Life being what it was, a heaping pile of steaming excrement, tonight was the night she was to be rudely assaulted.
In her own house.
Half lying on the cool cream tile floor, she swiped her short hair behind her ear while she cataloged her ample DVD collection.
Rearranging by seasons, she started tapping the smooth cases back into place, one by one. She thought about color coding them and creating a rainbow-like the book tok-ers were want to do instead of stuck with the genre. Each case slid smoothly into place until one didn’t, finding it odd when some didn't line up.
Curious, she thought.
Going back, she lifted them one at a time and slid them back. Then, all of a sudden, it happened.
The cockroach came from behind the cases to its teeth. Do roaches have teeth? You would think they did when it landed on her arm, and In one failed swoop, she bounded to her feet and ran.
She ran straight for the kitchen in a panic. She snatched up her broom and wielded its pink sweeping glory like a sword, and she was a knight of Camelot on the heels of her echoed yelp of terror.
The roach fell to the floor, and she was on it, smacking it until it grasped the bristles and hung on as if life depended on it.
Which it did.
With a fierce, sharp squeal, she hit and hit until it landed on its back, flailing about in sheer panic at the utter chaos the gouging found itself in. Her roommate wasn’t home to save its life; oh no, it would be flushed tonight. Because if it weren’t, it would somehow find its way to hover over her bed and drop from the ceiling like a skilled acrobatic genius and send her straight to the afterlife mid-dream.
Panting, she stared at the wiggling body before her. Broom held high, bare feet planted wide, ready to fight to the death if she needed to. She looked fierce, like Joan of Arc defending her perch, hair tossed, clothes askew from the untimely skirmish.
All the while, as the chaos ensues, the feared huntress of fair tortoise colorings lay two feet away on her throne of dirty laundry, wondering what the hell was going on and why the human was messing up her slumber over a tinsy, tiny palmetto bug. Mid lick, their eyes clicked, and they stared a moment longer before both cat and human returned to their doings. The cat returned to its slumber while the human returned to sweeping up the dust and the newly acquired bug carcass.
Only to be spurred back into a frenzy of hallow whomps and plastic slapping against cheap rental house tile as the bug righted itself and ran. To her utter horror and great disbelief, it was still alive! The sucker was still at it.
"Aack." She sneered, broom smacking down on the poor soul that skittered across her path.
Hunting down a high-heeled shoe came next when the soft bristles harmed only her ego more than the pest. She came around with a wedge-heeled shoe and gave it one last hit, and splat it went! With triumph, she looked at the shoe, a twitch of a leg, and a turning of stomach. She grimaced and tossed it back to the shoe pile inwardly vowing to either clean the shoe or burn it and its mate.
After a brief pause to breathe a sigh of relief and congratulate herself for a job well done, she moved back to the kitchen to right what she had wronged and armed herself with Lysol. Cleaning up the evidence and sanitizing the spot, it was right then, right there, that she knew. As instinct would have it, the ping of knowledge weighed heavy on her now sore shoulders as she wiped, gagged, and tossed away.
That she had been watching way too many TV shows, listening to podcasts, and reading books about murder.
She needed to chill.
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