Pest Control

This is a work of fiction. No real people, places or events were used. Copyright 2011 Plot Roach.

Pest Control

By Plot Roach

It all started when I moved into a crappy apartment. No one intentionally moves into one of these places, but somehow you always find yourself trapped in one. It looks nice from the outside with its trimmed trees and manicured lawn. Somehow the management company even arranged to keep interesting and happy people on hand to decorate the place like plastic human flamingoes. The kitchen is scrubbed, the toilet flushes and the walls are newly painted. Then you move in and the apartment’s Mr. Hyde comes out in the night and you are faced with an obnoxious reality: you just moved into a hell hole.

After a month of a dripping faucets, a running toilet and a series of mysterious moans and creeks coming from the walls, I decided that the place was not for me. Though it was in my price range, and in a “historical” part of the city -aka “rundown”. It was not worth the daily hassle of dealing with a shower that spit on me like a lisping epileptic instead of delivering and actual flow of water, the stomping of children’s’ feet as they ran up and down the stairs in their daily play, or the fierce looks I got from the old lady who lived next to me who hoarded cats and their used kitty litter.

The cockroaches were the final straw. I knew that I had a bad bug problem when they pillaged everything in the cupboards the first week I that was there. I asked the landlady to call the pest control guy who bombarded my little apartment with spray, bombs, gels and traps. All of it in vain, as the six legged intruders merely took a vacation another part of the complex before returning with a vengeance less than a week later. I tried borax powder, sticky traps and even live geckos, but while they seemed to thin the insect horde, they never really eliminated it.

Finally, I just plain gave up on the notion of having the apartment to myself. I no longer shuddered at the feeling of one crawling against my skin as it used me as a shortcut from one area of the place to another. I learned to turn the lights on in any room twenty minutes before entering in order to scare them into the shadows. I even managed to trap a few by leaving out half emptied bottles of cheap beer. They would crawl up the long necked bottle, where upon they would enter the container, drink the beer, get drunk and drown, unable to leave the slick-sided glass trap. It kept the poisons out of my home and at least when they died they went the way many a redneck man would envy.

I was at a restaurant with a friend when the most embarrassing act transpired: a roach crawled from my purse onto the table. I shrunk away in guilt as she swiftly crushed the beast with her water glass. Seeing my embarrassment, she simple shrugged saying: “It happens. Everyone’s got a bug problem now and again.”

A man from the next table overheard our conversation and eyed the corpse of my six legged intruder under the water glass. “I couldn’t help but overhearing that you have a ‘pest’ problem?”

If I could have crawled under the table, I would have. Instead I grew an even deeper shade of red. I found that I was so embarrassed that I couldn’t speak, I merely nodded to answer his question. “And you’ve tried all the traps, baits and poisons out there, huh?”

“Yes.”

“Have you tried natural predators?”

“Geckos, mostly.”

“Good for the small infestations, but not the major ones.”

“So what do you suggest?” my friend asked.

“How about a free bit of help.”

“And this will cost me what?” I asked. I knew that nothing comes for free.

“Only the chance to prove my worth as an exterminator.”

“Uh huh” I said skeptically as I took his business card. His name was Dave Ness, his profession was that of naturalistic pest exterminator.

A week later, when a roach hitched a ride to work in my bra, I called him during my lunch break and set up an appointment. I was surprised at lack of tools he brought to my apartment in order to “cleanse” it. He had only a small bag, like that of a doctor. He asked that I leave the room as he set up his “tools“. And though I hid in the kitchen, I could spy through a crack in the door to what he was up to in the living room. First he spread out a small blanket as one would do on a picnic. He lit four candles and placed them at each of the points of the blanket. Then he produced a flute and began to play an odd little song, going from nearly silent warbling to a thundering crescendo of notes that felt as thought they were being ripped from my pounding heart. When he stopped, I noticed an outline of shadows around him. I gasped when I realized that they were not shadows, but the roaches I sought to get rid of. He opened his mouth, laying the flute aside and the roaches crawled up his clothes to his mouth. They entered, looking like a living carpet marching down his throat and making his belly bulge by the moment. Before long, they ceased their great numbers and fell to a trickling few.

I nearly puked in the kitchen as I waited for him to pack up his things. “It’s over now.” he called out, though I waited just a few minutes more to make certain of it. “There might be one or two left in this old place, but I will be back in a few days with your blessing.”

“Uh, sure.” I said. “What can I pay you?”

“Maybe a drink, I’m awful thirsty.” he said. “A beer would be nice.”

I fetched him a beer, one of the ones I kept around to catch the roaches with. He swallowed it in three gulps and I was surprised that he had any room left.

The next few weeks, he came over more and more frequently, until at last he moved himself into my little apartment, never moving from the blanket in the living room. He had grown to roughly the size of a bull, his belly bulging luridly with his six legged prey. A few would escape from time to time, to replenish the reserves and give him another meal in the days to come. He coughed, his voice raspy with his work. “Can you bring me another beer, babe?” he asked, setting his flute bag in his bag as he switched the channels on the television. I sighed, knowing that as bad as I had it, no roaches would be ‘bugging’ me anytime soon. Still, I felt cheated, swapping one beer swilling pest for another.