So, there’s this story that’s pretty famous in my hometown, though most people don’t talk about it openly, ‘cause the whole thing was really kinda sick, so of course being a morbid ten year old girl with nothing better to do I decided to try to figure out exactly what happened in exact detail. I did this mostly because I like stories about stuff like craziness and murder, which is probably why my mom always begs my dad to send me to therapy when she thinks I’m asleep or upstairs, but luckily for my potential psychologist my father refuses to believe that there’s anything wrong with me. I’ve always been very mature for my age, as you probably already noticed, so I know way more than you (or my parents) think about stuff like sex and basic human evil and I figure I should go to college when I’m about fourteen and get the hell on with my life.
Well, the whole thing isn’t really discussed very much because it makes people around here uncomfortable to talk about it. Strangely enough I found out about it from the perpetrator himself, this homeless guy named Tom, the one homeless guy I had ever seen and was forbidden to talk to. One afternoon after school he was sitting on a bench in town smoking a cigarette and when I walked by he asked if I wanted to hear a story. I stopped more for the cigarette than anything. Smoking has always fascinated me. You listen all day to teachers and your parents go on and on about what a FILTHY habit it is and how BAD for your health it is. But there’s something delicious and forbidden about the smell and I’m always jealous of how the person looks like a dragon blowing smoke out of their nose. So I sat on the bench next to Tom to watch him smoke and he asked if I thought he’d always been that way.
“Of course not. At some point you had to be a baby, then a kid like me with parents and a house and everything.”
“Then why do you think I’m like this now?” And because like my mother says I have absolutely no tact, I answered.
“You probably did something really stupid.” He laughed out loud and it startled me, I half expected him to get up and walk away after that blunt response.
“Do you want to know what it was?” We stared into each other’s eyes while the wasted smoke floated up to the clouds. My heart was racing with fear and excitement, he knew the answer. “Alright, I’ll tell you.”
********
Tom made it sound like he and his wife had the perfect life before the incident.
“Her name was Sarah,” he said. “And she was the prettiest thing you’ve ever seen. She had yellow hair, and her favorite color was white.”
That’s the lamest favorite color I’ve ever heard, I thought while he kept going on and on about how much they adored each other and how he would think to himself “Man, I’m married to the greatest woman on the planet” all the time and I just really wanted to puke. She stayed at their small suburban “starter home” he called it, while Tom worked as an architect.
“Did she go to college?” I asked.
“Yes.”
Then she wanted something more out of life than to sit at home hand washing the floors, I thought. If she was still alive I would have told her so.
“What kind of stuff did she like?”
“Throwing parties for our friends, and white orchids.”
Tom obviously didn’t know his wife very well at all. No one likes stuff like that. I think people that lead such disgustingly normal lives are bound to have something weird and twisted happen to them eventually because the weirdness isn’t all spread out evenly like it’s supposed to be. I was actually glad that Tom became homeless, because I knew that I never would have liked him the way he was before.
Anyway, the night before the incident she was throwing one of the parties that she loved so much, but Tom was in a sour mood from working so hard at the office only to come home to a spotless house and a hot four course meal waiting for him. Okay, I know I’m being a little biased right now, but come on. I just don’t think he had any right to be in a bad mood, that’s all. Then I started wondering what friends they could possibly have had that would want to come hang out in their white perfect house and chat with a perfect blonde woman who looked like she was cut out of a Coca-Cola ad. I mean, I have an aunt who’s kind of like Sarah was and as soon as I walk into her house I don’t even want to breathe because I know that I’ll have dirtied something up. That’s all beside the point. So he was a big sour puss at the party and Sarah was pretty upset with him after, but he said they had made up by the end of the night, which I knew meant that they had sex, though I’m not really sure if Tom knew that I knew or not. Then after all that boring exposition about the world’s most insufferable couple, he finally got to the good part, which I’ll try to narrate better, just how Tom told it to me.
*******
The next morning Tom awoke and before even opening his eyes he knew something was dreadfully wrong; it felt as though there was a large insect’s sticky leg on his bare chest. He thought that he must have been having an awful dream. He sat up with a start, but instead of finding Sarah’s silky body there was what appeared to be a giant cockroach, three to four feet in length, sleeping where Sarah should have been. Tom leaped out of bed and yelled, recoiling in horror, the insect made several jittery motions and looked around the room. Tom stood frozen and the bug came towards him, flying off the bed onto the floor, approaching the corner where Tom was cowering. The awful sound of the giant wings buzzing disgusted Tom so greatly that his paralysis was broken. Screaming like a feral animal, he grabbed a vase full of white orchids from the bedside table and hit the creature, his strength increased by fear and disgust. It retreated to the other side of the room and Tom escaped the bedroom before all the white petals had fallen to the floor.
Now that the insect was out of sight Tom started to feel more rational. He put on his bathrobe, the only article of clothing not in the dreaded bedroom, and pushed the couch against the bedroom door. He wasn’t sure if a cockroach could turn a doorknob or perhaps even smash down the door, but he didn’t want to take any chances. Sarah was nowhere to be found. Their car was still in the driveway, her purse was still on the table, and last night’s mess hadn’t been cleaned. The windows were all tightly shut, but Sarah wasn’t strong enough to open most of them anyway. She had managed to hide every sign that their small home was quite old besides the sticky windows. Even the door was bolted shut, which couldn’t have been done without the key, and both sets of house keys were on the hook next to the door. Tom’s stomach turned when came to the realization that she must be trapped in the room with the monster.
He cautiously put his ear to the bedroom door and listened. Nothing but an eerie silence. “Sarah, are you in there?” he called. The bug responded instead of his betrothed, with that awful buzzing and screeching ten times as loud as a normal sized cockroach. It began slamming itself against the door and Tom ran to the other side of the living room, upsetting the coffee table. “Maybe she’s hurt or unconscious,” Tom thought. Their bedroom was small, if she was in there she would have to be under the bed or in the closet. Tom grabbed a heavy lamp, took a few seconds to build his courage, then shoved the couch away and burst into the room.
He bellowed her name as the insect came flying towards him and swung the lamp as hard as he could. Porcelain connected with the roach’s abdomen and it fell, crumpled and twitching where it landed. If the bug had been smaller or the room had been bigger it could easily have avoided Tom, as most insects are much quicker than people, especially people filled with fear and confusion. Tom felt that he had triumphantly vanquished the beast, at least for the moment. Within seconds, strengthened by a rush of adrenalin, he had overturned the bed and ripped down the clothing in the closet, toppling pictures of the happy couple and the funny knick knacks they had collected together. She wasn’t there. The bug shuddered and chirped weakly from where it had fallen, sticky brown blood staining the white carpet. The sight made Tom nauseous. In a frenzy he slammed the door, pushed the couch back, and ran to the bathroom to vomit.
The only logical conclusion that Tom could come to was that the cockroach must have eaten Sarah. It must have smothered her in her sleep (so she wouldn’t make any noise) and then sucked all the juices out of her, lastly finishing off her skin and bones. Tears welled up in Tom’s eyes and sitting on the cold bathroom floor next to the toilet he cried for the first time since he was a boy.
Hunger pangs distracted him from his grief and as he ate a cold sandwich the bug renewed its efforts, buzzing and slamming itself into the door. The noises nauseated Tom and before he had finished his lunch he vomited again. He paced back and forth for the remainder of the afternoon listening to the monstrosity that killed his wife try to escape. Each hour it sounded weaker and rested for longer.
Everyone has heard the rumors about creatures mutated by nuclear testing, has seen the cheap B-movies reenacting such disasters. What else could produce a beast of such proportions? Tom knew that the right thing to do would be to call the police, turn the thing into the government, though it sounded ridiculous when he said it to himself. Fear and anger paralyzed him. He couldn’t possibly leave the house, what if there were more out there? What if all their friends and neighbors had been devoured by similar creatures? He cursed himself for not owning a gun of any kind. He could only hold off any number of them for a few minutes, horror and nausea had completely exhausted him. He also didn’t want the creature to get away alive. Scientists could turn it into some kind of pampered experiment; use it to warn the world against the dangers of nuclear radiation. He just wanted the monster that murdered the love of his life dead.
*******
All Tom said after that was, “I guess I killed her. Beat her right to death with that frying pan. But it wasn’t really her, ya know? It was that horrible cockroach. I didn’t kill my wife.” I didn’t want to ask any further than that, his voice sounded kinda funny and he just sat there and let his cigarette burn between his fingers. Hot tears were in my eyes ‘cause I knew hot tears were in his eyes, but then he took another drag and went on.
********
As evening slipped into night, Tom made up his mind. He was going to kill it. To prepare for the ordeal he made himself a grilled cheese sandwich with potato chips and washed down his meal with a shot of whiskey. Then for the first time since he had been married he cleaned the house. He washed and dried the guests’ dirty dishes. He vacuumed and wiped the counter tops. He put the whiskey bottle back in the liquor cabinet. He swept the floor. He moved the couch back into the living room, assuming that since the creature hadn’t made a sound in over an hour it would be too weak to break loose. He slowly and methodically walked around their home several times; making sure everything was in its proper place, exactly the way Sarah would have wanted. The only thing left was the frying pan that he had used to make the grilled cheese, which would now be his weapon. He picked it up, took a deep, wrathful breath, and threw open the bedroom door to unleash his fury on the mutated cockroach that had eaten Sarah.
The creature appeared to be badly injured from their earlier encounter, but it had the strength to scuttle towards him. Its brown, sticky blood was smeared on the white floor and walls. The bed was on its side, the contents of the closet were in a heap, the broken vase was on the floor with the shriveled, shredded orchids. Their happy pictures and objects were scattered amongst the rubble. Near the bed on the other side of the room were Tom and Sarah’s clothes from the night before, Sarah’s white silk negligee soiled with insect blood.
As the monster came toward him Tom raised the frying pan and brought it down upon the loathsome beast with adrenaline fortified strength. Tom had never felt so angry in his entire life, never experienced such a lapse in his sanity. Angry wasn’t even the correct word to describe it. Something animal came over him, a deep primal fear and loathing that careful lucky humans never have to feel. The roach turned to escape, leaving two of its legs behind, but Tom brought down another blow. It screeched in pain and attempted to unfold its wings, but only one of them would cooperate with its efforts. An antenna had been badly damaged and it thrashed its head stupidly. Any movement the creature made signaled that it was still alive and enraged Tom even more. The weapon came down faster and harder. Even after he knew the thing was dead Tom couldn’t stop himself. I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it. He and the entire room were covered in the creature’s fetid blood and pieces. Tom beat the corpse until nothing but a sickening brown mush was left, nothing but a dismembered insect leg that still twitched.
*******
Tom looked really upset after that, the tears were brimming over his eyelids and his nose was all red even though it was pretty warm out. I was feeling a strange mixture of horror, excitement, and sadness, something I only ever felt when I listened in on my parents’ very worst fights. “It was bad enough for me, but can you imagine what she was thinking?” he asked. I obeyed social rules this time and instead of responding “yes” like I wanted to, I just stayed silent and looked at the stuff in between the cracks in the sidewalk beneath my ratty sneakers. “I think about it all the time,” he continued. “I thought about it and thought about it and thought about it ‘til I had it all worked out, ‘til I knew just what she was thinking and feeling while I was doing that to her. I just had to. It’s the best punishment I can think of.”
“They didn’t punish you enough? You didn’t go to jail or anything?”
“Oh sure, I went to jail, but I got off on something called temporary insanity, which I still don’t really understand. I mean nothing like that had ever happened to me before, and nothing like that has happened since, so I guess that’s just what it was. Temporary insanity. But I still don’t really get it. Everyone besides that judge and the psychotherapist still thinks I’m crazy. I don’t even know that I’m not crazy, but they say that if you can figure you out that you might be crazy then you’re not crazy. I guess it just wasn’t real. They all told me it wasn’t real. I even saw them take her body out. I couldn’t recognize her, but I knew it wasn’t that monster that had been in our house. I have no other choice than to believe them. There’s nothing else I can do about it.”
“But maybe she lost her mind that day too,” I tried to comfort him. “Maybe she thought she was a giant roach too. Maybe she was in so much shock that she didn’t know what was happening.” I tried to sound like my mom used to when I would ask questions about horrifying stories in the newspaper. She would always tell me that the person was in so much shock that they didn’t know they were dying.
“No,” said Tom. “Her last few hours were hell on earth. That much I know.”
*******
I walked home five hours later than I was supposed to, turning everything I had just learned over in my head. Something about the story was bothering me, but I couldn’t figure out what it was, like when you have a hair in your mouth and you keep sticking your tongue out trying to grab it but somehow it stays stuck. Whatever it was, I knew it was important. I could barely pay attention while my parents screamed at me for being late and for refusing to tell them what I had been doing and for going to school in the same shirt that I wore the day before and grounded me for two entire weeks. One thing that Tom said kept surfacing, “I thought about it and thought about it and thought about it ‘til I had it all worked out, ‘til I knew just what she was thinking and feeling while I was doing that to her. I just had to. It’s the best punishment I can think of.”
I had the feeling that there was something about the story that I couldn’t understand, but I desperately wanted to figure out what it was so I could look it up in the dictionary or something. After a dinner of microwaved food that was probably silent, but I wasn’t really paying enough attention to know for sure, I put on my red plaid pajamas and went to bed. My parents pretended to make me go early, but they knew as well as I did that it was my decision. As soon as I closed my eyes my brain all on its own started to play the story for me like a movie. It didn’t feel like I had any control over what I was seeing, so I watched like a spectator, but I watched what I suppose actually happened rather than what Tom told me. What it was like for Sarah.
******
Sarah awoke with a start when she felt Tom jolt upright and leap out of bed. Right away she knew that something was wrong. He looked at her (or was he looking at something behind her?) with an animal-like horror and revulsion. Sarah crawled over the bed towards him. “Tom, what’s wrong, what’s going on?” She timidly walked towards the corner where he was standing. His anxiety seemed to worsen as she came nearer to him. She thought that there must be something horrible in the room behind her and bolted towards her husband for protection. Just as quickly Tom reached for a vase on the bedside table full of white orchids that he had brought home to surprise her and swung at Sarah with all his might, connecting with her shoulder. She fell backwards into the dresser and the knobs cut into her back. The pain searing through her spine temporarily paralyzed her. Tom dropped the vase and slammed the door with a deafening crash as Sarah watched the torn flower petals fall to the floor.
For the first few minutes she was too stunned to move. Every breath sent a piercing pain through her ribs, several of which were broken. She heard Tom pushing the couch in front of the door, but couldn’t comprehend what had just happened. Her body shook violently and she couldn’t stop the gasping sobs though each one was like a knife in her chest. Once she regained some control she attempted to get on her hands and knees. After successfully adjusting herself to this position she found that she could crawl without too much pain and pulled herself toward the bedroom door. She heard Tom on the other side and could tell he was listening for something.
“Sarah, are you in there?” he called.
“Yes, yes, I’m here Tom. Let me out, help me!” She pounded on the door weakly. “Please Tom, come back. Help me. Don’t leave me alone,” she screamed and groveled on the floor. She curled into the fetal position and bit her knee so hard that she drew blood. “I’ll do anything, just let me out!” Crying triggered a bloody nose; red mixed with the tears and mucus falling onto her white chest. Tom didn’t reply and she heard him walk away. She held her breathe listening for him for what felt like hours. When his footsteps returned Sarah’s heart pounded furiously as she heard the couch slide away from the door. Tom threw the door open and at first Sarah pulled herself to her knees, clumsily reaching towards him, calling his name. When she noticed the crazed look in his eye and the lamp in his hand she froze.
“Sarah!” he bellowed like a wild animal and swung the lamp into her head. She collapsed and curled into a ball, shaking so hard that her muscles were threatening to rip themselves apart. From her place on the floor she was vaguely aware that Tom was overturning the furniture when she lost consciousness.
When she awakened she knew that she was hurt very badly. Again she gradually began to test her motor skills and found that she could still crawl without too much difficulty. She didn’t care enough to wipe her face and a film of salt and mucus had formed from her forehead down past her neck. She had no idea how long it had been since Tom first attacked her or since the last time she had been conscious. Sarah watched her body bruise and swell, her flawless skin discolor, her excellent figure become crippled.
******
I lay in my bed frozen in fear and astonishment, wishing that I could turn the TV off or at least cover my eyes. I clutched my sheet to stop my hands from shaking. I wasn’t sure how I knew how she felt but I did and even when I told myself that I was making all this up it didn’t seem any less real and it didn’t stop.
******
Sarah could hear Tom moving around the house. She heard dishes clanging together, water running, the vacuum, and realized that he was cleaning. Instead of wondering why he chose now as the first time to help around the house Sarah found the domestic sounds comforting. She sighed with joy when Tom pushed the couch away from the door. “Thomas, dear, you’re so lovely, thank you for cleaning.” Her voice sounded strange to her, weak and scratchy, and talking burned her raw throat. When he threw the door open she crawled to him wildly before looking at his twisted face, before seeing the frying pan he held above his head.
Tom hit her in the chest before she could even scream. Blood trickled out of her mouth and she tried to pull herself away. He brought the pan down again on her back, paralyzing her with pain. The next blow was to her head, mercifully spilling her pink brains and ending her life. But in his rage Tom did not stop. Blood and flesh and blonde hair splattered the white room and stuck to the frying pan. He brought the weapon down on her limp, soft body again and again. Droplets of blood rained down on her forgotten white negligee and soaked in to the silk.
******
I wasn’t sure when I had started crying during that strange movie in my head, or why. It was a different kind of crying than I had ever done before, different than how I cried when I broke my arm or how I cried when the kids at school made fun of me when I chopped my hair off. It was different because I knew it was never going to end, somehow I knew I would always be crying for this. I lay in my red plaid pajamas under my sheets and cried silently the whole night. I understood why no one wanted to talk about the story, I understood that when my mom told me people were in too much shock to feel their grisly deaths she was lying, I understood why I was supposed to be afraid of Tom. And I hated that I understood. I hated that I would have to cry about this forever. I woke up the next morning and I knew I was older.
