Let me preface this by saying that I absolutely hate cockroaches.
Spiders, beetles, centipedes, I can handle those. I have a fascination for bugs and arachnids with their alien-looking bodies. I hate seeing insects in my home as much as the next person, but I don’t have a full-blown phobia.
But roaches? I’d rather get punched in the face than have one of those things touch my skin.
So when I started noticing the roaches in my home, I reacted the same way as anyone else. I swatted and squished each and every one that appeared. Living in dirty and cramped city spaces, it’s no wonder that the bastards would find a way inside no matter what you do. No matter how much you clean, how many holes you cover, there’s going to be some part of the house that’s rotted just enough so that the fuckers can crawl back in.
Sometimes, I wish I could just set everything on fire. So they can’t have anywhere else to hide. The temptation to light the match gets stronger every day.
Yeah, I really fucking hate roaches. You can imagine how I reacted when I found out my new apartment might have had a bad infestation.
My new place was just a 2 room piece of plywood that leaked too often and had a bathroom the size of a public cubicle. Set in the edges of the city that I worked in, near a dark river that smelled like garbage, it wasn’t glamorous by a long shot. But it was cheap, close to the hospital I worked as a nurse, and fit my budget of ‘not starving every day’ which was good enough.
I didn’t really notice something was off until about 6 months in.
It was just a normal night, warm and sticky from the summer humidity. My fan was working on the highest setting and my air conditioning was too busted to work. I was left in nothing by my underwear, taking constant showers, just to fight off the heat.
It was when I rolled over to the cooler side of the bed, that I saw it. Right there, just on my dresser, was a roach, crawling around and coming closer to my shirt. I immediately went for my slipper and threw it. It hit its mark and the roach was thrown down to the ground. I went to grab my slipper again, but just as I was about to throw it, I paused.
There, on the ground, the cockroach stood stock still. But it wasn’t the usual antenna twitching still. It had it’s front half raised in the air, the antenna directed towards me. Like it was facing me head on. It was almost like…
Well, there was no better word for it. It looked like it was staring at me.
I know, it sounds stupid, and trust me I thought the same. When I shook off the weirdness, I killed the thing with the sandal in my hand and cleaned up the remains. I didn’t think much of it except a roach decided to be suicidal.
Until the next night.
I went home exhausted, the final day of what was the worst week at work ever. I hadn’t cleaned the apartment much since I was too busy. I shouldn’t have been surprised by what I saw, but I couldn’t stop the shriek of horror from seeing a bunch of roaches crawling on the messy floor as I stepped inside.
I cursed, and started stomping, grabbing the nearest canister of bug spray I could find. Without remorse, I killed any crawling thing I could find. The splatter of them under my shoes was both revolting and music to my ears. When I felt the panic leave me, I surveyed what I had done/
There was a bunch of wet stains on the floor. The bottom of my shoes crunched with their exoskeletons as I stepped around the dirtied parts and shimmied my feet out of the ruined sneakers. I was about to leave to grab the cleaning supplies when I noticed another much bigger bug crawling to the splatters. I felt a shiver of revulsion as it’s tiny antennae prodded the remains.. I grabbed the broom, lifted it up my head ready to swat it.
But before I could, the creature turned to me and…
It hissed. It was a horriifying sound. Like when you force air to a whole to small and the whistling sound it makes rakes your ears.
The roach, with all of it’s tiny body, reared on it’s hind legs, opened it’s wings, and hissed. I didn’t even know roaches could do that.I swear to God I’m not making this up. It was hissing at me like a goddamn devil, and I could only stare at it.
My trance was broken as I felt something brush my toe, and I immediately jumped away.
I could barely stop my scream as more roaches came from the shadows and gathered around the hissing insect. They all went to the stains, prodded them, then copied the other roach as they all stood up and hissed at me.
That terrible whine multiplied as more of the roaches came together. I stood there, terrified as these monsters screamed at me, wings vibrating and making a disgusting chorus. I only realized I was backing away when I felt the couch hit the middle of my back. That was when I woke up from my stupor to remember the can of insecticide. Without hesitation, I sprayed them all.
That had them all running some flying away from the poisonous gas. When I saw some of them trying to fly towards me, that was when I screamed.
My neighbours would open my apartment to see me violently swatting the air, a few of the roaches escaping through the gap they made in my door.
I called the landowner then, furiously complaining of the severe infestation. I didn’t tell them about the hissing of course. I wasn’t stupid. While my neighbours saw a few of the roaches and believed the idea of an infestation, I didn’t expect they’d believe the weirdo who screamed at 10 pm at night had seen a small herd of hissing roaches. Whatever chance I’d get at cleaning the place would be squashed out the window.
So the landowner called the exterminators, the whole building was cleaned, and I managed to live a few weeks of roach free peace. I thought it was the end. Some horrifying hallucination I made out of exhaustion.
God, I wish I wasn’t so stupid.
It started when I was at work. I was busy checking the records of patients down in the old Records Room. Someone was dumb enough to mix up the dates and names of a few patients, and we needed to find the proof that it wasn’t the hospital. The hospital was as old as fuck, harking back to the 60’s with all the mildew and rot that never could be scraped off. I’ve seen rats crawl in the dark corners of this basement, and I had no plans of staying any longer than I could.
Unfortunately, the records I was looking for was being a real pain in the ass. Even in this modern age, the hospital was still using paper records for all of the patients. Which meant I spent most of my afternoon combing through the hundreds of folders just to find one piece of paper.
After opening most of the nearby boxes, there was just one more cabinet I had to check. Without even thinking about it, I opened the cabinet doors with a bang.
A horde of roaches flew out.
I almost screamed, but kept my mouth shut as waves of roaches sprung out of the dark cabinet. Their wings made a horrid gust around me, a sound of hundreds of tiny wings flapping, their putrid stench clogging my noses and making the temptation to breathe in my mouth strong. But I fought it down because the disgust of having even one of those things get in my mouth was worse. They crawled on my arms, their claws raking through my hair and catching my clothes. I could feel their vibrating bodies as they landed on every bit of exposed skin and it made me want to scream.
I swatted them away fruriously with the folders in my hand, running as far as I could. Most of them flew away, but some of them stuck to me and I had to wriggle violently to get them off. It was a while before the only sound I could here was my own struggling and my labored breathing. I grabbed my spray bottle of rubbing alcohol and covered my entire body in the disinfectant. I couldn’t help but shiver in repulsion at what happened, and I went immediately to the door, record be damned.
But just as I was about to close it, I caught a glimpse of the Records Room.
I wish I didn’t.
Every inch of the floor was covered in roaches. Every space on the shelves and cabinets was crawling with the creatures. I could feel nothing but horror as I watched them stand on their hind legs, flare out their wings, and hiss.
It was the sound of shrieking metal. Kettles bursting with steam. A terrifying buzzing sound accompanied by a deathly high pitched whine that came like a wall of sound. I let go of the door and grabbed my ears, trying to preserve my hearing against the onslaught. I couldn’t grab the door and close it without risking my hearing.
But it got worse.
Because even through all that, my eyes still functioned. And I saw the horde move.
While some of the roaches kept up their shrieking, those closer in the center moved together. Circling around itself again and again. I could only watch as the roaches crawled on top of each other, again and again and again and again.
A ball of the creatures grew in the middle of the swarm. And then more roaches branched out into horrifying tendrils that reached up into the sky, a horrible facsimile of a flower. The branching then reached a certain height, before it stopped. Then, the roaches crawled over each other, thickening the extensions until they looked as thick as my arm.
And then, through the ear-piercing screaming of the creatures, I realized it was an arm. And a leg. And another arm. Another leg. And then a bump that grew and grew before I realized it was a head.
I didn’t even noticing that the droning of the roaches had stopped, too terrified by the humanoid figure made of crawling insects that slowly stood up. Every step it took made a horrifying crunching sound as the weight of its own bodies crushed the roaches underneath. But it did not falter in walking.
And that’s when it only hit me that it was walking towards me.
It raised its arm, roaches visibly crawling over its form, pointing at the door. At me.
The center of the head opened into a gap. And out came something I wished I never heard.
A voice, made by a thousand shrieks and buzzing wings, whined in a horrifying echo of a human voice.
“You”
Me.
It wanted me.
That was when I screamed. I closed the door, just in time as the figure exploded into a swarm once more. I made sure the door was locked before I ran, hearing as hundreds of thousands of roaches slammed against the feeble wooden door, trying to break it down.
I didn’t look back, even as I heard that ghastly human voice drone out “You!”
I moved after that. Quit my job that I just started, moved somewhere North where the cold was too much for the roaches. Ever since that day, I kept my apartment fully stocked with insecticides, traps, even fucking fly swatters.
You would think that all of it was just a dream or a fucked up acid trip that happened years ago. I tried to think that way too. Kept me sane for most of my life so far.
But that was until today.
Until I was just browsing online and accidentally came across the news article celebrating the anniversary of a fire. Two fires actually. The news said that a man suffered a psychotic episode, who started screaming and crying about something after him. They said he took some gasoline and some matches, and didn’t hesitate in torching the places down.
“They’ll never get me now,” was what the news quoted him saying.
One was in a hospital. The other was in an apartment building. Two fires that happened simultaneously, on the same day.
Take a guess which hospital and apartment it was?
I don’t know what happened. I don’t know why it happened. All I know is that they’re real.
And as I’m typing this, I can see one of the fuckers right now. The tiny bastard looking at me.
There’s a cannister of insecticide under my desk and a lighter in my pocket.
If they were willing to follow me all this way to the cold, they had another thing coming.