A Slow Descent Into Madness

The year is 1998. Picture me, an excited, twenty-something year old African-American woman moving into her first apartment overlooking the Hudson river. I am in baggy denim shorts and my hair is in a funky little afro. A white walkman hangs off my belt and my headphones are curled snuggly around my neck. I am listening and singing along to the Fugees. I am laden with heavy carton boxes which rattle as I walk up the unending stairs to door D5, my new home.

I walk into the apartment and survey it from the door. The kitchen sink is in the bedroom or is the bedroom in the kitchen? The apartment is not tiny, its cozy. Its not expensive, its luxurious. And even though I live close to the river, I can barely see it through the ridiculously tiny windows. The ceiling bears an unisghtly water stain which has turned into the yellowish color of piss. I smile, content with my little paradise.

A fat cockroach scampers across the floor and I bring down my white Reebok-ed foot on it, crashing its skeleton with a sickening crunch! I wince, disgusted, yet shrug it off as I move to place the carton boxes on the floor. I will clean up the atrocity later, I decide.

What follows is hours of trying to fit my few possessions into the small space. My tiny couch blocks the pathway to the bathroom. Even the bed needs to be angled just so. I get on my knees to scrub away the remnants of the previous tenant and by the time the sun has set over the New York skyline, I am sweating and panting like an underpaid pornstar.

Finally, I collapse onto my awkward bed, exhausted. Soon, my whale-like snores are reverberating off the walls. Yet, I don’t stay asleep for too long. I am woken up by the curiuos sensation of something walking across my arm.

I turn on the lights quickly and another obese cockroach skittles across my pillow.

“Eck!” I exclaim, launching myself at the beast, but it vanishes from view.

Suddenly, from the corner of my eye, I catch sight of two cockroaches out on a leisurely midnight stroll on my kitchen sink. I grab my bathroom slipper and creep up behind them. I am ready to strike. I mercilessly bring down the slipper on one of the cockroaches while its companion escapes narrowly.

Now my kitchen sink is spattered with the whitish entrails of the creature. It lays there, in a pool of its own intestinal juices, its feelers moving around weakly as it dies. The site looks like a gory homicide crime scene, only much worse.

I look around at the apartment that I had meticulously scrubbed only a few hours earlier and it feels like I am standing in a pig sty.

Now, I must get rid of the body.

By the time I am rinsing my sink for the sixth time, I have hatched a war plan. I need reinforecement, I decide. I retire to bed once more, smiling at the thought of vanquishing the enemy with chemicals and poisons.

I wake up at the crack of dawn and I am out the door before you can say bloody roach. A short walk later, I walk into a store. A tiny Chinese man stands behind the counter.

"Hello," he greets me cheerily, "my name is Mr. Wang."

"Really?" I ask, "but you dont look like a wang," I joke.

He does not seem to appreciate my sentiments. I decide to get down to business.

"Look," I say, leaning conspiratorially over the counter, "I need something for the bloody roaches in my apartment. The strongest stuff you've got. Powders, liquids, sprays- just give me everything."

He doesnt say anything. Instead, he walks off to an ominious red door behind the counter. He is gone for a while before he returns with a bulging brown paper bag. I smile. I pay him and leave.

Now, I am standing in the middle of my tiny partment. In this moment, I am no longer a cosmopolitan woman trying it make it in the Big Apple. No. I am a soldier down in the Congo fighting against the oppressor and I have seen too much.

I look around the apartment warily. My skin crawls uncomfortably. I imagine the blasphemous bugs covering the walls. I imagine these spawns of Satan crawling on my skin with their creepy, spiky legs. I shudder. My hand teeters nervously above the bug spray bottle holstered to my belt. I feel like I am trapped in some sort of armageddon show down.

Suddenly, I spy with my little eye a juicy cockroach lounging about on the scatterboard of my apartment. I ambush it in a cloud of chemicals. I feel victorious. I wait for the cloud to clear only to see the cockroach scampering out of sight.

I toss the can of bug spray aside. It has failed me. I grab my broom from under the bed and attack the vile creature. I crash it and it makes a disgusting squelching sound which makes me gag.

I douse the apartment in chemicals then begin a systemic massacre of the unwanted species. By the time evening comes, I have killed more bloody roaches than I can count. With each kill, I feel my humanity slipping away from me. I have lost sight of who I was before the war.

I am knackered out from the day's battle. I feel confident I have made a significant dent in the roach population in my apartment. I have a light meal and drift off into cautious sleep.

Its four in the morning. I am woken up by a pressing feeling thirst. I reach for a glass from the cabinet above the kitchen sink. I turn it over and see a gigantic roach nestled at the bottom of the glass. I scream in terror and throw the glass across the room. It shatters and the bug scampers away.

Just then, I see another bloody roach strolling across the wall just above my bed. I grab the broom and splatter its insides on the wall.

I look around the aprtment, tension growing steadily in the pits of my gut. They are everywhere. I can hear them snickering at me from the cracks in the wall. They mock me, watching me through their bug eyes, planning their invasion in their little bug homes.

The thought of the unwanted room-mates drives me crazy.

I rip the sheets off my bed. I refuse to be defeated. I begin to air out everything once more.

To my neighbours I must sound deranged, pushing and pulling furniture in the wee hours of the morning. They do not know that my house has been transformed into a bloody warzone.

By the time the sun rises, my veins tingle with a rush of adrenaline or perhaps its the lack of sleep which makes me feel slightly buzzed. More roach carcases are disposed of. This is no way to live, I decide. As I collapse on my bed, I am racked with indesion. I will either have to submit to the bug overlords or move to a new home. One thing is for sure, there is no end in sight to this war.