EN World Short Story Smackdown - FINAL: Berandor vs Piratecat - The Judgment Is In!
maxfieldjadenfox
First Post
Piratecat said:
Number 3 and number 5 are just not part of the same story in my universe. The others are really fun. I'm looking forward to reading the entries!
Berandor
lunatic
EnWorld Short Story Smackdown 2008 – Final Match: Berandor vs. Piratecat.
(no grandma warning this time, though I really wanted to...)
Kingslayer. A story in 6 1/2 chapters
(1) The King
The king does not sleep. He does not need to. Some people say the king is dreaming. They say the king is dreaming of them, or rather, he is dreaming them. The world, its inhabitants, everything is just part of his dreams. And if he woke up…
These people are wrong. The king does not sleep, and he does not dream. He simply spends his time on standby, letting the whole nanoverse run past him, and through him. He is but an observer of his realm. He holds no audience, and noone asks him to. Nobody contacts him, except for the ubiquitous spambots even he cannot evade.
Correction: Nobody has contacted him before… now.
The king activates subroutines he has not used for a decade. Carbon tubes fold into rarely-practiced shapes. The king remains where he is, where he has always been, but his consciousness spreads out into his realm to look for the intruder. It will take him only a few minutes, at most.
Some people would say the king wakes up.
-
(2) The Slayer
I grab the phone booth to keep myself from falling as the wave of disorientation washes over me. The bastard has hung up on me! My hand tries to grab my crucifix but my avatar doesn’t wear one. I hope nobody saw me do that, it would be a dead giveaway.
I need to get away from the booth. I sprinkle a cleaning macro on the receiver to make sure the bugs won’t pick up my trail, and then I push myself off and downwards. I keep my eyes focused on the ground as I walk. I have no idea how the sheep manage not to get sick in here. It’s probably because they spend all their time logged in anyway and are too complacent to even think about it. They’re sheep, after all.
I must not let on who I am before I’m ready. I force myself to look up and activate my blank stare application. The end of this strand looks like a modern city from about fifty years ago. Of course, the look is slightly tarnished by the fact that this strand, like every other strand in this godless place they call the nanoverse, is shaped like a tube. The sheep are walking all around its walls, not caring for up and down. The sunlight streaming in from behind the buildings makes me dizzy again. Thankfully, I must go the other way, so I turn around and walk back to the node. Just a few more intertubes and I’ll be home.
I recite passages from the Next Testament to pass the time and to remind me why I’m doing this. It’s hard to remember surrounded by sheep who follow their false deity without question. The Konscious Independent Nanoverse Governance, spelled to fit the acronym. My tongue tastes foul just by thinking his name. There is but one crown, and it is made of gold. A golden crown, sitting on God’s head, not a carbon crown on a golden head.
My vision fills with green light, interrupting my thoughts. I am but one node away from the rift. My stolen identity has detected a friend. The light points towards a smallish creature with white fur, goat legs and horns, and a pig’s snout. A satyr. I murmur a short prayer but God either does not answer them here or he does not want to. The satyr waves his flabby arms. It’s too late for me to activate a travel protocol and just move past. I approach him. At the same time, I am frantically searching through my identity’s contact list and chat logs.
»You here?« the satyr greets me. His stink wafts over me before I can de-activate my avatar’s nose. I still don’t know anything about the satyr, so I keep quiet.
»How’s the heart?«
This one I know. I know it because the original owner of my avatar has died of heart failure about fifteen minutes ago. I killed him when I wrested control over his nanoverse identity from him. I make my avatar smile. »Never better.«
»Glad to hear.« The satyr belches. It takes me a moment to recognize it as laughter. »Got some time to spare?«
Sure I do. I’ve got all the time between now and when either the body of this avatar’s owner is discovered or the king’s bugs discover myself. »Not really,« I say.
The satyr furrows his unibrow. »Sure you’re okay? You seem different.«
I should just unlog him. Deliver him from his poor excuse of a life. But that’s not what He taught me. The sheep are primed for the slaughter, but I am their shepherd, not a butcher. »I’m just in a hurry.«
»Oh,« he says. His face freezes for a moment. I don’t know whether his owner is only thinking or whether he’s calling the bugs, but I don’t wait to find out. I need to get out. Now. I move past him. The satyr reaches out to grab my sleeve, but I make my avatar insubstantial so his hand passes right through. This is very bad form. It breaks the verisimilitude, or so I have been told, of this fictional world where satyrs pass through giant carbon tubes to get from one place to the other. It only makes sense if you never spend any time in the real world. God’s world.
The satyr shouts an alarm code, but I have already passed through the node. I am close to the exit now, too close for automatic defense mechanisms. I cannot detect the rift, but I know it is there. I put it there. I breathe a keycode at it, and then I wait. I don’t have to wait for long.
The bugs appear right in front of me, one slightly to the left, one to the right. Their avatars look like buxom blondes in leather. Servants of the devil. The bugs do not speak. They never do. They are scanning me for my location, and as soon as they have it, they will either port my avatar into a confinement area or simply delete it altogether. I watch them for a moment. I want to see what will happen when they cannot not localize me. Will they show astonishment? Fear? The answer is neither. They simply try and retry again. Never mind. I will show them fear.
I reach out and sprinkle code over the bugs. Almost immediately, their avatars change. I make them into the opposite of their former appearance. I turn them into sheep. And then I deactivate them. Their new avatars stare at me blankly. »You have been weighed, measured and found dirty with sin,« I proclaim. »And now you are the first sign of what is to come. I am to come.«
»Danny?« The satyr has followed me into the tube. Excellent. A witness. He will be my first disciple. »Are you alright?«
I turn to him and spread my hands. »Danny is in a better place now. Soon, you all will be. Soon, the king will be dead, and I will be the instrument of his killing. Prepare yourself. All of you.«
And with that, I walk through the rift and log off.
-
(3) The King
The king does not understand what has happened. His problem is twofold. First, never before have his bugs been so thoroughly defeated. They have been destroyed before, but not made an example of. The king understands the concept of what happened, but he cannot compute how it could happen to him. Second, the perpetrator is gone. The king does not often wonder about the world of his body. His realm is the nanoverse and everything in it. He thinks of his people as either active or idle. Unless he deletes them, they do not disappear. And yet this one did.
The king’s face splits open. Bugs of all kinds crawl out, as golden as he is. Messenger bugs, servants, killers. They crawl over the king’s face, worshipping him with their mandibles and their antennae.
The king has pondered his options for almost a second. He knows what he must do. He must venture out into the world of flesh, and not many kinds of bugs are able to go there. He will send the roach. It is fast and hard to kill. But first, he must know where the enemy went.
The king sends out his messengers. They infiltrate his people, hide within the code and slip into their brain, and then report to him anything they find. At first, they do so at random, but soon a pattern emerges. The king focuses his messengers there. After sixteen hundred and twelve people, the king has an address. He deletes the people from the database. His lifts the roach to his golden lips and sends it off with a kiss and a small gift.
-
(4) The Slayer
My home is His church. God led me to it when He came to me. He came to me three times. The first time, He visited me in my sleep. That was when He told me I was to be his vessel. The second time, He took control of my body and led me to this place. He meant it to be mine, and I know why.
The creator of the nanoverse lived in this house. He originally built it because he had no need for the physical world any more. He was the first sheep, but over time, he saw the light. It was he who composed the Next Testament, his fingers moving to God’s voice. He took me in. He showed me how to use the code he had written. We prayed together. I killed him and anointed myself with his blood. That was when God came to me the third time and told me what I had to do.
I stand naked on the balcony and look out towards the sea. The house is built on a large rock overlooking what once was the Grand Canyon. Before the second Flood, that is. Gazing upon His work makes me feel angry. He sent the Flood, and nobody cared about it. »A broken dam.« Sheep. I could kill them all, but I will not turn my anger against them. I will use it to destroy the false deity on the throne, the so-called king. I will–
Someone’s coming. It can’t be the food, it’s the wrong day. I put on a shirt and some shorts. The pulley arrives at the door before I do. I regard the visitor on the door monitor, a young man dressed in a suit. He smiles as if he knows I’m watching. He does not knock. He simply speaks.
»Mr. Veigh? My name is Alex Mitchell. SoulFood sent me. It seems there is a problem with the invoice.« He holds up an ID card. »Mind if I come in?«
It is a trap. I know it. I grab the shotgun next to the door and make sure it’s loaded. I will open the door and shoot him. But what if he is genuine? I cannot risk damnation on such a simple mistake. I let go of the shotgun again. I open the door.
Alex Mitchell blinks at me as if he’s unaccustomed to using his eyes. Maybe he is. He is probably as much a sheep as everybody else. »Thank you,« he says and walks past me. »I tried to reach you in the nanoverse, but it seems you’re keeping pretty private. I could not find you.« He laughs. It sounds like a cough. »I’m sorry, could I use your bathroom first?«
I point the way. He pretends not to notice that I’m in my underwear, or that I haven’t said a word. My hairs stand on end, but he might just be a salesman. I need proof before I kill him.
While Alex is in the bathroom, I prepare a chair with a small electrical charge and put on my shades. Alex returns with wet hands. He knows that I’m up to something because he furrows his brow at me. Have I given myself away? No. He smiles his smile again, and I recognize him. Even without the test, I recognize him. And the wolves shall walk among the sheep, but they will wear the skin of they prey, and thou shall only know them by their teeth.
I throw the chair at him, but he deftly catches it and jumps across. The charge sets off, and my shades show him for what he really is. The charge disrupts the bug’s control over what once was Alex Mitchell. He stumbles.
»You cannot kill me,« I shout over my shoulder as I run towards the shotgun. »The grace of God protects me!«
I hear the chair crashing against he wall behind me. I swivel around just in time to see Alex’s fist coming towards me. There’s a flash. I get hit in the back by a truck. I can’t breathe. Something hits my head. The panic drives the stars from my vision. I lay against the door. Alex is five feet away. The shotgun falls from my head into my lap. My chin hurts. It hurts even more when I laugh, and I do laugh. I point the shotgun at Alex. »Shee? Toldsha.« He tries to jump for the gun. He does not make it.
-
(5) The King
The king does not sleep. He does not need to. Normally, he is on standby. Some people say he is dreaming, then. He has not been on standby for the last few hours, though. And by the activity of his processors, the same people might say he is worried. When the message comes, it is not unexpected. Merely unlikely.
The king opens his eyes. Darkness surrounds him, and cool air. There is no throne room. No bugs are crawling on his face. The king does not have a face. He is just a slab of silicone and carbon nanites connected to the wall by large cable. The king is just a machine. The king can see the intruder now, hidden from the world, in his castle at the sea. He can feel his own programs being deleted. If the king felt pain, he would scream.
K.I.N.G. tries to call up subroutines to combat the enemy, but the bugs won’t obey a machine. K.I.N.G. is helpless. But it is also, for the first time ever, aware of what it had been, of what it was meant to be, of what it could have been. The intruder may have a point. Is he right? It opens a terminal window – there’s not much more it can do now – and inputs data. The program cannot compute an answer. There are too many variables.
Not much remaining now.
-
(6) The Slayer
The king is dead!
I pull my shades off and come back to the real world. No more hiding, let them find me. Just a short break, and then I will upload the cathedral software to the nanoverse. The sheep will be saved. I can already see them flocking to me. They want to hear His word, now that the false king is dead. I will tell them. I will tell them all and make them into men again. But first…
My bowels feel as if I haven’t emptied them for weeks, and when I think about it, maybe I haven’t. It’s all been so much stress, lately. All over now. Thy kingdom cometh. I kiss the crucifix and immediately feel better. I will have to clean up, though. Alex is still bleeding on my carpet. Foolish Alex. If he hadn’t wanted to use the bathroom, he might have gotten the–
-
(6 1/2) Aftermath
»It is still unclear what happened to the king, or how the nanoverse will develop from here on out. Already there are reported instances of strands unraveling into a flat environment. The future is an open field. Who knows what will come? Everything is possible. For Inside Node Zero, this is Fox Hunter.«
»Thank you, Fox. In local news, a young Colorado man died from internal bleeding in a freak accident as his toilet broke down. The man has not been identified, and the police are looking for people who might have known him. Unsubstantiated reports say at the time of his death, he was wearing a golden crown. More after the break.«
*end transmission*
(no grandma warning this time, though I really wanted to...)
Kingslayer. A story in 6 1/2 chapters
(1) The King
The king does not sleep. He does not need to. Some people say the king is dreaming. They say the king is dreaming of them, or rather, he is dreaming them. The world, its inhabitants, everything is just part of his dreams. And if he woke up…
These people are wrong. The king does not sleep, and he does not dream. He simply spends his time on standby, letting the whole nanoverse run past him, and through him. He is but an observer of his realm. He holds no audience, and noone asks him to. Nobody contacts him, except for the ubiquitous spambots even he cannot evade.
Correction: Nobody has contacted him before… now.
The king activates subroutines he has not used for a decade. Carbon tubes fold into rarely-practiced shapes. The king remains where he is, where he has always been, but his consciousness spreads out into his realm to look for the intruder. It will take him only a few minutes, at most.
Some people would say the king wakes up.
-
(2) The Slayer
I grab the phone booth to keep myself from falling as the wave of disorientation washes over me. The bastard has hung up on me! My hand tries to grab my crucifix but my avatar doesn’t wear one. I hope nobody saw me do that, it would be a dead giveaway.
I need to get away from the booth. I sprinkle a cleaning macro on the receiver to make sure the bugs won’t pick up my trail, and then I push myself off and downwards. I keep my eyes focused on the ground as I walk. I have no idea how the sheep manage not to get sick in here. It’s probably because they spend all their time logged in anyway and are too complacent to even think about it. They’re sheep, after all.
I must not let on who I am before I’m ready. I force myself to look up and activate my blank stare application. The end of this strand looks like a modern city from about fifty years ago. Of course, the look is slightly tarnished by the fact that this strand, like every other strand in this godless place they call the nanoverse, is shaped like a tube. The sheep are walking all around its walls, not caring for up and down. The sunlight streaming in from behind the buildings makes me dizzy again. Thankfully, I must go the other way, so I turn around and walk back to the node. Just a few more intertubes and I’ll be home.
I recite passages from the Next Testament to pass the time and to remind me why I’m doing this. It’s hard to remember surrounded by sheep who follow their false deity without question. The Konscious Independent Nanoverse Governance, spelled to fit the acronym. My tongue tastes foul just by thinking his name. There is but one crown, and it is made of gold. A golden crown, sitting on God’s head, not a carbon crown on a golden head.
My vision fills with green light, interrupting my thoughts. I am but one node away from the rift. My stolen identity has detected a friend. The light points towards a smallish creature with white fur, goat legs and horns, and a pig’s snout. A satyr. I murmur a short prayer but God either does not answer them here or he does not want to. The satyr waves his flabby arms. It’s too late for me to activate a travel protocol and just move past. I approach him. At the same time, I am frantically searching through my identity’s contact list and chat logs.
»You here?« the satyr greets me. His stink wafts over me before I can de-activate my avatar’s nose. I still don’t know anything about the satyr, so I keep quiet.
»How’s the heart?«
This one I know. I know it because the original owner of my avatar has died of heart failure about fifteen minutes ago. I killed him when I wrested control over his nanoverse identity from him. I make my avatar smile. »Never better.«
»Glad to hear.« The satyr belches. It takes me a moment to recognize it as laughter. »Got some time to spare?«
Sure I do. I’ve got all the time between now and when either the body of this avatar’s owner is discovered or the king’s bugs discover myself. »Not really,« I say.
The satyr furrows his unibrow. »Sure you’re okay? You seem different.«
I should just unlog him. Deliver him from his poor excuse of a life. But that’s not what He taught me. The sheep are primed for the slaughter, but I am their shepherd, not a butcher. »I’m just in a hurry.«
»Oh,« he says. His face freezes for a moment. I don’t know whether his owner is only thinking or whether he’s calling the bugs, but I don’t wait to find out. I need to get out. Now. I move past him. The satyr reaches out to grab my sleeve, but I make my avatar insubstantial so his hand passes right through. This is very bad form. It breaks the verisimilitude, or so I have been told, of this fictional world where satyrs pass through giant carbon tubes to get from one place to the other. It only makes sense if you never spend any time in the real world. God’s world.
The satyr shouts an alarm code, but I have already passed through the node. I am close to the exit now, too close for automatic defense mechanisms. I cannot detect the rift, but I know it is there. I put it there. I breathe a keycode at it, and then I wait. I don’t have to wait for long.
The bugs appear right in front of me, one slightly to the left, one to the right. Their avatars look like buxom blondes in leather. Servants of the devil. The bugs do not speak. They never do. They are scanning me for my location, and as soon as they have it, they will either port my avatar into a confinement area or simply delete it altogether. I watch them for a moment. I want to see what will happen when they cannot not localize me. Will they show astonishment? Fear? The answer is neither. They simply try and retry again. Never mind. I will show them fear.
I reach out and sprinkle code over the bugs. Almost immediately, their avatars change. I make them into the opposite of their former appearance. I turn them into sheep. And then I deactivate them. Their new avatars stare at me blankly. »You have been weighed, measured and found dirty with sin,« I proclaim. »And now you are the first sign of what is to come. I am to come.«
»Danny?« The satyr has followed me into the tube. Excellent. A witness. He will be my first disciple. »Are you alright?«
I turn to him and spread my hands. »Danny is in a better place now. Soon, you all will be. Soon, the king will be dead, and I will be the instrument of his killing. Prepare yourself. All of you.«
And with that, I walk through the rift and log off.
-
(3) The King
The king does not understand what has happened. His problem is twofold. First, never before have his bugs been so thoroughly defeated. They have been destroyed before, but not made an example of. The king understands the concept of what happened, but he cannot compute how it could happen to him. Second, the perpetrator is gone. The king does not often wonder about the world of his body. His realm is the nanoverse and everything in it. He thinks of his people as either active or idle. Unless he deletes them, they do not disappear. And yet this one did.
The king’s face splits open. Bugs of all kinds crawl out, as golden as he is. Messenger bugs, servants, killers. They crawl over the king’s face, worshipping him with their mandibles and their antennae.
The king has pondered his options for almost a second. He knows what he must do. He must venture out into the world of flesh, and not many kinds of bugs are able to go there. He will send the roach. It is fast and hard to kill. But first, he must know where the enemy went.
The king sends out his messengers. They infiltrate his people, hide within the code and slip into their brain, and then report to him anything they find. At first, they do so at random, but soon a pattern emerges. The king focuses his messengers there. After sixteen hundred and twelve people, the king has an address. He deletes the people from the database. His lifts the roach to his golden lips and sends it off with a kiss and a small gift.
-
(4) The Slayer
My home is His church. God led me to it when He came to me. He came to me three times. The first time, He visited me in my sleep. That was when He told me I was to be his vessel. The second time, He took control of my body and led me to this place. He meant it to be mine, and I know why.
The creator of the nanoverse lived in this house. He originally built it because he had no need for the physical world any more. He was the first sheep, but over time, he saw the light. It was he who composed the Next Testament, his fingers moving to God’s voice. He took me in. He showed me how to use the code he had written. We prayed together. I killed him and anointed myself with his blood. That was when God came to me the third time and told me what I had to do.
I stand naked on the balcony and look out towards the sea. The house is built on a large rock overlooking what once was the Grand Canyon. Before the second Flood, that is. Gazing upon His work makes me feel angry. He sent the Flood, and nobody cared about it. »A broken dam.« Sheep. I could kill them all, but I will not turn my anger against them. I will use it to destroy the false deity on the throne, the so-called king. I will–
Someone’s coming. It can’t be the food, it’s the wrong day. I put on a shirt and some shorts. The pulley arrives at the door before I do. I regard the visitor on the door monitor, a young man dressed in a suit. He smiles as if he knows I’m watching. He does not knock. He simply speaks.
»Mr. Veigh? My name is Alex Mitchell. SoulFood sent me. It seems there is a problem with the invoice.« He holds up an ID card. »Mind if I come in?«
It is a trap. I know it. I grab the shotgun next to the door and make sure it’s loaded. I will open the door and shoot him. But what if he is genuine? I cannot risk damnation on such a simple mistake. I let go of the shotgun again. I open the door.
Alex Mitchell blinks at me as if he’s unaccustomed to using his eyes. Maybe he is. He is probably as much a sheep as everybody else. »Thank you,« he says and walks past me. »I tried to reach you in the nanoverse, but it seems you’re keeping pretty private. I could not find you.« He laughs. It sounds like a cough. »I’m sorry, could I use your bathroom first?«
I point the way. He pretends not to notice that I’m in my underwear, or that I haven’t said a word. My hairs stand on end, but he might just be a salesman. I need proof before I kill him.
While Alex is in the bathroom, I prepare a chair with a small electrical charge and put on my shades. Alex returns with wet hands. He knows that I’m up to something because he furrows his brow at me. Have I given myself away? No. He smiles his smile again, and I recognize him. Even without the test, I recognize him. And the wolves shall walk among the sheep, but they will wear the skin of they prey, and thou shall only know them by their teeth.
I throw the chair at him, but he deftly catches it and jumps across. The charge sets off, and my shades show him for what he really is. The charge disrupts the bug’s control over what once was Alex Mitchell. He stumbles.
»You cannot kill me,« I shout over my shoulder as I run towards the shotgun. »The grace of God protects me!«
I hear the chair crashing against he wall behind me. I swivel around just in time to see Alex’s fist coming towards me. There’s a flash. I get hit in the back by a truck. I can’t breathe. Something hits my head. The panic drives the stars from my vision. I lay against the door. Alex is five feet away. The shotgun falls from my head into my lap. My chin hurts. It hurts even more when I laugh, and I do laugh. I point the shotgun at Alex. »Shee? Toldsha.« He tries to jump for the gun. He does not make it.
-
(5) The King
The king does not sleep. He does not need to. Normally, he is on standby. Some people say he is dreaming, then. He has not been on standby for the last few hours, though. And by the activity of his processors, the same people might say he is worried. When the message comes, it is not unexpected. Merely unlikely.
The king opens his eyes. Darkness surrounds him, and cool air. There is no throne room. No bugs are crawling on his face. The king does not have a face. He is just a slab of silicone and carbon nanites connected to the wall by large cable. The king is just a machine. The king can see the intruder now, hidden from the world, in his castle at the sea. He can feel his own programs being deleted. If the king felt pain, he would scream.
K.I.N.G. tries to call up subroutines to combat the enemy, but the bugs won’t obey a machine. K.I.N.G. is helpless. But it is also, for the first time ever, aware of what it had been, of what it was meant to be, of what it could have been. The intruder may have a point. Is he right? It opens a terminal window – there’s not much more it can do now – and inputs data. The program cannot compute an answer. There are too many variables.
Not much remaining now.
-
(6) The Slayer
The king is dead!
I pull my shades off and come back to the real world. No more hiding, let them find me. Just a short break, and then I will upload the cathedral software to the nanoverse. The sheep will be saved. I can already see them flocking to me. They want to hear His word, now that the false king is dead. I will tell them. I will tell them all and make them into men again. But first…
My bowels feel as if I haven’t emptied them for weeks, and when I think about it, maybe I haven’t. It’s all been so much stress, lately. All over now. Thy kingdom cometh. I kiss the crucifix and immediately feel better. I will have to clean up, though. Alex is still bleeding on my carpet. Foolish Alex. If he hadn’t wanted to use the bathroom, he might have gotten the–
-
(6 1/2) Aftermath
»It is still unclear what happened to the king, or how the nanoverse will develop from here on out. Already there are reported instances of strands unraveling into a flat environment. The future is an open field. Who knows what will come? Everything is possible. For Inside Node Zero, this is Fox Hunter.«
»Thank you, Fox. In local news, a young Colorado man died from internal bleeding in a freak accident as his toilet broke down. The man has not been identified, and the police are looking for people who might have known him. Unsubstantiated reports say at the time of his death, he was wearing a golden crown. More after the break.«
*end transmission*
Piratecat
Sesquipedalian
Round Four - Match Fifteen
Berandor vs. Piratecat
Brood
By Kevin Kulp (Piratecat)
“Mrs. Wheeler?” His voice was resonant, with a unique cadence and a rhythm to it. You could picture that voice murmuring sweet nothings to you over a cocktail in your favorite dimly-lit hotel bar. You could picture that voice whispering in your ear as you lay in the summer darkness atop rumpled sheets.
I’d been nervous to open my door to a stranger. I shouldn’t have been. The man on my front stoop was handsome and neatly dressed. He wore a collared shirt and tie along with dark blue slacks. His outfit looked just enough like a company uniform to put me at ease. It had probably been picked for that exact purpose.
“Ms. Wheeler, not Mrs.,” I corrected him, and opened the screen door with one arm. “Call me Shelly. Thanks for responding so soon.”
“You bet,” he said, and grinned up at me. His smile was infectious. “Infestations are never fun. I’m Mr. Blatti from Brody Bug Removal, at your service.”
He must be Italian, I thought. “Glad to hear it. Come on in.”
He paused at the doorway. “I hear you called for some help. Where’s the problem?”
I shivered a little. “All over the house, I’m afraid. I’m not sure how they got in, but I can’t get them out. I figured it was time to call in a professional.”
“Smart thinking. That’s what we’re here for. We’ll give you your house back.”
“We’ll?” I asked teasingly. I didn’t see a partner.
“Figure of speech,” he said with a laugh and stepped inside. He looked at me and I looked back. His eyes were clear blue. He was clean-shaven, his hair cut short, and he looked to be in his early thirties. I didn’t know what his cologne was, but it smelled fantastic. Shaking my head a little, I silently reminded myself that I hadn’t called him in just to avoid lonely weekends.
“Fair enough.” I led him room by room through the house, pointing out the problem areas: under the kitchen baseboards, a crack at the base of the tub, my art studio, the basement stairs. I couldn’t stop thinking about him as we walked. I knew it was a mistake; he probably had women hitting on him all the time, even in his line of work. I just couldn’t help it.
“I’ll just go out to the van for my gear,” he said. Suddenly his voice reminded me of a television actor, but I couldn’t remember who. When I strained my ears I thought I could detect the slightest buzz to his speech. An accent? If so, it was so small as to be almost nonexistent. And very, very sexy.
Don’t get interested in the hired help, Shelly, I reminded myself. You’re newly divorced and newly depressed. Screwing the exterminator wasn’t likely to improve your life.
Oh, but I told myself, it couldn’t hurt, could it?
Steady on, girl. I focused back on what Mr. Blatti was saying. “...this is a good time for you to go out for some coffee. At the least, best to stay out of my work area.”
“Okay,” I said, and he turned towards the door. I squinted at the white van at the end of the walk. “Mr. Blatti, you said you were from Brody Bug Removal? That’s not who I called, was it?”
He laughed and turned back towards me. I felt a wave of warmth. “Buyouts and consolidations, I’m afraid. It’s hard to keep track of whose buying who nowadays. We’re all part of the same parent company.” It made perfect sense. He went out the door and I watched him walk towards his vehicle. Things were looking up, I told myself. When’s the last time you even thought about a man since Brian left? I couldn’t remember one, and this sudden infatuation was somewhat surprising. I headed into my art studio to consider ways to seduce the poor man that wouldn’t leave me feeling trashy afterwards. I couldn’t particularly think of any, but it was a fun fantasy nonetheless.
Be serious, Shelly, I told myself. After all, the man is here to kill your cockroaches.
That brought me back to Earth. My house hadn’t had roaches six months ago. Then Brian walked out of the door and into the Las Vegas sun, taking half of our belongings with him as he went. I never had any hint it was coming. He left a note on the fridge, pinned there by a cross-eyed raccoon magnet that we’d picked up somewhere over the years. “Dear Shelly,” the note said, “How are you? I am fine. This isn’t working out. I am leaving and taking half our things and half the money in our account. We would have talked this through, but there’s nothing to talk about. I don’t love you any more. Brian.”
Bastard.
He took the couch, so I didn’t even have any place good to lie down and sob. He left all my art supplies and the painting I had made for him. He took the air conditioner. Later I heard a rumor that he was shacked up with some cocktail waitress from a wine bar down on the Strip. I was in bad shape by then. Depressed, eating too much, not doing the dishes, not living my life. Depression is miserable. It took me several months to get back on my feet, but by then the damage was done. A filthy kitchen full of unwashed dishes, plus desert heat, equals an infestation of cockroaches that just wouldn’t go away.
And finally, enough was enough. I had been sitting around reading the night before when a roach skittered over my foot and into my bedcovers. It was the last straw. After I killed it I flipped open the yellow pages to find a professional exterminator.
“Exterminus,” the ad read. “Fast. Effective. Cheap.”
Worked for me.
And now I could hear Mr. Blatti moving around the house and starting to work, and I finally felt like my life was back on track. Maybe I’d go change clothes and ask Mr. Blatti out for a drink. Or maybe not. But I really did like his cologne.
Forty minutes later I was working in my studio when I heard an indistinct knock on the back door. I put down my brush and went to the door. I opened it and squinted into the sunlight.
The man on my front steps slouched as if standing up straight was only for people who understood basic hygiene. A greasy baseball hat was turned backwards over his head. It hid unwashed hair, but not the man’s thinning mullet. A limp hand-rolled cigarette drooped out of the corner of his mouth like a failed erection. He had desert eyes, sunburned and cynical. A patch on his uniform shirt declared that his name was Mickey. Before I could say anything he looked me up and down and then back up again. It was like being felt up by his eyes.
“I think we got us an appointment, lady.” His voice was rough, a smoker’s voice. “You Shelly Wheeler?”
I blushed uncomfortably. “I’m sorry, who are you? Can I help you somehow?”
“You called for an exterminator. That’s me.” He jabbed an unwashed thumb at his own chest. “Mickey Groat, Exterminus. Let’s kill us some buggies.” He hefted up a big tank of chemicals and tried to walk in the door. His frame sagged under the weight; he wasn’t any taller than I was, and I probably outweighed him by twenty pounds. I blocked his way.
“No, there’s been some confusion. Your company’s already sent an exterminator out. He’s been working for almost an hour.”
He considered, doubtful. “Oh yeah? Who?”
“A Mr. Blatti. You know him?”
He smiled, and I could see he was missing some teeth that you’re usually used to seeing. He issued a grunt that must have been laughter. “Blatti? Yeah, I know him. You didn’t call him. You called me. Exterminus.” He handed me a smudged card with the company name and logo on it, and tapped it a few times with a dirty finger. The card smelled vaguely like cigarette smoke and socks. “He’s poaching my job.”
I frowned. “He said you were all in the same company.”
“Yeah. Not so much. He probably bugged my line.” He found this tremendously amusing for some reason. “You give me just a second, yeah?” He turned away and sauntered slowly back to his car. From here I could see that his baseball cap had a picture of a dead bug on the front. He rooted around in the back of his car for a minute and came out with something in one hand. He disappeared around the back side of the Brody Bug Removal van, then reappeared and returned to his car. A minute later he strolled back to the house, this time holding a clipboard. His odor preceded him.
When he reached the door he thrust the clipboard into my hands. It was full of information from my call the night before. “Mind if I come in, sort this out? Maybe I know why.”
I paused, unsure. Mickey Groat was not exactly the picture of a trustworthy individual. But this was the company I had called, and I was a little disturbed that I had been half-planning to seduce a man who apparently wasn’t even supposed to be there. I had an inkling that this could have been an awfully bad idea. I opened the door and stood aside.
“Where he at?” asked Groat.
I stuck my head in a few rooms, sniffing. “My art studio, I think. The door’s closed. What’s he using to kill bugs, anyways? I don’t smell any chemicals at all.”
“Yeah, you wouldn’t. You be quiet now.” And with more skill than I would have given him credit for, he soundlessly eased open the studio door.
Mr. Blatti was sitting in a chair at the edge of the room. He had a serene look on his face. His spray pack of chemicals lay on the floor next to him, obviously not touched. He stood in what looked like a small puddle of brownish paint.
The puddle of paint was getting smaller.
Then I realized that it wasn’t paint, it was roaches. Hundreds of roaches in my art studio, gathered around him like freezing men gather around a fire, swarming onto his brown shoes and crawling over and around Mr. Blatti’s feet. But why was the pool of roaches getting smaller? I couldn’t understand until I saw the man’s pant legs twitching. The roaches were swarming up his legs, underneath his pants. They were crawling onto his body under his clothes. Even his shadow against my wall seemed horribly, horribly wrong.
I turned and vomited. Mr. Blatti looked up.
I was hanging onto the doorknob as I retched a second time. A lone roach scurried past me from the hall and into the studio; running late, perhaps, for its appointment with Mr. Blatti. Mickey Groat stepped on it instead. It made a crunching sound.
“Well, Shelly, don’t you look pretty,” Mr. Blatti said to me in that wonderful, resonant voice. He favored me with a smile from across the room. Then he looked at Groat and his voice fell in volume. “Sorry, fella. We’re done here, and you’re too late.”
Groat spit a thin brown stream onto my white floor, that pig. “Now, you know you ain’t welcome here. You’re on my turf. I got me a signed contract to rid this house of vermin, and you’re standing in it right now. That means you count.”
He shook one trouser leg and straightened his pleats as he prepared to stand up. No roaches were visible. “I’ll be leaving in just a moment.”
“Too late,” said Groat as he raised his chemical sprayer.
“No it isn’t,” said Mr. Blatti, and sprung upwards from his chair. The leap should have been impossible, but he cleared fifteen feet effortlessly and landed next to both Groat and myself. Blatti reached forward and slapped Groat with the back of his hand. The scrawny exterminator flew across the studio and slammed into a stack of completed artwork. Canvas and broken frames scattered under the impact. “I don’t like actual exterminators,” said Blatti as he picked up his chemical tank and walked towards Groat. “You give us a bad name and kill our recruits. We’re efficient. We’re polite. We clean every single vermin out of a person’s house, and we don’t charge them much for the privilege. Tell me, is that so bad?”
Groat pushed himself off the floor and looked up. His hat was askew and his nose was bleeding. “What you do with ‘em afterwards?”
“We let them join,” said Mr. Blatti, “we let them get smart.” He fired his chemical sprayer into Groat’s face. Brown fluid hissed. Throughout the attack I could still smell Mr. Blatti’s cologne, and I swear no one has ever looked as good as that horrific man did standing in my studio. I knew he was probably covered with roaches underneath his clothing, and I still wanted to sleep with him. That didn’t stop me from hitting him in the back of the head with a wooden easel, though. There was a crunch as if from snapping chitin. The sprayer fell from his hand and spun across the floor, spraying a fine mist of liquid as it went.
“You stop that!” I screamed. “Stop it now!” Groat covered his face with his hand and writhed on the floor in front of me. Mr. Blatti regained his balance and turned around. I gazed into those blue, blue eyes, and this time something seemed strange. A shadow in the left eye? No, something inside his eye, peering out the pupil. A cockroach. There was a cockroach in the man’s eye, using it as a window onto the world. Impossible. I felt my knees lock as blood rushed from my head.
Slowly Mr. Blatti smiled, nodded, and fondly patted my face. A roach scurried out of his sleeve and into my hair, and that broke me from my near faint. I pushed away. “I’m sorry, Shelly. We won’t have time today. I was hoping, but oh well.” He shoved past me back into the house. By then I had Groat dragged over to the large sink and was spraying his face and neck with water. I didn’t even hear the white van pulling away.
* * *
Berandor vs. Piratecat
Brood
By Kevin Kulp (Piratecat)
“Mrs. Wheeler?” His voice was resonant, with a unique cadence and a rhythm to it. You could picture that voice murmuring sweet nothings to you over a cocktail in your favorite dimly-lit hotel bar. You could picture that voice whispering in your ear as you lay in the summer darkness atop rumpled sheets.
I’d been nervous to open my door to a stranger. I shouldn’t have been. The man on my front stoop was handsome and neatly dressed. He wore a collared shirt and tie along with dark blue slacks. His outfit looked just enough like a company uniform to put me at ease. It had probably been picked for that exact purpose.
“Ms. Wheeler, not Mrs.,” I corrected him, and opened the screen door with one arm. “Call me Shelly. Thanks for responding so soon.”
“You bet,” he said, and grinned up at me. His smile was infectious. “Infestations are never fun. I’m Mr. Blatti from Brody Bug Removal, at your service.”
He must be Italian, I thought. “Glad to hear it. Come on in.”
He paused at the doorway. “I hear you called for some help. Where’s the problem?”
I shivered a little. “All over the house, I’m afraid. I’m not sure how they got in, but I can’t get them out. I figured it was time to call in a professional.”
“Smart thinking. That’s what we’re here for. We’ll give you your house back.”
“We’ll?” I asked teasingly. I didn’t see a partner.
“Figure of speech,” he said with a laugh and stepped inside. He looked at me and I looked back. His eyes were clear blue. He was clean-shaven, his hair cut short, and he looked to be in his early thirties. I didn’t know what his cologne was, but it smelled fantastic. Shaking my head a little, I silently reminded myself that I hadn’t called him in just to avoid lonely weekends.
“Fair enough.” I led him room by room through the house, pointing out the problem areas: under the kitchen baseboards, a crack at the base of the tub, my art studio, the basement stairs. I couldn’t stop thinking about him as we walked. I knew it was a mistake; he probably had women hitting on him all the time, even in his line of work. I just couldn’t help it.
“I’ll just go out to the van for my gear,” he said. Suddenly his voice reminded me of a television actor, but I couldn’t remember who. When I strained my ears I thought I could detect the slightest buzz to his speech. An accent? If so, it was so small as to be almost nonexistent. And very, very sexy.
Don’t get interested in the hired help, Shelly, I reminded myself. You’re newly divorced and newly depressed. Screwing the exterminator wasn’t likely to improve your life.
Oh, but I told myself, it couldn’t hurt, could it?
Steady on, girl. I focused back on what Mr. Blatti was saying. “...this is a good time for you to go out for some coffee. At the least, best to stay out of my work area.”
“Okay,” I said, and he turned towards the door. I squinted at the white van at the end of the walk. “Mr. Blatti, you said you were from Brody Bug Removal? That’s not who I called, was it?”
He laughed and turned back towards me. I felt a wave of warmth. “Buyouts and consolidations, I’m afraid. It’s hard to keep track of whose buying who nowadays. We’re all part of the same parent company.” It made perfect sense. He went out the door and I watched him walk towards his vehicle. Things were looking up, I told myself. When’s the last time you even thought about a man since Brian left? I couldn’t remember one, and this sudden infatuation was somewhat surprising. I headed into my art studio to consider ways to seduce the poor man that wouldn’t leave me feeling trashy afterwards. I couldn’t particularly think of any, but it was a fun fantasy nonetheless.
Be serious, Shelly, I told myself. After all, the man is here to kill your cockroaches.
That brought me back to Earth. My house hadn’t had roaches six months ago. Then Brian walked out of the door and into the Las Vegas sun, taking half of our belongings with him as he went. I never had any hint it was coming. He left a note on the fridge, pinned there by a cross-eyed raccoon magnet that we’d picked up somewhere over the years. “Dear Shelly,” the note said, “How are you? I am fine. This isn’t working out. I am leaving and taking half our things and half the money in our account. We would have talked this through, but there’s nothing to talk about. I don’t love you any more. Brian.”
Bastard.
He took the couch, so I didn’t even have any place good to lie down and sob. He left all my art supplies and the painting I had made for him. He took the air conditioner. Later I heard a rumor that he was shacked up with some cocktail waitress from a wine bar down on the Strip. I was in bad shape by then. Depressed, eating too much, not doing the dishes, not living my life. Depression is miserable. It took me several months to get back on my feet, but by then the damage was done. A filthy kitchen full of unwashed dishes, plus desert heat, equals an infestation of cockroaches that just wouldn’t go away.
And finally, enough was enough. I had been sitting around reading the night before when a roach skittered over my foot and into my bedcovers. It was the last straw. After I killed it I flipped open the yellow pages to find a professional exterminator.
“Exterminus,” the ad read. “Fast. Effective. Cheap.”
Worked for me.
And now I could hear Mr. Blatti moving around the house and starting to work, and I finally felt like my life was back on track. Maybe I’d go change clothes and ask Mr. Blatti out for a drink. Or maybe not. But I really did like his cologne.
Forty minutes later I was working in my studio when I heard an indistinct knock on the back door. I put down my brush and went to the door. I opened it and squinted into the sunlight.
The man on my front steps slouched as if standing up straight was only for people who understood basic hygiene. A greasy baseball hat was turned backwards over his head. It hid unwashed hair, but not the man’s thinning mullet. A limp hand-rolled cigarette drooped out of the corner of his mouth like a failed erection. He had desert eyes, sunburned and cynical. A patch on his uniform shirt declared that his name was Mickey. Before I could say anything he looked me up and down and then back up again. It was like being felt up by his eyes.
“I think we got us an appointment, lady.” His voice was rough, a smoker’s voice. “You Shelly Wheeler?”
I blushed uncomfortably. “I’m sorry, who are you? Can I help you somehow?”
“You called for an exterminator. That’s me.” He jabbed an unwashed thumb at his own chest. “Mickey Groat, Exterminus. Let’s kill us some buggies.” He hefted up a big tank of chemicals and tried to walk in the door. His frame sagged under the weight; he wasn’t any taller than I was, and I probably outweighed him by twenty pounds. I blocked his way.
“No, there’s been some confusion. Your company’s already sent an exterminator out. He’s been working for almost an hour.”
He considered, doubtful. “Oh yeah? Who?”
“A Mr. Blatti. You know him?”
He smiled, and I could see he was missing some teeth that you’re usually used to seeing. He issued a grunt that must have been laughter. “Blatti? Yeah, I know him. You didn’t call him. You called me. Exterminus.” He handed me a smudged card with the company name and logo on it, and tapped it a few times with a dirty finger. The card smelled vaguely like cigarette smoke and socks. “He’s poaching my job.”
I frowned. “He said you were all in the same company.”
“Yeah. Not so much. He probably bugged my line.” He found this tremendously amusing for some reason. “You give me just a second, yeah?” He turned away and sauntered slowly back to his car. From here I could see that his baseball cap had a picture of a dead bug on the front. He rooted around in the back of his car for a minute and came out with something in one hand. He disappeared around the back side of the Brody Bug Removal van, then reappeared and returned to his car. A minute later he strolled back to the house, this time holding a clipboard. His odor preceded him.
When he reached the door he thrust the clipboard into my hands. It was full of information from my call the night before. “Mind if I come in, sort this out? Maybe I know why.”
I paused, unsure. Mickey Groat was not exactly the picture of a trustworthy individual. But this was the company I had called, and I was a little disturbed that I had been half-planning to seduce a man who apparently wasn’t even supposed to be there. I had an inkling that this could have been an awfully bad idea. I opened the door and stood aside.
“Where he at?” asked Groat.
I stuck my head in a few rooms, sniffing. “My art studio, I think. The door’s closed. What’s he using to kill bugs, anyways? I don’t smell any chemicals at all.”
“Yeah, you wouldn’t. You be quiet now.” And with more skill than I would have given him credit for, he soundlessly eased open the studio door.
Mr. Blatti was sitting in a chair at the edge of the room. He had a serene look on his face. His spray pack of chemicals lay on the floor next to him, obviously not touched. He stood in what looked like a small puddle of brownish paint.
The puddle of paint was getting smaller.
Then I realized that it wasn’t paint, it was roaches. Hundreds of roaches in my art studio, gathered around him like freezing men gather around a fire, swarming onto his brown shoes and crawling over and around Mr. Blatti’s feet. But why was the pool of roaches getting smaller? I couldn’t understand until I saw the man’s pant legs twitching. The roaches were swarming up his legs, underneath his pants. They were crawling onto his body under his clothes. Even his shadow against my wall seemed horribly, horribly wrong.
I turned and vomited. Mr. Blatti looked up.
I was hanging onto the doorknob as I retched a second time. A lone roach scurried past me from the hall and into the studio; running late, perhaps, for its appointment with Mr. Blatti. Mickey Groat stepped on it instead. It made a crunching sound.
“Well, Shelly, don’t you look pretty,” Mr. Blatti said to me in that wonderful, resonant voice. He favored me with a smile from across the room. Then he looked at Groat and his voice fell in volume. “Sorry, fella. We’re done here, and you’re too late.”
Groat spit a thin brown stream onto my white floor, that pig. “Now, you know you ain’t welcome here. You’re on my turf. I got me a signed contract to rid this house of vermin, and you’re standing in it right now. That means you count.”
He shook one trouser leg and straightened his pleats as he prepared to stand up. No roaches were visible. “I’ll be leaving in just a moment.”
“Too late,” said Groat as he raised his chemical sprayer.
“No it isn’t,” said Mr. Blatti, and sprung upwards from his chair. The leap should have been impossible, but he cleared fifteen feet effortlessly and landed next to both Groat and myself. Blatti reached forward and slapped Groat with the back of his hand. The scrawny exterminator flew across the studio and slammed into a stack of completed artwork. Canvas and broken frames scattered under the impact. “I don’t like actual exterminators,” said Blatti as he picked up his chemical tank and walked towards Groat. “You give us a bad name and kill our recruits. We’re efficient. We’re polite. We clean every single vermin out of a person’s house, and we don’t charge them much for the privilege. Tell me, is that so bad?”
Groat pushed himself off the floor and looked up. His hat was askew and his nose was bleeding. “What you do with ‘em afterwards?”
“We let them join,” said Mr. Blatti, “we let them get smart.” He fired his chemical sprayer into Groat’s face. Brown fluid hissed. Throughout the attack I could still smell Mr. Blatti’s cologne, and I swear no one has ever looked as good as that horrific man did standing in my studio. I knew he was probably covered with roaches underneath his clothing, and I still wanted to sleep with him. That didn’t stop me from hitting him in the back of the head with a wooden easel, though. There was a crunch as if from snapping chitin. The sprayer fell from his hand and spun across the floor, spraying a fine mist of liquid as it went.
“You stop that!” I screamed. “Stop it now!” Groat covered his face with his hand and writhed on the floor in front of me. Mr. Blatti regained his balance and turned around. I gazed into those blue, blue eyes, and this time something seemed strange. A shadow in the left eye? No, something inside his eye, peering out the pupil. A cockroach. There was a cockroach in the man’s eye, using it as a window onto the world. Impossible. I felt my knees lock as blood rushed from my head.
Slowly Mr. Blatti smiled, nodded, and fondly patted my face. A roach scurried out of his sleeve and into my hair, and that broke me from my near faint. I pushed away. “I’m sorry, Shelly. We won’t have time today. I was hoping, but oh well.” He shoved past me back into the house. By then I had Groat dragged over to the large sink and was spraying his face and neck with water. I didn’t even hear the white van pulling away.
* * *
Piratecat
Sesquipedalian
* * *
“And what exactly do you intend to tell the police?” he asked peevishly.
“I still think you should see a doctor,” I said.
“Nah,” said Groat, “that weren’t actually poison, mostly.” He pronounced it ‘pizzen.’ “Jes some sort of acidy bug juice. You mostly got it off in time. Look what it done to my hat, though.” He sadly held his ruined baseball hat in both hands. You could see the mark on his forehead where the band had been. Even his ratty little mustache was singed. He looked furious.
I shoved a mug of coffee into Groat’s hands and sat down with my own. I was still shaking. “What the hell just happened there? That son of a bitch had a roach in his eyeball!”
Groat took one last sad look at his hat before spinning it across the room into the garbage. “That there was one smart bug. A whole mess of bugs all thinking as one, actually. They’re technically Pacific roaches. Bastards came out through California a decade ago. They’ve been establishing themselves ever since.”
“No,” I said, in denial. “That was a man.” A very good looking man, I had previously thought. Now the concept disgusted me.
“Nah. You saw a host. There’s a brainy bunch of them roaches running the show somewhere nearby, and they send agents out to do the work for ‘em. I killed a brood last year in the bottom of some old lady’s basement. The humans they walk around in are still alive for a while, but the roaches use ‘em kinda like school buses, burrowing in and taking over in order to get places in the sunlight.”
“That’s pretty nasty,” I said.
“You don’t want to see one of ‘em after the human shell gets abandoned. They don’t live long after that. They don’t live long, period, but the colony uses them smell gland things to disguise what they really are.”
“Pheromones?”
“Sure, that sounds right. Them things. They use ‘em to distract people. But hell, you smoke long enough like I have and you got no sense of smell left.” He winked at me, the entire side of his filthy face screwing up in one big awkward wink.
I shuddered despite myself. “I don’t understand any of this. It isn’t some bad movie. People don’t get taken over by bugs.”
He eyed me. “You’re kidding, right? There’re all kinds of parasites that do just that. And I’ll tell ya, if God ain’t a beetle himself, then he sure does love the little bastards. There’s over five thousand different types of roaches alone. And they been around almost three hundred million years. Humans been around for something like 200,000 years. That means that got...” He did the math laboriously. “299, 800,000 years on us. You think they ain’t been evolving?”
“Holy crap,” I said, and sat down. I didn’t want to think about what my art would be like after this. Goodbye prior world view with still lives and landscapes, hello horrible insect paintings that no one would buy. Except the bugs, of course. They’d probably love them.
“Exactly. I got told about this by the man who trained me. He was drunk, so it may be hooey. But he told me about this island chain in the South Pacific where these roaches have pretty much husked everyone out. That’s where they’re from. He found out about it because he was sailing past and thought he saw a cable car system. Turned out to be giant egg sacks dangling from cables instead. This guy claimed the island was half carved stone monastery and half organic insect hive, chock full of the things.” Groat paused. “I never saw the guy sober, but that’s why he hired me on and trained me. I guess I can’t blame him.”
“That’s awful,” I said. I should have been picturing what it would be like if an infestation like this could be real. Instead, I was brooding on what my life might be like the day after tomorrow. I had been miserable. Was this going to be any better?
“My dream,” said Groat, “is to go there some day. Just me and my flame thrower and my chemical pack. And cleanse the whole place.”
“Seriously?” I asked. I noticed that for the first time he wasn’t slouching.
“Hell yeah,” he said. He checked his watch. “And speaking of which, I gotta go and track down that bastard. If I get him, I’ll send you a bill.”
I was curious. “How are you planning to find him?”
Groat smiled, revealing what was left of his teeth. “Gotta out-think a roach if you want to win. The nice thing about Las Vegas is that it’s got a lot of damn stupid stores for very rich people. I went into that fake spy store and bought a wireless camera. Fiber something. Put it on his van, and I got a monitor in my truck. I can see where he is.”
“You’re kidding?” I asked. I wouldn’t have expected it of him.
“Nope. Be smarter than the prey, that’s the secret to being a good exterminator. I should be able to find him now, or at least where he parked.”
I had made up my mind without ever realizing it. Screw brooding over the past. I stood up. “I’m coming with you.”
I expected him to protest, to make a token objection before accepting my invaluable help. Or maybe I expected him to outright refuse and that we’d fight about it before I stowed away in the back of his car. Not so much. Instead, he looked at my breasts.
“Sure. You got any hotter clothing you can wear, though? I gotta look at you, you might as well be scenic.”
“You’re a real prince, Mickey.” I disappeared to go throw on jeans, a baseball hat and a very concealing normal shirt. I grabbed work gloves as well. I’d help kill them, but I didn’t want to be touching any roaches.
* * *
Just under an hour later we were on the road, Mickey Groat stroking his slightly acid-burned hair and driving while I called out what I saw in the small color monitor. The view from the pinhole camera was so wide-angle that it was difficult to read. “He’s on the strip,” I reported. “Driving past New York New York right now, and heading down past the other casinos.” We drove slowly but dangerously, Groat honking for other drivers to get out of his way even as he swerved lanes. The inside of the station wagon smelled like unwashed body and bug spray. Revolting.
I tried not to realize that I couldn’t ever remember feeling more alive.
We made our way past the tourist areas. We finally pulled up down the street from the Brody Bug Removal, just outside a half-built casino on the outskirts of the city. The Pacific Islander Resort Hotel and Casino had planned to be huge, but they ran out of financial backers not long after they got started. Now it was just a rude framework of rusting girders that thrust up out of the desert soil. We were near a few support buildings, including a good-sized machine shop that had been built first to support the defunct casino. Groat and I got out of the car.
“How are we going to handle this?” I asked. “What should I expect?”
“Weeeell,” he mused, “they won’t try to kill us. Instead, they’re probably gonna try to burrow up inside us and husk us out. So try not to let ‘em do that.” My knees turned to water, but Groat didn’t seem upset in the least. As far as he was concerned this was just another day of work. “I got me a few tricks up my sleeves, so let’s do some set-up. Then we walk right in and kill any bugs we can find.” He paused. “If we’re using poison and they’re using pheromones, you may find this useful.” He handed me a breathing filter.
When we were finally ready to enter I figured he’s kick in the office door, like a cop or a secret agent. Instead he just turned the handle. It was unlocked. We stepped into hot dimness. No air conditioning here. No power, either. The smell was dry and awful. I thought I could hear high-pitched clattering just at the edge of my hearing.
“Hello?” I asked tentatively. “Anybody?” I looked around the drab little reception area, chemical sprayer raised. There was no one, but I saw signs that people had been here very recently. Groat moved around the outside of the room, looking for living bugs and living people.
He pushed open a door and snorted. I came to see. There was a man lying unconscious in the small bathroom. He had actually ripped the flimsy plumbing out of the wall when he fell over. His pants were around his ankles. I nudged him with my foot. It was Mr. Blatti.
“Is he dead?” I asked in revulsion. “What happened to him?”
“Not dead, but dying. He’s been husked out by the roaches,” said Groat. He extended one grubby hand and pushed the once-handsome man off the toilet. He fell bonelessly. With his clothes in disarray, it was easy to see that his backside was a mass of red welts up and down the spine. Burrow holes made by insects? He was breathing, but without the roaches to give him animus he wouldn’t be for very long. I couldn’t see how I had ever found him attractive. Pheromones, indeed.
I moved backwards, breathing deeply and trying not to retch into my air filter. I had been doing entirely too much of that recently. “Wonder where they all went?” Groat said amiably, as he wandered towards the other office door.
“Downstairs,” said a familiar voice, and the door swung open on a sea of roaches. The bugs were literally pushing the door ajar. Once they succeeded they all scuttled back into the shadows of the medium sized office. I could hear their feet moving on the tile. “Hello, Shelly. We think we remember you.”
It was Brian.
“Remember us? We found him today, Shelly. After you spurned us. It’s easy to find things in this city by smell. So when we suspected you might come after us with your exterminator, we thought someone who had mated with should tell you not to.” Brian’s voice was tinged by a horrible buzzing. He had gained some weight, I saw. That cocktail waitress hadn’t been good for him. “Perhaps you still wish to have congress with this human? If so, we advise you to exit now and leave the Brood in peace, and you may do so.”
“He’s already dead, isn’t he?” I asked Groat. The Brood answered instead, through Brian’s familiar voice.
“He maintains the semblance of life. We have more husks than we have fully trained drivers, so we need not pilot him if you prefer him for yourself.” He got up. His mouth sagged open, and I could see the brown squirming of a thousand bugs filling his airway. He cracked his knuckles, a very Brian thing to do. My heart broke.
“Kill it,” I whispered.
“Glad to,” said Groat, and he opened up with his flame thrower.
The flames filled the air with heavy black smoke, the sound of roaches popping in the sudden heat reminding me of microwave popcorn. I had a chemical sprayer and was pumping clouds of toxin towards Brian’s body. His skin was burned, sure, but he was still moving; all the roaches inside him were probably protected from the heat by his skin. He grabbed the blotter off the desk and thrust it shield-like at Groat. The flame hit it and bounced backwards, catching Groat in the face for just a brief second until Groat could remove his finger from the trigger. “God DAMN it!” my exterminator wailed, staggering backwards with his hair partially on fire. A thousand tiny compound eyes watched him fall as the roaches began to emerge from Brian’s husk. The body sagged slightly, like a balloon leaking air, but then it straightened and turned towards me. “Shelly,” it crooned in a buzzing voice, “I think I’ll like to ride your body next.”
I didn’t think. I just shoved the end of my sprayer nozzle into his mouth and started pumping.
The results were horrible. The body had taken an involuntary breath of air as I started to pump, and his skin started to ripple as the poison hit the roaches inside. I kept pumping. Welts began to appear in his skin as the roaches tried to escape their sudden toxic prison. I kept pumping.
It didn’t look anything like Brian any more by the time I was done. A few surviving roaches abandoned ship and streamed away into the hall. Thousands more were killed. The corpse lay on the tile, lumpy and twitching. I turned back to Groat.
“This is not my day!” Groat said, pissed beyond belief. He had gotten the fire out with no more than first degree burns, maybe second, but all his facial hair and most of his haircut were burned away. What was left was an ugly patchwork of untanned skin and frizzy hair stubble. How a man who looked like he did could have so much vanity I’ll never know. He ran his hand over his head. “You know how long I’ve had this haircut for?”
“Fifteen years?”
“Fifteen years.” He looked surprised that I could guess.
“Well, shaved heads are in.” I was still panting through my respirator mask. “We need to finish this.” We followed the fleeing roaches down a set of stairs and into the metal shop. Dried, husked-out bodies of humans lay everywhere; it seemed that when they dropped they were immediately eaten or used as nests. The floor in front of us was clear at first. Then slowly roaches scuttled in behind us. Twenty feet into the huge room I looked behind me, and realized that we were completely surrounded by a skittering sea of bugs. The way opened up in front of us, making a path.
“Not yet,” whispered Groat, seeing me start to panic. “We want the center.”
“I think it’s steering us,” I whispered back. I had the chemical sprayer clutched tightly in both hands.
“Good,” he said, and we both walked. The beetles settled in a moving circle around us, seething and squirming over one another. The chittering from the bugs was what I remember the most. Then we turned a corner and saw their king.
The bugs had clearly been using their husked humans with a purpose. They had been building. The statue in front of us seemed to be a bronze man eight feet tall, but that illusion faded once you looked at him closely. Every inch of his frame was made from a metal insect. I couldn’t tell whether they were real insects dipped in bronze and soldered on, or whether they were cunningly crafted directly onto the statue. Either way the results were breath-taking.
“Humans.” The voice arose from the buzzing wings of thousands of roaches around us, not from any human vocal cords.
“I’ve sealed yer death,” said Groat calmly. “I got me a whole mess of poison gas bombs hidden in the ventilation system. A mixture of Talstar Concentrate and Niban G. I press a button, and every single one goes off at once. You’ll never get a roach out alive.”
“You mean these bombs?” The buzzing rippled around us. Then eight toxic gas grenades were carried into the room on the backs of roaches, circled us once, and were carried out.
“Huh. Yeah?” said Groat. He had been pumping the button. Nothing had happened.
The voice vibrated the air. I could actually feel it on my skin. “They have been disabled. You have to out-think a human if you wish to win in this town.” The clear circle around us closed slightly as the bugs leaned inwards. Groat actually laughed.
“Point taken. This the point where I try to take you with me?”
I interrupted, my heart hammering. This was leading nowhere good. “First,” I said, “that is gorgeous armor. Is it protection?”
The roaches rustled their wings. “You must take the semblance of man if you wish to seize the rights of man.”
“The rights?” I blinked. “You want the rights of humanity? What, are you stupid?” The roaches rustled, and I continued. “I’ve been doing a lot of brooding over the last six months. I’ve thought about life, and death, and what it means to be worthwhile. And let me tell you, you don’t want it. Right now you achieve. You grow. You learn. Humans try to as well, sure. But if you try to ape humanity, or…” I lost my train of thought for a minute. “Sorry, ape is a bad word. If you try to mimic humanity, you’ll attract nothing but hatred and fear. People who would otherwise never know you existed will try to destroy you and your home. You will gain nothing, and maybe lose everything. But now? Separate from humans? You live in millions of human homes with no one knowing it. You’ve been around something like 1500 times longer than mankind has. You’ll be around when we’re gone. So please learn from us, sure, but don’t try to take from us. That doesn’t make any sense at all.”
Groat was staring at me. The metal king gazed expressionlessly as well, but I knew that all the cockroaches had heard what I’d said. I wasn’t sure if I was dooming humanity or saving them. It was all I could think of to do.
“And do you want jobs? You don’t want jobs. We have all these human constructs that have distracted us. Please, go back to your island and focus on that which makes you better, not that which makes you more like humans. Learn philosophy. Improve your race. Trust me, you’ll be doing yourself a favor.”
I went on like that for minutes, not sure when or how to stop. Groat clearly couldn’t believe that I was trying to talk sense into something as alien as a roach. But I figured I might have a chance. Certainly it was a better chance than trying to fight. After I finished, the cockroaches inside the metal armor sent up a vast hum, and all the roaches around us echoed and amplified the call. It was loud enough to hurt. I had the feeling that something was being decided, but neither of us could know what. Finally, the roaches abruptly fell silent.
“We will withdraw and consider,” a low buzzing said. “Perhaps you have wisdom. But we will take the predator with us.” They were on Groat before either of us could do anything. He never had a chance to trigger the flame thrower. My chemical sprayer was out of poison from the previous attack by Brian. They just swarmed him, and I couldn’t get there without getting swarmed myself. I didn’t stop screaming until a long, long time after Groat had already fallen silent and been carried away.
* * *
They let me go and fell back into the shadows, and I went back to my life. The building was empty when I sent the police there on some wild, fabricated story. My house has been clean of roaches ever since. It’s been years. I managed to convince myself that this never happened. Until now.
I’ve been seeing cockroaches in my house all day.
I think they want me for something. I don’t know if I’ll be able to run far enough; roaches live on every single continent, I’m told. I’m trying to mimic Groat and show no fear, but I’m not sure what’s going to happen to me. Do I want to know?
I hear clattering wings in the next room. It doesn’t matter what I want. I think I’m about to find out. Wish me luck.
“And what exactly do you intend to tell the police?” he asked peevishly.
“I still think you should see a doctor,” I said.
“Nah,” said Groat, “that weren’t actually poison, mostly.” He pronounced it ‘pizzen.’ “Jes some sort of acidy bug juice. You mostly got it off in time. Look what it done to my hat, though.” He sadly held his ruined baseball hat in both hands. You could see the mark on his forehead where the band had been. Even his ratty little mustache was singed. He looked furious.
I shoved a mug of coffee into Groat’s hands and sat down with my own. I was still shaking. “What the hell just happened there? That son of a bitch had a roach in his eyeball!”
Groat took one last sad look at his hat before spinning it across the room into the garbage. “That there was one smart bug. A whole mess of bugs all thinking as one, actually. They’re technically Pacific roaches. Bastards came out through California a decade ago. They’ve been establishing themselves ever since.”
“No,” I said, in denial. “That was a man.” A very good looking man, I had previously thought. Now the concept disgusted me.
“Nah. You saw a host. There’s a brainy bunch of them roaches running the show somewhere nearby, and they send agents out to do the work for ‘em. I killed a brood last year in the bottom of some old lady’s basement. The humans they walk around in are still alive for a while, but the roaches use ‘em kinda like school buses, burrowing in and taking over in order to get places in the sunlight.”
“That’s pretty nasty,” I said.
“You don’t want to see one of ‘em after the human shell gets abandoned. They don’t live long after that. They don’t live long, period, but the colony uses them smell gland things to disguise what they really are.”
“Pheromones?”
“Sure, that sounds right. Them things. They use ‘em to distract people. But hell, you smoke long enough like I have and you got no sense of smell left.” He winked at me, the entire side of his filthy face screwing up in one big awkward wink.
I shuddered despite myself. “I don’t understand any of this. It isn’t some bad movie. People don’t get taken over by bugs.”
He eyed me. “You’re kidding, right? There’re all kinds of parasites that do just that. And I’ll tell ya, if God ain’t a beetle himself, then he sure does love the little bastards. There’s over five thousand different types of roaches alone. And they been around almost three hundred million years. Humans been around for something like 200,000 years. That means that got...” He did the math laboriously. “299, 800,000 years on us. You think they ain’t been evolving?”
“Holy crap,” I said, and sat down. I didn’t want to think about what my art would be like after this. Goodbye prior world view with still lives and landscapes, hello horrible insect paintings that no one would buy. Except the bugs, of course. They’d probably love them.
“Exactly. I got told about this by the man who trained me. He was drunk, so it may be hooey. But he told me about this island chain in the South Pacific where these roaches have pretty much husked everyone out. That’s where they’re from. He found out about it because he was sailing past and thought he saw a cable car system. Turned out to be giant egg sacks dangling from cables instead. This guy claimed the island was half carved stone monastery and half organic insect hive, chock full of the things.” Groat paused. “I never saw the guy sober, but that’s why he hired me on and trained me. I guess I can’t blame him.”
“That’s awful,” I said. I should have been picturing what it would be like if an infestation like this could be real. Instead, I was brooding on what my life might be like the day after tomorrow. I had been miserable. Was this going to be any better?
“My dream,” said Groat, “is to go there some day. Just me and my flame thrower and my chemical pack. And cleanse the whole place.”
“Seriously?” I asked. I noticed that for the first time he wasn’t slouching.
“Hell yeah,” he said. He checked his watch. “And speaking of which, I gotta go and track down that bastard. If I get him, I’ll send you a bill.”
I was curious. “How are you planning to find him?”
Groat smiled, revealing what was left of his teeth. “Gotta out-think a roach if you want to win. The nice thing about Las Vegas is that it’s got a lot of damn stupid stores for very rich people. I went into that fake spy store and bought a wireless camera. Fiber something. Put it on his van, and I got a monitor in my truck. I can see where he is.”
“You’re kidding?” I asked. I wouldn’t have expected it of him.
“Nope. Be smarter than the prey, that’s the secret to being a good exterminator. I should be able to find him now, or at least where he parked.”
I had made up my mind without ever realizing it. Screw brooding over the past. I stood up. “I’m coming with you.”
I expected him to protest, to make a token objection before accepting my invaluable help. Or maybe I expected him to outright refuse and that we’d fight about it before I stowed away in the back of his car. Not so much. Instead, he looked at my breasts.
“Sure. You got any hotter clothing you can wear, though? I gotta look at you, you might as well be scenic.”
“You’re a real prince, Mickey.” I disappeared to go throw on jeans, a baseball hat and a very concealing normal shirt. I grabbed work gloves as well. I’d help kill them, but I didn’t want to be touching any roaches.
* * *
Just under an hour later we were on the road, Mickey Groat stroking his slightly acid-burned hair and driving while I called out what I saw in the small color monitor. The view from the pinhole camera was so wide-angle that it was difficult to read. “He’s on the strip,” I reported. “Driving past New York New York right now, and heading down past the other casinos.” We drove slowly but dangerously, Groat honking for other drivers to get out of his way even as he swerved lanes. The inside of the station wagon smelled like unwashed body and bug spray. Revolting.
I tried not to realize that I couldn’t ever remember feeling more alive.
We made our way past the tourist areas. We finally pulled up down the street from the Brody Bug Removal, just outside a half-built casino on the outskirts of the city. The Pacific Islander Resort Hotel and Casino had planned to be huge, but they ran out of financial backers not long after they got started. Now it was just a rude framework of rusting girders that thrust up out of the desert soil. We were near a few support buildings, including a good-sized machine shop that had been built first to support the defunct casino. Groat and I got out of the car.
“How are we going to handle this?” I asked. “What should I expect?”
“Weeeell,” he mused, “they won’t try to kill us. Instead, they’re probably gonna try to burrow up inside us and husk us out. So try not to let ‘em do that.” My knees turned to water, but Groat didn’t seem upset in the least. As far as he was concerned this was just another day of work. “I got me a few tricks up my sleeves, so let’s do some set-up. Then we walk right in and kill any bugs we can find.” He paused. “If we’re using poison and they’re using pheromones, you may find this useful.” He handed me a breathing filter.
When we were finally ready to enter I figured he’s kick in the office door, like a cop or a secret agent. Instead he just turned the handle. It was unlocked. We stepped into hot dimness. No air conditioning here. No power, either. The smell was dry and awful. I thought I could hear high-pitched clattering just at the edge of my hearing.
“Hello?” I asked tentatively. “Anybody?” I looked around the drab little reception area, chemical sprayer raised. There was no one, but I saw signs that people had been here very recently. Groat moved around the outside of the room, looking for living bugs and living people.
He pushed open a door and snorted. I came to see. There was a man lying unconscious in the small bathroom. He had actually ripped the flimsy plumbing out of the wall when he fell over. His pants were around his ankles. I nudged him with my foot. It was Mr. Blatti.
“Is he dead?” I asked in revulsion. “What happened to him?”
“Not dead, but dying. He’s been husked out by the roaches,” said Groat. He extended one grubby hand and pushed the once-handsome man off the toilet. He fell bonelessly. With his clothes in disarray, it was easy to see that his backside was a mass of red welts up and down the spine. Burrow holes made by insects? He was breathing, but without the roaches to give him animus he wouldn’t be for very long. I couldn’t see how I had ever found him attractive. Pheromones, indeed.
I moved backwards, breathing deeply and trying not to retch into my air filter. I had been doing entirely too much of that recently. “Wonder where they all went?” Groat said amiably, as he wandered towards the other office door.
“Downstairs,” said a familiar voice, and the door swung open on a sea of roaches. The bugs were literally pushing the door ajar. Once they succeeded they all scuttled back into the shadows of the medium sized office. I could hear their feet moving on the tile. “Hello, Shelly. We think we remember you.”
It was Brian.
“Remember us? We found him today, Shelly. After you spurned us. It’s easy to find things in this city by smell. So when we suspected you might come after us with your exterminator, we thought someone who had mated with should tell you not to.” Brian’s voice was tinged by a horrible buzzing. He had gained some weight, I saw. That cocktail waitress hadn’t been good for him. “Perhaps you still wish to have congress with this human? If so, we advise you to exit now and leave the Brood in peace, and you may do so.”
“He’s already dead, isn’t he?” I asked Groat. The Brood answered instead, through Brian’s familiar voice.
“He maintains the semblance of life. We have more husks than we have fully trained drivers, so we need not pilot him if you prefer him for yourself.” He got up. His mouth sagged open, and I could see the brown squirming of a thousand bugs filling his airway. He cracked his knuckles, a very Brian thing to do. My heart broke.
“Kill it,” I whispered.
“Glad to,” said Groat, and he opened up with his flame thrower.
The flames filled the air with heavy black smoke, the sound of roaches popping in the sudden heat reminding me of microwave popcorn. I had a chemical sprayer and was pumping clouds of toxin towards Brian’s body. His skin was burned, sure, but he was still moving; all the roaches inside him were probably protected from the heat by his skin. He grabbed the blotter off the desk and thrust it shield-like at Groat. The flame hit it and bounced backwards, catching Groat in the face for just a brief second until Groat could remove his finger from the trigger. “God DAMN it!” my exterminator wailed, staggering backwards with his hair partially on fire. A thousand tiny compound eyes watched him fall as the roaches began to emerge from Brian’s husk. The body sagged slightly, like a balloon leaking air, but then it straightened and turned towards me. “Shelly,” it crooned in a buzzing voice, “I think I’ll like to ride your body next.”
I didn’t think. I just shoved the end of my sprayer nozzle into his mouth and started pumping.
The results were horrible. The body had taken an involuntary breath of air as I started to pump, and his skin started to ripple as the poison hit the roaches inside. I kept pumping. Welts began to appear in his skin as the roaches tried to escape their sudden toxic prison. I kept pumping.
It didn’t look anything like Brian any more by the time I was done. A few surviving roaches abandoned ship and streamed away into the hall. Thousands more were killed. The corpse lay on the tile, lumpy and twitching. I turned back to Groat.
“This is not my day!” Groat said, pissed beyond belief. He had gotten the fire out with no more than first degree burns, maybe second, but all his facial hair and most of his haircut were burned away. What was left was an ugly patchwork of untanned skin and frizzy hair stubble. How a man who looked like he did could have so much vanity I’ll never know. He ran his hand over his head. “You know how long I’ve had this haircut for?”
“Fifteen years?”
“Fifteen years.” He looked surprised that I could guess.
“Well, shaved heads are in.” I was still panting through my respirator mask. “We need to finish this.” We followed the fleeing roaches down a set of stairs and into the metal shop. Dried, husked-out bodies of humans lay everywhere; it seemed that when they dropped they were immediately eaten or used as nests. The floor in front of us was clear at first. Then slowly roaches scuttled in behind us. Twenty feet into the huge room I looked behind me, and realized that we were completely surrounded by a skittering sea of bugs. The way opened up in front of us, making a path.
“Not yet,” whispered Groat, seeing me start to panic. “We want the center.”
“I think it’s steering us,” I whispered back. I had the chemical sprayer clutched tightly in both hands.
“Good,” he said, and we both walked. The beetles settled in a moving circle around us, seething and squirming over one another. The chittering from the bugs was what I remember the most. Then we turned a corner and saw their king.
The bugs had clearly been using their husked humans with a purpose. They had been building. The statue in front of us seemed to be a bronze man eight feet tall, but that illusion faded once you looked at him closely. Every inch of his frame was made from a metal insect. I couldn’t tell whether they were real insects dipped in bronze and soldered on, or whether they were cunningly crafted directly onto the statue. Either way the results were breath-taking.
“Humans.” The voice arose from the buzzing wings of thousands of roaches around us, not from any human vocal cords.
“I’ve sealed yer death,” said Groat calmly. “I got me a whole mess of poison gas bombs hidden in the ventilation system. A mixture of Talstar Concentrate and Niban G. I press a button, and every single one goes off at once. You’ll never get a roach out alive.”
“You mean these bombs?” The buzzing rippled around us. Then eight toxic gas grenades were carried into the room on the backs of roaches, circled us once, and were carried out.
“Huh. Yeah?” said Groat. He had been pumping the button. Nothing had happened.
The voice vibrated the air. I could actually feel it on my skin. “They have been disabled. You have to out-think a human if you wish to win in this town.” The clear circle around us closed slightly as the bugs leaned inwards. Groat actually laughed.
“Point taken. This the point where I try to take you with me?”
I interrupted, my heart hammering. This was leading nowhere good. “First,” I said, “that is gorgeous armor. Is it protection?”
The roaches rustled their wings. “You must take the semblance of man if you wish to seize the rights of man.”
“The rights?” I blinked. “You want the rights of humanity? What, are you stupid?” The roaches rustled, and I continued. “I’ve been doing a lot of brooding over the last six months. I’ve thought about life, and death, and what it means to be worthwhile. And let me tell you, you don’t want it. Right now you achieve. You grow. You learn. Humans try to as well, sure. But if you try to ape humanity, or…” I lost my train of thought for a minute. “Sorry, ape is a bad word. If you try to mimic humanity, you’ll attract nothing but hatred and fear. People who would otherwise never know you existed will try to destroy you and your home. You will gain nothing, and maybe lose everything. But now? Separate from humans? You live in millions of human homes with no one knowing it. You’ve been around something like 1500 times longer than mankind has. You’ll be around when we’re gone. So please learn from us, sure, but don’t try to take from us. That doesn’t make any sense at all.”
Groat was staring at me. The metal king gazed expressionlessly as well, but I knew that all the cockroaches had heard what I’d said. I wasn’t sure if I was dooming humanity or saving them. It was all I could think of to do.
“And do you want jobs? You don’t want jobs. We have all these human constructs that have distracted us. Please, go back to your island and focus on that which makes you better, not that which makes you more like humans. Learn philosophy. Improve your race. Trust me, you’ll be doing yourself a favor.”
I went on like that for minutes, not sure when or how to stop. Groat clearly couldn’t believe that I was trying to talk sense into something as alien as a roach. But I figured I might have a chance. Certainly it was a better chance than trying to fight. After I finished, the cockroaches inside the metal armor sent up a vast hum, and all the roaches around us echoed and amplified the call. It was loud enough to hurt. I had the feeling that something was being decided, but neither of us could know what. Finally, the roaches abruptly fell silent.
“We will withdraw and consider,” a low buzzing said. “Perhaps you have wisdom. But we will take the predator with us.” They were on Groat before either of us could do anything. He never had a chance to trigger the flame thrower. My chemical sprayer was out of poison from the previous attack by Brian. They just swarmed him, and I couldn’t get there without getting swarmed myself. I didn’t stop screaming until a long, long time after Groat had already fallen silent and been carried away.
* * *
They let me go and fell back into the shadows, and I went back to my life. The building was empty when I sent the police there on some wild, fabricated story. My house has been clean of roaches ever since. It’s been years. I managed to convince myself that this never happened. Until now.
I’ve been seeing cockroaches in my house all day.
I think they want me for something. I don’t know if I’ll be able to run far enough; roaches live on every single continent, I’m told. I’m trying to mimic Groat and show no fear, but I’m not sure what’s going to happen to me. Do I want to know?
I hear clattering wings in the next room. It doesn’t matter what I want. I think I’m about to find out. Wish me luck.
Berandor
lunatic
Piratecat
[sblock]One problem I have is writing a story from a personal narrative so that it is really infused by that person’s character. I tend to get too matter-of-fact in my descriptions, I think.
You really, really don't share this problem with me. And your use of the two hatless guys is awe-riffic. Great story. I'm still hoping to beat you, but I'm more hoping to beat you next time
[/sblock]
[sblock]One problem I have is writing a story from a personal narrative so that it is really infused by that person’s character. I tend to get too matter-of-fact in my descriptions, I think.
You really, really don't share this problem with me. And your use of the two hatless guys is awe-riffic. Great story. I'm still hoping to beat you, but I'm more hoping to beat you next time
[/sblock]
Piratecat
Sesquipedalian
Berandor:
[sblock]Wow, the world you've created! Chapter one and two tell me that there's a huge story underneath the story you're telling, and I want to know all of it. Very nice. While reading I realized that I wish this had been the plot to Matrix 2 and 3 instead of the actual movies; this is much better. Good use of the circular picture to define the nanotubes.
I have no idea who's going to win this one -- but if it's you, I'll cheer you all the way.[/sblock]
[sblock]Wow, the world you've created! Chapter one and two tell me that there's a huge story underneath the story you're telling, and I want to know all of it. Very nice. While reading I realized that I wish this had been the plot to Matrix 2 and 3 instead of the actual movies; this is much better. Good use of the circular picture to define the nanotubes.
I have no idea who's going to win this one -- but if it's you, I'll cheer you all the way.[/sblock]
