Fiction

Cars creep through the drive-thru, squirrels scramble up the oak trees, horns honk, and everything reeks of grease and low-grade beef. On one side of the street, there’s a Taco Bell, and on the other, a Checker’s. In between the two, there’s a row of live oak trees leading down to a squat, one-storey home with two of the trees on either side of it. Leaping between these trees like the jet from a water hose is a gray squirrel. As it lands on a branch, a man enters the home through the front door. The door slams shut and the squirrel bolts up the trunk. Both man and rodent disappear from view. Something appears briefly in the window, a face, and then the blinds cover it up too.

In the front yard of the house where the man entered are some azalea bushes with pink flowers. Behind these, a swathe of ferns and before those, golden leaves, most of them shaped like spearheads. Off to one side is a tall, thick, sweet-gum tree and opposite that, several thin saplings. A car, a recent model, but dusty and dirty with leaves caught in the windshield wipers, is parked in the black soil driveway, same as it’s been every day for the last two months. There are plastic bags and fast food sacks scattered all around it. They’ve been tossed there by homeless folks as they go on their way to wherever it is that homeless folks go.

Behind the house there is almost nothing, just a flat pitted concrete patio and one step off that, a sandy, black, dirt yard sprinkled with even more golden spearheads. Boxing the yard in is a wire fence, ramshackle construction, posted poorly. And tucked into the corner, a small patch of ferns ringing a laurel oak tree. The tree is tall and strong and it breaks up the sunlight into broken shards.

The man stands at its base and looks up. He’s heard that these laurels can live up to seventy-five years, a tiny bit longer than your average American male. He watches a lizard scamper into the forest of ferns at the base and wonders how long lizards live. He figures they live about as long as they’re allowed to before something else eats them. He thinks maybe that’s the way it’s meant to be for all creatures.

* * * * *

He pushed the door shut and turned the deadbolt behind him. Made his way across the black and white vinyl, diamonds and squares, and long-stepped over the sagging spot next to the water heater. The flooring was torn up from his roommate’s young pet, a hound-dog puppy. You had to avoid the spot there or it would bend and the crack would widen, and whatever was beneath the house would see in.

The man leaving the kitchen had taken the liberty of duct-taping the sag-spot and every other entry point in the home. A part of him considered that after doing so, whatever was already in would stay put. Another part of him accepted such things as inevitable.

He entered the living room and stopped immediately. There was one of them on the floor. On its back.

Two thoughts entered his head at that moment:

He’s defenseless.

and

It’s a trap.

But the ground beneath the man’s feet was solid. The floorboards were strong and if he didn’t get to the bug quickly, it would right itself and escape under the couch and then he would never get to it. Down the line, the results of such a miscalculation could be devastating.

In the time it took the man to decide what to do, the roach used its wings to flip itself over and set its legs down. The antennae and eyes readjusted to right-side reality and now it was scanning the surface for the nearest escape route. It took a step—

But the giant squashed it dead. Its skeletal shield splintered and its organs ruptured and a fleeting, dim understanding settled in which was then mercifully extinguished. It knew what had happened. But it never figured out why.

The man unlaced and removed his shoe. His balance off, he limped to the bathroom, flipped on the light and looked around, and then pulled the roach scout off and examined it.

Like gooey candy.

He dropped it in the toilet and flushed.

Back in the kitchen, he picked up the spray bottle of bleach and he returned to the scene of the kill. He wiped up the remainder of the bug with toilet paper and then he sprayed down the smudge with bleach before wiping the grease spot clean. He dropped the contaminated cloth into the toilet bowl and he performed what was perhaps the most important part: he flushed it all away. The remains, he had decided, could not be placed in the trash. Even expired food couldn’t be placed in the trash. The house had to remain completely biostatic. Otherwise the roach numbers would swell beyond all measurable means. They would engulf him. Choke him. They would spill down his throat and drown him in his sleep.

He thought, I will not let that happen.

But it was a statement of faith. And he feared that the sentiment behind it wasn’t strong enough.

* * * * *

He still watched television most of the time, taking his place on the couch after the cursory check under the cushions. But the TV wasn’t on and he found himself staring pointlessly at the blank screen. It didn’t work, of course. Nothing in the house did. Everything used to run. There had been power at one point. Power for lights and power for sound and power for computer access so that he could look up better ways to kill the bugs. But one day the roommate and his hound-dog puppy left and then the man had to quit his job to sit at home and keep watch full-time. It had been a part-time task before, divvied up quite fairly between the two, and the man had worked the night shift and the roommate had worked the day shift, and everyone did their part. But then the hound-dog and its spineless master left, scared off by the escalating conflict with the roaches. The coward claimed that he would rather live with roaches than with somebody as crazy as he, and the man told the coward that he was a coward and he would rather fight and die alone than share his home with a traitor to the human race. The coward and his chickenshit dog took their things and forgot the TV and they were too afraid to return and take it with them. And now it was his, but it didn’t matter anymore, because it didn’t work.

After the coward left, the man had to quit his job to keep watch on both ends of the clock. He took naps and patrolled and in between he ordered pizza and Chinese so that he wouldn’t need to leave for longer periods and thus tempt them to strike. But the ordering-in got expensive and soon he ran through his funds and could no longer pay the bills. The people at Regional Utilities shut off his lights. And now it was dark and hot all day and every day. And the roach colony prospered.

The enemy was used to night. They did well in low-light, high-heat surroundings. So the balance of power tipped dangerously in their favor when the utilities were crippled.

What the imbeciles at Regional Utilities did not recognize, what they refused to acknowledge no matter how many letters the man wrote to them, was that these were the kinds of conditions in which a house could be overtaken. When he fell asleep their operatives would be in position to take him out. And once he was removed from the picture, the enemy would be able to spread throughout the rest of the neighborhood, invading residences and replenishing supplies at will. Supposing that the neighbors put up a fight, the cockroach army might be controlled. But if the people inside neglected their duty, or if the structure had been evacuated by its guardians, then the entry team would breed and proliferate, no natural checks on them. They would multiply, and given enough time, they would develop a more efficient foraging strategy. Enhanced nutrition and health would lead to greater numbers and greater numbers would force the development of ever more efficient foraging protocols. The obvious byproduct would be a jump in reconnaissance and scouting activity and with that would come the need to branch out again. Soon, whole communities of bugs would be living side by side, interconnecting, networking, plotting. What started out as a harmless frontier post, weak and needing to scavenge for scraps, is suddenly an underground insect megalopolis. The human overlords start to look like nothing so much as walking meals. Just a bunch of protein and fat attached to big clumsy legs. A little push here, a coordinated trip there, a sharp steak-knife upended in the couch cushions... it was pretty obvious where all this was going.

The man shook his head for the hundredth time. It was a real shame that only he could see the conspiracy. If he was forced out of the house now, it might mean the end of humanity. Planet Earth would become Planet Roach. Only the Himalayas and the Arctic would be safe then. And not a single government official had so much as mentioned the roach threat. It was almost too perfect. He wondered whose side the utilities people were really on.

Another big one raced through the hole in the wall. It halted and wagged an antenna, cocky and careless. It thought it had found a way in, but the hole wasn’t a natural one. It had been created for a purpose. And the cockroach scum would soon discover what that purpose was.

It turned to face him, wagging the antenna once again. A repetition of the signal. It was either signing to the others to come in... or it was taunting him. These roaches were getting smug and the man didn’t like it. He pushed himself off the couch and stumbled towards it. Oddly enough, it ran at him too, only it zigzagged around his socks at the last second, and the man slid and had to struggle to stop. The bug, meanwhile, bolted for the cavernous space beneath the couch.

On a scaled-up level, the couch cavern would be wider than any underpass and many times as deep. The giant could move it, but he was slow on a turn and when the whole sky was flipped up and away, the roach was already racing off again in the opposite direction. Now it was pumping along between these two giant pillars. One of them swept low over its head and it knew that it had been spotted.

Instinct drove it to seek out a tight and cramped space, a place where a giant monster such as this would find it hard to fit. The leviathan was on its ass, kicking up gusts of wind in its hurry. The whole world shook where it treaded, death dropping on every side, but somehow the pillars missed their mark. The quaking became strong enough though that the bug couldn’t move. It tried to run but the boards tossed it up, bounced it down and up again, and twice it fell on its side. Once it took a hard hit on its back, and following that, another quake flipped it again to its feet. Then the shaking stopped. The bug lay still, flattened against the wall, still alive, still wanting like hell to run, but knowing that it wouldn’t be the right move just yet.

The giant seemed to have left. The roach turned and looked about. It was behind a bramble of wires, a nest of insulated cables, far beneath the big blob up top that sometimes boomed but lately hadn’t. Nothing moved in the room. The giant was apparently gone. The roach climbed the bramble and dropped over on the other side. It batted the wood floor in front and sensed some measure of safety. It took two more steps and then its guts shot out its back. White fat was pushed through the broken armor and its legs snapped underneath while the weight pressed down on the body. The antennae were still in operation, though they jerked like fishing poles, and the creature’s dispersed nervous system told it that something had gone painfully wrong. It lay there for what seemed like a long time and then it was scooped up and lifted high into the heavens. The whole world shook beneath it and the soft folds of tissue that contained its body began to separate, and with this separation, sticky blood and smashed body-bits pulled apart too.

It fell someplace where cold water covered most of it up. It was on its back, paralyzed and looking up at the sky when a dim form moved in above it. A hot torrent of something, definitely not water, pounded it for a while and then there was a swelling, rumbling vibration that came from everywhere and became everything. The water dragged it quickly round and down and then there was wetness and darkness from one side and the next. There was no more air and there was no more light. And then there was simply nothing at all.

* * * * *

It had been four days since he had last slept. Four days and four nights. Or four days and three nights. He couldn’t remember how days worked anymore.

He sat at the kitchen table and ran his hand through his hair. He thought it through and finally decided that he didn’t remember about nights and days and he didn’t care. All he knew was that he hadn’t slept or if he had, he hadn’t slept well.

Days and nights without sleep or rest and he hadn’t been outside to see the sun. He wasn’t even sure what time it was now. For all he knew, time had stopped and the sun with it. The world outside might be gone and only he and the house remained, floating in space, the bugs and the man trapped inside, fighting and killing each other from here until the end.

How long had this gone on? When did it start? Was this what forever was?

He drank another Mountain Dew and he crushed up another Adderall and snorted it through a flimsy dollar straw. It was his last straw and it might have been his last dollar. He hadn’t been to the bank in forever and he didn’t know how many straws were left in his checking account. God only knew how many he had left in savings.

The straw was flimsy and he had a hard time getting it to work: no wonder the dollar was devalued. And those bastards from Regional Utilities still hadn’t given him back his power. He needed his power to take care of the bugs. But they didn’t care. Nobody cared. Nobody except for him, that is.

Another one darted past and under the fridge. He slammed his fist on the table and demanded, “Come back here!” But it didn’t come back. Predictably, it was a coward. They were all cowards. He was the only brave one left. It was obvious. He should have foreseen all of this.

He stared at the bare white walls of the kitchen, and as he stared, he suddenly saw three of them appear. They were climbing and two of them forked off at a T and the third kept going. It reached the top of the wall and then it started coming backwards along the ceiling. His eyes followed it until they rolled back in his head and finally he had to look up to see the thing. It stopped directly overhead.

It held there for a second and in that second he realized what it was planning. It was going to fall on top of him. It was going to attack.

Well, at least there won’t be any more bullshitting around.

It dropped in his hair. He screamed and he started ripping it out in chunks and slapping at his raw scalp. When he thought he had killed it, he picked through the hair that remained, combing for the roach’s corpse. His hands were bloody but there was no body. What had been fear became rage and he stomped through the kitchen, hoping he’d squash it dead.

He never came up with a body. It was like it had vanished. It was like it had never been. But what had been couldn’t not have been. No, this was all wrong. They were playing him, the damn roaches were playing games with him.

He looked up and saw the two other brother bugs hanging on the wall, both of them just hanging there, like they hadn’t the slightest idea what was happening. Like they were just minding their own business, oblivious and unconcerned to his human presence.

Sure. It takes a smart creature to act dumb like that. First rule of roach war — appearances are always deceiving.

He took a step and heard something crunch. He bit into his lip and tasted blood and then he laughed, the realization having sunk in. He had found the kamikaze roach and now it was finished. Their great leader was dead. Soon they would negotiate a surrender.

But first to take care of these two.

He took another step and heard the crunch again. He didn’t remember killing two of them. Had it only been one after all? Perhaps the other was riding piggy-back.

He had to know, so he looked down. There were no roaches where he stood. There was no stain where he’d heard the crunch before that. His toes and the underside of his foot were clean as a whistle. He must have imagined it.

Except when he felt his head, the scalp was still there and the hair was still missing. It was raw and tender. It was bloody. He didn’t know what that meant. Well, he thought he did. But what he thought he let go.

He sat down on the kitchen floor and hugged his knees to his chest. He began to cry and then abruptly quit.

Man up.

Soon he was looking down into the space between his knees and he was no longer worrying about what was outside that space. He didn’t need to worry about it. He didn’t want to worry. He just looked down at the floor between his knees and he focused on the black and white vinyl, the diamonds and the squares. And he watched as the diamonds and squares lifted up from the floor and scattered.

There were no more diamonds. There were no more squares. Just the blank white floor between his knees. And all those things outside the knees that he couldn’t see right now, they were there too. He inferred it. They had him surrounded. The roaches had him pinned down. They were brilliant tacticians!

He looked up and saw that they were massed in ranks. Not like human ranks, though. Human ranks are straight lines, rows deep. This bug army, it was more like concentric circles. They had left a perfect circle of white floor just around him, so that he seemed to be in the center of a massive bull’s-eye. There was a little bit of blue on their backs from where the sun came through the blinds, but otherwise it was just them black and him white. Them circling and him circled. Centered. Bull’s-eye.

“Pull the trigger, you six-legged bastards.”

At that moment, the walls and the rooms went off to go do their own thing. The kitchen table and the fridge also vanished. The blinds and then the sun, they just blinked off and burned out. He had probably imagined them all in the first place anyway.

Just more goddamn bug mind tricks.

It occurred to him that the roaches probably drugged his drink or switched his Adderall with something more sinister. That’s what he would have done in their shoes.

They have played you like a fiddle, man. They have duped you again. Bugs one, man zero. No matter how many of you there are, there are always more of them, you knew that. You were outnumbered and outscored. Massively so. Best just give yourself up now. Longer you hold out the less likely they’ll be to grant you immunity for war crimes. God knows you’re guilty.

A thousand pairs of antennae were sweeping his feet, his legs, and his bare lower back. One of the roaches actually cocked its head to the side, like it was trying to study him. If it was reading his mind, he might be able talk to it.

“Surrender?” he asked. “Friend?”

But they just stared. One of them looked as if it had shrugged. They were smart, sure, but not that smart. They could communicate with each other, but not with other species. Very likely, they were illiterate in their very own language. He was dealing with the smuggest of philistines, then. There was nothing to be shared in the way of words.

The man stretched his legs gingerly into the crowd and the bugs stepped aside. A few of them climbed on his shins and started walking his legs, up toward the body and head. Stretched out flat on the ground, the legs became like trees and the trees became logs. And logs, he knew, didn’t do bugs much harm.

They kept coming, some scaling his arms and some his sides and back. And one of them hissed a little. A brother bug joined in and now they all hissed. It could even have been harmonious had the intent been benign. But it was not.

The man lay down and let the bugs move about where they wished. And when at last he opened his mouth to scream, he found that he couldn’t scream at all because his mouth was already full. They were on him and in him and crawling under his skin. They lifted him up and carried him aloft in the darkness. The last rational thought he could come up with was that they were his servants and that he was their king. And sometimes the servants eat the king. He was the host. They were the parishioners. Simple and clear. He accepted it.

Gradually he felt himself carried off to different places: a hand here, a foot there, his abdomen somewhere over in that general direction. There was no more air and there was no more light. A sucking sound followed him out and he felt himself going down and around. And now he wasn’t happy or sad or dead or alive. He wasn’t anything. He simply wasn’t at all.

David Alexander Mulis currently lives somewhere in Florida, working in lawncare maintenance for a "genuine Florida cracker" (raging racist and anti-Semite). David has yet to reveal his own Semitic background to the man or the fact that he is in fact black, which he isn't. Either way, his "smart mouth" will soon see him dead. You can read more about the late David here: http://furstdraft.blogspot.com.