The Harbinger

The other night I was lying in bed, wearing my elastic head lamp, reading a book. I do this most nights to help put me to sleep. The bedroom is very quiet, with only the faintest steady noise coming from the ceiling fan as it runs on low speed.

Although the story was really getting exciting, I was getting drowsy when I heard a clickety click click click coming from the window a foot and a half away from the other side of the bed. I have wooden blinds and I quickly determined that the sound I was hearing was a small creature moving around on these blinds. Aside I lay my book, to investigate the intrusion. Its movement caught my eye, as it descended to the carpet on the floor. To my dismay, it was a large cockroach… I haven’t seen a cockroach in my house in ages!

It didn’t seem able to see my head lamp’s red l.e.d. bulbs spying it, as it was just slowly meandering on the floor, doing whatever roaches do. I rapidly looked around for something to smoosh it, but the only thing I could find was a tissue box on the nightstand on the guest side of the bed. I didn’t want to chance losing this intrusive bug by getting out of bed and searching for a shoe, so I grabbed the tissue box and brought it down upon the insect with as much force as I thought the box could handle. It scurried off to die.

Back to my book, wide awake from the excitement of the kill, and kept that way by the increasing pace of the story, I read and read, for perhaps another hour, when I noticed from my peripheral vision a pair of antennae. The cockroach had made its way up the bed and found its way to my head lamp.

Perhaps it wanted to see what I was reading, but more than likely that wasn’t the case. In the fraction of a second it took me to realize what I was seeing in my periphery, I also remembered hearing that roaches crawl on people while they sleep and eat from the corners their mouths or under fingernails.

It only took that fraction of a second to reach up and swat it with enough force to give myself a black eye. Fortunately, I didn’t hit my eye, but I was unsure of the accuracy of my blow in regards to my new guest.

This time, I got out of bed and turned on the lights. It was on the sheets next to where I was lying, but not dead! Not willing to lose the battle with this increasingly annoying house guest, I slap-grab-threw it with my bare hand, out of the bedroom, into the hallway where I immediately went to verify its demise. Of course, it was nowhere to be found!

I looked everywhere it could have possibly hidden, to no avail.

Back in bed (after a thorough hand washing) to read until I am calm enough to sleep again, which finally came around 12:30, and continued undisturbed until the alarm went off at 6:30.

Later that morning, as I was making my breakfast in the kitchen, guess who pays me a visit?

The end of this story came with a spatula. I hope he could smell the over-medium egg the spatula had just finished handling, before all life was snuffed out of him.

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