The Dying Cockroach

Oh, the way they shimmer in the dark. What kind of nocturnal creature shimmers in the dark? Is that not a call to predators? They shimmer to annoy me.

Roaches.

Granted, most people feel a certain abhorrence for the vile insects, but I am extremely disgusted by them. I inherited this feeling from my lovely grandmother.

The other day there was a roach creeping along my couch cushion, as though it were his, as if the vagrant parasite had paid for it with his own money. My plan was to utterly annihilate it, but the thing sped at staggering speeds beneath the sheltering sofa. And 'twas nowhere to be found.

My sleep that night was disturbing. I kept feeling its unusually large abdomen dragging across my hairy legs. It tickled with subtly alarming precision. Of course, this was only a product of my crazed imagination, but inside the living night it felt all too real. I shudder to think of it.

It.

I saw It,

Die.

It lay outside my door the next morning, twitching in the last throes of poison-induced death. I stood there, late for work, unshaven and unwashed, watching the front two legs drag the massive body along the grayish pavement. The back four legs were most certainly paralyzed. I knew someday I'd be made to crawl like that, but I felt no sympathy in my breast. That day was a mere speck in the uncertain future. The front of my sneaker rose to mash the evil thing while my heel remained grounded. My foot was poised for death: a power untold.

I left it there, delightfully squirming. Its pain was my pleasure. I felt like a Nazi running a POW camp. Mercy was mine to give, yet I had withheld it, for death is mercy. I had dangled it like a lollipop in front of a sugar-deprived child, and I felt no remorse. I felt scorn, mere scorn. I thought of it attempting to live as I was worked my shift.

The will to live is looked down upon by us who will other ways. We despise it; we sense its common weakness. We live and we give...nothing more.

When I got back from work the roach was gone--or so I thought. Upon closer examination of the scaly pavement directly outside my door, I discovered body parts. One black, curved leg. One antennae. Yellow paste that could only be roach viscera. Something had gotten that poisoned cockroach and, ironically, it wasn't me.

The evening sun cast twilight glows across the ground. Whirling shadows moved swiftly. I glanced upward and saw birds. Birds with sharp piercing beaks born aloft on countless air currents. Currents which rose and fell, shifting with natural unpredictability. So, this was the roach's death. Digesting inside a higher animal. A victim of the boring foodchain. Nothing interesting. Just an immutable commonplace.

I heaved a sigh inside and took a shot.