A.F.R.
kickbox
This is something that was cut from my forthcoming novel. Stylewise it just didn't fit the story.
I sit in the dark closet of my parents’ bedroom with only a few beams of piercing daylight entering underneath the door and wonder what dying must be like. Theories about the afterlife vary, but the actual moment of death, the permanent and placatory experience we all must go through, is still a big question mark lacking a plausible explanation.
Supported by a single hair made out of wire, a heavy, kidney-bean-colored overcoat smelling of mothballs and dust is hanging over me like the Sword of Damocles, occasionally touching my head. I try to escape the sleeve swinging back and forth in the draft by pulling my legs against my chest and pushing my head between them. It helps temporarily, but after few minutes, my sore muscles start to twitch incessantly. The pain grows progressively until I lie down and curl up in the fetal position. The convulsing ends, but the plangent sound penetrates the thin closet door and overtakes my brain. Jingle-jingle, it cries. Metal against metal. Sharply and clearly, like an industrial lullaby.
The rhythm changes and I can sense a more aggressive flow of air galloping beneath the door. Someone steps in, and I hear a closing of the front door, the sound of the lock clicking, and steps, high heels crisscrossing the apartment without any specific destination.
She screams. Loud. Ear-splitting loud. The good thing is, I can’t hear the sound anymore, though I’m not sure if it has really stopped or not. Anyhow that’s currently least of my problems. I can feel how a cockroach, Periplaneta americana, I think, is eating my thumbnail, chopping off pieces of protein keratin to stay alive. The sensation is barely strong enough to register in my brain, but, in the ominous darkness, without the efficient use of my sight, my hearing picks up every bite the world’s most loathed insect takes. I suppose it could be worse. It could be eating my eyelashes.
The thumping high heels come alive again, but this time they’re running and not toward me. Dropping something on their way out, they pause for another high-pitched scream that cuts the air like a Mexican switchblade. Then, off they go again, out the front door and onto the staircase, finally fading like the end of a tacky love song. From the corner of my eye, I squeeze out a luscious, fat drop that lands on la cucaracha, which is badly in a need of a shower, pinning the poor little critter against the floor like a lubricated wrestler.
The stench creeps into the closet, and the soaked and amply mad cockroach gets back on its six legs, barely avoiding the three-count, and goes for my eyelash with the fortitude of a pit bull. In the dim light, I see as it wiggles its antennas, staring defiantly into my eye before starting its feast. As it bites in, there is a weak rustle, the same kind you might hear when stepping on a single potato chip, only fainter. It serves as a homing beacon for the rest of the population hiding in the shadows that, one by one, march into the great wide open, spreading out in orderly fashion like a well-trained battalion of GIs before proceeding toward me in smaller groups. The floor tiles are like blocks of ice, cooling me, and, on their gleaming surface, the cockroaches stumble onward like clumsy figure skaters, making the best of a bad situation.
My bad situation, to be more precise.
They mount my arms and legs, my tear-stained cheeks and nose, and my mind, still occupied by the terrible sound that will probably haunt me forever, as long as I live, orders me to blink repeatedly, to scare them off, but, in the end, it is as futile an effort as it is to piss into a raging forest fire. They feed on me, sensing my defenseless state. And all I do, all I can do, is quiver.
I sit in the dark closet of my parents’ bedroom with only a few beams of piercing daylight entering underneath the door and wonder what dying must be like. Theories about the afterlife vary, but the actual moment of death, the permanent and placatory experience we all must go through, is still a big question mark lacking a plausible explanation.
Supported by a single hair made out of wire, a heavy, kidney-bean-colored overcoat smelling of mothballs and dust is hanging over me like the Sword of Damocles, occasionally touching my head. I try to escape the sleeve swinging back and forth in the draft by pulling my legs against my chest and pushing my head between them. It helps temporarily, but after few minutes, my sore muscles start to twitch incessantly. The pain grows progressively until I lie down and curl up in the fetal position. The convulsing ends, but the plangent sound penetrates the thin closet door and overtakes my brain. Jingle-jingle, it cries. Metal against metal. Sharply and clearly, like an industrial lullaby.
The rhythm changes and I can sense a more aggressive flow of air galloping beneath the door. Someone steps in, and I hear a closing of the front door, the sound of the lock clicking, and steps, high heels crisscrossing the apartment without any specific destination.
She screams. Loud. Ear-splitting loud. The good thing is, I can’t hear the sound anymore, though I’m not sure if it has really stopped or not. Anyhow that’s currently least of my problems. I can feel how a cockroach, Periplaneta americana, I think, is eating my thumbnail, chopping off pieces of protein keratin to stay alive. The sensation is barely strong enough to register in my brain, but, in the ominous darkness, without the efficient use of my sight, my hearing picks up every bite the world’s most loathed insect takes. I suppose it could be worse. It could be eating my eyelashes.
The thumping high heels come alive again, but this time they’re running and not toward me. Dropping something on their way out, they pause for another high-pitched scream that cuts the air like a Mexican switchblade. Then, off they go again, out the front door and onto the staircase, finally fading like the end of a tacky love song. From the corner of my eye, I squeeze out a luscious, fat drop that lands on la cucaracha, which is badly in a need of a shower, pinning the poor little critter against the floor like a lubricated wrestler.
The stench creeps into the closet, and the soaked and amply mad cockroach gets back on its six legs, barely avoiding the three-count, and goes for my eyelash with the fortitude of a pit bull. In the dim light, I see as it wiggles its antennas, staring defiantly into my eye before starting its feast. As it bites in, there is a weak rustle, the same kind you might hear when stepping on a single potato chip, only fainter. It serves as a homing beacon for the rest of the population hiding in the shadows that, one by one, march into the great wide open, spreading out in orderly fashion like a well-trained battalion of GIs before proceeding toward me in smaller groups. The floor tiles are like blocks of ice, cooling me, and, on their gleaming surface, the cockroaches stumble onward like clumsy figure skaters, making the best of a bad situation.
My bad situation, to be more precise.
They mount my arms and legs, my tear-stained cheeks and nose, and my mind, still occupied by the terrible sound that will probably haunt me forever, as long as I live, orders me to blink repeatedly, to scare them off, but, in the end, it is as futile an effort as it is to piss into a raging forest fire. They feed on me, sensing my defenseless state. And all I do, all I can do, is quiver.