misty_fry
08-02-2016, 04:24 AM
Sally the cockroach climbs up the stuccoed wall of my 19th-century building in this desert town every night. Inside the house, I stare at her from a safe distance behind the screen covering my decrepit window. Every night, around 9 p.m. when the choking sun finally goes down, she crawls out from whatever cold and dark hiding spot she’s found in the pipes downstairs and marches her sticky little feet up the side of the courtyard wall to see if her baby is still there.
I don’t have the heart to tell her. I mean even if I could, how would I? She’s a ****ing cockroach. But her baby died on my windowsill about two weeks ago. I knew there would be casualties when I had called the exterminator, but to see the baby fall flat on its back right under my nose, right on my windowsill, well that’s pretty depressing. Sometimes I open the window and stare at it kind of masochistically. Now that its dead it can’t do anything to me. I watch it during the day as the scalding sun shrivels up its antennas and its little shell-covered body.
As the days pass, it dries up more and more, shrivelling up to be nothing but a shadow of the baby cockroach it used to be. And Sally treks up to my window every single night waiting to see if maybe her baby was just taking a nap in the sun. Like maybe it was a different little roach- one that wasn’t afraid of daylight like the others, a braver roach with a bright roach future. Maybe it would have grown to become leader of the sewage system or something. But I killed the ****er. And now I don’t have the balls or the wherewithal to tell Sally that her baby’s dead and she’s next.
I don’t have the heart to tell her. I mean even if I could, how would I? She’s a ****ing cockroach. But her baby died on my windowsill about two weeks ago. I knew there would be casualties when I had called the exterminator, but to see the baby fall flat on its back right under my nose, right on my windowsill, well that’s pretty depressing. Sometimes I open the window and stare at it kind of masochistically. Now that its dead it can’t do anything to me. I watch it during the day as the scalding sun shrivels up its antennas and its little shell-covered body.
As the days pass, it dries up more and more, shrivelling up to be nothing but a shadow of the baby cockroach it used to be. And Sally treks up to my window every single night waiting to see if maybe her baby was just taking a nap in the sun. Like maybe it was a different little roach- one that wasn’t afraid of daylight like the others, a braver roach with a bright roach future. Maybe it would have grown to become leader of the sewage system or something. But I killed the ****er. And now I don’t have the balls or the wherewithal to tell Sally that her baby’s dead and she’s next.