlight, the carapace looked hard though I knew it to be brittle."
Content warnings 3
body-horrorgoresexual-content
Quasar links out; the story lives on Strange Horizons, where the author gets the click.