It was the size of my big toe.
I’ve lived in my apartment for the last 5 years without a single sighting. Not once has my neat and clean home been soiled by their ugly, dirty, creepy-crawly presence. I am fanatical in my cleanliness and spare no expense in making my whole apartment proof against their intrusion.
And yet, there it was.
It was sitting there, in plain view, waiting patiently to be noticed. It was not trying to hide, it did not run away when I approached and it certainly didn’t appear to be frightened. In fact, if I were to believe my eyes, it was leaning up against the wall, smoking a cigarette and reading a teeny-tiny magazine.
PlayBug Magazine, to be exact.
Normally, when one walks into a dark room and turns on a very bright light, all the little nasties will run for the dark corners of the room like a wild herd of llamas for a watering hole in the desert. But not this bugger. It simply lowered the magazine, took a puff of its cigarette and gave me the finger.
I was shocked. Shocked!
“Hey! Aren’t you supposed to be scared?”
“Screw you.”
“What?”
“I said, ‘screw you’, Jackoff. You got a hearing problem?”
“I don’t believe this. A talking bug.”
“Believe it, human. Now shut your trap and listen up, cause I only want to say this once. I’m hungry. I’ve been running around this freaking apartment for the last 4 hours and haven’t found a damn thing to eat. I figure there’s got to be food around here somewhere and it’s up to you to give it to me. Or else.”
The last was said in the classic gangster movie, veiled threat voice.
“Or else, what?”
“Or else me and the boys are going to be paying you a visit. At night. Every night. In your bed.”
“Are you threatening me?”
“Try not to think of it as a threat. Think of it more as, ‘gentile persuasion’.”
“Persuasion? Hey, you sound like the Bugmob!”
“Bugmob? Bugmob? I never said that, did I? Did you hear me mention a fictional organization of bugs with the power and ability to get what they want through the use of force, fear and coercion? Did you?”
“Uhhh…”
“Hey! Look at me. I axed you a question. Did you hear me say ‘Bugmob’?”
“Uhhhh, no. No, sir. You didn’t say Bugmob.”
“Damn right, I didn’t. And you better not mention it in my presence again, got me?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Now, where’s that food you said you’d get for me?”
Thinking quickly, I looked around the room as carefully and inconspicuously as I could and realized that there weren’t any other bugs in evidence. This bastard was going it alone. I never had bugs before and I was moving into a new apartment in less than a month. No one would ever know. And by the time the other bugs figured out what happened, I’d be safe in a new apartment on the other side of the city. They’d never find me.
“Uh, you want food?”
“That’s right, Jackoff. Food, and make it quick.”
“You’re in luck, sir. It just so happens that I’ve got some food right here.”
“Where?”
“Right here, under my foot.”
“Really? Well? What are you waiting for, Jackoff? Let me have it!”
“Sure.”
Later on, as I wiped up his little buggy-guts from the floor, I replayed the sound he made as I stomped him to death over and over in my mind. For some reason, I truly love the sound those nasty bugs make as you squish their body between two hard and unyielding surfaces. It’s like… well, have you ever popped Bubble-wrap? If you have, then that’s exactly what it sounded like when I crushed that little bastard with my size 10’s and ground his horrid little body into the floorboards.
Damn, I just love Bubble-wrap. Don’t you?