Todd Terwilliger

Sunday night, at home, I was listening to ESPN’s wrap-up of the Lakers-Celtics NBA Finals game and writing up a scintillating entry on my adventure at the Mars Bar. I had left one of my windows slightly open for a little extra air-flow to combat the hot night. Through this gap, a brown bullet shot into the living-room. Once inside, unfurling waxy wings, it turned once, twice, and finally landed on a pipe that runs from the floor to the ceiling of the room. It was the biggest cockroach I had seen since I moved back from Texas. It was monstrous.

Of course, with primal cunning, it kept the pipe between us. It scuttled in and down the pipe. I could hear its chitinous clawed feet clicking on the metal. I grabbed a cardboard poster tube (the only weapon I had) and took position, ready to knock it into next week. I waited for it like A-rod sitting on a 3-0 pitch.

The difference between a giant, feral, flying roach and a fastball became immediately obvious when the thing came at me like the devil’s own knuckleball or, I should say, flew around me, as I impotently swung my cardboard bat, and dove straight into my bedroom. My god, I thought. My. God.

I gave chase and, after chasing it around the base of my bed once, twice, it disappeared into the wall. Into a section of exposed brick to be exact. I didn’t see exactly where it went. As I stood there, speechless, it looked as if it had vanished. It had vanished but I knew, as darkness enfolded my soul, that it wasn’t gone. That’s it. No way I’m sleeping tonight.

I began looking for anything I might spray, spray over everything, including myself, to ward off this horrible creature. Would it fear canola? What about Endust? Lysol? My preparedness for this contingency was severely lacking. I felt like FEMA.

Being a man of science, I decided to investigate the scene of the disappearance. I examined the brick face and found a nook. It was just deep enough, just dark enough. At that moment, was it fate that intervened? I watched two eye-stalks emerge from the cranny followed slowly, oh so slowly, by the vast trunk of the insect. I was patient. I waited, waited perfectly still. I waited until the roach had emerged almost fully before, with one hiking boot, I rained down rubber-booted death.

It was, I must say, a bold gamble. One wrong move and it again could have taken flight or fled back into the darkness. It was a close thing. A close thing indeed. But I triumphed and, having triumphed, wept, for I had no more bugs to conquer. And I could go to sleep. Oh, sweet, sweet sleep.