La cucaracha

They are all over my place. Lurking in the dark crevices of my dwelling, these insects, I will not bother understanding, crawl and eke on my leftovers.

I was in the middle of my routine dishwashing I do during weekends when something took hold of my attention. I’ve accumulated enough soiled dishes to fill my kitchen sink to the brim. Given the risk of doing the chore, I should have equipped myself with all protective gears invented by man. Gas mask for the deadly spores released by unknown fungi that have colonized my plates, goggles for the corrosive cleaning agents I use to remove the scab and hardened food residue, rubber gloves to protect my hands from both organic and chemical substances, not to mention wriggling larvae that are about to metamorphose into their pupal stage. These are the ingredients gathered in the soup-like lethal concoction resulting from my week-long procrastination.

A solitary cockroach was holding on to his precious life while I incessantly bombarded him with a strong gush of water directed from the faucet using my hand. I intended to drown him, or if not murder him by dismembering his frail body using the pressure from the water jet I created. Because of the slippery stainless steel sink, the creature could not climb up and escape from the torture I was inflicting him. Seeing him fight back the obstacles I created was satisfying and cathartic. It gave me the chance to play God at least for that moment.

I felt like a shinigami (death god) writing on my book the names of people I’d like to stamp out from this world. This time, it’s him that I was about to write off.

But cockroaches wouldn’t survive for five hundred million years, outliving even the mighty dinosaurs, only to give in to the ‘discomfort’ caused by a modern human being whose species started walking on the face of the Earth less than a million years ago. If there’s somebody who has the right to be cocky, it is the cockroaches. And this cockroach in particular proved to be a daunting pest to obliterate.

I replaced the stopper on to the drain to keep the water from flowing out, in this way I could just wait for the roach to run out of oxygen, drown, and die. I went on with my writing while waiting, but after thirty minutes, the insect’s will to live did not seem to have wavered. In fact, it appeared that the method I devised to inflict death strengthened his resolve to survive.

I decided to proceed with my Plan B. I took a plastic bottle of my ever-reliable hydrochloric acid I affectionately call Murray and emptied half of its content on to the pool of water. The vapor caused me to wince and run to my open window that faces EDSA. It did not matter a bit as both are as deadly. I only hoped the cockroach would resign his fate in my hand this time.

He stopped moving for a minute or two. I thought he finally capitulated. I was about to remove the stopper from the drain when the cockroach began squirming and running back and forth like mad. I have had enough. I took a metal skewer and aimed at the insect’s bulging abdomen. I was desperate. I did a precise calculation of my target. I needed to do a drastic action.

I knew I stabbed him, but everything went blackout.

He cleverly and agilely dodged my skewer, broke out, used my left arm as a ladder and narrowly escaped death.

I died right there and then.

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