Late Nights Turn into Early Mornings
Day Thirteen of Thirty Days of Writing

Shhhhhhhh needles my arms and neck. Numerous lines streak through the circle of lamppost light and vanish into the shadows. The roaches are hiding, afraid to get wet.
Is it raining?
No way is it raining, it wasn’t supposed to rain today
It’s been 108 every day this week!
Umm 108?
And it STILL hasn’t fucking cooled down
Drunk children stumble out of Blackthorn. They keep their feet, hold out their arms, and lop out their tongues to taste the sweet rain drops. Even in this oppressive heat, the kind of musty heat that weighs on your chest, that sticks in your lungs and burns on your temples, the rain will cool — cooooolness will permeate this scorched Missouri. It softens the heat for now.
Cars meander down Wyoming, engines a-hum, rubber pulling all that weight through and through each stop sign. They all pause at the corner, some squeal as they slow and ERkas as they stop, then rev up and off they go.
This life doesn’t really make sense. I got in a fight with a cockroach last night. I was reading, it was evening, the lamp light in my room was dim, and for no real reason I decided to glance up at the wall. Maybe it was that kind of reason when you feel someone is watching you. I often feel that people can feel me watching them. It’s not so intentional but I find people fascinating, and annoying, and mean, and beautiful, and ugly. I guess I find people everything and everywhere, but I don’t always feel like one, and so I catch myself watching them and if they catch me I usually feel guilty and quickly turn away, almost embarrassingly because of how obvious it all might seem. However, it is those times that I don’t look away that something might happen, and it’s often the kind of thing you hope might happen every day of your life, at least once. For some reason I’m afraid to step on toes, and likewise I find it somewhat rude when someone steps on mine.
Anyways, I decided, for no real reason, to look up at the wall, and there, a foot away from my head, a shiny, silver dollar sized cockroach stood horizontally. What an exciting thing to walk on walls, to defy gravity and dimensions. Is it true cockroaches will outlive everything (outlove on accident), that they can survive 30–40 minutes submerged in water — is that all? Have you ever tried to drown a bug? They don’t seem to care too much at the time. They might not even budge from the side of a jar, but eventually they will start floating up to the top, and probably turn upside-down, dead as doorbell fly.
I didn’t consider the cockroache’s life too much, mostly, hell no you are in my house! I grabbed a notebook and SMACK — the wall is all I got. Somehow it eluded me, leapt I think, can they leap? On the carpet it scurried and I hurried after it to finish the job. Too slow. It vanished. Literally disappeared.
What the fuck. It must have went under the bed. Unacceptable. I lifted up the mattress and put it on end against the armoire someone left behind. I lifted each wooden pallet, one at a time, four in all, inspecting their sides. Then the baseboard and the carpet and the walls and the corners and under the numerous piles of clothing which I promise I will pick up tomorrow morning, and the notebooks and the textbooks for class I’ve leafed through and have to read entirely before the month is out because I gave myself a deadline, but all I’ve had time to do is write and work and drink myself silly.
Why am I wasting my time on such a small thing? Why am I so concerned that this little vagabond should crawl on me while I sleep? It’s the principle of the matter. Something like that. But this Houdini is long gone. After a good fifteen minutes of my life, I give up. Drop my bed back, put everything together, occasionally flashing my eyes to the wall — is that it? What’s there? Diving under some debris in totally unheeded suspicion.
When you see insects, especially swarming, doesn’t it make your skin crawl? I was with a girl who was terrified of spiders. Not really so much the spider itself, or the threat of attack, nothing like that. It was the movement, it had too many legs she said, and when it walked, it created this kind of illusion, like a spinning pinwheel, and so it wasn’t just eight legs, it was a web of movement and it gave her the creeps, literal shivers, borderline paralysis. She often saw things hiding in shadows, sauntering across the lawn near the back entrance of the woods. Swarms of birds had a similar effect, numerous dots, too many dots, too rapid movement, all the lines intersecting, all the pinwheel webs spinning.
Everything is in place. Ten minutes go by and I cannot focus the slightest on what I am doing. Hmm. The wall? I turn around to the north facing wall by the window and in the corner, not a foot from my bed, is Mr. Cockroach, still as a bowl of fruit. I sit up nonchalantly so as not to startle him. Should I really do this? I must. Who cares? It’s a bug. Why is this even a hesitant moment? Why is this even something worth telling anyone about. Who cares? It’s a bug. Not in my house! Not a roach.
Notebook. WHACK. He fucking jumped! Are you kidding me? But I got a piece of him, he fell in the crack between the bed and the wall. Sure enough, down on the carpet he was walking in circles, one side of him had stopped working.
I reached for my wooden katana, yes, my practice sword might finally come in handy — HIYA! — into his crunchy thorax until he moves no more. There, I’ve done it. Of course now I can’t go back to the life I had before… I mean I can’t go back to work with his carcass underneath my bed. I must dispose the evidence and rid the house of the foul stench of death. I grab a long spoon from the utensil drawer and try to fish him out. Funny thing is, he’s not dead! He starts to lurch, his antennae spin wildly, half his body is in shambles, and he comes at me like a fiery Rasputin! I can see now why they will survive — they’re fighters.
Why didn’t I just catch and free him? The thought never even occurred. They are too fast. I felt slighted by his presence, I wonder if he felt the same way about me. Another thrust, this one sadder than before, crushing. I tossed his body outside and finished my work. I know I will get mine in the end.
