Roach War Journal – The Battle Rages On

Roach War Journal – 06/22/08 –1245am
Outside the rain falls like the tears of the betrayed, hard and cold. Inside I am washed in heat blankets of fire trying to snap off a bite of sleep before the sunrises. Sleep, like the penis of a 90 –year-old, just doesn’t want to come. Some fights you can’t win without a drink. I am at the sink, skin sizzling enough to leave grill marks, and I wait until the water is nice and cool before filling my mug. It goes down smooth and icy, just how I like my women. I see it on the wall before it sees me and I reach for my gun. I then realize I don’t have a gun, I’ve never had a gun and that I really need a gun. The scuttle monster, the roach, is larger then his brother. I relished in killing him last week and now his enraged sibling has come to extract a little early morning revenge. Revenge, a knife plunging slowly into your back until you can feel every inch of the blade, revenge, icy and angry, the perfect mixture to swallow in this heat. The roach now notices me, his feelers dancing on my wall as though he were caressing a lover. I arm myself with a towel, quickly tossing it towards the creature. The roach doesn’t move. He is a brave beastie. I would say he was as large a hunk of mucus on the sidewalk and just as ugly. I reach for my can of spray and step forward ready to do battle. This is my war. The roach is gone, slipped through a crack in the floor. It was sending a message. “I know you’re there, you dirty biped. You killed my brother and now you’re going to pay.” I pay every day off my life, my adversary, and I ran out of coins a long time ago. I go back to bed. There will be another fight. There’s always another fight.

Roach War Journal – 06/22/08 –545am
Awake again, damn it! If I could grab sleep and ring it’s filthy neck I’d be flexing my fingers. The rain has stopped…for now. My stomach is knotted but I am all out of food and am too exhausted to cook even if I had something to fry. The sun is rising now on another gray day. I decide I’ve lost the battle with slumber. Losing is a part of living and we’re going to lose most of the time. Bank on it, bub. I could use a whiskey and a woman, in that order. A dame with pouty lips, midnight hair and a mouth that does more then talk. Instead I have a keyboard, eyes that feel like they are weighted down with led and that roach out for another round. I am on it with the furry of an enraged cougar…the kind you find in dingy bars on the outskirts of town stuffed into a miniskirt and tube top trying to shake the last drops of youth she drank a long time ago in the arms of a college track star. The roach senses my approach and hurries back into the kitchen. I throw a little light on the situation and waste no time with the spray can. I blast the bug into the wall, foam flying caking the crawling creature and gluing him momentarily to the floor. I get down to his level, the only way to face an enemy is to face him eye to eye. The roach squirms trying to escape but he has about as much hope as a Pauly Shore has at resurrecting his career. They left you when your spotlight faded, Pauly, left you in your prime, left you with only a grasp of the brass ring, only a glimmer of that spotlight and then they were out the door and in a cab already ready in the parking lot. They all leave us, Pauly. You should know this by now. Terrible truths are found in the shadows of loneliness. In the end all you have is a can of bug spray and a dying roach on your kitchen floor. And maybe you start feeling sorry for the creature. Up close now you are a hulking mass, a mountain over your dying opponent. The bugs legs kick but it cannot move. It will die there. The fight was always against you, my soon to be departed enemy. I grab a shoe, raise it above my head and bring it down hard. Again. AGAIN. The roach has been saved the pain of living. Death is the best gift you can give a person in this world. There will be more of your kind and if they cross me they will meet the same fate. I have plenty of gifts to give.

Roach War Journal – 06/22/08 –400pm
Partners and me get along about as well as a rattlesnake does with a boot maker but the Man seems to think teaming me up with others is a good idea. The Man wouldn’t know a good idea if it fell on nutsack. Well, at least the dame they decided to team me with today was a nice dish. She had a body you want to eat tacos off of. You know the type. The curves were chiseled like a fine sculpture in some museum I’ll never see. Yeah, a man could do a lot of things to that kind of body. Soon the children would arrive and we prepared for our lesson in silence. The pretty girls never know what to say. That suits me just fine. I wasn’t in the mood for talking with the night I had. Silence sometimes is the only friend you got. Silence doesn’t last forever, nothing does, and sometimes silence can be murdered by the high octave scream of a woman who has just seen a giant cockroach under the toilet seat. “A roach! A roach in the bathroom,” she yelps like a kicked pup. I reach for my gun only to realize that I still don’t have a gun and that I still need a gun. The air conditioner clicks. The clock ticks away another second towards our eventual ends. A car passes in the street. I stand up, arm myself with a slipper and walk towards the wailing woman ready to due battle yet again. Wars don’t sleep…they merely take momentary hiatuses. There’s always war somewhere, isn’t there? In the deserts? In the streets? In the homes of Joe Working Man? In the schools of Joe’s children? Wars are just as much a part of us as ears and teeth. Some are fought with words, some are fought with tanks, some are fought with bombs. My way is fought with an orange slipper with a cartoon rabbit picture on the toe. I hope your laughing God. This roach is larger then the other two combined, a mammoth and I step back in awe of its girth. This was Frankenroach, made from the parts of other roaches. The slipper was looking like a poor choice of weaponry. When you need a bazooka life gives you with an orange slipper with a cartoon rabbit picture on the toe. Yeah, you heard me, I hope your laughing God. I rise the slipper like a gladiator ready to fell a lion but for me there is no roaring crowd. The heroic feats of the every day average human go unnoticed while intermittent fame is lapped up by the dogs of ignorance. Right now, roach, I am your judge, your jury and your executioner and I sentence you to death by footwear. The slipper whistles as it cuts the air. The roach makes one attempt at escaping but it is trapped in the shadow of descending death and once you purchase that ticket there is no turning back. I bring the slipper down for just another murder to raise my notch in hell another level. Roach juice spatters my face. Disgusting. If I believed in reincarnation I hope that little bastard was Hitler, Stalin or Natalie Wood. Why Wood? I was just in the mood to kill something beautiful for a change. I wipe the sludge off my cheek and look at the woman now heaving breaths of relief. She doesn’t thank me. It figures. I don’t need thanks anyway. Thanks makes you soft. All I need is this slipper, a cup of mud and a dirty magazine. The day ends and I never see the woman again. It’s just as well. The train takes me home to my own roaches, my own war and I prepare for the next battle, the next scar, the next death. I put the kettle on, lay back in the darkness waiting for the whistle, close my eyes and live another day.