The Cicada Brood — Seventeen-Year Return

16:9 video, 8 seconds. A suburban street at dusk: the seventeen-year cicada emergence is underway — and the scale is wrong.

0-3s: The air is thick: the trees are loud with the brood's drone, the sidewalks crunch with shells, nymphs climb every vertical surface. A resident films from the porch — until the scale registers. The shells clinging to the oak trunks are the size of dinner plates. The nymphs climbing the porch railings are as long as forearms, their emergence splits glowing faintly.
3-6s: One adult, wings still soft, the span of a hawk, detaches from the oak and lands on the porch railing facing the camera. Its red eyes reflect the porch light; its tymbals begin to thrum — a bass note felt in the chest, deepening as the wings harden. Down the street, car alarms trigger in sequence as the brood's drone deepens.
6-8s: The porch light flickers. The cicada's wings snap rigid with an audible crack, and it lifts off — straight at the camera. The frame whites out on wings and red eyes. The audio holds one last bass thrum — then the porch's silence, and the brood's drone, everywhere.

Detail: the dinner-plate shells, the forearm nymphs, the glowing emergence splits, the hawk-span wings, the red eye-shine, the flickering porch light. Camera: handheld suburban footage, macro close-ups on the horror. Lighting: porch-light amber against dusk blue, red eye-shine. Atmosphere: biblical-plague dread — the suburbs, outnumbered. Style: handheld suburban footage, overwhelming sound, the scale all wrong.