TheBanyanTree: Death of a Roach

[Maria Gibson]

"It's just you an' me, asshole."

I don't like roaches and this one got in my way. When a girl is on a 
journey to herself, she doesn't need the likes of filthy, disgusting 
insects interrupting her travel.  I saw that sucker for the second time 
as I was making another cup of coffee.  As it was, his first appearance 
caused me to put my coffee supplies in the fridge and vow to not use 
anything in the small kitchenette without washing it to death first.  
The dive I was staying in was cheap, particularly for a beach 
community.  It was cheap and apparently not without roommates of the six 
legged variety.  The furniture was ratty, the appliances rusty and the 
harsh overhead light glaring too brightly when I arrived at 2:30 in the 
morning had made it look all the worse.  I needed to be here.

I was absently-mindedly minding my own coffee business as ibuprofen 
eased a beer headache.  I put the single cone on my cup, folded the 
filter edges and when it was seated perfectly in the cone, put in four 
heaping scoops of ground coffee.  The first cup, while good and hot, had 
been just a tad weak.  I hate weak coffee so this cup was going to make 
up for it.  From the left peripheral came the roach approach.  The first 
time I'd seen him, I was startled and may have uttered an understated 
girly shriek.  No one made fun of me, though, because I was alone.  It 
had taken me three hours to drive here by myself.  It had taken me out 
of my realm and out of my everyday life.  It had taken no small amount 
of courage to get into my car at 10:00pm knowing I'd be the furthest 
from home I'd ever been alone and without anyone to meet upon arrival.  
I needed to do that.  I needed to get behind the wheel and go despite my 
sudden reservations as I left.  I was thinking, "What am I doing and why 
do I have to do it??"  The only thing I really knew for sure was that if 
I didn't, a lot of ground I had gained lately on a personal level would 
have been lost.  Ground gained at a sacrifice should not be easily given 
up, so regardless of a lonely feeling I got in the car and arrived in 
time to hear my band play before finding a desk clerk awake enough to 
rent me a room.

The first showing of my uninvited roommate made me look even closer at 
my weekend digs.  The place was not only rundown but none too clean, 
either.  Since I hadn't been in the bathroom nude yet, I doubted 
ownership of the pubic hairs on the floor.  The place was a general fest 
of faint filth.  Not enough to alarm right away but it didn't take too 
long to spot upon inspection.  I was really ok with that, though.  If 
you are on a quest for self and digging deep, you're probably getting 
down and dirty.  I was, anyway.  I was digging into frightening aspects 
of choices I'd have to make and wondering just how many people I'd have 
to hurt, including myself, to achieve some nameless passion.  This was 
work that couldn't have been done honestly in pristine surroundings 
which made this room perfect.  I am not pristine.  I have lost my sheen 
and upon close inspection am none too clean, either.  I can't decide if 
this is the end of the beginning or the beginning of the end.  Either 
way, it's movement in motion.

That little son-of-a-bitch  came at me without regard of my emotional 
state.  Scurrying, scuttling and sneaking about in the full light of 
day.  Wasn't he supposed to be hiding right about then...?  Waiting for 
nightfall and darkness to pounce so that when the light was suddenly and 
harshly presented from overhead he could scamper away on six germ-ridden 
feet?  This day was the wrong one for him to move from the norm and 
break into new daylit territory.  On this day, he should have stayed 
behind the coffee pot warming his insect hide.  Unfortunately, he 
decided to venture forth.  I poised myself over him with a kitchen towel 
and came down hard on his fragile exoskeleton.  His back legs not 
working, he tried to stagger away with a broken body and confused roach 
thoughts.  He never saw me coming and by the time he realized he should 
have been running for his life, it was too late.  The second smack of 
the towel was the fatal blow.  He couldn't have known that to overcome a 
roach on my own, in a dirty room occupied by one, I was empowered.  I 
had used the towel against the odds of self-imposed angst and 
loneliness.  My arm raised above my head, I struck at ambivalence and 
indecisiveness.  He may not have lived and died for much other gain, but 
I got something out of it.

I sat on my hotel bed with my coffee which was hot and mercifully 
strong.  Bright sunlight streamed through the dirty windows as I 
rummaged through my purse for anything on which to write; any viable 
surface onto which I could scratch out the event of the pest.  I wrote 
and sipped my brew as the warmth, if any warmth exists in a roach, 
dissipated from his dead body which had landed in the sink.  I left him 
there as a warning to any other unwanted roommates.  I hoped they'd get 
the message because a dead comrade has a lot of story to tell even 
without a note pinned to his chest.  It's a simple message, really, that 
even an ignorant insect should be able to appreciate.

Don't fuck with a girl on a mission to herself.

Maria