Oh Bugger

A shrieking banshee cry pierced an otherwise tranquil and peaceful evening. It seemed, to an uninitiated party, that somebody was being brutally murdered and simultaneously witnessing a murder. The victim's and a witnesse's horrors combined and were released in a wail of untold agony, dread and repulsion. So it was no wonder he rushed breathlessly to the bedroom where, as he was convinced, the bloodbath was taking place. There, he witnessed a little Japanese American apparently trying to decimate a 5 cm cockroach by emitting a high-pitched scream in its general direction. Seemingly it worked, as the cockroach chose to charge toward the 86 kg human male who had just entered the bedroom, in fear for its life, rather than remain within striking distance of the decidedly deadly and dangerous owner of the voice box.

The voice box having suddenly malfunctioned, the little Japanese American laid on top of the bed, no extremity remotely close to the polished wood floor, mute and pointing a quivering index finger in the direction where the disgusting thing has skittered off to. Prompted by the increasingly agitated urging of the 86 kg male, the voice box magically began to generate hushed and uneven sounds, attempting to construct complete and coherent sentences in conjunction with the cockroach traumatized brain, and describe the full details of the past few seconds that seemed like eternity. Really. As she gathered her jumbled thoughts, without hesitation he began rifling through her few belongings that sat on the floor (that is going to change, no doubt). It took a few tries for him to realise she was attempting to convey that it could be anywhere in the apartment by now, but most certainly was no longer in the bedroom.

From where she gathered the courage she did not know - perhaps the presence of the fearless 86 kg male - but she tentatively braved setting foot outside the bedroom, in search of the prehistoric pathogenic Blattella or Periplaneta or whatever it was, with the intention of once again calling on the male to bludgeon it with whatever means necessary. She carefully opened the narrow linen closet, where there were boxes and other items stuffed sufficiently at the bottom that it would have taken more effort than she was willing to exert at the time to extract ... so she vigorously kicked at the boxes in hopes that it would flush out the revolting brown bug. But nothing.

Venturing further into the apartment, the male already ahead of her and doing some investigating of his own, it struck her how ironic it was that they chose, and actually pursued, an apartment with dark polished wood floors, the perfect camoflauge for a dark shiny nasty little creature. Sigh ... but no sooner than she had contemplated and cursed their home-hunting criteria, she noticed he had returned to the closet, and was extricating a box and a sizeable black duffel bag; and within a nanosecond exclaimed "here it is!" or "I found it!" or "suffer and die a horrible excruciating death you hideous foul loathesome minion of hell!" Or something. And he stomped it with his black-socked foot, its innards spurting out the sides, she half expecting them to be slimy green and burn a hole through the previously desirable dark wood floor, right down to the car park.

Let that be a lesson to its brethren.