written by Blattella germanica, the common cockroach

Sometime in mid-July…

The frantic beeps of taxicab horns stab the steamy, late night air of an Atlantic City summer.  The dark apartment in a tall, brick highrise is seemingly devoid of life, but as we follow the dim streetlight through the tattered shade that covers the street facing window, we hear first a skittering noise and then pick up the gleam of the shiny outer forewings of the common cockroach.  We stay away, not interested in chasing this creature away, back to the dark recesses of the cabinets.  Instead we watch as the creature investigates what we notice, as our eyes adjust to the minimal light coming from the street to a cluttered, almost filthy apartment.

First our friend comes upon a box, flat and square; to the cockroach it smells of dead wood, but what is in it is what interests our little friend.  His long, slender antennae detect delectable lipids; what we recognize as grease – and a lot of it, I might add.  Our friend extends his jointed mouthparts and takes in the luxurious fats.  He is also attracted to the lone remaining piece of protein, round and red – if it knew what red was, but it knows it solely as protein… food.

We observe this tiny scavenger as it eagerly feeds and when sated, it moves on.  For safety, it crawls along the wall and encounters an object that smells like animal, but knows it is not.  It is surrounded by bits of solid, slick material – we recognize it as plastic, but our friend the Blattella knows not of plastic, nor would it recognize a Colorado Driver License, nor the press card for Northern Lights Park.

The roach scurries across the floor, over scattered sheets of paper – one of which, in big bold markings you’d recognize as letters, reads “DEN–ACY”.  Others have a scattering of such letters, arranged in combinations we understand as words.  Words such as “ownership” and “will” and “25%”.  Also words such as “Penny” and “gym” and “old man”.  Even long words, names you may recognize: “Chris Rodriguez” and “John Rodriguez” and “Topham”, which would probably do nothing but make our friend the Blattella hungry.

The cockroach races around a bright, spherical object with red markings – we would know there was blue dot on the other side.  Then it reaches a tall structure and begins to climb the leg and arm of what is only a couch.  To our friend, it may as well be the Empire State Building.  Here he finds a large creature; you see an overweight man in an unfortunately named garment, a wife beater, and dark slacks with the zipper down.  To the roach, this description means nothing.  To him the attire of this unshaven giant is meaningless; to the roach it is the smell of grease, the orts of dough and the sweet and sour odor of grape on his breath.  Across the snoring giant’s chest – a crumb; over the dense black curls of the hair on its chest – ah! Another bit of the delicious protein it found earlier.  Over its scrubby chin and onto the bushy moustache for another bit of nourishment, and down the other side to what is anatomically this creature’s shoulder – but of course the roach has no use for anatomy.

It gazes about the stark box of a room, tinted in yellow light peeking in through the windows.  One wall’s torn wallpaper hangs in a few spots; on another, a ragged piece of felt, triangular in form, celebrating what you might recognize as the 2007 PEBA Champions.  On yet a third wall, a calendar.  A cockroach has no need for a calendar, and the Blattella would not recognize the females of this creature’s species on the pages of this calendar, nor would it care that they wore not the clothing of this creature, nor any at all.

Finally the cockroach spies another body in the room; it had not seen this individual in the corner.  It sees the ropes, but has no comprehension of being tied up.  As it leaps from the giant to a table, the flashing box in front of it shows images the cockroaches primitive brain recognizes as copulation, but no smells of such are in the air – just sights and sounds.

As it scurries to the corner, it crosses a small gold piece of paper that looks like the triangle on the wall and a box that, in words the cockroach can’t read but we can, reads “Flame” and “DarkSide”.  The thin, frail body in the corner smells of death but moves of life, and if the cockroach had a memory like ours, it might recognize this individual as the one that it crossed on the plastic IDs.  Paper that clutters the floor surrounds this body as well, and as the cockroach slides into a bottle next to the body looking for drops of life-sustaining water, it crosses on a sheet that we read as “Missing Reporter Mystery Thickens”.

As our little friend moves to return from where he came, and as we slowly fade back out the window with decaying light, the cockroach climbs another table and over yet more scattered papers, and we read the one on top, folded so we only see some of its scattered markings.  “Dear Chris – It has been far too long, and I must see you now, for I can solve all your troubles.  Come to… I’m sure we can come to an amiable agreement.  Love, P.”  And, with that, the nefarious Blattella is gone into the night, and so are we…