She was doing her monthly room cleaning and rearranging of furniture when she first spotted them. She moved the bookshelf a little to the left in order to clean the space between it and her dresser when they caught her eye. She screamed in outright terror and stared in disgust at the dusted corpses with their legs up in the air, lint and strands of hair clumping them together. Having counted at least nine of them, she shuddered in revulsion and suppressed the urge to squirm. Grabbing her broom, she swept the whole area up hastily to get rid of the bodies, mentally noting to bring pesticide back up from downstairs.

As she went downstairs, she held the small trash bag that contained the cockroaches by the tips of her fingers, trying to make minimal contact. She threw the bag into the larger kitchen trashcan and went on the hunt for pesticide, preferably something strong. Finding one that she found suitable, she stomped back up the stairs, dreading the smell that would fill her room. She tried to quell it however, reminding herself, ‘The ends justify the means, Mel,’ she reminded herself. The ends justify the means. This is for a greater cause.

She came back into her room and shrieked, finding at the exact, same spot, a live cockroach, scuttering around. Not thinking about it twice, she grabbed the first thing she saw (a hardcover copy of Kafka’s Metamorphosis) before hurling it at the offensive creature. She cringed when she lifted the book and saw that her attempt had been successful; white goop spread all over her book’s cover. She wiped it off thoroughly (gagging all the while) with a Bounty and thus deemed the area of encounter (quite unoriginally, she might add), ‘The Graveyard’.

After the somewhat traumatizing event, she prompted herself to douse pesticide in absolutely any corner and surface, all the while wondering, ‘If I were a cockroach, where would I hide?’

She heard her mom shouting distantly, “Melanie! What’s that smell?”

“It’s pesticide, mom!” she shouted back.

“Wha--But what for? What are you doing?”

“Fighting the noble fight, mother!”

Once her handy-work was done (and she finished choking on the fumes she was drowning in), she looked around at her room, satisfied, and menacingly declared: “This is war.”

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Since her impromptu declaration and usage of chemical warfare, she’s checked the Graveyard every once in a while, and noticed that there has not been a showing up of any more bodies that needed cleaning. Happy about her apparent victory, she continued on with her life. Wake up in the morning, rush to school, get back home at 6:00 PM, nap ’til 6:45, finish homework by 10 to talk to her boyfriend until 11:30. It all worked out contiguously and well for her.

However, on October 28th, at exactly 7:12 PM, she was disrupted from her daily routine when something flew smack into her face.

“What the hell--?” she spluttered, waving her hands in front of her face frantically. Her eyes zeroed in on the thing, which landed on her laptop screen. “God-freaking-dammit,“ she muttered angrily, rolling her homework up into a makeshift bat before lunging at the damned roach. She landed a hit and thought she got it, but when she lifted the papers once more to survey the damage, it flew past her, behind her back. She twisted around and swatted blindly, trying to figure out where exactly the damned thing went, but failed. She slumped in defeat and tried to brush it off.

“It’s nothing, Melanie. Honestly, it’s just one, small cockroach, not a big deal. You can let it get past you. You’ll get the fucker later,” she assuaged herself. The more she told and reminded herself that it really wasn’t a big deal (“Because face it, cockroaches can’t cause you any actual harm, silly”), the better she felt.

And did she feel better! She had almost forgotten about the flying-into-the-face incident, when the very next day, she saw a small, dark figure scurrying out of the corner of her eye. Her head whipped to where she saw said figure, with a reeking suspicion as to what exactly it was. But no, even after upturning her hamper, investigating underneath her bed, checking the Graveyard, and moving the dresser, she never saw a single cockroach.

“Hmm,” she mused aloud, “I must be crazy, because I swear to God...” she trailed off, still gazing around.

She went back to doing her homework when it happened again. This time she jumped off from her bed and threw herself to the floor, searching desperately, but still found nothing.

“Okay, roaches! I see what you’re doing. But know this, you sure as hell won’t get this lady to run away from you! I won’t hide! I won’t back down!” she shouted to absolutely no one.

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It was starting to get to her, though. The appearances hadn’t stopped, and they were always out of the corner of her eye. Every time she’d turn around to see them, they would disappear. She knew they were there, she just didn’t know where exactly. And that’s what drove her even madder: the inability to strike back because she didn’t know where to start.

She voiced her concerns to her boyfriend one night, explaining: “I think they’re trying to overthrow me. Honestly, I do. They’re getting back at me for dousing the whole place with pesticides and showing them who’s boss. I swear to god, it’s like the French Revolution here.”

He only laughed in reply, called her silly and overly imaginative. Then, then he did the worst thing of all: he told her to ‘chill’ (to which she groaned in frustration).

“No, no look. They’re trying to drive me crazy, I know it. First they make their presence known by flying into my damn face, and now they’re just taunting me, appearing then disappearing, making me go mad,” she whispered conspiratorially, eyes darting around the room, on the look out for the aforementioned vermin.

“You need to let this go, babe. I think you’re taking this too much to heart,” he replied, and she huffed indignantly before grumbling out a small, “Fine.”

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She threw herself into a ton of activities to keep her life busy, but most importantly, keep her out of her room. It helped with momentarily forgetting her situation and trying to let go. It of course all went to s*** as soon as she got back home though, and kept on seeing cockroaches, cockroaches everywhere.

She had resorted to just staying in her brother’s room for the time being. He didn’t appreciate her presence, but she couldn’t bring herself to care.

“Why can’t you go back to your room again?”

“Because, there are a bunch of roaches living there that are attacking me.”

He had given her a blank stare but didn’t push any further.

By the fifth day, however, she had gotten on everyone’s nerves.

“Okay, Melanie, this has got to stop. This is getting ridiculous: you have to go back to your room,” her mother complained.

“No, but, Mom--“

“--No buts! I mean honestly, give your brother some privacy!”

“I don’t want to go back, Mom! They,” she paused before her voice went down to a helpless whisper, “--they scare me...”

“Melanie, they’re just roaches. Please relax,” her mother dismissed her and repeated once more that she was to go back to her room by that night. She sighed in response before she gathered her things and headed over to her room.

She tentatively pushed the door to her room open, the pitch black of her room screaming, “Don’t come in!”

Melanie gulped and sucked it up, then turned on her lights. She was taking baby steps towards her bed when something had launched itself at her and she yelped, looking down to see of course, a cockroach. Roaring, she stomped on the creature before running over to her bed and throwing herself under the covers. She waited for a while until she felt okay enough and lowered the covers, surveying the floor. Not finding a body, her blood ran cold. There was the telltale goop on the floor, but no body. She froze and stared at that spot for at least a minute before she jumped out of the bed, muttering to herself hysterically, “Maybe sleep will make it better!”

She turned off her lights and ran back to the bed, throwing herself under the covers once more. She willed her heart to calm down and took slow breaths, allowing the darkness to relax her. She felt herself slowly give in, and soon enough, she was asleep.

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She drifted in and out of sleep due to a tickling sensation she felt in her neck. She brushed it off, knowing her hair sometimes tickled her neck in her sleep, and tossed around, trying to get back to sleep. But her eyes flew open when she was attacked by the same sensation on her arms, around her thighs, surrounding her feet. This disgusting, tickling sensation of crawling. She didn’t react to this sudden assault before she soon felt it on her face, now covering her all over. She opened her mouth to scream, but nothing came out except this strange gurgling, and all she felt was crawling, crawling on her skin, on her insides, beneath her eyelids, all around her. She soon couldn’t breathe, the sensations and events overwhelming he,r and she struggled to draw in air, her chest feeling tight and full. Her insides squirmed, her heart raced, and she gagged and gagged until she lay still, the crawling sensation overtaking her.

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“Melanie, time for school!”

Minutes passed before Melanie’s mother noticed her daughter’s lack of reply. Her eyebrows furrowed, and she made her way to her room to call her daughters attention.

“Melanie! I said it’s time for school!”

Still no response. She frowned, knowing this was so unlike her daughter, and got closer to her room. As she got closer, she heard a slight buzzing in the air, and it increased in volume as she got closer to the room.

She knocked on the door insistently, and asked, “Melanie? Are you okay? I’m hearing this strange sound, is that you?”

When she still received no answer, her heart beat increased in speed, and she did not wait for a response before swinging the door open, “Melanie, honey what’s wron--“ and stopped midway to let out a piercing shriek.

On every surface and space of Melanie’s room, there were roaches: surrounding and gathering at the bed, flying around the room, running up the walls. Crawling, crawling everywhere.