Of crickets and Purgatory

…I don’t know if the crickets thunder. I never kill crickets. Felipa says that the crickets are always making noise, without stopping or breathing, so that no one hears the cries of the souls suffering in Purgatory. The day that the crickets stop, the world will fill up with the cries of the holy souls and all of us will run away from the fright…

-Juan Rulfo, El llano en llamas