The Encouter With Cockroach

Before that incident, i could proudly regard myself as a brave person. This is simply because I'm not afraid of most of the animals (except bad human beings) even the possibly most hated and eeriest creature in the universe: COCKROACH. I'm not afraid of this brown and small creature for it is not harmful at all but somehow it's actually disgusting in a way. It is dirty, smelly and not welcome.

I used to stay in an apartment with three of my other female house mates cum classmates during my 1st year college time. Besides mouse, cockroaches were the closest thing to wildlife in our neighborhood but we always wanted them out of our habitat especially that all of my house mates are cockroach-phoebes. Every time, whenever they saw their great "enemy"--cockroach (they usually would be more sensitive than i was), they would metamorphose from the nonviolent, refine and gentle ladies into march hare; and they would scream blue murder past me and would hide themselves miles away from the ugly and white-blooded creature. I was always left behind alone to be their rescuer by killing the poor cockroach and always managed to act calmly and steadily when I was facing this harmless creature. It was until that particular night that I found out that I was not as brave as I thought.

That night, four of us were squeezing in the tiny and messy living room of our rented walk-up apartment burning midnight oil rushing to complete our assignments. Everything seemed normal and quiet until a brown, about an inch long youngster cockroach appeared in our living room all out of sudden. It was sitting on the white-tiled floor beside my lovely but short legs, starring at me and hesitate to move further. It took about 10 seconds for all of my cockroach-phobic house mates to be out of joint, screaming while running into their bedrooms.

As usual, me, the rescuer who would always come to their rescue by turning myself into a cold hearted killer. Energetically, as I was approaching this ugly intruder, It suddenly flew high up into the air and moved everywhere in the tiny living room searching for exit to escape. while I was trying to target it, before I could scream, I felt something was moving at my back underneath my T-shirt. Logic couldn't explain the shiver I felt in my spine, the primal desire I had to do was to scream out loud and to get it out of my cloth. it was the smelly and disgusting cockroach, I realized. This astonished me and I was reacting vehemently, jumping up and down while screaming, shaking my body and my cloth violently; desperately trying to shake it off me.

I could not recall how long I had been shaking , jumping and screaming, finally it dropped out of my clothes. The minute it was out on the floor, I used my bare foot to turn it over; I was happy to see it's legs flailed; it was twitching. twitching until I tamped hard on it. The bug's crackle and it's smooth exoskeleton was caved in. It's disgusting and sticky white blood was spreading out.

It was dead. Once again I had become the heroin although I had been acting like a buffoon in that battle.